Archive for March, 2009

Do you have too many icons in your ChessBase 10’s database window? Is there so much clutter that it’s becoming hard to see the woods for the trees? ChessBase Workshop columnist Steve Lopez just might have the answer for you with an often-overlooked and certainly underused ChessBase 10 feature. You can learn more about it in the latest Workshop.

In round seven of the Blindfold and Rapid Tournament World Champion Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik overtook Levon Aronian to take the shared lead. Magnus Carlsen had no mercy with out-of-form Wang Yue, winning 2-0 and moved up to third place. In the key encounter of round eight Anand defeated Kramnik to take the sole lead, ahead of Aronian and Carlsen. New pictures by John Nunn.

Higgins (2054) – DeFirmian (2584)
White to play.

I have posted three annotated games that were “Near Upsets at USATE 2009.” The games feature confrontations between masters and amateurs where the amateurs could have won if only they had not missed the winning move or plan. I found these games while going through the file of 599 Games recently posted at the NJoyChess website (which I will probably return to in the near future to annotate other games of interest.)

Each year at the World Amateur Teams / US Amateur Team East they give out awards for the biggest ratings upset of each round. It’s a shame that they can’t give some consolation prize to the players of “Near Upsets” — the ones that got away. The most interesting in that regard was Derrick Higgins vs. GM Nick DeFirmian, where the Expert player missed two chances to bring down a GM in a fascinating line of the Najdorf Sicilian (see diagram above for the first critical position). Based on the way he played, I predict that Dr. Higgins will have other chances in the future. But I’m sure he is still kicking himself over this one.

My intention is not to embarrass the amateurs who, like Rahul Swaminathan (see below) missed a chance to force mate against a strong master — nor to embarrass the masters who almost got mated. My view is that upsets and near upsets serve to remind us of just how complex chess can be, so that even amateur players can have moments of near-brilliance where they almost see through the thicket to victory. Unfortunately, no one ever tells you during over-the-board play that it’s “your turn to play and win” as they do in chess puzzle books — or in the diagram below. Instead, in the midst of the thicket and with time ticking away on the clock we have to hope that we can sometimes see our way to the clearing ahead. And that may be why we continue to play, despite so many set-backs and failed attempts: we know that it is possible for even us amateurs to compose a masterpiece. The near-upset reminds us of what could have been, and convinces us that it is possible next time.

Braylovsky (2441) – Swaminathan (2053)
Black to play and mate in 4.
(Bonus: guess what Black did instead)

It took place on the 41st floor of Is Bank Towers, which is the highest spot in Istanbul – the highest incidentally in Southern Europe. Koneru Humpy, Elina Danielian and 15-year-old Hou Yifan picked up their trophies and checks for 6,500, 4375 and 4375 Euros for the first and joint second places. The Turkish Sports Minister and the bank chiefs were present. Pictorial report.

In our last two columns we’ve been examining the “Annotation” tab of the Search mask in both ChessBase and Fritz. In the third and final installment of the series on annotation searches, our columnist teaches you how to perform text and symbol searches in both programs. Read more in the latest ChessBase Workshop.

Levon Aronian, last year’s winner, beat the two “kids”, Magnus Carlsen in round five and Sergey Karkjakin in round six, each time with 1½–½ point. Vishy Anand scored a 2-0 victory over Teimour Radjabov to catch Kramnik in second place. Carlsen and Morozevich follow half a point behind. We bring you new impressions from Nice by our illustrious photo reporter GM Dr John Nunn.

The tiebreak for the title in St Petersburg was won by Russian IM Tatiana Kosintseva, who beat her Armenian rival IM Lilit Mkrtchian 1½–½. There was also a seven-player tiebreak for bronze, which was won by WGM Natalija Pogonina of Russia. And finally a playoff for the 14th place in the next World Championship, which was taken by the Ukrainian IM Mariya Muzychuk. Report and games.

IM Lilit Mkrtchian from Armenia and IM Tatiana Kosintseva from Russia both won their final round game to share first in Saint Petersburg. Tomorrow a tiebreak match will decide who takes the title. There are also matches for bronze (seven players shared third) and for a place in the World Championship. New videos by Europe Echecs and a giant portrait pictorial by Elena Mikheeva.

She actually did it! India’s top female GM, Koneru Humpy, staged a big finish and won the Women Grand Prix with 8.5 out of 11. In the last round she pressured her French opponent, Marie Sebag, until the latter blundered and Humpy could win. Armenian IM Elina Danielian defeated Zhao Xue to finish joint second (with Hou Yifan) and earn a second GM norm in the process. Round eleven report.

