ChessBase

• Mahdi Gholami wins Sunway Sitges Open

  The 12th Sunway Sitges Chess Festival concluded with a closely contested open tournament in the Catalonian seaside town. After ten rounds, first place was shared before a blitz play-off decided the title, while an additional knockout determined third place. Iranian GM Mahdi Gholami Orimi emerged as overall winner, ahead of Spanish GM Josep Manuel López, with French GM Jules Moussard completing the podium. | Photo: David Llada / Sunway Sitges Chess Festival (2024)

• Lilit Mkrtchian’s Best Games of 2025 - Opening preparation that actually works

  This video is a valuable chess lesson by IM Mkrtchian. Watch Lilit walk through a full “real tournament” prep routine in ChessBase 26. Find out how she scouts an opponent in the Mega Database, predict their openings, and steer the game into a line she specifically prepared. The payoff: a sharp Rossolimo move-order trap explained in a super teachable way, plus how she converts the advantage into a clean endgame win.

• Alpine SG Pipers beat Triveni Continental Kings to win third edition of Global Chess League

  The Global Chess League came to an end in Mumbai with Alpine SG Pipers, led by Fabiano Caruana, claiming overall victory after beating the two-time champions Triveni Continental Kings, captained by Alireza Firouzja. The Continental Kings failed to win the final after a dominant round-robin showing. Third place was claimed by PBG Alaskan Knights, under the leadership of Gukesh Dommaraju, after winning a blitz playoff against Vishy Anand's Ganges Grandmasters. | Photo: Vivek Sohani

• Spanish Championship: David Antón and Marta García claim national titles in Marbella

  David Antón Guijarro and Marta García Martín claimed the Absolute and Women's titles at the Spanish Chess Championship 2025 in Marbella. Played as a nine-round Swiss with a 100-player field, the event saw Antón decide the open standings early with a strong start, while the women's title went down to the final round and was settled on tiebreaks after a late swing in fortunes.

• ChessBase Master Class: Understanding Wilhelm Steinitz

  Wilhelm Steinitz, the first World Champion was far ahead of his time. A new ChessBase Master Class explores Wilhelm Steinitz as a theoretician, practitioner, and driving force of ideas – and shows why his concepts continue to resonate today. Harry Schaack, Editor-in-Chief of the German chess magazine "Karl", has taken a close look at the course and explains in the current issue why Steinitz still provokes, inspires, and surprises.

• Global Chess League Finals - Live!

  The Tech Mahindra Global Chess League returns for its third season from 14 to 23 December, continuing its franchise-based format that combines elite male and female players. Featuring a team structure, the league again brings together established stars and juniors, with the title to be decided through a double round-robin stage followed by a two-match final. | Follow the action live starting at 11.00 CET (5.00 ET, 15.30 IST)

• New: ChessBase Magazine #229

  FIDE World Cup 2025: Analyses by Adams, Bluebaum, Donchenko, Grandelius, Shankland, Wei Yi, Wojtaszek and many more – Marshal Attack: just develop: Robert Ris praises the modern 11…Bb7!? – “Giri’s Gems”: The world-class player looks back at eight games from top tournaments of 2025 – “Hello e-file!”: Oliver Reeh poses numerous training questions on 33 games and presents four interactive videos in his tactics column – Topalov-Anand 2005: Dorian Rogozenco looks back at a theoretically important, highly tactical Queen's Indian with the spectacular 14.Nxf7!! – a “Modern Classic” and much more!

• London Chess Classic - Live!

  The XTX Markets London Chess Classic is a 10-player all-play-all tournament taking place from 26 November to 5 December at the Emirates Stadium, home to Arsenal Football Club. Four English players and six international representatives make up the lineup, which includes top seeds Alireza Firouzja and Nodirbek Abdusattorov. | Follow the games live with expert commentary starting at 17.00 CET (11.00 ET, 21.30 IST)

• Attacking and sacrifice games

  Ed Schröder, pioneer of chess engine programming, has in his retirement turned his attention to a new and very exciting project: to extract games from a database collection that are especially aggressive – that are short and have daring sacrifices and king attacks. He shows us the kinds of result you can get. Best of all: you can download the utility and use it on your databases.

• Rebel and playing style in chess

  Ed Schröder is a pioneer in chess programming. In the 1990s his program Rebel won a number of World Championships in computer chess, and always had a special place in the community, due to its playing style. In 2003 he retired from competitive computer chess, only releasing freeware versions of Rebel. Now Ed has come out of retirement and is undertaking some interesting new projects – like extracting the most interesting games from historical databases. And he is sharing them with us.