Fabiano Caruana recovered from his nightmare finish to the Candidates Tournament in Madrid by starting the final weekend of the German Chess League with a battling win over 19-year-old rising star Hans Niemann.

The "Schachbundesliga" is one of the world's most formidable chess team events, and this year's finale is taking place in Bremen with no less than 5 rounds from Thursday July 7th to Sunday July 10th (on Saturday they play two games, at 10am and 5pm).

As always a host of star names are in action, including some who came straight from the FIDE Candidates Tournament in Madrid.

World no. 4 Fabiano Caruana made his debut this season as he took on one of the world's fastest rising juniors, his US colleague Hans Niemann.

Fabiano had looked extremely smooth as he raced to +3 in the first half of the FIDE Candidates, but a long, painful loss to Hikaru Nakamura was followed by similar defeats to Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Ding Liren and Alireza Firouzja, as Fabi's tournament fell apart.

It was all the more impressive, then, that he was still willing to mix things up in another incredibly complicated game against Hans Niemann in Bremen.

Fabi grabbed one pawn, then another, and had a tactical solution to keep an edge!

30...Nxg3! was correctly met by 31.Qg4! (31.fxg3? Rxg3+ and 32...Qh4! next is devastating) when 31...h5! and more chaos followed.

It was the kind of position where any result was possible, but this time Fabi was the one who finally emerged on top.

54...g3+! and White can't take the knight because after h2 there's no stopping the appearance of a new queen on the board.

In fact after 55.Kf3 g2! there was also no stopping that fate, and eventually Fabi picked up his first win in 8 classical games!

That was part of a 12th match win in a row for Baden-Baden, who have won 14 of the last 15 seasons of the event.

There's no guarantee of a 15th win, however, since Viernheim, with Shakhriyar Mamedyarov on top board, have also won all their matches, most recently scoring the only 8:0 whitewash of the season.

Baden-Baden and Viernheim clash in Saturday's evening round and you can watch all the action here on chess24.