I was going to hold the games from the Kenilworth Quads until after the tournament but have decided not to. Here are 4 games from last week in java-replay & PGN.

To wrap up the 2009 Kenilworth Championship, which was won last month by NM Yaacov Norowitz, here are :

• an updated 4th round replay page & zipped PGN, with 5 additional games
• the 5th round java-replays & PGN
• a ChessBase archive with 50 games from the event.

Thanks to :

• Michael Goeller… for donating many trophies & saving the club lots of money;
  
• Geoff McAuliffe… for a smoothly-run tournament & annotating at least 14 games;
• Ian Mangion… for providing notes to his final-round contest;
  
• all 26 participants… for helping to tie the club record for largest tournament.
  

The Awards Ceremony will be held this Thursday (3/19), before the 2nd round of the Kenilworth Quads.

French GM Marie Sebag actually did it: she outplayed the leading Zhao Xue to give the Istanbul Women’s Grand Prix a rousing finish. Especially since Koneru Humpy scored a crushing win against Antoaneta Stefanova, and Hou Yifan survived a tough game against Elina Danielian. So it’s Humpy, Hou and Zhao with 7.5/10 in the final round. All have the black pieces. Watch it on Playchess.

The tiebreaks at the European Championship in Budva, Montenegro, produced a final between GMs Evgeny Tomashevsky and Vladimir Malakhov, both from Russia. Tomashevsky won the first rapid game and lost the second, so that an Armageddon game was required. Malakhov had the black pieces and only needed to draw. In fact he had a winning position and then hung a rook! Take a look.

GM Zhao Xue came under considerable pressure in the Women’s Grand Prix in Turkey, with India’s Koneru Humpy pressing. But she managed to hold for 66 moves and remains in the lead. Hou Yifan drew against Marie Sebag, while Elina Danielian beat Martha Fierro to move into contention at equal third. The Turkish WIM Betül Yildiz scored her first victory, over Shen Yang. Round nine report.

The European Women’s Championship is taking place in St Petersburg, Russia, just a stone’s throw away from where top GM Peter Svidler lives. GM Robert Fontaine is producing video reports for the French chess magazine Europe Echecs there. The two got together for an indepth interview on Peter’s career, development, ambitions, Topalov vs Kamsky and Anand vs Topalov. Must watch and read.

In Round 4 of the 18th Amber Blindfold and Rapid Tournament Vladimir Kramnik defeated the luckless Wang Yue 2-0 to take the sole lead in the overall scores. He achieved this mainly with a fine 3.5/4 performance in the blindfold section. In second place are last year’s winner Levon Aronian and Alexander Morozevich, who won Amber in 2002, 2004 and 2006. Report after round four.

“With all the super-tournaments going on nowadays, it’s easy to forget that there are other great players producing work of art.” Our Playchess lecturer Dennis Monokroussos is referring to correspondence players and shows us an impressive example. Be there at 9 p.m. ET.

Eleven players finished the European Championship with 8.0/11
points, which produces a tiebreak spectacle tomorrow, starting at 10:00 a.m.
local time. A final decision on what will transpire will be taken late tonight
by the Technical Commission. It will probably be a knockout system with byes
in the first round. If you are on the Playchess
server at 10 a.m. you can watch the drama unfold.

It sounds ominous, when quoted by the broadsheets and repeated in chess blogs. “Vishy is a brilliant player,” Kasparov said in New Delhi, “but it is very difficult to compete at 40. I will be surprised if he can go on any longer.” Kasparov himself will soon be 46, Anand is pushing forty, and there are 13 and 14-year-olds out there baying at their heels. Article, transcripts and a video interview.

The meteoric path of 15-year-old Hou Yifan has been stopped – by her compatriot Zhao Xue, who defeated her after the younger girl blundered on her last move before the time control. Zhao now leads with 7.0/8 points and a 2790 performance. Behind the Chinese girls and always good for a big finish: India’s GM Koneru Humpy, the second strongest female player in history. Big pictorial report.

On her birthday Iweta Rajlich, wife of Rybka programmer Vasik Rajlich, made herself a special gift: she defeated Nino Khurtsidze and joined Hungarian GM Hoang Thanh Trang in the lead. Salome Melia also won her game and made it a threesome. Eleven players follow half a point behind. We bring you results and games, new videos by Europe Echecs and a pictorial report by Elena Mikheeva.

