3/2/2026 – A clear leader has emerged in the Challengers tournament at the Prague International Chess Festival, as 16-year-old Vaclav Finek moved a full point ahead of the field after defeating Daniil Yuffa with the white pieces. Divya Deshmukh, meanwhile, scored her first win of the event, while the remaining games ended drawn. The players now get a rest day before the final four rounds of the event take place from Tuesday to Friday. | Photo: Petr Vrabec / Prague Chess Festival
new: ChessBase Magazine 225
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more. ChessBase Magazine offers first-class training material for club players and professionals! World-class players analyse their brilliant games and explain the ideas behind the moves. Opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in tactics, strategy and endgames show you the tricks and techniques you need to be a successful tournament player! Available as a direct download (incl. booklet as pdf file) or booklet with download key by post. Included in delivery: ChessBase Magazine #225 as “ChessBase Book” for iPad, tablet, Mac etc.!
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Finek and Divya score wins
After five rounds of the Challengers tournament at the Prague Chess Festival, 16-year-old Vaclav Finek stands clear at the top of the table with a full-point lead. The Czech IM secured his third victory of the event on Sunday by defeating Daniil Yuffa with the white pieces, moving to 4/5. His remaining two games have both ended in draws.
Yuffa had been one of four players trailing Finek by half a point before the round began. The loss leaves him outside the chasing group, which now includes Thomas Beerdsen, Jachym Nemec and Stepan Hrbek, all of whom drew their games in the final round before the rest day and trail the leader by a full point on 3/5.
The key game between Finek and Yuffa turned on a strategic decision. Yuffa chose to exchange his dark-squared bishop, a trade that left the dark-square complex around his king significantly weakened.
Finek responded energetically, advancing his kingside pawns and maintaining pressure in a position where all six major pieces remained on the board.
In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of Dutch and Grünfelkd structures with colours reversed. In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores one of the most intriguing and under-examined areas of modern chess: reversed opening systems, focusing on the Reversed Grünfeld and the Reversed Dutch. At first glance, these two systems seem unrelated. However, they share a common strategic challenge: the value of tempi, structure, and psychology when familiar openings are played with colours reversed. Drawing on his long professional experience, Sokolov explains why these positions are far more subtle than they appear and why traditional engine evaluations often fail to capture their true complexity.
Free sample video: Introduction
Free sample video: Larsen’s b4 Plan vs Reversed Stonewall Setups: Larsen - Spassky
With his opponent's king exposed, Finek gradually increased the tension and converted his advantage in convincing fashion.
The only other decisive result of the day was scored by Divya Deshmukh, who obtained her first win of the tournament by defeating Surya Shekhar Ganguly with the black pieces. Deshmukh thus returned to a fifty-percent score, recovering from her earlier setback against Zhu Jiner in round three.
The critical moment came when Ganguly opted for 19.Nxh7?, a knight sacrifice that did not yield sufficient compensation.
White could have gone for 19.Qh3 and, in fact, have a slight advantage. Instead, there followed 19.Nxh7? Qh5 (the refutation) 20.Nxf6+ gxf6 21.f3 Qxh2+ 22.Kf2 Qh4+ 23.Kf1
Doesn’t every chess game get decided by mistakes? Absolutely. But most players never truly comprehend that they are making the same kind of mistakes over and over again.
The black knight jumped from e7 to d5 and from d5 to c3 in the following two moves, forking the rooks to gain an exchange. Ganguly resigned the game on move 35.
Divya Deshmukh | Photo: Petr Vrabec / Prague Chess Festival
Among the three drawn games, the encounter between Zhu and top seed Benjamin Gledura stood out. Zhu agreed to a draw by triple repetition in a position that engines assessed as better for her, with an evaluation of around +1.3.
In this course, we will learn how to identify passively placed pieces in any given situation and how to improve their health by bringing them into active squares.
Given her difficult start to the tournament, which had seen her lose three of her first four games, the practical decision to secure half a point was understandable.
Zhu Jiner | Photo: Tomáš Krist / Prague Chess Festival
Carlos Alberto ColodroCarlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.
2/25/2026 – The eighth edition of the Prague International Chess Festival was officially opened at the Don Giovanni Hotel in Prague, launching the Masters, Challengers and Futures tournaments. The event features the reigning World Champion, Gukesh Dommaraju, who played a symbolic opening duel with Czech beach volleyball world champion Ondřej Perušič. The game was part of the festival's ceremonial start ahead of play through 6 March. | Photo: Petr Vrabec
12/18/2025 – The Prague International Chess Festival will be held from 24 February to 6 March 2026. As the organisers have announced, Divya Deshmukh and Jiner Zhu, two of the world’s leading women players, will compete in the Challengers tournament. The event combines high-level chess with the opportunity to enjoy Prague, one of Europe’s most attractive cultural and tourist destinations.
After 1.d4 d5 many players with White avoid the great amount of theory in the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA and Orthodox Queen's Gambit and do not therefore play 2.c4. This is not very ambitious, but the painful experience of many chess players has been that the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack and the London System are nevertheless extremely dangerous. Black has to be prepared for each of these openings and IM Valeri Lilov offers you some help with his six instructive videos, in which he demonstrates for each single opening a relevant plan for Black. In addition to the openings mentioned, the Bulgarian trainer also delves into the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov Opening.
London System PowerBase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
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