7/18/2022 – The two German representatives, Matthias Blübaum and Rasmus Svane, at the Deutschland Grand Prix started with defeats in Sunday’s first round, as they lost their games against Luke McShane and Pavel Eljanov. Romanian rising star Bogdan-Daniel Deac defeated David Navara. McShane shared his thoughts on his remarkable win. | Photos: Michelle Lassak
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Three white victories
What a start in the Deutschland Grand Prix, part of the 49th Dortmund International Chess Days Festival! After 90 moves and 5½ hours, the third game of the grandmaster tournament ended with a white win for Pavel Eljanov.
These video courses feature a black repertoire against 1.d4, 1.Nf3 and 1.c4. The recommended variations are easy to learn and not difficult to remember, but also pose White serious challenges.
Ealier, the top-seeded shooting star Bogdan-Daniel Deac defeated Czech number 1 David Navara. After Navara played the opening inaccurately, the young Romanian managed to get a commanding victory.
Last year, Luke McShane was unable to travel to Dortmund at short notice due to entry restrictions. This year it worked out, and he started motivated with a white game against European Champion Matthias Blübaum. Against the Petroff Defence, McShane got a nice advantage in the middlegame and was able to lead it to victory in the endgame.
Last year’s winner Pavel Eljanov won after almost six hours against the other German starter Rasmus Svane. Dmitrij Kollars, who provided entertaining live commentary with the two main commentators, did not play on the first day.
Analysis by Luke McShane
All games
Sportland NRW Cups off to a fighting start
The Sportland NRW Cup started perfectly for the young FM Christoph Dahl, who won two nice games. He is a two-time German U18 runner-up and is pursuing the goal of achieving a standard for the title of ‘International Champion’ in Dortmund.
After his opening defeat, 11-year-old Sauat Nurgaliev was able to record his first victory against Leonardo Costa.
In the women’s Sportland NRW Cup, several young participants are hunting for title norms. But the experienced WGM Zoya Schleining from the Ruhr area had the perfect start with two wins. In both round-robin tournaments, one game of the weekend will be played on a morning in the course of the week.
Sparkassen Open with big surprises
Two rounds have already been played in the two open tournaments. The first big surprise in the Sparkassen Open A came in the second round on Sunday when Alexey Wagner (photo) beat the top seeded Grandmaster Erwin L’Ami. After two rounds, some players are still perfectly on track with 2 points, among them the co-favourites and Grandmasters Max Warmerdam and Dr. Florian Handke.
In this video series, it's all about understanding middlegame strategies better. Pawn structures, manoeuvres and concepts are being shown through model games. New: now also available as stream!
The Sparkassen Open B attracted 234 participants. The players up to a rating of 1900 play here in the morning and thus have time to watch the grandmasters in the afternoon. No fewer than 40 participants still have a perfect score in the B-Open.
The tournament continues on Monday. Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik, Michael Adams and Daniel Fridman will also play in the No Castling World Masters in the afternoon. The top game will certainly be the duel of the world champions.
GM Artur Jusupov, WIM Fiona Steil-Antoni and GM Matthias Blübaum, who is not playing, will commentate live.
In this video course experts examine the games of Bent Larsen. Let them show you which openings Larsen chose, where his strength in middlegames were, how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame & you’ll get a glimpse of his tactical abilities!
From the 2026 Candidates Tournament, featuring a video review by Dorian Rogozenco, to Jan Werle’s opening video on the French Tarrasch Defence, and Oliver Reeh’s tactical column ‘Top Grandmasters at Work’. Analyses by Giri, So, Wei Yi and many others.
You will learn how Black's dynamic piece activity and structural counterplay more than compensate for White's extra tempo in the colour-reversed setups.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
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.
€59.90
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