Archive for December 15th, 2009

In this week’s Playchess lecture by
FM Dennis Monokroussos will introduce you (presumably) to one of the best players
in the world in the 1930s. Grigory Levenfish, whom you may know for his 6.f4
line against the Dragon, and from his endgame books, will be discussed,
with highlights from his great career. Before that IM Merijn van Delft discusses
current games. Be there and watch.

Many amateur players have enormous respect for the knight, to a great
extent as a result of painful experience. In an analysis of his Bundesliga
game against Wattenscheid at the weekend, GM Karsten Müller shows
that the knight can show off its tactical abilities not only in the
middlegame
but also in the endgame. In the position in the diagram, it was Black’s
move,
and it looks as though all he has to do to win the game is to advance his
queenside pawns. But, which pawn should he advance? What do you think?
55…b3 or 55…c3?
The solution is here,
but first ponder over it with a  larger version of the diagram.

Live commentary on top events, online training with titled players,
simuls with IMs or GMs – all of this is free in the new full
year premium membership that comes with Fritz 12. Premium members can watch Magnus Carlsen’s
postgame analysis of his first round win in London against
Vladimir Kramnik at full length. Here’s a three-minute
taster or read more about the Premium membership here.

For a while it looked as though Magnus Carlsen was going to lose with the white pieces against Michael Adams, but the latter did not play the best continuation and let the Norwegian off the hook. Vladimir Kramnik won a scrappy game against Nigel Short to move within a point of Carlsen. Ni Hua won his first game, against Luke McShane. Illustrated report with analysis.

If you want to improve your understanding of a complex opening with a
huge history the best that can happen is to have a really strong player
with many years of experience teach it to you. That’s exactly what GM Lubomir
Ftacnik offers you on his
Sicilian
Scheveningen and
Gruenfeld DVDs.
Carsten Hansen from chesscafe.com tested the former thoroughly. Read his review with sampler.