Biel: Three draws

7/26/2018 – The streak of two decisive games per day finished on Wednesday at the Biel GM tournament, as the players split points in all three boards in the fourth round. Nico Georgiadis finished his bad run by defending a highly complicated position against World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Mamedyarov and Carlsen still lead the standings and will face-off in the fifth round. | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Biel International Chess Festival

The Cote d'Ivoire Rapid & Blitz Invitational kicked off in Abidjan

7/25/2018 – Amin Bassem leads a field of ten strong chess players from ten different African countries. They are competing at the Cote d'Ivoire Rapid & Blitz Invitational, an event that mimics the format used in the Grand Chess Tour. The tournament is organized by the Fédération Ivoirienne des Echecs (FIDEC) and the Kasparov Chess Foundation. Starting today, 90-minute highlight shows will be provided daily. | Pictured: GM Amin Bassem | Photo: Alina l'Ami

NEW: Michael Rahal: Smash the Sicilian with the Smith-Morra Gambit

7/25/2018 – The Smith-Morra Gambit (1.e4 c5 2.d4!) is a great attacking weapon against the popular Sicilian Defence. On move two White sacrifices a pawn for fast development and good attacking chances, and Black can easily fall into one of the many devious opening traps. With this gambit in your opening arsenal you are highly unpredictable and able to deal heavy blows at short notice. Your opponent will have to solve concrete problems from the beginning and can easily be under pressure before move ten!

Ding Liren and Hou Yifan in exhibition matches

7/25/2018 – Nikita Vitiugov defeated Hou Yifan by a 6½-3½ score in a Blitz Encounter in Russia as part of the ongoing Russia-China friendship series of events. Back in China, the injured Ding Liren seems to be making a smooth recovery and is already set to play a match with Veselin Topalov next month. Details on how he's been spending his time, and games from the Chinese League, which he had to miss. | Photo: Vladimir Barsky

Biel: Shak catches Magnus

7/24/2018 – For the third day in a row, two players left Biel's Congress Centre with a win in their pockets. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov inflicted Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's second consecutive loss and now shares the lead with Magnus Carlsen. The other winner was David Navara, who increased Nico Georgiadis' woes with a Black win in 39 moves. Peter Svidler and Carlsen signed a three-fold repetition draw after exploring a complex line of the Najdorf | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Simon Bohnenblust / Biel International Chess Festival

The Weekly Show with Lawrence Trent

7/24/2018 – Tuesdays at 18:00 CEST (5:00 pm UK time, Noon EDT) Lawrence Trent goes on air on Playchess.com. In his show, Lawrence will be dealing with the latest trends, games and combinations from elite chess tournaments. This week features games from the Xtracon Open!

Biel: Carlsen with the early lead

7/24/2018 – On Sunday, the Accentus GM tournament started in Biel with a few super GMs, including none other than the World Champion himself. Magnus Carlsen had an exciting duel with David Navara, in which Carlsen proved that the queen may be overrated. So far, the World Champion has shown himself in excellent form. On Monday he scored again, this time with Black against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Peter Svidler celebrated his first victory, against Nico Georgiadis, and is tied with Mamedyarov for second place. | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Simon Bohnenblust / Biel International Chess Festival

A free path for the passed pawn

7/24/2018 – Rook endings require precision, rook endings with passed pawns even more. And precision sometimes requires to make moves that seem to be counter-intuitive, paradoxical, like retreating when you want to advance.

Hort stories: Impressions of a new senior (I)

7/24/2018 – The World Senior Team Championships was on Jon Speelman's mind recently, and now it's Vlastimil Hort's turn. Hort was born in 1944 and initially wanted to wait until he reached his eighties before starting to play in senior tournaments. However, friends convinced him to try it earlier and he took part in Radebeul. He enjoyed the time and was happy to meet a lot of old colleagues and friends. | Photos in the report: Karsten Wieland

Speelman's Agony #80

7/23/2018 – Jonathan looks at his own agony / ecstasy pair of games from the recent World Senior Team Championship near Dresden. In two weeks he'll be back to looking at reader submissions — and Jon can always use more material from readers. If your games are selected for the Agony column, not only will you get free detailed commentary of your games by one of chess’s great authors and instructors, and former world no. 4 player, but you also win a free three-month ChessBase Premium Account!

Awonder Liang and Carissa Yip are the 2018 U.S. Junior Champions

7/23/2018 – Saint Louis hosted the 2018 editions of the U.S. Junior Chess Championship and the U.S. Girls Junior Championship last week. Awonder Liang and Carissa Yip qualified to the national main event by winning in each category. This was Liang's second consecutive win in this event, while Yip improved greatly on her eighth place from last year. | Photos: Austin Fuller / Saint Louis Chess Club

Dortmund: Nepo wins in style

7/23/2018 – The 2018 Sparkassen Chess Meeting finished on Sunday. Ian Nepomniachtchi took clear first place after beating Georg Meier with a dazzling attack. Vladislav Kovalev could have finished in clear second place had he been able to defeat Vladimir Kramnik in a winning but difficult endgame — the former world champion defended until a draw was agreed on move 104. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Singapore GM invitational: The chat with the two local heroes

7/22/2018 – The QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters Invitational 2018 was the first GM norm event two be held in Singapore in the last twenty years. At the conclusion of the event, two Singaporean players had secured their final norms. While IM Kevin Goh secured his final GM norm after six years of wait, WIM Gong Qianyun scored her third WGM norm and became Singapore's latest Woman Grandmaster. After the event, both players spoke about their success with JUNIOR TAY and shared some annotated games.

