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!

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

7/20/2018 – WATCH LIVE 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.

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!