Chess Informant no. 100

Exclusive interview with editor-in-chief Aleksandar Matanovic

Recently, the famous Chess Informant reached a milestone: edition no. 100 was published. Facts, figures and an exclusive interview with 77-year-old editor-in-chief Aleksandar Matanovic. full story »

Is Tiviakov’s Scandinavian refuted?

With a score of 6 / 9, Hungarian GM Zoltan Almasi has won the 50e Torneo Capodanno in Reggio Emilia. Second was Vugar Gashimov of Azerbaijan, who won the brilliancy prize for his win against Tiviakov. (Good to see that some tournamenst still give brilliancy prizes.) We’re going to look at this game in detail - a must for 1.e4 mainline players! full story »

Baden-Baden leader again

Before the “winterstop” started, this weekend title holder OSC Baden-Baden and three other clubs catched up with the other teams, and played their third and fourth rounds of the Bundesliga. After this the situation in the German national league is back to normal, because with victories against Turm Trier, SC 1950 Remagen and Godesberger SK the home team, with Peter Svidler on board one, took the lead. full story »

Update your Moscow! – GM analysis World Cup

ChessVibes is proud to present the following lengthy analysis, by GM Erwin l’Ami & GM Jan Smeets, of several games played at the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk.

When deciding which World Cup games to analyse for ChessVibes, we simply had too much choice. We chose to neglect many of the interesting, already annotated games. Instead we bring you the latest developments in the Mockba Variation of the Semi-Slav. The Moscow (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 h6) is one of the main tabiya’s in present day theory. 6.Bxf6 is the positional choice, with – surprisingly – Mamedyarov as its main advocate. We will focus on the sharper 6.Bh4 in this article. Anand won the world championship title using this opening as his main weapon. In Mexico most of the players joined the discussion (Kramnik, Gelfand, Aronian, Svidler, and Grischuk). In Khanty-Mansiysk the firework continues… full story »

Hard-core Zaitsev Theory in Czech Open

The Czech Open in Pardubice is one of the biggest, if not the biggest chess festival in the world, with a bit over 1700 players this year. And not even just a chess festival, since also tournaments in backgammon, crossword puzzles, draughts, sudoku, poker, bridge and even Rubik’s cube are held! Later I will write more about the festival, but today I will focus on a subject that hasn’t been treated for a while here on ChessVibes. Hard core opening theory! Normally long theoretical lines are seen in the elite round-robins and not in these huge open tournaments, except… when super-theoretician Vasilios Kotronias is playing. Yesterday, in the fifth round, an amazing Zaitsev Ruy Lopez attracted the attention. full story »

Turn off those opening libraries!

Today not only the finals of the Candidate matches in Elista have begun, but also the “Ultimate Computer Challenge” computer match between Deep Fritz and Deep Junior. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the FIDE, appears to sponor the match himself. Of course this is all very moving, but I suspect that Chessbase would otherwise have donated the money. By the way, neither Ilyumzhinov nor Chessbase have responded to Rybka’s challenge about which we wrote before. Whether this is really surprising, I leave to the reader’s imagination.
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Leo Kerkhoff passed away

This week Leo Kerkhoff, a chess player from Rotterdam, passed away. In the late sixties and early seventies he was a very talented player, beating amongst others Hans Ree and Jan Timman. Since he was mainly known in The Netherlands, this article is only available in Dutch. full story »

An important improvement?

An opening that is currently not very popular at the highest level, is the Tarrasch Defence. You mainly see Slavs, Queen’s Indians and thanks to Radjabov many King’s Indians as well these days. Although Grischuk uses the Tarrasch occasionally, no top player seems to have seriously studied the opening since Kasparov in the eighties. The reason might be that Black players unconsciously associate it with boring positions and a draw as the best possible result. This is a misconception. full story »

‘The Kid’ strikes with the KID

Perhaps it was the combination of the storm that was hitting the Dutch coast with 10 bft and the fact that there were no amateur games, that made it awfully quiet yesterday at the Corus Chess Tournament. The visitors who made the trip to Wijk aan Zee were paid for their efforts as there were some interesting games again. Of course there was the first victory of Loek van Wely and the third win with Black for ‘The Kid’ Teimour Radjabov. As I think this is quite unique I would like to pay some attention to this game. full story »

Book review: ‘The Chigorin Defence’

What’s the first thing you do when you see a new opening book? Look up the variation you know most about and check what is said about it. Surprisingly enough, this is often a disappointment, and usually you don’t even buy it because of this first impression. “This will never work.” But it’s wrong to think like that. full story »

