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Several Pawn Endings With Zugzwang
The position on the first diagram was reached in Ilyin Zenevski – Botvinnik, 1938. White has a passed pawn, but as we will see the decisive factor was one spare tempi. Black’s problem is also a limited mobility of his own pawns, as White h5 is holding two of them. 1. Kf3! But still some [...]
Kramnik’s Passed Pawns
In the GM Neil McDonald’s book “Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy” Vladimir Kramnik’s style was described as: “In Kramnik’s games we witness what might be described as a ‘breakthrough style’: he aims for a space advantage and then tries to smash the pawn barriers in his path. Typically this leads to the creation of [...]
Gruenfeld Indian Defence
The Quality Chess “Grandmaster Repertoire” editions number 8 and 9, dedicated to the thorough analysis of the Gruenfeld Indian Defence, are finally out on the market. Grandmaster Boris Avrukh, who already wrote two highly praised volumes on the 1.d4 repertoire, now covers his favourite opening on 616 pages. Grandmaster Repertoire 8: The Gruenfeld Defence Vol.1 [...]
Double Exchange Sacrifice
While exchange sacrifice is a very common strategical tool for achieving positional transformation, a double exchange sacrifice is rare guest in the tournament practice. The material deficit is bigger and it is harder to obtain positional compensation. In addition, the opponent can always be alert to give one exchange back and kill the counterplay, while [...]
Brilliancy Prize In 2012 Gibraltar Masters
The 10th Gibraltar Chess Masters concluded yesterday with GM Nigel Short claiming the first prize. Exactly in the last round Swedish GM Emanuel Berg played a brilliant attacking game with Queen sacrifice for which he won the best game prize of the tournament (1000 pounds). He defeated reigning French champion GM Maxim Vachier-Lagrave. Excerpt from [...]
A Hidden Motive
I picked this extremely interesting position from Volokitin/Grabinsky book “Perfect Your Chess”. The sample from the game GM Dejan Antic – GM Bosko Abramovic is included with the chapter “Find the Win” and it is black to move. Obviously, the e3-pawn is located deep inside the enemy’s territory and the first instinct is to try [...]
Henri Rinck
We’ve already mentioned a famous Russian chess composer Aleksej Selesniev, and now it’s time to pay a tribute to a brilliant French artist Henri Rinck. According to Wikipedia, he had published an impressive number of endgame studies, namely a total of 1670. Rinck’s favourite theme was domination, but he also explored the ways on how [...]
Vishy Anand – Jon Ludvig Hammer
The Arctic Securities Chess Stars Tournament with Vishy Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Judit Polgar and Jon Ludvig Hammer was played on 28-30th August, 2010, in Kristiansund, Norway. Carlsen took the trophy after beating World Champion Anand in the final. The game of our interest was played in the first round between Anand and Hammer. Anand is [...]
Paco Vallejo – Magnus Carlsen Annotated
Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov, for many years one of the world’s leading chess players, is commenting the games from Sao Paulo – Bilbao Grand Slam live on Chessdom.com, together with his colleagues from the “Chess Evolution” team. Author of six chess books, out of which “Winning Chess Middlegames” was one of the best selling chess books [...]
Botvinnik’s Piece Sacrifice
There was a saying: “When Tal sacs, take and check. When Fischer sacs, take and resign. When Petrosian sacs, just resign”. What about Botvinnik? The famous strategist made many positional sacrifices, but usually with no escape for his opponents. We’ll take a look at Knight sacrifice for two pawns. Pawns alone are not enough of [...]
