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| Introductory videos In his introductory video, HamburgGM Karsten Müller introduces the various pieces of training content in this issue and casts a first glance at the decisive game in the FIDE-Grand Prix in Nalchik. Kuzmin’s repertoire suggestion against the Caro-Kann (5.Nc5) and Postny’s surprise weapon against the Scotch (4...Bb4+) are two particularly exciting opening articles which are touched upon and there is also Rainer Knaak’s opening trap from the Queen’s Gambit Accepted. |
 | GM Dorian Rogozenco looks back to the tournament highlights of recent months. In his first video Rogozenco presents, e.g., a win by the new European Champion Evgeny Tomashesvky, a win which is typical of the latter’s positional play and his alertness to the possibility of tactics. Rogozenco discusses another gem from the European Championship in the form of Jobava’s victory as Black over Volokitin, who was apparently put off his stride by the move 27...Nf3+ (see diagram), and also a spectacular victory by Kotronias over the Russian GM Grigoriants. He also mentions the Women’s European Championship and the Women’s FIDE Grand Prix in Istanbul. |
 | The tournament highlight in April was the fourth stage of the FIDE Grand Prix in Nalchik in Russia. In his second video Rogozenco demonstrates the decisive moments in the game between the tournament winner Aronian and the completely out of form Ivanchuk. Also mentioned are the finish of the Bundesliga season and the Russian team championship. Rogozenco singles out from the latter event a brilliant win by Fabiano Caruana, who once more had a brilliant result with 5 points from 6 games. |
Anand - Radjabov
| Vishy Anand annotates One of the highlights of this issue is without any doubt Vishy Anand’s analysis of his first round game against Teimour Radjabov in Linares. The World Champion annotates his victory in the Sicilian Sveshnikov Variation move by move in audio format. In one of the deeply analysed variations after 9.Bxf6 gxf6 10.Nd5 Bg7 11.Bd3 Radjabov came up with a new try in the form of 18...f5. Anand explains the ideas behind this move and takes a close look at the resulting endgame with queen, rook and knight against queen, rook and bishop in which White has only a minimal advantage. Anand’s conclusion: Radjabov made only a slight error – 36...h6 deprived his own queen of the square needed for counterplay – but that mistake decided the game. Click here or on the link under the picture and follow the game with the audio comments of the World Champion. |
15.04.-29.04.2009 
Victory in Nalchik:
Levon Aronian
| FIDE Grand Prix Nalchik Levon Aronian is back to his winning ways. Right after his win in the Amber Tournament in Nice in March his next great tournament success was in the FIDE Grand Prix in Nalchik. With a total of five wins and only one defeat (against Karjakin), he was at the finish a clear point ahead of the two who shared second place, Peter Leko and his compatriot Vladimir Akopian. However, the decision about who would win the tournament did not come until the very last round in the face-to-face encounter between Aronian and Leko, since the latter had caught up with the leader in the penultimate round with his victory over Kasimdzhanov. |
Aronian,L - Leko,P
Position after 34.Re5
| The decisive game Aronian - Leko is annotated in detail on the DVD by the Armenian super-GM. Leko, who showed great fighting spirit and improved form in Nalchik, sought his fortune in this final game in a Nimzo Indian. But Aronian adapted well to Leko’s choice had come prepared for a long positional struggle. In the variation with 4.e3 Aronian achieved the slightly better position thanks to his bishop pair and space advantage in the centre. Aronian annotates move by move the ensuing middlegame, e.g. explaining how he enticed Leko’s knight on to what were in the medium term bad squares on the kingside. The exchange sacrifice in the position in the diagram forces the decision, because after 34...Nxe5 35.Rxe5 f5 the e6-pawn falls and the white passed pawns become unstoppable. |
Gelfand,B - Karjakin,S
Position after 14.a4
