ChessBase Magazine Extra 224

Opening videos

Nico Zwirs: Nimzo-Indian

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 b6 5.Nge2 Ne4 

If you want to avoid sharp variations in the Nimzo-Indian with 4.e3 with Black, the side line 4…b6 may be an option, because here Black can hope for a more positional course of the game. Nico Zwirs examines the variation using the topical game Maghsoodloo-Gledura from the German Bundesliga (2025).

Robert Ris: French Advance Variation

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6 6.Na3

Robert Ris prepared a small opening surprise for his game against the young Ukrainian FM Mykola Korchynskyi at the Open in Wolfsberg 2024: After the standard moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3 Qb6, our author continued with the not new but rare move 6.Na3. After the exchange 6...cxd4 7.cxd4, Black first has the option of weakening White’s pawn structure with 7...Bxa3 - Robert Ris explains why this, however, is not a good idea for Black! The main continuation is 7...Bb4+, and the game Ris-Korchynskyi continued 8.Bd2 Nge7 9.Nc2 Bxd2+ 10.Qxd2 Qxb2. Black now is a pawn up, but White has strong attacking potential after Black's short castling. In his video, Robert Ris demonstrates the complete game including the novelty 14.Nh4 prepared for that game.

“Lucky bag”: Analyses by Alexander Donchenko, Romain Edouard, Abhijeet Gupta, Rainer Knaak, Fiona Sieber and many more.

The “Lucky bag” of this CBM Extra contains 44 annotated games from various tournaments.

Alexander Donchenko’s victory with black against Fabiano Caruana from the Saint Louis Cup 2024 was chosen as “The brilliancy” of the issue. With this victory in the last round, the German secured first place with 6.5 out of 9, shared with the American top player!

“I felt that I could play the structure more easily than Caruana and believed for the first time that I was actually fighting for an advantage. I also saw how his time consumption increased and he no longer exuded his usual absolute self-confidence.”

The "Update service" once again delivers over 40,000 new games for your database!

The games of the update service are also included in the Mega Update Service 2025, which can be used with the programs ChessBase 17/18 (and a corresponding subscription).