8/15/2024 – Ian Nepomniachtchi (pictured), Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave all scored 3/6 points on Wednesday and remained atop the standings of the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz Tournament. Going into the blitz, 9 out of 10 players in the field have realistic chances of winning the title - R Praggnanandhaa has been struggling in the event and is now a whole 7 points behind the co-leaders. | Photo: Lennart Ootes
new: Fritz 20
Your personal chess trainer. Your toughest opponent. Your strongest ally. FRITZ 20 is more than just a chess engine – it is a training revolution for ambitious players and professionals. Whether you are taking your first steps into the world of serious chess training, or already playing at tournament level, FRITZ 20 will help you train more efficiently, intelligently and individually than ever before.
Your personal chess trainer. Your toughest opponent. Your strongest ally. FRITZ 20 is more than just a chess engine – it is a training revolution for ambitious players and professionals. Whether you are taking your first steps into the world of serious chess training, or already playing at tournament level, FRITZ 20 will help you train more efficiently, intelligently and individually than ever before.
GM Blohberger presents a complete two-part repertoire for Black: practical, clear, and flexible – instead of endless theory, you’ll get straightforward concepts and strategies that are easy to learn and apply.
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Nepo, Firouzja and MVL top the standings
More than half the games played on Wednesday finished decisively at the Saint Louis Rapid & Blitz tournament. However, there were no big changes in the standings, as most players finished the day with a 50-percent score. The exceptions were Wesley So and Hikaru Nakamura - who obtained a +1 - and R Praggnanandhaa, who finished with -2.
These results left Ian Nepomniachtchi, Alireza Firouzja and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave tied for first place with 11 points each. Levon Aronian remains in sole fourth place 1 point behind, while five other players have 8 or 9 points to their names. With 18 rounds of blitz to go, this means anything could still happen in Saint Louis. The one player who is having a mix of bad form and bad luck is Pragg - but we all expect him to recover in the final two days of action.
In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.
Regarding the race for Grand Chess Tour points, things are looking good for Firouzja, who entered the event in second place in the tour standings, only behind Fabiano Caruana, who won both the Superbet Classic in Romania and the SuperUnited Rapid & Blitz in Croatia.
Alireza Firouzja | Photo: Lennart Ootes
The round-9 encounter between Firouzja and Aronian saw both kings remaining uncastled out of a French Defence. Aronian got a clear advantage in the tricky middlegame, but made a crucial mistake on move 30.
Black's active pieces and safer king (which was transferred to g8 'manually') grant him a major advantage. Aronian's 30...Bc6, however, was not the way to go here.
The path to victory begins with 30...Rxc2+, trading White's one active rook, and after 31.Kxc2 Ra8 32.Qb7 Ba4+ 33.Kd3 Rb8 34.Qa7 Rb3+ Black would have managed to bring his rook and bishop tandem to the attack while White is only defending with the knight.
Instead, after the text, it was White who traded rooks with 31.Rxc4, gaining one key tempo to bring his other rook to the defence - i.e. 31...dxc4 32.Rc1 Rb2+ 33.Rc2, and Black has lost most of the momentum he had a few moves ago.
In this video course, GM Surya Ganguly joins IM Sagar Shah and drawing from his colossal experience, shares some uncommon endgame wisdom. The material mostly features positions with rook against rook and a pawn, and starts by covering the fundamentals.
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.
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.
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.
€14.90
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