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.
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more. ChessBase Magazine offers first-class training material for club players and professionals! World-class players analyse their brilliant games and explain the ideas behind the moves. Opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in tactics, strategy and endgames show you the tricks and techniques you need to be a successful tournament player! Available as a direct download (incl. booklet as pdf file) or booklet with download key by post. Included in delivery: ChessBase Magazine #225 as “ChessBase Book” for iPad, tablet, Mac etc.!
The most popular chess program offers you everything you will need as a dedicated chess enthusiast, with innovative training methods for amateurs and professionals alike.
The ChessBase Mega Database 2025 is the premiere chess database with over 11 million games from
1475 to 2024
€229.90
How has Technology Transformed Chess Competition?
The Summer Nostos Festival welcomed back Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov — widely considered to be the greatest chess player of all time. He was joined by Hungarian chess grandmaster Judit Polgár, the youngest of the renowned Polgár sisters, known as the greatest female chess player of all time.
In this sneak preview of next year’s Nostos University, Kasparov and Polgar examined how technology has transformed competition in chess and beyond. This topic is inspired by the 2021 SNF Conference’s theme of Humanity and Artificial Intelligence. You can learn how these two legendary players embraced chess as children in a world so different from the one chess players know today. You can find out about the barriers they broke through on their way to success and their contributions to major advances in competitive sports.
This stimulating discussion was hosted by former professional football player, mathematician, and chess super-fan, John Urschel. You also get to meet ChessBase co-founder and chess journalist Frederic Friedel, who explains surprising historical details from the early days when chess met computers. Finally, Greek grandmaster Hristos Banikas brings questions from some of his top young students.
The discussion with Kasparov, Polghar and Friedel begins at 1:21:58 into the video. If you want to see the introduction to the with GM Banikas (Greek, with subtitles) go back to 1:12:31.
Festival entertainment
The entire video that was streamed on Saturday is four hours and forty minutes long. Apart from the chess there is quite a bit of entertaining performance to watch. Here some suggestions:
Mark Mitton
He is a professional magician who is fascinated by using magic to better understand how we see the world. In addition to performing at private and corporate events all over the world, and creating magic for film, television, the Broadway stage, and Cirque du Soleil, Mark tirelessly explores the theme of ‘Misdirection’ from an interdisciplinary standpoint. He has performed for Mick Jagger, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, John Mayer, Katy Perry, Salman Rushdie, Sienna Miller, Mark Messier, Sting, Sylvester Stallone, and many others; at festivals in Europe and Asia; at the Olympic Games; in war-torn Liberia; in hospital wards around New York City; and in a Mexican orphanage with members of the band Guster. You can read more about him on his home page.
Mark and his wife Susanna are consulting producers of the Nostos Festival. They staged the video discussion with the chess experts. At Christmas 2019, in preparation, they visited Frederic Friedel in Hamburg, and Mark thoroughly enchanted the Friedel family (above Fred's son Martin and grandchildren Hennes and Enders) with his close-up magical tricks. Here's Mark performing at the Nostos Festival:
There are many other parts of the SNFestival RetroFuture video stream you might enjoy watching. In case you do not have 4¾ hours to watch it all, here are some recommendations:
Suspended Lady – Musical performance on nature, man, and the role of art in modern cities, curated by Dimitris Kamarotos and mezzo-soprano Anna Pangalou
Frederic FriedelEditor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.
Throughout the video course, Sasikran shows various examples from his career to explain sacrifices for initiative, an attack, a better pawn structure and much more.
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
The Trompowsky is especially suited for faster time controls as you don‘t have to memorise endless lines of theory, and you push your opponent out of their comfort zone after your second move.
Trompowsky Powerbook 2025 is based on 53,000 computer games from the engine room of playchess.com as well as 49,000 games from Mega and correspondence chess.
Trompowsky Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 8727 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 316 are annotated.
2025 European Championship with a German double victory and analyses by Bluebaum, Svane, Rodshtein, Yuffa, Navara and many more. Opening videos by Engel, King and Marin. Training sections “The Fortress”, “The Trap” and “Fundamental Endgame Knowledge" etc.
Powerbook based on more than 618 000 games in which White already sidesteps the main variations of the Sicilian on move 2.
€9.90
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, analysis cookies and marketing cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies. Here you can make detailed settings or revoke your consent (if necessary partially) with effect for the future. Further information can be found in our data protection declaration.
Pop-up for detailed settings
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies, analysis cookies and marketing cookies. You can decide which cookies to use by selecting the appropriate options below. Please note that your selection may affect the functionality of the service. Further information can be found in our privacy policy.
Technically required cookies
Technically required cookies: so that you can navigate and use the basic functions and store preferences.
Analysis Cookies
To help us determine how visitors interact with our website to improve the user experience.
Marketing-Cookies
To help us offer and evaluate relevant content and interesting and appropriate advertisement.
