ChessBase Magazine 225: Prague 2026, 27 Miniatures and the Silence of the Analysis Room

Two in the morning in Binh Duong. The ChessBase Magazine 225 download finished after nearly forty minutes on a patchy connection, and the first thing I clicked was the set of 27 miniatures. The opening game ended on move twenty-three. There was no combination that made me stop, yet I rewound it three times, only to watch how the losing side sat motionless for another ten seconds before extending a hand across the board. No spectators in the room. No applause. Just a digital clock counting down in the corner of the screen and a short annotation line by the analyst. The game ended, but the ticking of the clock still echoes in my memory.

I have bought this publication with my own money for twenty-one years, since I was a junior chess player on the grassroots circuit, before moving into tournament organising, commentary and writing about the game. The moment I realised I was still sitting in front of a screen at two in the morning for a twenty-three-move game, rather than for a ten-hour final, says a great deal about how elite chess is moving.

ChessBase Magazine 225 is a periodical from ChessBase, the German publisher of chess software and databases, issued once every two months. This issue is built around the Chess Festival Prague 2026, held in the Czech capital in late February and early March 2026, with Masters, Challenger and several open sections.

The games section features annotations written by the players themselves: Aravindh Chithambaram of India, Anish Giri of the Netherlands, Ediz Gurel of Turkey, David Navara of the Czech Republic, and others. Alongside them sits a group of 27 miniatures, placed by the editors under a heading called 'Special' — a name that shows they understand the entertainment value of the genre. The openings section carries ten feature articles on new theoretical ideas, plus opening videos from three familiar presenters: Jan Werle, Daniel King and Robert Ris.

In terms of format, issue 225 comes in two versions: a direct download with a PDF booklet, or a printed booklet sent by post with a download key. It is also packaged as a 'ChessBase Book' for reading on an iPad, tablet and Mac.

Those four names chosen for annotation map out four stages of a chess player's life, and that is what turns a magazine into a lasting record. A chessboard carries the calluses of a human life alongside the white and black pieces.

Aravindh Chithambaram belongs to the Indian generation that followed Viswanathan Anand, raised in a country where chess has become a genuine career path. Reading his notes, I notice how he talks about the lines he rejected. Young players tend to describe what they chose. Those who have taken enough knocks describe what they turned down, and the reasons for rejection are usually more honest than the reasons for selection.

Anish Giri is the opposite case. He is famous for his high drawing rate, and equally famous for the self-deprecating lines in his annotations. At thirty-one, Giri has been through enough to know that an eighteen-move draw is sometimes the product of three hours of preparation rather than caution. Reading him, I learned how to write about failure without turning it into tragedy.

Ediz Gurel represents the generation born after 2026, players who grew up alongside engines and never knew a chess world before Stockfish. What stands out about Gurel is not the lines but the speed. The way he records the sequence of his thinking reveals a mind trained to decide within seconds, and that produces an entirely different kind of game.

David Navara is the remaining figure. At nearly forty, he has held the Czech number one spot for almost two decades. Age does not extinguish a love of the board, it only changes its colour. Reading Navara, I always feel I am listening to a storyteller rather than someone explaining a variation.

These three parts — games, openings and miniatures — fit together into a deliberate structure: teach through beauty first, teach through theory afterwards.

The opening videos reveal the segmentation of the training market most clearly. Daniel King pursues an accessible introduction, suited to club players who want to grasp the ideas within a few dozen minutes. Robert Ris takes a systematic approach, turning one opening variation into an entire decision tree. Jan Werle sits between the two extremes, leaning towards middlegame ideas that grow out of the opening. Three people, three teaching philosophies, inside one publication.

The ten opening articles are the section I read most slowly. Based on my experience of following and commentating on tournaments, opening pieces of this kind are never merely reference material. They are the fuel for a preparation arms race, and that race has a direct effect on how long games last.

This brings me to the 27 miniatures, since that is the most heavily advertised section.

A short game at the top level is rarely the product of pure talent. It is usually the intersection of three things: a new opening idea, a small error in the transition phase, and a tactical stroke spotted a few moves before the opponent sees it. When all three align, the game ends before the spectators have settled into their seats.

The editors call these 27 games 'Special', and the label is accurate in a commercial sense. They are easy to read, easy to remember, easy to share. A club player can go through all 27 in one evening and feel they have absorbed a considerable amount of knowledge.

But this is where I want to pause for longer.

Twenty-seven miniatures are a curated collection of exceptions, and reading 27 exceptions in a row creates a distorted sense of understanding. In a real tournament, most games run past move forty, reach an endgame, and are decided by the quality of the most mundane decisions. The skills needed to survive such games — patience, time management, accepting a worse position for thirty moves — never appear in a set of 27 miniatures.

Put another way, a player who studies many short games can easily sharpen their tactical recognition, but will struggle to build endurance. The two skills do not substitute for one another.

There is a further paradox, and it sits inside the very same issue. The ten opening articles and the opening videos help players upgrade their arsenal. The thicker the arsenal, the more games end early, because one side lands a prepared blow right from the first phase. Those short games are then curated into entertainment for the next issue. The publisher sells the medicine and the symptoms in the same package.

None of this reduces the value of the publication. But it forces readers to sort it themselves: which parts are for enjoyment, which are for training. For me, the 27 miniatures belong to the first group. The long annotations by Navara and Giri belong to the second. And the ten opening articles are a long-term commitment, not a single evening's reading.

The pandemic years taught me a similar lesson. Sixty days of rewinding footage, and I imagined the sound of pieces touching the board from empty chairs. When there is no audience, chess returns to the sound of its own breathing. Back then I had plenty of material for entertainment, but what I lacked was the ability to sit still with a long game. A good magazine cannot fix that. It only hands you the raw material, then leaves you to decide whether you will be a spectator or a student.

Reading ChessBase Magazine 225 from cover to cover, I think about its greatest value, and that value does not lie in the 27 miniatures. It lies in the fact that a periodical issued every two months, published steadily, is quietly building an archive. Thirty years from now, when a young player wants to know what Anish Giri was thinking at thirty-one, or how David Navara saw the board at nearly forty, they will not find that answer in the rating lists. They will find it in annotations written by the players themselves, in issues nobody expected to become historical documents.

What I take away from issue 225 is not any particular miniature, but a way of reading. The magazine does not promise to make us stronger. It only promises to preserve what players thought, at the exact moment they thought it. The rest — the patience to sit with a long game, the acceptance that most of the beauty lies on move forty rather than move twenty-three — remains the reader's job, at two in the morning, when nobody is clapping.