ChessBase Magazine Extra 192

Ding Liren and Teymour Radjabov met in the final of the FIDE World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk (see ChessBase Magazine #192). Mihail Marin takes the second game of this duel as his starting point for an incisive investigation into the “Flohr-Mikenas System” with Black’s continuation 3…c5 (the main continuation is 3…d5). Here White sacrifices a pawn with 4.e5 Ng8 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.d4 cxd4 7.Nxd4 Nxe5, but 8. Ndb5 immediately puts a finger on the wound, namely on the d6-square. In his video analysis Mihail Marin explains the important continuations to you, for example why it is critical to examine Radjabov’s 15…d6 and much more.

In the second opening video Adrian Mikhalchishin takes a look into a classic in the Grünfeld Defence – the variation 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.Qb3 dxc4 6.Qxc4 0-0 7.e4 Bg4 had appeared twice in the WCh match between Kasparov and Karpov in 1986. Mikhalchishin shows you a topical game by Aleksander Beliavsky, who decided the game in his favour with a strong knight manoeuvre.

The „Lucky bag“ starts with a rarity: In autumn, at the age of 14 Praggnanandhaa became world champion in the U18 class. In this issue “Pragg” shows one of his games from this year's Asian Championships against another shooting star of the chess scene: Alireza Firouzja is only two years older but with his Elo rating of 2720 (video).

Moreover, the Lucky bag of this issue contains more than 30 annotated games by master players like Adhiban, Humpy Koneru, Elisabeth Pähtz, Romain Edouard, Alexander Seyb and Daniel Gormally. Following Romain Edouard's seven games (French Championship + Barcelona Open) is like looking into the opening diary of a diligent chess professional. You may look forward to a complete opening article about the position after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.h4!? (see the screenshot below from Edouard,R - Gozzoli,Y ½-½) by the Frenchman in the coming CBM 193!

„The brilliancy game” is once again a game by Mihail Tal! IM Georgios Souleidis shows you the game Tal-Simagin from the first Soviet Championship in Leningrad in 1956. Astonishingly: after only the tenth move Mihail Tal was objectively winning! And of course he played the game in “his” spectacular way by more than once shooing the black king into the middle of the board. 

Last but not least: The Update Service provides you with over 23,000 new games for your database. You will find games by top players like Caruana, Giri, Mamedyarov, Anand, Dominguez Perez, So, Aronian, Karjakin, Rapport, Artemiev, Vidit, Navara in this update!