In June the chess blogs had plenty of first class chess tournaments to follow. The start of the month saw the conclusion to the Bosnia Sarajevo event (won by Alexander Morozevich), while the end of the month saw the start of Sparkassen Dortmund with Vladimir Kramnik seeded first ahead of three other 2700 players in the eight player field. Between those events were the King's Tournament (Bazna, Romania) won by Nigel Short ahead of a field of top players from the 1980s, and the Aerosvit Foros (Ukraine) tournament won by Magnus Carlsen.

Along with the many exciting games played in those events, the blogs picked up on two classic rivalries, one rooted in the past, the other in the present and future. The rivalry from the past was renewed by a pair of games between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi at the Pivdenny Bank Cup rapid tournament (Odessa, Ukraine). Read more...

Forum thread Need help finding a PGN starts out with a search for a wrongly attributed game and ends up in a discussion of the elementary endgame Bishop and Knight vs. King (B+N vs.K). It's a forced mate that appears often enough in real games and that many players don't know how to handle. Do you know the winning procedure?