Dortmund Rd4: Caruana continues his rout

7/16/2014 – Despite having three prestigious previous winners, Fabiano Caruana continues his rout of the field with a win in round four. This takes him to 3.5/4 and a 3000+ performance, but more importantly permits him to leapfrog Grischuk to take third on the live ratings list. The king of Dortmund, Vladimir Kramnik, has been unable to recover his form after his opening loss. Round four report.

Wesley So leads the ACP Golden Classic

7/16/2014 – After three rounds of this seven-player round robin (category 17) the very talented 20-year-old Filipino GM has scored 2.5/3 points, with a rating performance of 2924. Although adjournments are allowed in this event, there was just one occasion to seal a move – and the game was decided without continuation. We bring you a special report with lots of comments and videos.

Plovdiv Rd9: The final challenge

7/16/2014 – All it took was a draw. With Valentina Gunina running away with the European Women's Championship, focus began to be made on the runners up, after all, there is only so much one can say about a one-horse race. In round nine, Gunina was finally forced to accede to a draw by rival Salome Melia from Georgia, and this alone injected the fight for first with new life.

Harikrishna joins leaders in Biel

7/15/2014 – Pentala Harikrishna proved to have immense fighting spirit by pushing a position that might have not been in his favor against Anish Giri. The Dutch player got into time trouble and blundered in a complicated position. Hou Yifan had no problems in the black side of a Ragozin against Radoslaw Wojatszek, while Alexander Motylev also easily held Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. Video reports.

Germany wins World Cup in Brazil

7/15/2014 – We estimate that 90% of all chess players are avid soccer fans – and 10% are total fanatics. During the FIFA World Cup there were massive amounts of chat going on, and too much heart-stopping drama for us to ignore. And there is a bit of chess history involved: our headline could have been used 24 years ago, with the addition "Kasparov satisfied". Frederic Friedel explains.

Dortmund Rd3: Four draws

7/15/2014 – As usual, the title does not tell the entire tale of the round. Kramnik obtained a large advantage against Baramidze, and seemed headed to a win, but bad mistakes with 23.Nf3? and 25.f5? turned the tables. The game was pushed to the bitter end, but a draw ensued. There was little to say about the two other Berlins, and a quiet French Classical, making for a fairly lifeless round.

Dutch Champions: Loek Van Wely and Anne Haast

7/15/2014 – The Dutch Championships 2014 finished dramatically. In the Men's tournament Loek Van Wely and Sergei Tiviakov battled it out in a tie-break, which Van Wely won 2-0. In the Women's tournament Peng Zhaoquin was close to her 14th title, but in the last round spoiled a winning position against 21-year old Anne Haast who then became Dutch Champion 2014.

The breakthrough

7/15/2014 – Often a sacrifice, often surprising, quite often beautiful and very often deadly effective - that's the breakthrough. In his weekly endgame blog endgame expert and ChessBase author Karsten Müller presents remarkable and instructive endgames - today he shows a fine breakthrough that took a grandmaster by surprise. Find the right move and enjoy!

Plovdiv Rd8: Exceptional results

7/15/2014 – The first and foremost story of round eight is the steaming locomotive that is Gunina, taking her score to 7.5/8 and with only one rival within even a point. Still, other players are also posting exceptional results, closing in on norms their rating would ordinarily not suggest was within their reach. Two names are Mammadzada and De Rosa who each have huge performances.

Fabulous Start in Biel!

7/14/2014 – The super-tournament in Biel has begun and already the tournament shows amazing chess. Motylev lost to Wojtaszek in a long and complex endgame that was full of tactics; certainly dangerous for both players. Vachier-Lagrave barely held a draw against Harikrishna after the Indian went to the throat from the beginning. But the news of the day? Hou Yifan's demolition of Giri.

India dominates the Commonwealth

7/14/2014 – Glasgow was the host to the 2014 Commonwealth Chess Championships. The tournament reminded all of us why India is considered to be one of the strongest chess countries in the world! The top stages were filled with Indian players and they duly took home most of the prizes. Our reporter, Sabrina Chevannes, bring us a detailed review of a traditional event. Pictorial report.

Plovdiv: Gunina strikes again

7/14/2014 – In 2012 Valentina Gunina became European Women's Champion, and she seems set for a repeat in Plovdiv 2014. After beating number one seed Nana Dzagnidze in round six, she continued her winning streak against Natalia Zhukova in round seven to reach an impressive score of 6.5 out of 7 and an Elo-performance of 2800. Fortune smiled on her.

