6/14/2018 – After scoring his second GM norm, a couple of months ago at the Heraklion Fischer Memorial in Greece, IM R Praggnanandhaa continued his quest for the GM title at the 1st Schaakweek Apeldoorn closed round robin in the Netherlands. Unfortunately, after a loss in the fifth round, the Indian wunderkind lost even a mathematical chance to reach his goal in Apeldoorn. By now, seven rounds have been played out of which Praggnanandhaa has lost five and won two. We take an in-depth look at his performance so far. | Photo: Henk Vinkes/Schaakweek Apeldoorn

6/13/2018 – Wesley So got off to a good start in the rapid tournament in Leuven, with 5 / 6 (rapid games use double scoring). So maintained his lead on day two, keeping the same rhythm. He won in rounds 4 and 5, in round 6 he played a draw, bringing his point tally to 10 / 12. In second place is Levon Aronian with 8 / 12 | Photo: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

6/13/2018 – David Navara plays a match against P. Harikrishna in Prague, starting today. The match will take place over 12 games of rapid chess. Harikrishna was a last minute replacement for Ding Liren after the Chinese GM suffered an accident in Norway. The Chinese Association sends word that their top player will be fine, but he will be out of competition for at least a month.

6/13/2018 – Wesley So had the best start on the first day of the rapid tournament in Leuven and leads after wins over Caruana and Mamedyarov and a draw netting him 2½ points, using traditional scoring. Sergey Karjakin and Levon Aronian trail with 2 points. Rapid game point tallies will, however, count double in the final standings. | Photos: Lennart Ootes / Grand Chess Tour

6/13/2018 – Here's another opportunity to sharpen your tactical skills: twelve positions taken from recent tournaments, for you to solve. As a special service, the diagram boards allow you not only to move the pieces around to analyse — there is also an embedded engine that will actually play the positions against you! That means you can work things out directly on the diagrams in the browser. Plus: you can get products from Chess & Bridge at a discount price!

6/12/2018 – 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. Today, Lawrence will have a look at games from the American Continental Championship.

6/12/2018 – Tactics are fun and solving tactics puzzles improves your chess. The search mask of ChessBase and Fritz allows you to quickly find games with sacrifices. And that's only one of the many options for this tool! | Drawing: ChessBase

6/12/2018 – In the first part of our interview with Ju Wenjun we spoke about her World Championship match against Tan Zhongyi. In the second part of the interview, we have much more general questions to ask her. What is a normal day like in the life of Ju Wenjun, what does she think about the World Championship format, what's her opinion about Hou Yifan not playing women's chess and who is the male player she would like to play a match against. Interview of the 17th Women's World Champion by Niklesh Jain and Angela Franco.

6/12/2018 – "All rook endings are drawn" is a well-known and obviously wrong witticism. In fact, even drawn rook endings are not always drawn.

6/11/2018 – Thursday at 8pm UK time Daniel King will go on air on playchess.com. You can watch the episode live for free. All the usual puzzles, games and instruction will be on offer. Puzzle and the live video...

6/11/2018 – In this Simon Says we look at the final stage of the game. Important rules and endgame techniques are discussed. Join the action starting from 18:00 CEST (Noon EDT). | Photo: Alina l'Ami

6/11/2018 – After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 g6! leads to the so-called “Accelerated Dragon Defense” of the Sicilian, which is characterised by the idea to achieve the thematic central break d7-d5 in one move (in contrast to the “Dragon Variation”, in which Black plays d7-d6). On this DVD the Russian grandmaster and top women player Nadezhda Kosintseva reveals the secrets of her favourite opening. Kosintseva has played the Accelerated Dragon for many years and achieved a lot of success with it. You too can accelerate your opening – with this complete repertoire for Black against 1.e4!