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.

7/3/2016 – "Fast and furious" is the headline of an article published in the Cuban newspapers: but they were not referring to Ivanchuk, who won the Elite group in the Capablanca, or any of the players in that section for that matter. It was a teenage boy that was ripping apart the Premier section that caught everyone's attention. Jeffery Xiong continues to make headlines, and for good reason.

7/2/2016 – FIDE published the rating list from July 2016. Carlsen remains number one, Kramnik follows on two, very narrowly ahead of Caruana. Two Chinese - Hou Yifan and Ju Wenjun - lead the women's ranking list, best junior is Richard Rapport who is 56 points ahead of Wei Yi. Aleksandra Goryachkina and Lei Tingjie, who both have 2482, lead the girls' ranking. Tables...

7/1/2016 – This year the Chess Federation of Colombia was host to the Panamerican Junior Championships and they invited the players to Guatepe, a small picturesque village not far from Medellin. The tournament schedule was tough but Guatepe with its cheerfully painted houses and its breathtaking landscape still left a deep impression. Dejan Boikov reports.

7/1/2016 – After five of nine rounds Armenia and Germany I lead the World Team Championship 50+ that takes place from 26th June to 4th July in Radebeul, Germany. In the Championship 65+ the Russian team dominates. Radebeul is the place where Karl May, one of Germany's most successful and popular authors, died. But the heroes of his popular novels are still very much alive.

7/1/2016 – Tactics can seem deceptively simple, particularly when seeing an engine analysing grandmaster games. Strange, however, how difficult it is to find the right move and to calculate variations properly when playing yourself. It is easier if you solve tactical puzzles regularly. In the ChessBase Magazine and his tactics column Oliver Reeh helps you to do so.

6/30/2016 – Over a 10-week period, English Grandmaster Keith Arkell played in and won seven weekend tournaments. The seven first-place-finishes in a row is a personal best for Arkell. In this interview, he tells how he prepares for his games, how his approach to chess changed over the years, why he works harder at the board and reveals why he thinks chess and life are fabulous at age 55.

6/30/2016 – Twelve teams start in division A of the Chinese Chess League and from April to December they play a double-round-robin tournament, 22 rounds altogether. The teams play on five boards with at least two female players. The rating differences between the various players are often huge but this does not mean that the favorites do have an easy life.

6/30/2016 – Later this year GM Timur Gareyev will try play 47 opponents simultaneously, blindfold, breaking the current world record of 46 games. Neuroscientists found this interesting enough try to find out how his brain works – they put the GM into a MRI scanner while he played four blindfold games. In CHESS Magazine Timur provides a look into how he is preparing to take on arguably the game’s most impressive record of all time.

6/29/2016 – This year's Mitropa Cup was played in Prague, from 19th to 27th June. The Mitropa Cup is a round-robin team event, in which ten Middle European nations take part, each nation ideally starting with a team in the open event and a team in the women's event. This year the Czechs won in the open section while Germany succeeded in the women's event.