Dortmund Round 7 LIVE

7/22/2018 – Dortmund Round 7 is at 13:15 CEST (7:15 AM EDT) Saturday with a sole leader in Ian Nepomniachtchi. Trailing by a half point with two rounds to play are Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Vladislav Kovalev, Georg Meier and Anish Giri each with 3½ out of 6. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Dortmund: Giri and Meier join the chasing pack

7/22/2018 – With one round to go, no less than four players are half a point behind sole leader Ian Nepomniachtchi at the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund. Giri and Meier beat Kramnik and Nisipeanu, respectively, to join Kovalev and Duda on 3½/6. LAWRENCE TRENT analysed both decisive games and the final stage of Duda-Nepomniachtchi, where the young Polish star missed his chance to defeat the leader. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

First GM norm event in Singapore since last century

7/21/2018 – The QCD-Prof Lim Kok Ann Grandmasters Invitational can be regarded as a historic event for Singapore. JUNIOR TAY reports not only on the chess — won by Mongolian GM Batchuluun Tsegmed ahead of 2600 top-seeded Timur Gareyev — but also extensively on how this event came to pass, and all the people power that went along with it. | Photo: Cecilia Chong

Dortmund: Nepo leads after big win over Kramnik

7/21/2018 – The fifth round of the Sparkassen Chess Meeting in Dortmund had only one decisive result, but it was a big one: Ian Nepomniachtchi took down Vladimir Kramnik in the only match-up that faced two of the previous co-leaders. Nepo is now in front on 3½/5, half a point ahead of Vladislav Kovalev and Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The final two rounds of the tournament will be played this weekend. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Pattern Recognition — Fact or Fiction?

7/20/2018 – Chess players, chess authors and chess psychologists attempt to teach and explain chess playing and development of chess skills with the concept of pattern and pattern recognition. However, the lack of a precise definition of pattern raises the question of what we are supposed to recognise and if chess may not be too diverse and too complex to be reduced to simplified didactic devices like 'patterns.' This is comprehensively considered in a paper by RUNE VIK-HANSEN.

48 hours to Biel

7/20/2018 – Get set for one of the summer's biggest events and one with a long tradition. The Biel Chess Festival is LIVE with World Champion Magnus Carlsen leading the GM tournament. ChessBase brings you live commentary from Biel with GM Daniel King and IM Anna Rudolf.

Open result

7/20/2018 – Not an easy situation for Black in the diagram position: the rook is hanging, and on top of that White threatens to promote his d-pawn. A good idea is required — or rather two. Your move, please!

30-minute training: Learn to play the Tartakower

7/19/2018 – Learn from GM DANIEL KING on a favourite variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined. Here's the deal: you invest a small amount of time, reading a few paragraphs about an interesting opening line, selected for you by one of the world's great chess trainers. After that, you try it out, right there in your browser, against an engine that matches the playing strength of you potential opponents. You can play any number of games and test different ideas, as far as possible following the instructions of an experienced chess trainer. We have a brand-new application to support this kind of learning. Take a look – and admit: it is great fun!

A fascinating memoir: Genna Sosonko's "Evil-Doer: Half a Century with Viktor Korchnoi"

7/19/2018 – 40 years ago this week, Karpov and Korchnoi started their fight for the world title in Baguio City on the Philippines. Yesterday we published a lengthy interview with Karpov, who won the match 6 : 5, but Korchnoi almost became world champion. A good occasion to take a look at Genna Sosonko's new book "Evil-Doer: Half a Century with Viktor Korchnoi", a fine memoir of one of the most interesting chess players of the 20th century. | Pictured: Korchnoi and Sosonko | Photo courtesy Elk and Ruby

Dortmund: Kramnik beats Duda

7/19/2018 – Jan-Krzysztof Duda had a great start at the Sparkassen ChessMeeting in Dortmund, but fell victim to Vladimir Kramnik in the fourth round. Anish Giri also got a full point on Wednesday, as he beat Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu. These results left four players tied in first place. | Photo: Georgios Souleidis

Karpov on his biggest pleasure in life

7/18/2018 – Today is the 40th anniversary of the start of the 1978 World Championship match between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi in Baguio, the Philippines. To mark the occasion we bring you an epic interview from DAVID LLADA, who spoke to the 12th World Champion following his 184th tournament win in Plato d'Aro, outside of Barcelona, Spain. | Photo: David Llada