This month we present a lightly edited excerpt from Chess Evolution Newsletter #137. 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. An Intuitive Exchange Sacrifice! by Csaba Balogh Caruana,F (2844) - Gelfand,B (2748) Baku FIDE Grand Prix 2014 Baku AZE (2.2), 03.10.2014 Najdorf Sicilian [B90] Caruana and Gelfand continue their thematic opening discussion in the Sicilian Najdorf defense. 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.f3 White avoids the 6.Be3 Ng4 variation and starts with the 6.f3 move-order. This one also allows an extra option … [Read more...]
Exchange Power: Rooks Over Bishops
by Bruce Pandolfini If you trade pieces, you exchange pieces, with the word "exchange" being written in lower case. But if you gain a rook for a bishop (or for a knight), you win the Exchange, with a capital "E," as the great Burt Hochberg used to say to me upon editing my pieces, that is, the written kind of pieces. Now in the old days, at least at the Marshall Chess Club, to avoid upper and lower case confusion, chess players would also refer to winning or gaining the Exchange as winning or gaining quality, whenever they got ahead by a rook for a bishop or a rook for a knight. But let's jump to the present. In all ten problems offered this month, however it is phrased, you are presented … [Read more...]