The game of chess as the universe

Every chess player knows the comparisons between the game of chess and war, between the game of chess and ‘life’. But computers show that the game of chess should actually not be compared to real life combat or life itself, but rather to… the universe. full story »

Shirov misses opening novelty on YouTube

In his chess column of yesterday, in the Dutch quality newspaper NRC, Hans Ree writes about my site and about ‘the effect of YouTube for chess players’. What is the case? On one of my videos that I made during the Essent Tournament a piece of the post-mortem of Polgar-Mamedyarov can be seen. Mamedyarov shows Polgar how she could (and should?) have drawn the game. In the first round of the Tal Memorial the game Shirov-Mamedyarov ended in a draw, exactly like Mamedyarov had shown to Polgar. If Shirov would have known about my video, he would certainly have played the game differently. full story »

The Pawn was Poisened again in Cap d’Agde

Yesterday a very old variation decided the Cap d’Agde rapid tournament. It was the Poisened Pawn of the Najdorf (6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 8.Qd2 Qxb2) and after 9.Rb1 Qa3 not even 10.f5 but the older move 10.e5. Radjabov had already played this before (two months ago against Anand in a blitz game) so Karjakin was warned. Still, he hit one of the many land mines Radjabov had placed at home. Today an extensive analysis, including coverage of theory. full story »

Stellwagen still plays for gold

Daniël Stellwagen is playing an excellent world championship under 20. After eight rounds of a total of thirteen he shares a fine second spot. Today Daniël had a game that must have been most relaxing to play. full story »

Is the match already over?

Is it too pessimistic to declare that the reunification match between Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik is already over? A friend of mine said to me that he considers it to be already decided, because two points behind is too much in such a short match. To this he added: “Topalov has shown very weak play in game 3. With such opening play even Loek van Wely can beat him in a match!” Indeed, if Kramnik would have played 17.Ne4 it would probably have been a devastating 3-0 (and Kramnik would finally have been compared to Fischer…).

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Gelfand demolishes Tivi’s Nimzo

Earlier this week I wrote about the Spanish team championship. Later my eye fell on the game Gelfand-Tiviakov, in which Black was demolished. A perfect example of how to play positions with ‘compensation for the sacrificed pawn’, where you have more active pieces than your opponent. full story »

Milner-Barry and his Attack

Today it’s hundred years ago that Philip Stuart Milner-Barry was born. His name seems to have been attached to the line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 Nc6, but obviously he’s still known because of the Milner-Barry Attack, a way to play against the Indian Defences: 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Bf4 Bg7 5.e3 O-O 6.Be2. full story »

Sympathetic and slightly naive

Every Dutchman has heard of Roel van Duijn, and every Dutch chess player has heard of the Roel van Duijn Gambit, which starts after 1.e4 c5 2.a3!? It’s not the first time someone has written about his gambit; Schaaknieuws wrote about it and early this year, Gert Ligterink wrote an article about the gambit on his chess blog. In Holland, there are a number of strong players who frequently play the gambit: GM Yge Visser is the most well-known (see Ligterink’s article) and I also know that Eelco Kuijpers and Gertjan van der Hoeven sometimes move their a-pawn on move 2. Actually Van der Hoeven played the gambit against me last week. full story »

Andersson’s Rubinstein

Een belangrijke stap in mijn ontwikkeling als schaker was toen ik mij realiseerde dat er geen ’saaie openingen’ bestaan. Zwakke schakers hebben vaak de onbedwingbare neiging bepaalde openingen of varianten ’slaapverwekkend’ te noemen. Vaak zijn dit damepionspelen met snel e3 en/of Lf4, of Réti-achtige opstellingen. De toon waarop dit verkondigd wordt, is dikwijls zelfs enigszins verbitterd, ja: vijandig.

An important step in my development as a chess player was when I realised that there was no such thing as a ‘boring opening’. Weak players seem to have the urge to call certain openings or variations ‘tedious’. These are often Queen’s Pawn lines with a quick e3 and/or Bf4, or Réti-like setups. Often these words are uttered with a certain bitterness, or even hostility.

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Ter verdediging van Vladimir Alatortsev

Even een berichtje vanuit het azijnhok. Op chessbase.com stond vorige week een artikel van Fjodor Skripchenko, de vader van Almira, over de momenteel zeer populaire Chebanenko-variant van het Slavisch. Die ontstaat na de zetten 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Pf3 Pf6 4.Pc3 a6!?. De titel van het stukje was pakkend en veelzeggend: ‘Birth of a variation, or: how the “New Slavâ€? came about’. full story »

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