The Master's Bulletin December 2013 Has Arrived!

In my first blog for Chess.com I am happy to announce that we published the first "new" issue of The Master's Bulletin. Chess.com “tested” a similar magazine (with a very similar name!) between July and November, but the December 2013 issue is the real deal!

For this first one we immediately did something... different! We have created a special world championship issue that is bigger than normal. We have set ourselves the goal to produce a monthly magazine between 20 and 30 pages, but this month we got GM Dejan Bojkov to write an extra long, special featured article on the critical moments of the historic Anand-Carlsen match! He analysed very thoroughly and delivered a magnificent piece on which he must have spent many hours.

It was a much-awaited match, and now that it has finished it can certainly be called historic. That’s why we decided that this month’s theoretical opening articles had to deal with Anand-Carlsen as well. GM Sergei Tiviakov wrote about the 4.d3 line of the Berlin Ruy Lopez, and Alexander Ipatov delved into the complications of the Sämisch Nimzo-Indian. (You will notice that these two articles have some overlap with Bojkov's piece, but that shouldn't really matter because Tiviakov and Ipatov focus more on the opening and besides, it might be interesting to compare the opinions of different GMs!)

I’m happy that two of my old pals from ChessVibes, IMs Arthur van de Oudeweetering and Robert Ris, are more or less continuing their columns from ChessVibes Training. Arthur has selected a game (or rather two!) from the European Team Championship in Warsaw, Poland and reminds us of a famous story from the 1955 Goteborg Interzonal. From the same tournament comes an instructive ending analysed by Robert, who will also take care of nine tactical exercises each month.

We finish each magazine with three instructive endgame studies selected by IM Yochanan Afek, another co-editor of the ChessVibes.com website.

All in all, we hope that we can provide you with interesting opening, middlegame and endgame material that should be especially useful for the practical player. I’m looking forward to bring you many more issues. For now, enjoy this first magazine!

Peter Doggers,
Director of Content