| Boris Gelfand was also able to notch up a victory in the final round and by doing so bring his final score to 50%. Against Karjakin’s Slav with 4...a6 he had prepared with his compatriot GM Rodshtein the innovation 8.Qc2. The idea is to go for a rapid opening of the centre with e3-e4 and then to expose pawn weaknesses on Black’s queenside. Gelfand’s strong move 14.a4 (see diagram) continues with this strategy. The forced14...b4 weakens Black’s pawn structure even more and gets for White the c4-square. Gelfand explains in his analysis how he was able to convert his positional advantage by creating another weakness in Black’s camp. Click here or on the link under the diagram to play through the game with Gelfand’s comments. |
07.03.-19.03.2009 
Fortunate victor:
Humpy Koneru
| FIDE Women’s Grand Prix in Istanbul With an ELO rating of 2612 (as of April 2009) the 22 year old Indian Humpy Koneru is at the present just behind Judith Polgar on second place in the women’s world rating list. So there is every prospect that she will emulate her compatriot Vishy Anand and bring a second world title back to India. However, luck was also very much on her side in her victory in the FIDE Grand Prix in Istanbul, because in the final round the two Chinese players who had led for so long, Yifan Hou und Zhao Xue, displayed their nerves and neither was able to win her game. |
Koneru,H - Stefanova,A
Position after 13...Nxd5
| On the DVD Humpy Koneru annotates four of her games from Istanbul. She had a relatively easy game against ex World Champion Antoaneta Stefanova, who suffered a decisive loss of material from the position in the diagram after the tactically erroneous move 13...Nxd5. Can you see the point of White’s play? In the final round game Sebag,M - Koneru,H,on the other hand, she had to fight hard in the Chigorin Variation of the Ruy Lopez, but first of all the French champion overlooked a continuation which promised her an advantage and shortly thereafter on move 36 she committed a serious error which allowed her opponent to mount an immediate and decisive attack. Koneru’s analysis of her games against Zhao Xue and Pia Cramling and all the other games from Istanbul can be found here. |
06.03.-18.03.2009 
New European Champion: Evgeny Tomashevsky
| European Championship in Budva For some years the European Championship has been a major event with an enormously high number of strong grandmasters taking part – though this strong opposition appears to rather scare off the absolutely top players from Europe. Considering the size of the field (over 120 GMs were in the starting blocks) there was a high probability from the very start that after 11 rounds there would have to be a play-off for the first place. And in fact the title was finally decided in a rapid chess knock-out tournament with 11 participants; in the event of a score of 1:1 there was for each match an “Armageddon game”. The whole was best managed by Evgeny Tomashevsky, who at the age of 21 is now the youngest European champion in history. |
3rd place for
Baduur Jobava
| The DVD contains more than 1700 games from Budva. Amongst our annotators for this issue, there were two, Ernesto Inarkiev and Baduur Jobava with 8/11, who made it into the rapid chess finals. Both even got as far as the semi-finals, where they drew the short straw. In their resulting duel, Jobava secured the 3rd place. After a fast and furious start with 4 out of 4, Georg Meier missed the playoffs by half a point, as did Mateusz Bartel, Nikita Vitiguov and Victor Bologan, who each annotate two of their games on the DVD. |
Jobava,B - Georgiev,K
Position after 34...Rd8
| In the final round game Jobava - Georgiev the Georgian had a strategic victory which is well worth seeing; it was the basis for the greatest success in his career so far. In the Archangel Variation, Jobava achieved after 12.Bg5 a position which was favourable for White, and with which he was already well acquainted from several tournament games (in the online database you can find 3 games with the position, all with Jobava as White). Georgiev then came under strong pressure and tried in vain to free himself by means of a double pawn sacrifice. Jobava’s pawn storm against the black king followed by the white bishop hitting g6 decided the game in impressive fashion. |
Inarkiev - Kozul
Position after 13.h4
| Ernesto Inarkiev started in the tournament like Georg Meier with four victories and for some time sat along with the German at the head of the table. His win over Zdenko Kozul in round 4 was achieved by the young Russian in his favourite opening, the Richter-Rauser Attack. Inarkiev’s innovation 13.h4 (see diagram) left his intentions in no doubt. After the obligatory exchange of pieces on c4 and Inarkiev’s 16.Nce2 (with the idea of preparing the g4-g5 advance and adding strength to it by means of Ng3) White has reached a promising setup. In a difficult position Kozul played the normally thematic advance 18...d5 but in doing so committed a serious error, which immediately allowed his opponent to mount and break through with an attack. |
