2/1/2025 – The fight for first place remains fierce in both sections of the Tata Steel Chess Tournament with two rounds to go. In the Masters, Gukesh Dommaraju retained the sole lead, but Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu closed the gap by scoring a crucial win over Fabiano Caruana. Meanwhile, in the Challengers, Erwin l'Ami emerged as the new sole leader after defeating Lu Miaoyi, while Thai Dai Van Nguyen suffered a setback against Frederik Svane. | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Lennart Ootes
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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.
FIDE World Cup 2025 with analyses by Adams, Bluebaum, Donchenko, Shankland, Wei Yi and many more. Opening videos by Blohberger, King and Marin. 11 exciting opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more.
€21.90
A three-horse race
With two rounds to go, three players remain in the fight for the title at the Tata Steel Masters. Gukesh Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, is still the sole leader, with 8 points to his name, while Nodirbek Abdusattorov and Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu stand a half point behind. Three players are sharing fourth place a full two points behind the leader and do not have realistic chances of claiming the title.
Round 11 on Friday saw Pragg catching Abdusattorov by scoring a memorable win over Fabiano Caruana. The youngster showed stronger nerves than his more experienced opponent to prevail amid a double-edged middlegame in which both contenders were dealing with pressing time trouble. This was Pragg's second consecutive win, which came after his loss in round 9 against Anish Giri.
This video course includes GM Anish Giri's deep insights and IM Sagar Shah's pertinent questions to the super GM. In Vol.1 all the openings after 1.e4 are covered.
Abdusattorov, on his part, could easily be tied for first at this point, as he missed a huge chance to catch Gukesh in his game against Vincent Keymer. The Uzbek GM got a clear advantage, but failed to find a killer blow on move 31, and then mistakenly allowed a queen exchange while still in the driver's seat.
Pragg was not the only winner of the day, though, as Giri, Pentala Harikrishna and Leon Luke Mendonca also collected full points. Mendonca thus obtained his first win of the event, as he defeated Vladimir Fedoseev with the black pieces. The winner of last year's Challengers had three times lost with black in the previous rounds.
Gukesh Dommaraju, the reigning world champion, remains as the sole leader in the Masters | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Jurriaan Hoefsmit
In this Video-Course we deal with different dynamic decisions involving pawns. The aim of this Course is to arm club/tournament players with fresh ideas which they can use in their own practice.
Nodirbek Abdusattorov tried hard but could not defeat Vincent Keymer | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Lennart Ootes
From Mating with a queen; a rook; two bishops; a knight and a bishop; to the basics of pawn endgames – here you will gain the necessary know-how to turn your endgame advantages into victories!
Round 11 results
Standings
All games
Challengers: L'Ami leapfrogs Nguyen
Five out of seven games ended decisively in the Challengers section, including three games that greatly impacted the top of the standings. Frederik Svane defeated Thai Dai Van Nguyen, who entered the round as the sole leader; Erwin l'Ami, who was Nguyen's closest chaser, beat Lu Miaoyi; and Aydin Suleymanli got the better of Vaishali Rameshbabu. These results left L'Ami in sole first place, followed closely by Nguyen and Suleymanli a half point back.
Curiously, all three games that impacted the top of the standings featured the eventual winner converting his advantage in a superior rook endgame. Not all rook endgames are drawn!
L'Ami, for example, had five pawns to Lu's four in a rook ending.
Svane, on his part, made the most of his outside passer in a position with four versus four pawns against Nguyen.
To avoid theory battles in well-known lines against Ruy Lopez (Berlin, Open Variation or the Marshall Attack), Sergey Tiviakov invites you into the world of an extraordinary early queen move for White: Qe2 – elegant, effective and easy to learn!
Friday's round also saw Divya Deshmukh beating Irina Bulmaga and Nodirbek Yakubboev defeating Faustino Oro. In both cases, the winner had the black pieces.
This was Frederik Svane's second win in a row | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Lennart Ootes
Erwin l'Ami | Photo: Tata Steel Chess / Lennart Ootes
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.
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.
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.
€9.90
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