This month we present a lightly edited excerpt from Chess Evolution Newsletter #125. CEWN is released every Friday of the week, the newsletter contains twenty-plus pages of great chess material written by top grandmasters Arkadij Naiditsch and Csaba Balogh. by Arkadij Naiditsch Hou, Yifan (2629) – Giri, Anish (2750) Hans Suri Mem 2014 Biel SUI (1.3), 14.07.2014 Sicilian Defense [B51] In the history of chess, only one woman has played on the highest level and this is Judit Polgar. At her best she even managed to enter the Top Ten. Hou Yifan, the current Women's World Champion and clearly the strongest female player after Polgar seems to do fine against men as well. Yifan is very … [Read more...]
Archives for July 2014
When a Bishop and Knight Rule the Queen
Like many chess teachers, I tend to show lots of tactics. Naturally, I want students to analyze without moving the pieces. My presentations can be random, as in real life, though I also play with variations on a theme, offering comparable examples to reinforce specific ideas. I guess that is how we are going to start here, in this new monthly feature. For the most part, every month we will present a block of ten problems that I have given to classes and certain private students (yes, even some who became GMs). The puzzles could be random, you never know. But usually they do their best to rally around a particular motif. In this first group, we provide ten simple illustrations of a bishop … [Read more...]
A CC Player on Vacation
It is nice to be back to discuss some CC issues with you again. Since the January 2014 column I have achieved my goal of completing more than 500 CC games. I suppose my next goal will be 1,000 games. We also have a new CC World Champion: Alexandr Surenovich Dronov from Russia. He won the 27th World Championship Final ahead of three players from Germany. His achievement is exceptional in that it is the second time he captured the world championship title. Only two other players have managed this previously. We will look at one of his games below. Earlier in the year I went for a one-month vacation in the sun. As usual I did not bring any electronic devices with me (except for a very … [Read more...]
Interview: Viktor Kortchnoi
Interview: Viktor Kortchnoi by Jules Welling From Inside Chess, 1994/17 I Think I Understand More of the Game "It might sound a bit strange, but I think that my understanding of the game of chess is still growing, although I don't play Candidates-level chess anymore. Even for myself, that is a strange experience. Of course, I am no challenger for the world title anymore, but I do have the feeling that my play is more interesting than at the time I played for the world championship. I do not really follow closely the theoretical developments of today, but nowadays I have more and better ideas." Viktor Kortchnoi and I talked in Antwerp during the Lost Boys tournament, where he finished … [Read more...]
Coordination
Quote of the Month: Coordination of your forces means the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In my book Elements of Positional Evaluation, which is about evaluating the value of pieces (and not positions), one of the seven elements is coordination. Of course, coordination is not just associated with individual pieces and how each relates to the other pieces; it is often considered "as a whole" on how all the pieces coordinate with each other. One interesting aspect of coordination is that pieces that move on the same lines, like doubled rooks or batteries (pieces that move the same way on the same line, like a queen and bishop on the same diagonal) would seem to be coordinating … [Read more...]
Chess Mazes #371
Chess Mazes #371 There are two types of chess mazes: checking and mating. For bishop, rook, and knight mazes the play is to check the black king. For queen, pawn, and king mazes the object is to checkmate the enemy king; here checks are not allowed. The rules in common for each type of maze are as follows: Black never moves. Only the maze piece (in the case of pawns – the maze units) may move. A maze piece may never move to a square where it can be captured by enemy forces. A maze piece may capture undefended enemy forces. Plus we look for the shortest solution. Helpers in queen and king mazes are frozen to the diagram position, unable to move or be removed. In pawn mazes … [Read more...]
The Bishop’s Opening [C24]
This month I am covering the Bishop's Opening at the request of Aaron Carter from South Africa. I will be examining it for White and Black, since it pays to know the alternatives for both sides. 1.e4 e5 2.Bc4 This signifies the Bishop's Opening, but it does not constitute its own system since transposition to the Italian Game or Vienna is common. As we will see, this move order can be a way to avoid the Petroff Defense. 2...Nf6 Other moves would not get to the set-up I want to look at. 2...Bc5 The main line of the Vienna has the bishop go to the b4-square, so Black has to be prepared for a transposition to the Vienna when the bishop is on c5. Otherwise we could just transpose … [Read more...]
The Unbelievable Truth
A Modern Benoni with a twist. Gilles Garrigues from France e-mailed with a problem concerning the first two moves of the game: "I find Black's 1.d4 e6 2.c4 c5!? slightly annoying. Note that I am mostly a positional player rated around 2100. What can you recommend?" This move-order is an invitation to take on the Modern Benoni. The difference is that Black wants to avoid playing a king's knight to f6 and have the option of developing it to e7, allowing a different type of set-up. The problem is that when you look it up in your standard reference books, it does not seem to exist. The reason is that the game usually goes 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 e6. In this case, after 1 d4 e6, Black runs … [Read more...]