Chess Mazes #373 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...]
Grandmaster Reference Guides
by Carsten Hansen Reviewed this Month The Alekhine Defence: Move by Move by Cyrus Lakdawala Kotronias on the King's Indian, Volume One: Fianchetto Systems by Vassilios Kotronias A Cutting-Edge Gambit against the Queen's Indian by Imre Hera & Ufuk Tuncer Grandmaster Repertoire 12: The Modern Benoni by Marian Petrov This month we feature four recent titles: one in the popular Move by Move series by Everyman Chess, and three distinctly more complicated and advanced works, all written by grandmasters and opening specialists. It would be nice to say that there is something for everyone in this month's harvest, but they are either decidedly for advanced and strong players or for … [Read more...]
Cards on the Table
A relatively new idea in the Ruy Lopez Exchange causes confusion. Otto Baric from Denmark has been playing the Ruy Lopez Exchange for some time, but is stumped by a new move in a normal position. He e-mailed to say, "1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.O-O Bg4 6.h3 Be6?!?! I was expecting either 6...Bxf3 or the sharp 6...h5, and at first I thought it was just an oversight. I played 7.d4 because I did not want simplification after 7...exd4, but upon 7...Nf6 I began to 'analyse' the position. I suddenly saw many opportunities for Black on the open g-line, and weak pawn on h3 and strong bishops. I decided to prevent that with 8.Bg5, but after 8...h6 I gave up 9.Bh4 g5 10.exf6 and played … [Read more...]
Off the Beaten Path in the e6-Sicilian [B40]
This month I take a look at a rare option for White in the mainline e6-Sicilian. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 This is just one of many moves Black can play, whether anticipating White playing the Open Sicilian (3.d4) or something else. 3.c3 This move order is considered off the beaten path. More usual is 2.c3 and if 2...e6, then 3.d4 rather than 3.Nf3. Here there is less to learn for both sides. By playing 3.c3 White avoids certain lines such as 2.c3 Nf6 and 2.c3 d5. 3...d5 On nearly any other move White will play 4.d4. 4.e5 The point of this move order is to transpose to an Advanced French: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Nc6 5.Nf3. 4.exd5 exd5 5.Bb5+ is another way to play and … [Read more...]
Chess Mazes #372
Chess Mazes #372 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...]
Hou Yifan Commands Respect
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...]
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...]