After ten rounds, with one to go, a total of nine players are in the lead,
poised to win the event, half a point behind are fourteen more
who have theoretical chances. So the final round on Tuesday is bound to bring
a lot of action, which you can follow on the Playchess
server. The official web site has many hundreds of (uncaptioned) pictures of
players. Photo report of soccer, sun and sea.

Somebody once said that each time you change your opening repertoire you “grow” as a chessplayer. Well, I should be a grandmaster by now for all the growing I’ve done over the years. As I put the finishing touches on my latest opening system, which may be my most coherent to date, I begin to wonder if I’m really growing so much as settling into a new approach to the game.

I think I’ve had dozens of repertoires over the years. The last one I wrote about in these pages was my Knightmare Repertoire (built around mirror systems with e4, Nc3, and Nf3 as White and e5, Nc6, and Nf6 as Black), which bears some connection to my current approach. I also documented my Caveman or Left Hook Repertoire for White (which included the Urusov Gambit, Two Knights with d4, Steinitz-Sveshnikov Attack, Evans Gambit, Modern Horowitz Max Lange, Anti-Petroff with d4, Left Hook Grand Prix, Left Hook Austrian, Wing Gambit French, Caveman Caro-Kann, and Saemisch Attack vs. the Alekhine) and various unusual systems as Black (including a universal 1…Nc6 system and an early d6 system that included the Philidor, Panther, and Janowski Indian or Janowski’s Brother). Along the way I’ve also flirted with various completely different ideas, including the d-pawn repertoire built around the Barry Attack and Colle-Zukertort as laid out by Aaron Summerscale in A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire and recently updated by Richard Palliser in Starting Out: D-pawn Attacks.

I really don’t know how other players go about constructing their repertoires, and it might make for a good interview question — or a question for readers. How do you go about it? Steve Giddins once devoted an entire book to the subject (How to Build Your Chess Opening Repertoire). Perhaps most players simply pick up one of the many books on the market offering a ready-made repertoire and read it carefully from cover to cover. While I love repertoire books, I rarely find myself adopting more than one or two lines from any of them. Most book repertoires are simply not coherent enough for my taste. Perhaps some players work with coaches to create a coherent system, or perhaps they just let things fall into place over time, with new acquisitions coming on organically along the way.

It’s my desire for coherence that drives my changes, and I am rather dogmatic in my approach. I want to have a coherent system, and so a change in any opening line will inevitably trigger a cascade of adjustments throughout my repertoire. The Knightmare Repertoire came about because I found myself playing the Tango (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 e5) and the Berlin Variation of the Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6), and soon it just seemed natural to adopt the Four Knights, the Two Knights French, and so on down the line until I was playing practically every system where you move your two Knights and your e-pawn in the first three or four moves. A similar process created the Caveman repertoire for White, which arose out of my desire to develop a dark square attacking formation (generally centered around an e5 advance).

My current system began much the same way. I had been building up an Open Game system with 1.e4 e5 as Black when I started playing lines with a kingside fianchetto, especially the Three Knights (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 g6). Meanwhile, I was struggling to find a good line against the Italian Game that did not involve too much study or any gambits, and just around that time I happened to annotate the game Weeramantry-Bisguier, USATE 2008 which suggested that a kingside fianchetto might work more universally than I had imagined possible. I decided to see how far I could take the idea and started researching other lines where Black plays an early g6 advance in the Open Games, including the Smyslov Variation of the Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6). I started playing it in blitz and really enjoyed the types of positions I was getting in those lines, which reminded me of my most positive experiences with the King’s Indian Defense. I had given up the KID years ago when it just seemed too difficult to keep up with the theory. But maybe a modified King’s Indian system was possible, one that did not involve too much study? As I studied the Open Games with g6, the KID seemed inevitable — and a natural addition since some KID lines could arise via the Open Games (such as by 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 g6 5.c4, which heads toward an interesting line that could arise via the Classical KID).

With the KID and the Open Games with g6 on board, I soon found myself looking at other lines with a kingside fianchetto, such as the Glek System of the Four Knights (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.g3), the Vienna with g3 (1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6/Nc6 3.g3), the Closed Sicilian or an Open system with g3 (depending on Black’s set-up), and an anti-Pirc system with g3. It all seemed so natural.

