7/7/2016 – On Saturday, the 44. Sparkassen Chess Meeting begins in Dortmund. From 9th to 17th July some of the world's best players compete against the best German players. Vladimir Kramnik will play his 22nd tournament in Dortmund and hopes to win his eleventh title. But he has strong rivals such as Fabiano Caruana, the winner of the two previous events, or Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, currently number four in the world.

7/7/2016 – Jan Gustafsson’s ChessBase DVD Black Repertoire against 1.e4: Open Games covers everything in 1.e4 e5 except the main lines of the Spanish (though it covers Spanish sidelines). "I believe that a basic knowledge of 1.e4 e5 from Black’s perspective is a kind of foundational knowledge for any strong player," writes reviewer Zhigen Lin. "I have no problem in saying that this is hands down the best openings DVD I have ever seen."

7/6/2016 – Magnus Carlsen leads the Grand Chess Tour after the speed events in Paris and Leuven. But the world chess champion will not be around for the next two established classical events in Saint Louis and London. He is leaving the competition, mainly to prepare for the world championship match against Sergey Karjakin, scheduled for November in New York City. Carlsen’s exit gives other players a chance to win it all.

7/6/2016 – Since a few days a new "replayer" is used on the ChessBase websites. Of course, you can replay games with it but you can also add an engine to analyse the game and you can enter and analyse variations. In conjunction with the ChessBase Cloud the replayer also offers possibilities, which are particularly interesting for tournament organisers who want to share the games of their tournament. And that's how it's done...

7/6/2016 – In last week's "Agony Column" Jon Speelman showed two games that were rather positional, and steeped in the importance of pawn structure and colour complexes. This week he gives a hint how Black might get active play after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 and presents two games that have positional aspects but are rather more violent and feature two vicious attacks with nice tactics.

7/6/2016 – Looking for an interesting, exciting, aggressive and flexible opening to play against 1 e4!? Then the Black Lion is just the opening for you! The Lion gets ready to roar after 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Nf3 Nbd7 5.Bc4 Be7 6.0–0 c6. This opening, first brought into the limelight by Dutch amateur players Jerry van Rekom and Leo Jansen, now gets the grandmaster treatment. Simon Williams suggests a simple to learn, yet deadly system of development for Black. Add it to your tournament repertoire.

7/5/2016 – After round four of the Women's Grand Prix in Chengdu, China, which takes place from 1st to 15th July, the Indian Grandmaster Humpy Koneru leads with 3.5/4. In round four she played against Tan Zhongyi from China and won her third game in a row. The other decisive game of the round was Ju Wenjun's victory against Pia Cramling. The four other games of the round all ended in a draw.

7/5/2016 – Its stiffest competition came from the German program Jonny, running on a giant 2400-core machine. With only 48 cores the US program Komodo finished the computer tournament in Leiden, Netherlands, equal first with Jonny, then went on to win a hard-fought tiebreak, making it the 22nd World Computer Chess Champion. It may interest you to know that the latest version of our flagship chess engine, Komodo 10, was released just a month ago.

7/5/2016 – After eight of nine rounds Armenia led the World Team Championship 50+ in Radebeul, Dresden, by half-a-point. But this was too narrow a margin because in the last round Armenia won only 2.5-1.5 while Germany 1 won 3.5-0.5. This allowed Germany to catch up with Armenia to become new World Senior Team Champion. In the 65+ event the Russians dominated from beginning to end and convincingly won the title.

7/5/2016 – Every week ChessBase Magazine author and renowned endgame expert Karsten Müller presents a remarkable or particularly instructive endgame in his blog. A click on the diagram opens a larger board. Test your endgame skills, improve and have fun!

7/4/2016 – The Russian "Higher League", which finished 1st July and was played in Kolomna, is a strong tournament and a qualifier for the "Superfinal", the Russian Championship. Grandmaster Grigoriy Oparin, who turned 19 during the tournament, won with 6.5/9, half-a-point ahead of the field. He and four more players qualified for the "Superfinal".

7/4/2016 – The Queen's Gambit Declined is one of the most reliable openings against 1 d4. With a rock of a pawn in the middle of the board, Black refuses to be pushed over in the centre. The Catalan is a reliable opening for White, but there are ways for Black to shake White out of his com-placency while still maintaining a sound and solid position himself. We have two brand new DVD on these openings by one of our most popular authors, Daniel King. Check them out.