Edmonton: Ganguly ties for first, cedes the spot to Shankland

Surya Shekhar Ganguly had a blistering start to his tournament racing away to a Caruanasque streak—7.0/7! With two rounds to go, he was facing Shankland in the eighth round, and Shirov in the ninth. Shankland played a crazy game with Ganguly, eventually winning the point to snatch the lead and the tournament from the Indian ace. Ganguly then beat Shirov, but was second on tiebreak. Sethuraman had a mercurial tournament, while Bitan Banerjee scored an IM norm, his fourth. An illustrated report.

Andhra Pradesh State Challengers Championship 2016

Organizing an event in my hometown was always something I wanted to do, says IM CRG Krishna. It was in April, after returning from the Dubai Open 2016, he thought of organizing the State Challengers, the official event for National Challengers selection for Andhra Pradesh players. The event attracted 200 participants—1 International Master and 80 rated players—and the organizing team managed to provide free accommodation, lunch and dinner to everyone. IM CRG Krishna reports.

Erwin L’Ami: A Gambit Guide through the Open Game

You are well versed in main lines arising after 1.e4 e5 but are you also often surprised by old and forgotten gambit lines? Or are you tired of main lines and do you prefer some easy to learn, yet very dangerous gambits that will win you a bucketload of points in open tournaments? This is your DVD! In his Gambit Guide Vol. 1 & 2, Dutch Grandmaster Erwin l’Ami takes you on a journey through time and shows gambit lines in the Open Games (that is, after 1.e4 e5). You can buy each of these DVDs at Rs. 999/- only, or if you want to buy both these gems, you can do so, only for Rs. 1799/-! All you have to do is write to us at ChessBase India.

Semi-Tarrasch: A universal weapon against 1.d4!

Great players like Fischer, Korchnoi and Kramnik have included the Semi-Tarrasch in their repertoire, which strongly speaks about its safe character and Black’s possibilities for counterplay. How useful is the Semi-Tarrasch in your games? The presenter is Romanian grandmaster Mihail Marin. The author presents a complete Semi-Tarrasch repertoire for Black, explaining the main strategic ideas of the resulting structures and providing complete analysis against practically all White's important variations.

National A for Visually Challenged: Kishan scores a hat-trick!

Until the year 2008, there were only seven rated blind chess players in India. Today, there are more than 134 visually impaired rated players. The National-A for the Visually Challenged is the apex tournament of the strongest blind chess players of India. 

IIT-Kanpur makes him Dr. Viswanathan Anand!

The man who basically put India on the world chess map has a lot of awards and adulations to his credit — he is probably the only sportsperson from India to have a planet named after him! Now, add one more to the list: the Indian Institute of Technology - Kanpur is awarding Anand a Degree of Doctor of Science (Honorary Causa) on June 28, which effectively makes him Dr. Viswanathan Anand!

Norms galore for Indians in Zalakaros

Neelotpal and Prantik win National Rapid and Blitz

The National Rapid and Blitz Championship was held from 11th June to 13 June at the Swarna Bharathi Indoor Stadium in Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The rapid tournament was won by GM Neelotpal Das who remained undefeated throughout, holding his titled colleagues at bay while pummelling the rest. Prantik Roy delivered a royal performance in the blitz event, beating a GM, four IMs, scoring 10.0/11 for clear first. Neelotpal and Prantik have some of the most notable games they played, with Neelotpal even educating us with his thoughts. Read this report celebrating a double delight for Bengal!

Edmonton 01-04: Ganguly begins with 4.0/4!

The 11th edition of the Edmonton International Chess Festival is taking place at the Edmonton Chess Club between June 17-26, 2016. The main event is a ten-player Round Robin tournament.  This year's event features the legendary GM Alexei Shirov.  Other participants include Indian GMs Surya Shekhar Ganguly and S.P. Sethuraman. We bring you an illustrated report with a video lecture by GM Surya Shekhar Ganguly.

Fourth place for Anand in Your Next move Grand Chess Tour

Blitz chess is considered to be a young man's game. You need good reflexes, quick thinking and most of all stamina in order to play 18 rounds in two days. However, Vishy Anand once again proved that he is timeless and ageless by finishing a respectable fourth and playing some high quality chess. He beat MVL 2-0, Nakamura 1.5-0.5 and very nearly got the better of Magnus Carlsen. An overall fourth place finish sets him up well for the remaining two legs of Grand Chess Tour in Sinquefield and London.

Women's Challengers: S. Vijayalakshmi leads

For the past few years, National Women Challengers Chess Championship is attracting a lot of IMs, WGMs, and WIMs, competing for the eight slots available in National Women Premier championship. Premier championship is the prime event, leading to the selection of Indian team for Olympiad and other international events. The 2016 edition has three IMs, five WGMs and eight WIMs to its credit and other innumerable strong players, who can spring a surprise on higher rated players. The chief arbiter R. Anantharaman brings us his illustrated report.

Harika is gold at Eurasian Blitz!

The Eurasian Blitz Cup of the President of Kazakhstan was held on 18 June and 19 June at the city of Almaty. The strongest players from Europe and Asia assimilated in the Kazakh city to play the blitz tournament including names such as Nepomniachtchi, Karjakin, Gelfand, Grischuk (the World Champion), Svidler, etc. India had two contenders for the medals — Sasi and Harika. Sasi's flight got delayed en-route to Almaty, and he had no option but to give up the meat of the first half. Harika huffed and puffed to fifty percent at the end of first day that witnessed fourteen rounds, before delivering a golden performance in the remaining games. Report.

Interview with Asian Women's Champion Bhakti Kulkarni

"Let's start afresh!" were the words of Bhakti's coach Raghunandan Gokhale when the girl from Goa was struggling in her chess career. With meticulous planning and right selection of events, the duo had made sure that Bhakti was in the best possible form before her Asian Championships in Uzbekistan. And the 24-year-old showed one of the most powerful performances of her chess career winning the title with an Elo performance of 2505! ChessBase India brings you an exclusive interview with the 2016 Asian Women's Champion.

Live!: Vishy Anand in GCT from Belgium

The first leg of the Grand Chess Tour in Paris was won by Hikaru Nakamura. The second leg will begin from the 17th until the 20th of June in Leuven, Belgium. While this is a super strong tournament, the special Indian interest is ignited by the fact that Vishy Anand will be one of the ten participants. It is a nine round rapid plus an 18 round blitz event. On this page you can not only view Vishy's live game but you can also enjoy the commentary by Yasser Seirawan, Maurice Ashley and others. The live game begins at 15.30 hours IST. Go Vishy!

MCL 2016: Navigators navigate it through

The stage was set for Navigators and Battlers to take on each other yet again. They had already faced each other twice before the finals. The match turned out to be a see-saw battle between the two ace teams of the tournament. Battlers' plunderer in chief Srinath N. was clearly out of sorts, going down to Mary. Navigators' Varshini was winning against Humpy of Jalgaon Battlers. It looked like Navigators would win easily. But Varshini blundered the game and Jalgaon Battlers held Navigators 3.0-3.0. The Maharashtra Chess League 2016 was decided, once again, by an armageddon. Report.