7/26/2019 – Really? Game of the year? You heard it right! After an opening mistake from Vidit Gujrathi, Nico Georgiadis turned on beast mode and made it to an endgame a pawn up. However, instead of a routine piece capture, he had a chance to end the game with a spectacular piece sacrifice! Vidit survived by the scruff of his neck, and is now joined at the top by Sam Shankland, who produced a Sicilian miniature consisting of temporary piece and exchange sacrifices to down Maghsoodloo in only 26 moves. Friday is the tournament's rest day, so play resumes on Saturday with blitz!

7/25/2019 – Vidit Gujrathi didn't play perfect chess, but his slow and steady build-up was too much for Peter Leko to take, and the Indian GM now takes over sole lead in the tournament. Nodirbek Abdusattorov handed Sam Shankland a defeat in the 4.d3 Anti-Berlin after the 2018 US Champion lost his objectivity and overextended his queenside. Parham Maghsoodloo's loss of form turned worrying, as an overestimation cost him a sure draw, with Jorge Cori being the lucky beneficiary. | Photos: Simon Bohnenblust / Biel Chess Festival

7/24/2019 – One doesn't lose forever! Sebastian Bogner, the current Swiss Champion, taught us all how to get out of a rut by clinically destroying Parham Maghsoodloo's weak opening play to get himself back into contention. Sam Shankland had the (missed) chance of the round against Vidit, but the American failed to assess properly the best continuation available to him. Peter Leko continued his remarkable fable by turning over a new leaf yet again — his game against Georgiadis lasted an epic 101 moves!

7/23/2019 – With the prestigious title of Biel Champion on the line, the players produced one of the most energetic rounds of classical chess in recent times, and produced a decisive result on all four boards in round one of the Biel GM 2019! Peter Leko and Vidit Gujarathi channelled their inner Karpovs and slowly squeezed the life out of Bogner and Cori respectively, while Shankland and Maghsoodloo beat back their opponents, Georgiadis and Abdusattorov, in contrasting Sicilian victories to maintain their spots in the standings.

7/11/2019 – Three young players plus Vassily Ivanchuk gathered in Leon for this year's "Masters" rapid and blitz fest over three days. Ivanchuk deftly dealt with the Indian prodigy Nihal Sarin to reach the Final, but there he met his match in World Junior Champion Parham Maghsoodloo. The Iranian dispatched Jaime Santos in his semifinal, and dominated the final, winning two of the four games. | Photo: José Luque / Luque Fotografía León

7/5/2019 – The 32nd edition of the "Magistral Ciudad de León" will take place this weekend, with the main event — a four-player knock-out tournament — starting today, July 5th. This year's participants are Vassily Ivanchuk, Parham Maghsoodloo, Nihal Sarin and Jaime Santos. Besides the GM event, an open tournament, a blitz event, a scholastic meeting and many other chess-related side activities kicked off on Thursday. | Photos: Archive

6/17/2019 – With 7.0/9 Vietnamese Grandmaster Le Quang Liem was sole winner of the Asian Continental Championships in Xingtai, China, five players qualified for the World Cup 2019, Dinara Saduakossava won the women's event with 7½/9, Nihal Sarin finished first in the blitz tournament, and a number of interesting games were played. | Photos: Chinese Chess Federation

4/3/2019 – April ratings came out like clockwork on Sunday night. Our own internal PlayerBase update — not so much. Apologies for the delay in our monthly tour through the Elo lists. Of special interest on the April list: 28 players from the Top 100 exhibited rating swings of +/- 10 Elo points or more — a rare occurrence. Pictured: Ju Wenjun, David Anton Guijarro, Jan Krejci, winners at the Prague Challengers. | Photo: Macauley Peterson

3/15/2019 – Every once in a while you have a fairy tale story at a world class event where a player who was given absolutely no chances of winning the tournament, comes out, plays his heart out and takes home the first prize! Something similar happened at the Aeroflot Open 2019 when the 62nd seed Kaido Kulaots scored 7.0/9 and with a rating performance of 2873 won the Aeroflot Open A, a prize of €18,000 and got himself an invitation to the Dortmund super-tournament which will take place later this year. How did Kulaots achieve this phenomenal performance? Sagar Shah caught up with the man of the moment for a detailed interview.

2/20/2019 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET, 2 pm EST). On this week's show: P. Maghsoodloo vs S. Tiviakov from the 3rd Stars Cup in Iran. 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.

2/3/2019 – Prior to 2018, there were few world-class chess tournaments dominated by Iranian players — just the odd youth championship. Now Iran is climbing the list of the top countries in the world — currently at number 25, with the average rating of the top ten players rising by the month. The country's 15 GMs, 23 IMs, and 125 total titled players obscures the fact that among the top ten, only two were born before 1995. SHAHROKH MOJTABAEI takes a look at the recent history. | Pictured: Coach Ivan Sokolov with Masoud Mosadeghpour, Alireza Firouzja, Parham Maghsoodloo, Pouya Idani, Seyed Mohammad Amin Tabatabaei | Photo: Iranian Chess Federation

1/14/2019 – Ian Nepomniachtchi is now the sole leader at the 81st edition of the Tata Steel Masters after knocking down Vladimir Kramnik's Berlin wall in the third round of the competition. Ding Liren beat Jorden van Foreest with the black pieces and now shares second place with Vishy Anand. In the Challengers, Andrey Esipenko and Parham Maghsoodloo won in round three to join the pack of co-leaders on 2/3. Expert analysis by DANIEL FERNANDEZ and DANNY KING. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