 | At the ripe old age of 37 Viktor Bologan was almost one of the old hands in the field. The grandmaster from Moldava has been for nearly ten years a member of the extended circle of the best in the world. However, his score of 7.5/11 was not enough this time to qualify for the play-offs. But the result was enough to secure for Bologan his qualification for the next FIDE World Cup. In the coming weeks the Moldovan will for the first time be having Fritztrainer DVDs published by ChessBase: on the Caro-Kann and on the King’s Indian Defence. |
Bologan,V - Huzman,A
Position after 28.b5
| In the two games which Viktor Bologan has annotated for this DVD, there are the Sicilian with 3.Bb5 and the Petroff Defence. In Bologan - Huzman the Moldovan came up with an innovation in a fashionable variation of the Petroff with his prophylactic move 10.a3. In a very complex position with a centralised rook on e4 Bologan chose in 28.b5 the wrong continuation and was lucky that his adversary missed the possibility to seize the initiative by exchanging on g4 and following up with c6-c5. Instead, with the help of a knight sacrifice which is worth seeing (see diagram), Bologan manage to create a strong pair of passed pawns and decide the game in his favour. |
Cheparinov,I - Meier,G
Position after 15...e5
| In Budva Georg Meier was able to celebrate his first successful mini-duel against a top GM. After his victory over Ivan Cheparinov in the Olympiad in Dresden, he this time managed to achieve a draw with Black despite a mistake in calculation. This meant that in the Nimzo-Indian with 4.Nf3 and 5.g3 Meier even let slip a slightly advantageous position acquired after his strong move 11...e5 (followed by f7-f5 and e5-e4). The result of this was that the young German, after a longish liquidation, once more found himself in a slightly disadvantageous ending, which he was finally able to draw without problem thanks to good technique and inaccurate play on the part of Cheparinov. In addition to this game, Meier has also annotated on the DVD his victories over Dobrov and Gagunashvilli. |
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Repertoire against 1.d4
| A system against 1.d4 GM Dorian Rogozenco has worked out a system for Black in the Queen’s Gambit Accepted which is “extremely simple to learn and to play”. After the capture on c4 and the standard moves for White of 3.Nf3 and 4.e3 Black can, after a6, b5 and Bb7, bring about a position which has until now been reckoned to be disadvantageous on account of the backward c-pawn. But in his video analysis Rogozenco shows an astonishingly simple way for Black to carry out the thematic advance c7-c5 and thus reach equality without any problems. |
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A gambit in the Grünfeld:
7...e7-e5
| A rediscovery in the Grünfeld Defence 1.d4-players are often on the look-out for a setup against the Grünfeld Defence which basically cuts across the entire plan behind the opening. One example is 4.Nf3 and then 5.Bg5. Here the main continuation goes 5...Ne4 6.cxd5 Nxg5 7.Ng5. GM Adrian Mikalchishin examines in his video analysis the rare gambit 7...e5, with which Black strives at any price for activity for his strong bishop on g7. Mikalchishin’s conclusion is: After more than 40 years it was high time for this gambit to be rediscovered. For players of the Grünfeld this constitutes a real enrichment. Because it offers Black good play, and so far only very few games have been played with 7...e5. Click here or on the link under the diagram to start the video in Fritz-Trainer format. |
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How to react to 7.Bd2?
| Slav with 4...a6 The discussion about the Slav with an early a6 has been ongoing for some years now, but still no clear picture has emerged as to how White should meet this “puzzling” plan. GM Lubomir Ftacnik presents in his video the latest efforts by White involving 7.Bd2 (in the variation with 5.Nc3 b5 6.e3 Bg4). Basing his remarks on the game Kramnik-Karjakin from the Amber Tournament of March this year, he takes a look at the potential in the black position. With 9...b4 and 10...e5 Black takes the initiative, because somehow all the white pieces are not on their correct squares. |
