Prague 2026 and 27 Short Games: How ChessBase Magazine 225 Reopens the Door to Depth

The March snow in Saint Petersburg fell later than usual this year. I sat in my small apartment, a cup of tea gone cold beside me, a game lasting only twenty-three moves on the screen. It came from the Chess Festival Prague 2026. I paused for a long time at move eighteen. There was nothing spectacular there. No sacrificial shock, no combination that made the hall stand. Just a knight retreating, slowly, like an old man stepping back to see the road ahead more clearly. Within those twenty-three moves lay a strategic idea I had not encountered in decades of playing and writing about chess. Outside the window, a Russian birch stood still under a thin layer of snow. In my mind, an old question returned: what makes a short game more memorable than a long one?

ChessBase Magazine issue 225 arrived in the spring of 2026, carrying the lingering warmth of the tournament in Prague. For professional chess people, this magazine has long been a ritual. It is not loud like live feeds, it does not argue on social media, it does not chase scandal. It arrives quietly like an old textbook reopened, and inside is the work of the world's top players trying to explain themselves. Issue 225 devotes most of its pages to the Chess Festival Prague 2026, where names such as Aravindh Chithambaram, Anish Giri, Ediz Gurel, David Navara and others sat down to dissect their own moves.

I have always believed one thing, and sixty-five years have taught it to me through both tears and joy: a game not recorded dies twice. The first time when the game ends, the second when memory of it fades. ChessBase Magazine, in its quiet way, fights the second death. In this issue, readers get analysis from the very people who sat at the board, along with twenty-seven short games labelled with a modest word: "Special". Those are twenty-seven games chosen because they are both short and beautiful, ending early yet leaving a long echo.

I remember an afternoon in Prague years ago, when I was younger and still followed tournaments. I sat in the back row, watching an older player quietly notate his own game. He said nothing for three hours. When I asked why, he answered: "I am relearning my own game." That is the spirit of issue 225. It does not merely display fine moves, it relearns itself.

Let us start with Aravindh Chithambaram. This Indian player belongs to a generation born after computers had already transformed how people study chess. He plays with an almost cold calm, and in the game analysed in issue 225, the striking thing is not his attacking moves but how he declines opportunities. We praise courage in launching into a fight. Few notice that declining a fight needs another kind of courage, the courage of someone who grasps the value of waiting. Aravindh wins not because he is stronger at the decisive moment, but because he understands better which moment should not be decided. That lesson struck me, a man who has watched more than one game slip away through haste. In the opening phase he chose, the computer gives no clear verdict, and that blur is human territory. Aravindh steps in, not because he is certain to win, but because he trusts his reading of the position more than the number.

Contrast this with Anish Giri. The Dutch player of Nepali origin has been at the top for over a decade, and his story is tied to a paradox: drawing is easy, winning is hard. But in his analysis in issue 225, Giri shows a side few notice. He does not avoid complexity; he chooses complexity exactly where it favours him. The difference between a player who draws often and one who wins often lies in choosing the right kind of complexity to enter. Giri understands that some tangled positions lead people astray, while in others the tangle itself is a weapon. He distinguishes the two with a sensitivity I call "a player's ear". I have watched many Giri games, and what I admire is not his calculation but his ability to hear the rhythm of a game before the moves take shape.

Ediz Gurel, a young Turkish player, represents the new wave. He plays with the confidence of someone who has never feared losing, and in his games Gurel often enters opening paths elders consider risky. Curiously, reading his analysis I realised the risk is not random at all. It is calculated to the last detail, just calculated differently from the previous generation. The young are not more reckless; they merely weigh risk by a new frame of reference, where actively creating uncertainty counts as investment rather than gambling. Gurel knows that in a world where everyone has a computer, conformity is no longer an advantage. The advantage lies in pushing opponents outside the norm while keeping one's own clarity.

David Navara, the Czech, is the heart of the Prague tournament. He is known as a player of extraordinary memory and rare humility at the top. In his analysis, Navara salvages games with a patience the young often undervalue. He does not try to impress. He only tries to understand. And precisely for that, what he leaves behind is often deeper than anything loud. Navara reminds me that patience is not the virtue of someone short of ideas, but the discipline of someone with too many ideas who must choose. In an age that worships speed, a top player choosing to slow down is a quiet but powerful statement.

The "Special" section with twenty-seven short games is what troubles me most. In chess circles, long, complex games with deep endgames are often prized. Short games are sometimes seen as products of error, of imprecision. But looking closely at these twenty-seven, I see the opposite. A good short game often contains more original ideas than a long one, because it has no room for mediocrity. When a game ends in twenty or twenty-five moves, every move must carry weight. There is no room to play casually. No time to wait for the opponent to collapse. You must create the collapse. And that pressure crystallises into ideas sharp as knives. I have wondered why short games stay with me so long, while many hundred-move games I forget the moment I leave the board. The answer may be that human memory binds to intensity rather than length.

The three opening videos by Jan Werle, Daniel King and Robert Ris add another dimension to issue 225. King, the Englishman, is famous for explaining chess like storytelling, turning dry variations into narratives with climaxes. Werle brings the precision of a well-trained Dutchman, not a sentence too many, not an idea too few. Ris is more intimate, like a friend by the board whispering. Three styles, one aim: to bring viewers inside the opening, where decisions are made before people understand why. Opening videos, to me, are a strange form of teaching. They teach knowledge and also teach how to think. And in an age when anyone can look up a variation in seconds, the value of these videos is not information but the way people think about information.

