4/7/2019 – A theoretical battle ended up with Sergey Karjakin showing great technique to take down Vishy Anand in an endgame, thus catching up Magnus Carlsen at the top of the standings. The other winner of the day was Veselin Topalov, who defeated Shakhriyar Mamedyarov from the white side of a Ruy Lopez. Three rounds remain to be played in Azerbaijan, with co-leaders Karjakin and Carlsen set to battle on Monday. GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ analysed all the games. | Photo: Official site

4/6/2019 – Recently a new book on endgame studies was published, written by IM Yochanan Afek. He belongs to that very rare breed of composition grandmasters, with more studies to his name than we have seen elsewhere. His book is a treasure trove that provides insights into how, on occasion, the games Afek or others have played gave him the ideas for his study compositions. Review by Frederic Friedel.

4/6/2019 – Waskaduwa beach in Sri Lanka is fast becoming the Colosseum of Asian junior chess battles. Now it's hosting the Asian Youth Chess Championships 2019. EDWIN LAM and KK CHAN check in from on site. | Pictured: The tournament hall where 571 kids from around Asia battle wits against one another | Photo: KK Chan

4/6/2019 – The Dubai Open has been a source of excellent opportunities for players all across the world to play in a strong open event for 21 years now. Some of the readers may remember Magnus Carlsen getting his final GM norm at one of the earlier editions of this event in 2004. This year we have 163 players with some exciting talents. After four rounds we have two leaders with a perfect 4.0/4: IM Raghunandan KS (2370) and GM Aleksandar Indjic. NIKLESH JAIN, who is present at the venue, brings you detailed report.

4/5/2019 – The Shamkir Chess 2019 in the memory of GM Vugar Gashimov has a rest day, and so we remember the tournament's namesake. 27-year-old Vugar Gashimov left us on January 11th, 2014. Above his grave is a picture of a position from his game against Daniel Stellwagen from the European Team Championship 2009. What exactly was so special about the game that it deserved a place in Gashimov's grave? Indulge in the drama and excitement of October 30th 2009 and get to know about the most thrilling game of Vugar Gashimov's life. Gashimov's contribution to the game of chess has been mammoth. A tribute to the great player by IM Sagar Shah.

4/5/2019 – Magnus Carlsen played his first traditional international tournament in October 2000 in Bad Wiessee against FM Ingo Cordts. It was the first game that made it into our Mega Database from the future World Champion. Talking to Thorsten Cmiel, the German FIDE master remembers this memorable encounter of almost twenty years ago.

4/5/2019 – Friday at 16:00 UTC (18:00 CEST, Noon EDT) 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...

4/5/2019 – In the diagram position Black's attacked bishop must retreat onto the right square. 29...Bd7 or 29...Be6 — what would you have played against the future world champion?

4/5/2019 – ChessBase 15 offers a lot of training tools. An effective and powerful training method is to work with interactive training tasks. Part 3 of our series with ChessBase tutorials shows how to create interactive training tasks, how to save them in training databases, and how to create work sheets with training tasks.

4/5/2019 – There were three wins in Round 5. Vishy Anand won against Anish Giri with the help of his strong pawn centre, David Navara benefited from a tactical inaccuracy vs Ding Liren and Alexander Grischuk showed how strong the bishop pair can be against Veselin Topalov. Magnus Carlsen and Shakhriyar Mamedyarov drew as did Teimour Radjabov and Sergey Karjakin. With 3½ out of 5, Carlsen remains the sole leader. GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ examines all the games. | Photos: ShamkirChess.com

4/4/2019 – Wang Hao had been unstoppable in the last couple of tournaments that he played, but at the Sharjah Masters, as the top seed, he had to settle for the second prize. It was Russian Ernesto Inarkiev who took home the winner's cheque of USD $15,000, after a seven way tie at the top. Inarkiev led the tournament right from the start and hence he was the deserving winner. Niklesh Jain sends us an illustrated report from the venue.

4/4/2019 – Today's topic: Thematic sacrifices in Sicilian Najdorf with 6.Bg5, live at 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST / 2 PM EDT) The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows.