7/10/2020 – His painfully honest, self-deprecating style is impossible to miss amid the generally ‘well-behaved’ community of chess players. Love him or hate him, Daniel Gormally has gained notoriety in the chess world for his witty remarks, his dark sense of humour and his unique writing style. Now he presents his most memorable game — the time he beat Alexey Dreev to get the GM title — and includes a number of side anecdotes that are hard to come across in this context: from a curious chat with a Russian girl to Simon Williams exploding in anger after coffee was spilled on his laptop. Take a look for yourselves!

7/9/2020 – The corona pandemic did not prevent the organizers of the Leon Masters (Magistral Ciudad de León) from launching the 33rd edition of the traditional yearly event. The main event, to be played on July 10-12, is a four-player knockout with two Spanish players and a couple of international stars. In the semifinals, Alexei Shirov will face local hero Jaime Santos, while Leinier Dominguez will play defending champion Parham Mahgsoodloo. Given the circumstances, the games will be played online. | Photos: Official site

7/9/2020 – After confirming his participation to play at the fourth stage of the Magnus Carlsen Tour, former world champion Vishy Anand talked to The Hindu. The “Tiger of Madras” praised the current world champion for having organized the tour and showed he is more than willing to try new formats in this time of crisis. | Photo: Lennart Ootes

7/9/2020 – As is well known, the coronavirus pandemic has brought public chess life to a standstill. But now it is slowly getting back into gear. In Bischofsgrün, the Upper Franconian Senior Championships were played. The social-distance rule was meticulously observed — with double boards.

7/9/2020 – Soon after rapidly climbing to the top of the chess elite, Vugar Gashimov sadly passed away at the young age of 27 on January 11, 2014. The Azerbaijani grandmaster was known for his joyful personality and his uncompromising style on the chessboard. We look back at a testimonial made about him and three of his greatest achievements as a chess player. | Photo: Nadja Wittman

7/9/2020 – “Game Changer” by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan, published by New in Chess, won the Averbakh-Boleslavsky Award to the best book of 2019. Artur Jussupow, who was a member of the jury, said of the book: “It is a unique project that combines human achievements with remarkable development in AI and opens a new approach to our beloved game. We could not choose a more deserving winner”. Books by Sam Shankland and Davorin Kuljasevic were shortlisted. | Photo: Alina l’Ami

7/5/2020 – “The most important thing is to choose the moves you want to play — not somebody else, let alone an engine. They may not ‘theoretically’ be the best, but unless they can palpably be refuted you will do better with them than something ‘better’ which makes your stomach turn”, concludes star columnist Jon Speelman after exploring a number of instructional examples, including a couple of his games against Garry Kasparov!

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