7/29/2019 – Change is never pleasant, but when one succeeds in expanding his skill set the results are often staggering - ask Vidit Gujrathi! His attacking masterclass over Bogner sees Vidit just 3 points away from his 1st Biel title! Sam Shankland was a surprise victim today - Jorge Cori played splendidly in a reversed French structure to hand the American a potentially decisive loss and come closer to the coveted 2700 mark. Abdusattorov came back from the brink to stun Georgiadis, while Leko blundered deep into the endgame to switch places with Maghsoodloo in the points table.

7/29/2019 – The second day of the GCT Paris tournament at the Head Office of mass media conglomerate Vivendi saw local hero Maxime Vachier-Lagrave climb to first place after collecting two wins and a draw between rounds four and six. Vishy Anand and Jan-Krzysztof Duda are trailing a point behind the leader with three more rounds of rapid chess left for Monday. Eighteen rounds of Blitz will wrap up the event on Wednesday and Thursday. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

7/28/2019 – 41 years ago Wolfram Runkel, (1937-2019) wrote a piece in the prestegious Hamburg weekly "Die Zeit". It was the first major article on computer chess in a German broadsheet. A young science journalist, Frederic Friedel, read it and, with Runkel's help, produced two science documentaries on the subject. And he went on to co-found the chess software company ChessBase. Today, with kind permission of Die Zeit, we bring you the historic article that set everything off.

7/28/2019 – After the rapid tournament, one felt that Vidit was not playing his best chess. But his play improved towards the end of rapid and in the classical event! After dominating the first four rounds of the classical, he now razed the field in Blitz with a powerful 11.0/14! His victory in this section followed a well-known pattern: ruthless against the bottom half with 8.0/8(!) and holding his own against the remaining three by breaking even (3.0/6). Sam Shankland played superbly as well, but a last round loss from a completely winning position ruined his chances, and he now trails the two-player race by a point with three Classical games left to play. TANMAY SRINATH has an exhaustive report. | Photo: Simon Bohnenblust / Biel Chess Festival

7/28/2019 – Exciting chess was the norm in the first three rounds of Rapid at the Paris Grand Chess Tour. Fabiano Caruana and Viswanathan Anand kicked off with wins in rounds one and two and drew their direct encounter to share the lead on 5 out of 6 (wins in Rapid are worth two points). Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Jan-Krzysztof Duda are their closest chasers, on 4 out of 6. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

7/27/2019 – Study of the Month columnist SIEGFRIED HORNECKER outdoes himself this month with a tour de force including eight studies! You can truly spend the entire month with this one. Featured first is Sergiy Didukh (pictured), a Ukrainian studies composer who invented the term “thematic wrong try”. Enjoy! | Photo: Arves.org

7/24/2019 – The FIDE Grand Prix has just ended and IM Merijn van Delft has flagged the semi-final Catalan of Shakhriyar Mamedyarov as his Game of the Week. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. Merijn is on-demand this week starting at 18:00 UTC (20:00 CEST / 2 PM EDT).

7/24/2019 – Wolfram Runkel (1937-2019) was a journalist and writer of the prestigious Hamburg weekly "Die Zeit". In this role he was the founder of the tradition of chess reporting in a mainstream outlet. He was also a pioneer in bringing the subject of computer chess to the attention of the German public and, notably, of a young journalist who went on to co-found a large chess software company. Runkel died last Friday after a long illness. Read Frederic Friedel's personal eulogy. | Photo: Hans Walter Schmitt

7/24/2019 – Game one of the FIDE Grand Prix final in Riga finished surprisingly quickly, as Shakhriyar Mamedyarov took down Maxime Vachier-Lagrave from the white side of a Grünfeld Defence in 28 moves. In the second classical game MVL battled back to tie the score forcing a tiebreak, July 24th starting at 12:00 UTC (14:00 CEST, 8:00 AM EDT), with live games and commentary. | Photo: Niki Riga / World Chess

7/24/2019 – One doesn't lose forever! Sebastian Bogner, the current Swiss Champion, taught us all how to get out of a rut by clinically destroying Parham Maghsoodloo's weak opening play to get himself back into contention. Sam Shankland had the (missed) chance of the round against Vidit, but the American failed to assess properly the best continuation available to him. Peter Leko continued his remarkable fable by turning over a new leaf yet again — his game against Georgiadis lasted an epic 101 moves!

7/24/2019 – The Slovenian city of Maribor celebrated the 100th anniversary of the founding of the first chess club in the city this year. A number of well-known grandmasters took this opportunity to participate in this year's chess festival, among them, Antoaneta Stefanova, women's world champion from 2004 to 2006. From there she won the strong Women's Open in Shaoxing, China, scoring 7 points from 9 games. The Bulgarian, born in 1979 and the mother of a nine-month-old girl, remained undefeated and ended up one point ahead of China's Guo Qi, Harika Dronavalli of India and Munguntuul Batkhuyag from Mongolia, who shared places two to four.

7/23/2019 – After a quick loss in game one, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave evened the score of the final with a 32-move win out of an Italian Opening at the Grand Prix in Riga. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov did not react well to his opponent's unhurried approach, which provoked his position to collapse rapidly. The winner of the event will be decided on Wednesday's tiebreaks, starting at 12:00 UTC (14:00 CEST, 8:00 AM EDT). | Photo: Niki Riga / World Chess