Dear readers, apologies as I haven’t updated the site for awhile. I’m currently working as a reporter from the European Team Chess Championship that is taking place in beautiful Creta Maris in Greece. Some photos bellow, we should be back on track around 10th November.
This is the game I played last weekend in a team event. Similar to “5th Deadly Chess Sin”, I will reproduce my thoughts that occurred during the clash. Note that I didn’t run the moves through the chess program, if you find any tactical flaws, please mention it in the comments.
Goran Urosevic - Boban Stojanovic
1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3
In the first round, I played the Catalan and lost the game (will post that soon). This time I wanted to try something else.
4… Be7 5. Bg5 h6
I don’t know if this move order (more common is 5… 0-0 and h6 later) has any significance in the sense of allowing/avoiding certain lines. While 6. Bh4 would have been normal transposition, I was happy to get off the hot lines of the Orthodox Queens Gambit, and quickly snapped on f6.
6. Bxf6 Bxf6
I grinned while taking on f6 and I think my opponent saw that. The thing is that in the last year’s league I lost only one game, and it was because I started a combination to win the bishop’s pair, while blundering simple intermediate move (zwischenzug). That was one of the most embarrassing defeats ever, in only 17 moves. I remember how one of the team-mates criticized me for “recklessly running after the pair of bishops”. I was happy to show him this time how “universal” player I am by giving the bishop for knight on 6th move.
This continuation is, of course, well known in the modern opening theory. White will quickly finish the development while black will be a bit passive for awhile, because his bishops can’t easily reach any of the good diagonals. By removing Nf6, black is losing some of the control over e4 and d5, and we will see how could white exploit this advantage.
Another sample from “Perfect Your Chess”. GM Volokitin and IM Grabinsky are commenting game moves as the best continuation, but I think there is even prettier tactical motif.
White to move, suggest your solutions in the comments.
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In yesterday’s post I recommended “Perfect Your Chess” by GM Andrei Volokitin and IM Vladimir Grabinsky. Here is one sample from the first chapter “Make a Move”. From the chapter intro: We set ourselves the task of choosing positions where it is sufficient to suggest only one move. Just as in a game, a player has to solve problems of various types, so here you will find a mix of quiet moves, zwischenzugs, winning moves, prophylactic moves, etc.
Black to move. Discuss the position in comments.
Frankly, I’m not a big fan of books written by top players. They spend most of their time studying theory and I doubt they can afford switching to explanatory mode. I often browse list of Gambit Chess Publications where I spotted “Perfect Your Chess”
I ordered the book and started solving the examples. Unlike the usual study (opening lines…. boring!), this work was so smooth and enjoyable. And the solutions are not only dry move lines, authors are exercising great sense of humor - about king walk: “It is polite to come out and greet guests, but it should be better to stay indoors on this occasion…”.
From Introduction: “Therefore, in this book, we shall not try to teach you how to play better chess. Rather, we shall do something more valuable: we shall give you material, which will help to develop your thinking”. I think this is basically the only secret of the Soviet Chess School - they simply analyse a lot. Don’t get hooked with the flashy book titles by GM Lev Alburt and others, it’s only a cheap marketing trick. Better buy “Perfect Your Chess”
I should add that this book is aimed at the club players rated above 1800. Enjoy analysing!
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