ChessBase

• Svitlana's Smart Moves - Center Game

  Svitlana explores the Center Game with 1.e4 e5 2.d4 and explains why this historic opening remains a practical surprise weapon. She examines the main queen placements, Black’s most important defensive setups, and White’s typical plan of castling queenside and launching an attack. Particular attention is given to the choice between f3 and Nf3, the importance of preventing Black’s central break with d5, and the tactical possibilities that arise from opposite side castling. The episode shows that even if engines consider many positions equal, the Center Game can still lead to rich, aggressive, and highly playable positions

• Dortmund Chess Festival attracts top players

  The 53rd Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting gets underway on Saturday (1–8 August). Alongside a strong open tournament featuring German national team players Matthias Blübaum, Rasmus Svane and Dmitrij Kollars, as well as Biel Open winner Christian Glöckler (pictured), the festival also includes an international women's GM tournament, where Dinara Wagner will defend her title. | Photos: Tournament organisers

• School Chess Across Continents: Inside the 2026 World Schools Team Championship

  FIDE and the International School Chess Federation (ISCF) have introduced a new format for the World Schools Team Championship. Continental championships will first be held in Asia, Africa, the Americas and Europe, with the continental winners advancing to a final tournament in December.

• The African Chess Confederation has elected a new executive board

  On Monday, the African Chess Confederation elected a new executive board. In an extremely close vote, the incumbent continental president was voted out of office, and Benard Wanjala (pictured) was elected as the new president. The defeated candidate, Tshepiso Lopang, has accused Benard Wanjala of vote-buying and lodged a complaint against the result. | Photos: FIDE / ACC

• Final-round win secures Andorra Open title for 15-year-old Francisco Fiorito

  Argentine 15-year-old IM Francisco Fiorito won the 42nd Andorra Open, scoring 7½ points from 9 rounds to finish half a point clear of the field. After suffering his only defeat in round four, he recovered to win four of his final five games, including victories over GMs Egor Bogdanov and Andrey Sumets. Top seed Miguel Santos from Spain finished second on tiebreak. WGM Lile Koridze from Georgia, the 79th seed, had a remarkable performance, scoring 7/9 to obtain an IM norm. | Pictured: Francesc Rechi (President of the Andorran Chess Federation), Miguel Santos, Francisco Fiorito and Vladyslav Larkin | Photo: Andorra Open

• Shifts and mirrors in a chess problem

  A year ago problem composer Werner Keym issued a challenge: compose a study in which White is winning – but one that can be shifted and mirrored vertically and horizontally, with all vertically shifted and mirrored positions drawing, and all horizontally shifted and mirrored positions losing. Here is the elegant solution, which reminds us of the famous Babson task.

• How much faster are computers today?

  In the early 1980s, as a fledgling TV journalist, I did a report on the fastest computer in the world. The Cray-1 cost eight million dollars and could do 130 million floating point operations per second. That was enough to calculate the weather, but also to win two consecutive world computer chess championships. How much faster are today's supercomputers? Take a guess – you are definitely not going to get it right.

• Biel Festival - Live!

  The Biel International Chess Festival is taking place on 11-24 July. Following the Chess960 tournament on Saturday and the rapid chess stage on Sunday, the players in the Masters and Generations Challenge Triathlon face off in the final stage of the classical section on 21-23 July. | Follow the games live starting at 14.00 CEST (8.00 ET, 17.30 IST) | Photo: Biel Chess Festival

• Svitlana's Smart Moves - Most underrated World Champion

  Svitlana looks at Max Euwe, one of the most underrated world champions in chess history. Through one attacking game and one defensive game, she shows that Euwe was not just a logical and balanced player, but also capable of finding powerful sacrifices, active counterplay and precise prophylactic ideas. The lesson highlights how much can still be learned from classical games, especially when it comes to initiative, defensive resourcefulness and the idea that prophylaxis can be aggressive rather than passive.

• ChessBase tips for beginners - Standard Layout or Custom Layout (10)

  In this episode of ChessBase Tips for Beginners, we look at layout customization and show how to arrange the panes in the single game window to create a more comfortable workspace. You will learn how to use predefined layouts, resize and dock panes, save your own setups, and restore the default view whenever needed.