7/10/2020 – In the diagram, Black's blockade construct Qd8/Bh4 on the kingside looks artificial, but White rightly decided not to rush and calmly strengthened his position. How?

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

7/8/2020 – This provoking title has some truth in it. Humanbenchmark.com specializes in measuring human brain abilities with games and cognitive tests. One of their exercises states that chimpanzees consistently outperform humans — the Chimpanzee Test. Interestingly enough, some games are strongly related to chess. For pattern recognition, the “Visual Memory Test” is helpful, while for online chess purposes the “Aim Trainer” might do the trick.

7/8/2020 – ChessBase 15 is the most powerful chess database management software on the planet, but to get the best out of all that potential, the first thing you need is a large, up to date Reference Database. Nick Murphy takes you step by step through setting and updating your reference database.

7/8/2020 – After presenting the Indian, Chinese and Egyptian theories of the origins of chess, researcher Sergio Negri takes us through hypotheses based on myths, legends and the fictional world — many of which are better known than those based on historiographical data.

7/7/2020 – Paul Keres' tournament victory was already certain before the final round. Nevertheless, the Estonian once again played uncompromisingly to win. This was not the only decisive game of the day, which ended with a wonderful closing ceremony. At which a budgie also changed hands. | Photo: SC Bamberg

7/7/2020 – One draw in a crucial game and David Bronstein would have been World Champion. After losing a difficult ending in the crucial 23rd game Bronstein drew the World Championship Match 1951 against Mikhail Botvinnik which allowed Botvinnik to keep the title. Now Karsten Müller wanted to know whether this ending was indeed lost or whether Bronstein had a draw. Karsten Müller asked the ChessBase readers for help to solve this historical riddle, and now, after long and difficult analyses and a debate about the 50-move-rule he has an answer: Bronstein indeed missed a draw in this historically important game!