Of course, there were some complications. For one thing, in order to avoid taking on the whole King’s Indian, I decided it made sense to keep the Tango against any line where White did not commit to Nf3. That way I could avoid the Four Pawns Attack, the Saemisch, and a whole host of other White systems. Keeping the Tango also allowed me to focus generally on lines where Black plays an …e5 advance, as in the Classical and the Fianchetto (with Nbd7 and e5). And the Tango made sense because I was also drawn to the Two Knights French and Two Knights Caro-Kann, which were practically like reversed Tango systems in some lines (especially where Black plays a d4 advance).

There were many other adjustments, of course, too numerous to mention — and I am still trying to work out all the transposition tricks and marginal lines. Here is the broad outline of what I have so far and what books I’ve been looking at to help me organize my study (suggestions for additional lines and useful books or articles are most welcome):

Black

Smyslov Variation of the Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g6)

• Offbeat Spanish by Glenn Flear
• “The Solid but Tricky Fianchetto Spanish” by Glenn Flear in SOS #2.
• “Radulski’s Ruy Lopez” in SOS #3
• Opening for White According to Anand, Volume 1, by Alexander Khalifman
• Beating the Ruy Lopez with the Fianchetto Variation by Andrew Soltis

Italian Game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 g6 or 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4 g6!?)

• Italian Game and Evans Gambit by Jan Pinski

Three Knights and Scotch (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 g6 or 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 g6)

• “Livening Up the Three Knights and Scotch” by John Emms in Dangerous Weapons: 1.e4 e5
• An Unbeatable White Repertoire after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 by Larry Evans and Ken Smith

Center Game (1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.Qxd4 Nc6 4.Qe3 g6!?)

• “Centre Game Revealed, Part III” by Andrew Greet in Dangerous Weapons: 1.e4 e5
• Play 1.e4 e5 by Nigel Davies

Tango (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 Nc6)

• Tango! by Richard Palliser
• The Black Knights’ Tango by Georgi Orlov
• Joel Benjamin’s Opening Shortcuts columns at Jeremy Silman’s site

King’s Indian Defense (1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6)

• Opening for White According to Kramnik, 1.Nf3: Modern Lines in the King’s Indian Defence by Alexander Khalifman
• Kasparov on the King’s Indian, by Gary Kasparov and Raymond Keene
• Kasparov’s Chess Openings by Otto Borik
• Winning with the King’s Indian by Eduard Gufeld
• The Art of the King’s Indian by Eduard Gufeld
• Miguel Najdorf: King of the King’s Indian by Nikolai Minev
• The New Classical King’s Indian by John Nunn and Graham Burgess
• An Active Repertoire for Black by Drazen Marovic

English (1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Nf3 Nf6)

• English …e5 by Alex Raetsky and Maxim Chetverik
• Gambit Guide to the English 1…e5 by Carsten Hansen
• Beating the Flank Openings by Vassilios Kotronias

White

Paulsen-Mieses Vienna or Glek Four Knights (1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6/Nc6 3.g3 or 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.g3)

• Vienna Game by Gary Lane
• The Four Knights by Jan Pinski

Closed Sicilian or Open with g3 (1.e4 c5 2.Nc3)

• The Ultimate Closed Sicilian by Gary Lane
• Taming the Sicilian by Nigel Davies

Two Knights French (1.e4 e6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Nf3)

• A Startling Chess Opening Repertoire by Chris Baker
• “Russian Roulette” by Viktor Moskalenko in The Flexible French

Two Knights Caro-Kann (1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 d5 3.Nf3)

• Play the Caro-Kann (2nd edition) by Egon Varnusz
• Play the Caro-Kann by Jovanka Houska

Alekhine (1.e4 Nf6 2.Nc3)

• A Startling Chess Opening Repertoire by Chris Baker

Pirc (1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.g3)

• Pirc Alert! by Lev Alburt and Alex Chernin
• The Pirc in Black and White by James Vigus

Owing to technical and communications problems we have not been able to do wall-to-wall coverage of the very attractive FIDE Women Masters in Turkey, where the Chinese GMs Hou Yifan and Zhao Xue are dominating in stunning fashion, with 2905 and 2746 performances respectively. But now we intend to take up reporting again for the last four rounds. Here for starters is a big pictorial report.

Chinese GM Wang Yue has in the past week travelled from Linares to Beijing to Nice – not such a good idea when you are facing 2700+ opposition in your events. Russian GM Alexander Morozevich beat him with white in the rapid chess game and completely outplayed him in the rapid. Morozevich joins Levon Aronian who today made Peter Leko an unexpected present. Photos by John Nunn.