7/5/2020 – In the thirteenth round of the Bamberg Jubilee Tournament, almost all games ended drawn — and some of them were very short. Only the Bulgarian grandmaster Milko Bobotsov (photo: Dutch National Archive) achieved a victory against Jürgen Teufel from Bamberg. But, since these two players are in the bottom half of the standings table, their decisive result had no influence on the fight for first place: with two rounds to go, Paul Keres still has a one-point lead over World Champion Tigran Petrosian.

7/5/2020 – Looking back: in 1983 Frederic Friedel was in Budapest for the third Microcomputer World Chess Championship. There he made first acquaintance with the Polgar family, but also met the East German chess programming team. His description of this memorable encounter tells us what things were like in the fading years of Eastern European communism.

7/5/2020 – In the new ChessBase Magazine #196 eleven opening articles with exciting repertoire ideas are waiting for you. IM Robert Ris scrutinizes an almost forgotten line with which Daniil Dubov recently brought fresh wind into the Tarrasch Defence and tried at the highest level. Ris' conclusion: 7.cxd4 8.Nxd4 Bc5 is "very hot and deservedly so."

7/5/2020 – Magnus Carlsen won the Chessable Masters online tournament by scoring a straight-set victory in the final against Anish Giri. In Saturday’s second set of the deciding match, Carlsen got an impressive win in the first game, while Giri missed chances to tie the score in games 2, 3 and 4. This was the third event of the Magnus Carlsen Tour — and the second one that sees the world champion taking first place! | Photo: Lennart Ootes

7/4/2020 – The editor of the chess periodical “Deutsche Schachzeitung” Rudolf Teschner is an International Master and thus a strong chess player. Yesterday at the Bamberg Jubilee Tournament, Yugoslavian grandmaster Borislav Ivkov confirmed this was the case when he lost to Teschner — in fourth place, Teschner is now half a point ahead of Ivkov. At the top of the table, World Champion Petrosian and Bamberg’s Lothar Schmid have moved closer to Paul Keres: both won their games, while Keres signed a quick draw against Wolfgang Unzicker. | Pictured: A view of Bamberg from Michelsberg

7/4/2020 – In our review of the movie The Coldest Game in March we also mentioned the cult classic science-fiction film "Independence Day". What's a better time to take a look at the chess game played in that movie than the Fourth of July - Independence Day?

7/1/2020 – The International Chess Federation just announced the FIDE Online Olympiad 2020. The international team event, in which all federations affiliated to FIDE, have the right to participate will be held between July 22nd and August 30th, 2020.

7/1/2020 – Round 9 of the Jubilee Tournament in Bamberg brought a number of exciting games. Wolfgang Unzicker played the move of the day against Laszlo Szabo, and Borislav Ivkov could have played the game of the day if he had found a hidden tactical possibility against World Champion Tigran Petrosian. | Photo: Wolfgang Unzicker | Photo: Roger Rössing, Deutsche Fotothek.

7/1/2020 – ChessBase 15 is a most sophisticated chess software. But today we are gonna take it right back to the original function of ChessBase: the very reason that ChessBase was developed in the first place – Chess Databases. Nick Murphy takes you through this beginner's guide to chess databases.

7/1/2020 – Did you miss it? The Summer Nostos Festival, an international, multidimensional festival that gives us a week bursting with art, conversation, ideas, music, dance, performances, entertainment, and sports, for visitors of all ages, last Saturday streamed a preview of next year's edition. Watch it all, or just the in-depth discussion with Garry Kasparov and Judit Polgar.

7/1/2020 – Magnus Carlsen and Anish Giri kicked off their semifinal matchups with wins of different nature. While Giri got a clean 3:1 victory over Ian Nepomniachtchi, Carlsen played an eventful mini-match against Ding Liren — the Chinese disconnected and lost a drawn position on time in game 1, to which the world champion responded by politely resigning on move 4 in the next encounter! Two draws followed, and Carlsen won the set by scoring 1½ points in hard-fought blitz tiebreakers. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

6/30/2020 – In his weekly show IM Lawrence Trent takes a look at Giri’s performance vs Grischuk at the Chessable Masters, with a special focus on Giri's win with Black in game four of their second match. But Lawrence will also give a more general roundup of the action. | Lawrence' show is available at 17:00 UTC (19:00 CEST, 13:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here. | Photo: Alina l'Ami (Archive)