Over the last few weeks I have been watching a lot of chess tournaments online. Hitherto I tended to do this only for world championship matches and candidates tournaments but, having an upgraded broadband service at home since last summer, the experience has been more satisfying. Also I took note of something one of the fellow competitors of my own generation said to me during the Irish Championship; he had, I think, been maintaining his playing strength partly through following top games online. I agree. It does much more for tactical awareness as well as maintaining one's sense of what is new and topical in the openings compared with reading about tournaments afterwards in chess … [Read more...]
Archives for September 2014
In Houdini’s Footsteps, Part Two
I will say a few words about the book Lessons with a Grandmaster by Boris Gulko and Joel Sneed, from which the last game we looked at in the August 2014 column was taken. Actually this is not even one book, but two, and now a third is being prepared. I was studying the second volume just before writing this article. The books are structured in an unusual way; in my view, they should be both interesting and useful to readers of various levels - from amateurs to grandmasters. Gulko shows his student and co-author his best games (in the first volume positional advantages, and in the second tactical ones), suggesting that he answer questions associated with the search for the best moves. … [Read more...]
Building an Opening Repertoire
Tutorial: Building an Opening Repertoire by Mark Donlan This month we will look at using ChessBase 12, or any similar database program to some extent, to build an opening repertoire. Players will sometimes lament, usually after a loss, that they do not have any good openings. Yet it is rarely the opening that is at fault. It is usually a tactic on which the game turns. With regard to the opening these players seldom study it in a formulaic way, and often do not play long enough time controls in which to expect perfection in any phase of the game. First let's consider some maxims from chess authors to define our parameters: "The importance of opening theory is grossly … [Read more...]
Chess Mazes #374
Chess Mazes #374 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...]
Dynamic Openings
by Carsten Hansen Reviewed this Month The Tarrasch Defence: Move by Move by Sam Collins The Extreme Caro-Kann: Attacking Black with 3.f3 by Alexey Bezgodov Playing the Trompowsky: An Attacking Repertoire by Richard Pert Play the Accelerated Dragon by Peter Lalic This month we will look at four recent books on openings that have a decent following at many levels, but are not currently as popular as their reputation suggests. The Tarrasch Defence: Move by Move by Sam Collins, Everyman Chess 2014, Figurine Algebraic Notation, Paperback, 254pp. $27.95 (ChessCafe Price $23.87); Ebook $21.95 In my February 2012 column, we looked at the very advanced Grandmaster Repertoire: … [Read more...]
Towards Zero
How can I be like Alexei Shirov and also play the Fried Liver Attack? Peter Osborne from the UK has spotted the infamous Fried Liver Attack being used at the Olympiad and wants to know if it is just winning for White? The first thing to say is that the Fried Liver Attack is another name for the Fegatello Attack, which was popular with sixteenth century Italian masters, and the name is apparently Italian for a piece of liver. Well, I have to admit that I was rather shocked to see a grandmaster playing Black would dare tempt such an attacking genius to force your king to e6 in the opening and hope to get away with it. I can only suspect that Black thought Shirov would shy away from the … [Read more...]
The Classical Nimzo-Indian Defense [E38]
This month we examine a variation from the Classical Nimzo-Indian Defense, 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Qc2 c5 5.dxc5 Na6, for Olivier Mathieu of France, who after a thirty year absence from chess wants to know whether it is still playable. He writes, "Indeed, after 6.a3 Bxc3 7.Qxc3 Nxc5 8.b4 Nce4 9.Qb2 Black's position looks difficult. Is there any hope with 9...Nd6 or should I forget the 5...Na6 move?" I am grateful for the request because the variation leads to very interesting positions with plenty of tactics. 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 The Nimzo-Indian Defense, named after the great Aron Nimzowitsch, is extremely popular. The immediate 4.e4 is not possible and throughout this … [Read more...]