Recent News: Norwegian grandmaster Magnus Carlsen shocked the chess community by resigning after one move in a game against American grandmaster Hans Niemann at the Julius Baer Generation Cup, a tournament held online. Niemann as white played 1. d4; Carlsen responded with Nf6. Niemann played 2. c4, whereupon Carlsen resigned and turned off his webcam. Carlsen had previously accused Niemann of cheating after losing to him at the Sinquefield Cup tournament in St. Louis.
The "Lucky bag" of ChessBase Magazine Extra has never been so extensively and diversely filled as in Extra #205! The new issue offers no less than 73 annotated games, including two tricky training exercises by GM Sasikiran. GM Kapnisis presents various opening ideas ("Scotch advance", "Benoni strikes", "Petroff rook shifts", "English castling"), plus analyses by Edouard, Krasenkow, Sumets and many more. However, Imre Hera's analysis of his game against his compatriot Zoltan Almasi from the Hungarian League - "The brilliancy" of this issue - is right at the top of the "Lucky bag". For his success against the higher-rated opponent, Hera employed a surprise in the popular London System: after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bf4 b6 4.e3 Be7 5.h3 c5 he went for the unusual 6.Nc3, which immediately posed problems for the nine-time Hungarian Champion. Take a look!