Peralta wins XXXVII Barbera del Valles Open

7/14/2014 – When preparing his second report from the Spanish summer circuit Sagar Shah discovered that his colleague WGM Alina l'Ami had reported for ChessBase from Barbera del Valles three year ago. Both had played in the event, scored 6.0/9 points and made norms – Alina her maiden for GM, Sagar his final for IM. And gained around 50 rating points each. Enjoy this big pictorial report.

Dortmund: Caruana leads with 2 out of 2

7/14/2014 – After beating David Baramidze in an endgame in round one Fabiano Caruana used tactics to overcome Ruslan Ponomariov in round two of the Dortmund tournament. Baramidze lost again, this time against Arkadij Naiditsch. Georg Meier and Peter Leko drew peacefully while Vladimir Kramnik almost beat Michael Adams but failed to win a won position.

ChessBase Puzzles: Different Opinions

7/13/2014 – It's a position taken from a genuine historic game – one played exactly a hundred years ago. Four different opinions are quoted, each contradicting the previous one about who is actually winning. We ask our readers: study the position, without a board and pieces and form your own opinion. If you get it right you can give yourself a contortionist's pat on the back. Now with solution.

Surprise in first round of Dortmund

7/12/2014 – The Dortmund Sparkassen chess meeting has begun in Dortmund, Germany. With five chess super-stars and three powerful German players the tournament usually provides an interesting mix of top level chess and clashes between the locals and the foreigners, with the super GMs winning most of those points. However, as Meier proved today, that is not always the case.

Gunina leads European Women's Championship

7/12/2014 – After six of eleven rounds a sole leader emerged at the European Women's Championship in Plovdiv: Valentina Gunina from Russia. The European Women's Champion from 2012 won a crucial game against top seed Nana Dzagnidze and now leads the event by 5.5 out of 6, followed by Natalia Zhukova (Ukraine) and Lela Javakhishvili (Georgia) with 5 points each.

ACP Golden Classic starts today

7/12/2014 – Seven players, three with 2700+ ratings (and two top-ranking Italians) are playing this seven-round tournament in a spectacularly beautiful city in Lombardy, Italy. Correct us if we are wrong, but for the first time in this millennium the games will be adjorned if they last for more than five hours. The event starts on Saturday at two p.m. European time. You can watch it on Playchess.

A Fresh Look at Robert the Eleventh

7/11/2014 – "I have always been an admirer of Bobby Fischer the chess player," writes Chris Wainscott, "and also of the ChessBase FritzTrainer DVDs. So it was with some delight that I sat down with Volume One of the Master Class series, the subject of which is none other than Robert James Fischer." He gives this product the maximum six stars ("Everyone should own") in his Chess Cafe review.

Tactics please: First rank versus seventh

7/11/2014 – Endgames with Queens and Rooks can be tricky. With so much firepower around both Kings tend to feel uncomfortable, and pawns, if there are any left, do not always offer reliable protection. No wonder tactics abound in such endgames. Oliver Reeh shows a fine recent example from the European Women’s Championship in Plovdiv.

Visa problems for the Chess Olympiad

7/10/2014 – In order to travel to the Olympiad in Tromsø many players require a visa. But in countries without Norwegian embassies this can pose a problem. European laws require biometric data to be supplied personally, forcing players to travel to a different country. In an open letter FIDE President has complained to the Norwegian Prime Minister, and the Olympiad CEO has replied.

Mihajlova: Chess Pieces and the Art of Etching

7/10/2014 – With the advent of printing, various techniques were developed by artists in Europe and the Far East to facilitate the duplication of images – and at the same time to reach the highest level of artistic achievement. Diana Mihajlova, a chess player, writer and artist, explains how one technique, etching, works and how she used it to generate a series of wonderful chess images.

Two teams top Chengdu

7/10/2014 – It was the teams of Zhu Chen and Yasser Seirawan and Yu Shaoteng and Xu Yuhua. The rating favorites, Hou Yifan and Nigel Short, took a stumble on day three as they were able to score only 0.5/2 in rounds three and four, something that put them too far behind in a tournament that was only five rounds long. We bring you final impressions of a fun and unique event.

Entertaining and informative: New in Chess

7/9/2014 – 106 pages in A4 format, that's the size of "New in Chess", enough material for a small book. The Dutch magazine, which is published in English, appears eight times per year, and the current issue has a lot to offer. For example, an interview with Magnus Carlsen and an extensive portrait of director and chess enthusiast Stanley Kubrick.