1/14/2019 – It was a good day for the locals in the Tata Steel Masters, as both Dutch participants recovered from their first round losses — Anish Giri got a third win in a row against Vladimir Kramnik and Jorden van Foreest defeated Jan-Krzysztof Duda with the black pieces after surviving a complicated time scramble. In the Challengers, young Vincent Keymer joined the leaders thanks to a win over Stefan Kuipers. GM DANIEL KING provides expert analyses of all the action. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

1/12/2019 – The elite chess season of 2019 took off on Saturday with the first round of the Tata Steel Masters. Seven fighting games left Vishy Anand and Ian Nepomniachtchi as co-leaders, after the rest of the encounters finished drawn. The biggest escape of the day was achieved by Vladimir Kramnik, who could not be taken down by Teimour Radjabov. Meanwhile, in the Challengers, experience got the better of youth, as Anton Korobov and Evgeny Bareev defeated their much younger colleagues to join a four-player leading pack. Expert analysis by GM ADHIBAN BASKARAN and IM MERIJN VAN DELFT. | Photos: Alina l'Ami / Official site

1/11/2019 – A few weeks ago we launched reader polls with nominations for the best players of 2018. In addition to overall player and best female, we added "newcomer" of the year. The latter proved to be a close contest between World Junior Champion Parham Maghsoodloo and German IM Vincent Keymer. Women's World Champion Ju Wenjun easily took the "female player of the year" honours, and Fabiano Caruana edged World Champion Magnus Carlsen in the readers' minds for "player of the year". Here's to an even greater 2019! View the results...

12/28/2018 – The year 2018 is drawing to a close and it was filled with great events, strong tournaments and fantastic games. Now, at the end of the year, we invite you to vote for the player of the year (male and female), the newcomer, the game, the combination and the endgame of the year. What do you think: Who was the up-and-coming player of 2018?

9/28/2018 – The Olympiad in Batumi witnessed its most exciting round as India took on USA. While this was the biggest encounter, the match turned into something pretty one-sided as Fabiano Caruana beat Vishy Anand and took home the match with the score of 2½:1½. The real action was witnessed in the match between Poland and Russia, as the Poles managed to beat the mighty Russian team. The two decisive wins were scored by Jacek Tomczak, who beat Kramnik, and Kamil Dragun, who got the better of Dmitry Jakovenko. A report filled with pictures, videos and GM analysis.

9/27/2018 – The third round of the Batumi Chess Olympiad 2018 saw no real problems for the top seeds. Almost all of them won their games and it seems as if the real battles between strong teams will begin from the fourth round, the most interesting being India versus USA. In the women's section too, there were some draws, but no loss for the higher seeded team. This report is broken into four parts. The first part gives you the idea of the results of round three, second part are positions and analysis selected by GM Ganguly, third part are photos by Amruta Mokal and fourth is videos by Sagar Shah!

9/16/2018 – Although the gold medal in the open section had already been confirmed by Parham Maghsoodloo, the fight for other medals was exciting on the last day of the World Juniors 2018. Esipenko managed to beat Maghsoodloo, but it wasn't good enough for a medal for the Russian. Silver went to Abhimanyu Puranik who beat Aram Hakobyan and bronze to Sergei Lobanov who got the better of Johan-Sebastien Christiansen. In the Girls section, Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova drew her last round game which allowed Aleksandra Maltsevskaya to overtake her and win the gold. Tokhirjonova had to be content with silver and bronze to Nino Khomeriki.

9/15/2018 – (Current standings, games and results!) It has been one of the most dominating performances that you would ever see at any strong chess tournament, leave alone World Junior Championships. GM Parham Maghsoodloo from Iran started the tournament as the top seed. He conceded half a point in the sixth round by drawing his game against Alireza Firouzja. But rest of the games he managed to win thereby scoring 9½/10 and winning the tournament with one round to spare. In the Girls section as well, we have the sole leader after ten rounds and she is Gulrukhbegim Tokhirjonova. | Photo: Shohreh Bayat

9/14/2018 – The Open section has ceased to be interesting from the gold medal point of view as GM Parham Maghsoodloo from Iran notched up another win, this time against Awonder Liang from America. Maghsoodloo is on 8½/9 and has a 1½ point lead over the field with a rating performance of 2944! In the Girls section, there is everything to play for as five girls are tied for the top spot with 7.0/9. Among the five, four are Russian and one is from Uzbekistan. It will be exciting to see who comes out on top — Maltsevskaya, Dordzhieva, Tokhirjonova, Assaubayeva or Potapova?

9/13/2018 – Parham Maghsoodloo has shown some tremendous chess at the World Juniors 2018. He is currently the sole leader with a score of 7½/8. He has a lead of one full point over his rivals. On 6½/8 we have Awonder Liang followed by ten players on 6.0/8. In the Girls section Maltsevskaya, Khomeriki and Dordzhieva are leading with 6½/8. They are being followed by five more players on 6.0/8. While Maghsoodloo is a clear favourite for gold in the Open section, nothing is clear in the Girls. Round eight report from Gebze, Turkey. | Photo: Amruta Mokal

9/12/2018 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 20:00 CEST (19:00 UT, 2 pm EDT). On this week's show: Parham Maghsoodloo!

9/12/2018 – It is generally agreed that White has a small edge going into the game because he has the first move. At the top level, Black more often than not equalizes. Yet, at the seventh round of the World Juniors 2018, we had a pretty unique case where all six games, the top three in boy's section and the top three in girl's section, all of them ended in the white player winning the games. In this article, we show you all the games along with analysis. Apart from this you also have pictures by Amruta Mokal and videos by IM Sagar Shah.