The ten opening articles with new repertoire ideas are the part I read slowest. This is where the magazine proves its worth as a training tool, not merely an entertainment digest. One can find new plans for an old system, new handling for a structure thought exhausted. For a club player, this is treasure. For a coach, it is material. For a journalist like me, it is proof that chess still changes, year by year, game by game, however still it looks on the surface.

Beyond analysis and openings, issue 225 also includes training in tactics, strategy and endgames led by master trainers. This is the least-mentioned part yet the backbone of any tournament player. Tactics can be learned; strategy must be felt; the endgame is where calculation meets patience. A beginner loves beautiful combinations, but someone who has played for thirty years like me treasures dry endgame exercises, because there truth shows itself. What separates a good player from a merely fine one is the ability to win positions that offer nothing glamorous to win. Issue 225 provides material for exactly that moment.

I recall a line I once wrote years ago: the transfer market is where people sell the future to buy hope. In chess there is a similar market, though few name it. It is the market of opening ideas, where people trade study time for an edge at the board. A magazine like issue 225 is such a market, where ideas are bought, inherited and transformed. And in that market the winner is not the one who buys most, but the one who knows what he is looking for.

There is something that troubles me, and here I want to argue against how we usually read a chess magazine. We tend to read it like a reference dictionary: meet a hard variation, open it for an answer. That reading is convenient, but it turns knowledge into a tool and loses the most important part of studying chess. The most important part is not the answer but how one arrives at it. Reading a game analysed by the player himself is learning how to think, not how to memorise. When Aravindh explains why he chose a modest-looking move, when Giri admits a hesitation, when Navara confesses a mistake, they give us something more valuable than a correct variation: they give us the process. And process is what no computer can replace, because a computer gives results, not hesitation.

The biggest counter-intuitive point in issue 225, I think, lies in the number twenty-seven itself. In a culture that prizes complexity and length, devoting a whole special section to short games is a manifesto. It says that economy of move matters as much as depth. It says a strong enough idea can end a game before the opponent understands what happened. We tend to believe victory comes from doing more than the opponent. But these twenty-seven short games show the reverse: victory often comes from forcing the opponent to do too much, too early, in a position where every extra move is a wrong move. The elegance of a short game is not that it ends quickly, but that it permits no excess to exist.

A memory rushed back as I read this section. Years ago, at a tournament in Moscow, I watched a game end after only nineteen moves. The losing player sat motionless for a long while, not from regret but astonishment. He did not understand what had just happened to him. His opponent had not attacked violently; he simply gave him no chance to breathe. It was another kind of victory, cold and absolute. When the stadium no longer has a ball, memory starts scoring, and in that case, the memory of those nineteen moves still scores in me after all these years.

In form, ChessBase Magazine issue 225 is released as a direct download, including a booklet as a PDF file. For those who want it in hand, there is a printed booklet with a download key by post. The publication is also available as a "ChessBase Book" for iPad, tablet and Mac. This variety of formats is not merely convenience. It reflects a deeper truth: chess lives in many places at once, on a wooden board, on a screen, on a bus, and in people's minds when they close the device. Knowledge, to live, must follow its reader anywhere.

The day the heart stopped beating, I learned to beat slower but deeper. That line returned to me as I thought of issue 225. This is not a publication of haste. It beats slowly, and therefore deeply. Amid a world of chess news unfolding by the minute, where results are online before players leave the board, a magazine that chooses to stop, to dig, to dissect, is an almost romantic act. It resembles an old bird that refuses to land, flying slowly but forever. On a Luzhniki night, I once understood that landing too is a way of flying. But in the chess world, some books refuse to land, and precisely for that we still have something to read on long nights.

So what makes issue 225 worth the time? For me, its value lies not in how much information it holds, but in how it pushes people to think. A weak player can buy it and find a variation to surprise a club friend at the weekend. A coach can buy it and build a whole syllabus for students. A journalist like me buys it to understand more about the people making the history of the game, one move at a time. But the one who reads most is probably the one who reads slowest. The one who dares to pause at move eighteen, at the retreating knight, at a move the computer calls ordinary, and asks: why?

I spent this evening rereading issue 225 for the third time. The snow outside still falls, slow and steady. On the screen, that twenty-three-move game still waits for me. Each rereading yields something new, and I understand it will never end. Chess, to me, is not a puzzle to be solved but a friend to converse with for life. And publications like ChessBase Magazine issue 225 are those conversations recorded, so that those who come later can still join in.

What I carry away after closing issue 225 is not a new opening variation, though it contains ten valuable opening articles. What I carry is a reminder: in chess, as in life, people usually win not by doing more, but by doing more rightly. Aravindh taught me the value of refusal. Giri taught me the art of choosing the right complexity. Gurel taught me that risk can be an investment. Navara taught me that patience is a form of courage. Twenty-seven short games taught me that depth lies not in the number of moves, but in the weight of each.

I do not know what issue 226 will bring. But I know I will wait for it like a letter from an old friend. And while waiting, I will return to that retreating knight at move eighteen, to ask it once more why. Perhaps that is how an old man studies chess: not learning more, but relearning deeper. After all, memory never receives a red card, and at the board, one truly loses only when one stops asking why.