ChessBase Magazine Extra 201

Opening videos

Mihail Marin: Anti-Najdorf à la Carlsen

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Qd2

In the second half of the FIDE Candidates Tournament in Yekaterinburg, Alexander Grischuk chose an unorthodox setup against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave’s Sicilian Najdorf, which the world champion had successfully tested three years ago. Grischuk played the over-the-board novelty 9.Ne2 – previously 9.g3 was played. But is it an improvement? Mihail Marin sees good reasons for this, but also shows that Vachier-Lagrave was unable to exploit the potential of Black's position. His conclusion is nevertheless: "As a player who doesn‘t play 1.e4 so much nowadays this game has something that inspires me!"

Daniel King: King's Indian Main Line with 7…Bg4

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d6 3.c4 g6 4.Nc3 Bg7 5.e4 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 Bg4!?

At the Tata Steel tournament in January of this year, Fabiano Caruana surprised his opponent Radoslaw Wojtaszek in the Classical King’s Indian with the extremely rare 7…Bg4. In his video Daniel King first demonstrates this great game by Caruana (with the strong and remarkable motive 13…Bxc3 14.Qxc3 Qf6!) In which White tackled the challenge with 8.Be3. Since Black got a good game here, King then highlights the two alternatives 8.dxe5 and the actual endurance test 8.d5. For what is Black’s plan with his exposed bishop when White plays h2-h3?

With “The brilliancy” we are highlighting one of the 23 extensively commented parts in this issue. Krishnan Sasikiran shows how in the Modern Defence after 1.e4 g6 2.d4 d6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.Be3 a6 5.Qd2 b5 6.h4 !? h5 7.a4 !? (a new trend in correspondence chess) 7… b4 8.Nd5 a5 he immediately posed problems to his opponent with the novelty 9.Nh3 !?

In the "Lucky bag" you will find the brilliancy by Sasikiran as well as another 22 extensively commented games! These include analyzes by Jan-Krzysztof Duda, Yu Yangyi, Krishnan Sasikiran, Spyridon Kapnisis, Romain Edouard, Sury Vaibhav and Tanmay Srinath.

"The Armenian championship is full of fighting chess. That's the reason it is one of my favourite tournaments to follow and analyse games", writes our author Spyridon Kapnisis. He commented on six games from this event for Extra # 201, here are three examples:

Playing 15.Rxd6!? axb5 16.Rxe6+ Kf7 17.Bxb5 Kxe6, the eventual tournament winner Hovhannes Gabuzyan sacrificed a whole rook.

Do you like the Benko Gambit? In Gharibyan,M - Gabuzyan,H, 17...h6!? 18.Bxe7!? Re8 19.Nb5 gave rise to enormous complications.

As shown in the analysis of Gharibyan,M - Pashikian,A 0-1, here instead of 28.g4? the positional pawn sacrifice 28.e4!! would have given White excellent compensation.

And last but not least: the "Update Service" delivers over 38,000 new games for your database. Once again, almost the entire world is represented!