Svitlana Demchenko introduces the Ukrainian Variation from the Old Indian Defense and explains why it can lead to surprisingly comfortable positions for Black, especially if White accepts an early queen trade. The featured Soviet-era game between Lev Polugaevsky and Rashid Nezhmetdinov becomes a spectacular attacking lesson, where Black keeps the white king trapped in the […]
Monthly Archives: July 2026
Levon Aronian and Vaclav Finek took the early lead in the two triathlon events at the Biel Chess Festival by winning their respective rapid sections. Aronian scored 9/10 in the Masters, finishing 3 points clear of Aydin Suleymanli, while Finek topped the Generations Challenge with 8/10, 1 point ahead of Xiao Tong and Marco Materia. […]
In this episode of The Underdog, Robert Ris presents a spectacular upset from the Asian Esports Chess Cup, where a young Thai player (Pakornnarong Liukasemsarn) defeats super-GM Andrey Esipenko despite an enormous rating gap. In a sharp Italian Game with opposite-side castling, Black bravely pushes the kingside pawns, opens the g-file and keeps finding dynamic […]
Dear chess friends, from July 13–19, you can get the Champion’s Bundle: ChessBase’26 & FRITZ 21 – Summer Special: Instead of €269.80, get both for just €209.90! This is our summer special, and it runs for seven days. Two flagships, one price, built to work together.
In this episode of ChessBase Tips for Beginners, we look at Tactical Analysis, a feature that automatically adds engine annotations to your games. Instead of going through every move manually, ChessBase can detect mistakes, suggest variations, add comments, create training questions and even provide an overall game summary. This is a useful tool for studying […]
Did you attend the Checkmate: USA v. India exhibition match in the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas? No? Was it too far away? Well, you can visit the event virtually, get a feel for the atmosphere and the mood of the players, in this gigantic photo report sent to us by Ashwin Subramanian, senior leader […]
Chola Chess is building a dedicated space for India’s strong chess players to train and improve. It is led by R. B. Ramesh and Aarthie Ramaswamy, and supported by a committed team. With consistent camps and serious training, it has already impacted over 1300 players across the country. In this article, we take a look […]
Five rounds against the other players in the Masters, followed by two rounds against players from the Generations Challenge – that was the format of the ACCENTUS Chess960 Masters tournament. After seven rounds, Matthias Bluebaum and Aydin Suleymanli finished tied for first place on 4½ points. However, Bluebaum had the edge thanks to his superior […]
Let’s continue with ChessBase´26’s powerful training tool “Replay Training”: Replay Training! We already introduced you to this super feature in the last article, and in this tutorial, we’ll show you some additional features that will help you noticeably improve your playing strength in a fun way. Let’s continue …!
One of the world’s strongest women’s super-tournaments returns to Saint Louis this summer as the 2026 Cairns Cup welcomes ten of the world’s top women chess players to compete for a $250,000 prize fund – one of the largest in women’s chess. The tournament will take place 8-21 August at the recently expanded Saint Louis […]