Dinara Wagner became the first sole leader at the Sportland NRW Cup in Dortmund, as she is the only player to have started the tournament with two wins in a row. Wagner beat Alexander Bagrationi with black on Sunday. Meanwhile, in the A-Open, the top three seeds Matthias Bluebaum, Alexander Donchenko (pictured) and Michael Adams also kicked off the event with 2 out of 2. The No-Castling Masters, with Vladimir Kramnik and Fabiano Caruana, starts on Monday.
All five games ended decisively in the first round of the Sportland NRW Cup in Dortmund. WGM Dinara Wagner (pictured), IM Georgios Souleidis and 12-year-old FM Hussain Besou had a dream start: they beat the three participating grandmasters. In the A-Open, most of the favourites won their games, although the accelerated Swiss format made for interesting fights on the very first day of action.
The two "heroines" of ChessBase Magazine #209 were already decided before the Chennai Olympiad had even started. And then the Ukrainian sisters Anna and Mariya Muzychuk actually led their team to gold! One more reason to pay tribute to the two top players in CBM. In the new issue, a selection of 21 games with detailed commentary awaits you, as well as Mihail Marin's strategy article "The Muzychuk sisters" and an endgame Special by Karsten Mueller (both including videos). Krisztian Szabo has chosen the encounter Mariya Muzychuk - Alexander Bagrationi (2018) for his analysis - certainly also because of the "great finish". Take a look!
Viswanathan Anand goes into his last game with a half-point lead over direct opponent Michael Adams and Dmitrij Kollars at the No-Castling World Masters in Dortmund. Meanwhile, Pavel Eljanov leads the Deutschland Grand Prix after beating Matthias Blübaum on Saturday. Bogdan-Daniel Deac also won and still has a chance of winning the tournament | Photos: Michelle Lassak