The Chess Mind

The FIDE World Championship in San Luis, Argentina, starts this Wednesday, and so we conclude our preview this Monday with a look at the chess of Russian original Alexander Morozevich.

"Moro" is known as an opening innovator with a taste for the unusual and great endgame technique, and those qualities are all on display in his White game with Shirov in the 2001 super-tournament in Astana. Morozevich essays his patented 5.Bd3 against the Petroff, and although the game doesn't exactly turn into a Najdorf, the ensuing middlegame is far from dull. Shirov is a great endgame player, but Morozevich outplays him in the game's final stage in an instructive display of "Capablanca's rule" - that queen + knight are stronger than queen + bishop.

It isn't a spectacular game, but it's very rich, instructive, shows off Morozevich's strengths, and best of all for some of you, shows the Petroff's Defense taking it on the chin. Hope to see everyone this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET!

For those new to the show, directions for watching live broadcasts - or past programs in the archives - can be found here, while a list of games I've presented in previous shows can be found here.

Like the dodo and the politician unwilling to exploit tragedies for political gain, the old main line of the Botvinnik variation of the Semi-Slav (BVSS) once proudly walked the Earth, but is now most likely to be found in museums. (Of course, I'm only kidding about politicians. They've always placed self-aggrandizement first.)

One might remember the BVSS: it was inordinately popular in the mid-90s, and Alexei Shirov devotes an entire section of his classic Fire on Board to his games in the variation. The old main line starts with the following moves: 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.Bg5 dxc4 6.e4 b5 7.e5 h6 8.Bh4 g5 9.Nxg5 hxg5 10.Bxg5 Nbd7 11.exf6 Bb7 12.g3 c5 13.d5 Qb6 14.Bg2 O-O-O 15.O-O b4

Here White has a choice between 16.Na4 and 16.Rb1, and today we're taking the second path: 16.Rb1 Qa6 17.dxe6 Bxg2 18.e7 Bxf1

Do you understand what's going on here? If you answered yes, you're lying. 19.Qd5 Bh6 20.Bxh6 Bd3 21.Qa8+ Nb8 22.exd8Q+ Rxd8 23.Re1 bxc3 24.Bf4 Qb6 (24...Qb7? 25.Re7!+-) 25.bxc3 Bf5 26.h4 Qb7

I quote Shirov (Fire on Board, p. 210):

Until this move everything has been played before in the game Yermolinsky-D. Gurevich, USA Championship 1994, which White won after 26...Be6 27.Kh2 Rd7 28.h5, etc. The text forces White to go in for an ending which was considered lost for Black by Yermolinsky, but in fact is drawn.

27.Qxb7+ Kxb7 28.Re7+ Rd7 29.Bxb8 Kxb8 30.Rxd7 Bxd7 31.Kg2 Kc7 32.Kf3 Kd6 33.Kf4 Bc6!!

Again, Shirov:

You have to find such moves at home if you play the Botvinnik variation! If White can get his king to g5 and pawn to f4 then Black can only resign. The bishop manoeuvre prevents this set-up.

The game concluded as follows: 34.Kg5 Bf3 35.Kf5 Kd5 36.g4 Kd6 37.h5 Kd5 38.Kf4 Bd1 39.Kg5 Bf3 40.Kf4 Bd1 41.Kg5 Bf3 42.Kf4 1/2-1/2

Shirov, one last time, in an understandable bit of showing-off:

Drawn because of threefold repetition. As the reader will have realized, the final position had been analysed at home. Sometimes the Botvinnik variation gets so boring...

This game proved quite persuasive, and White started to vary in order to avoid this ending. (One recent exception was the game Benen-Hoekstra from the 2004 U. S. Junior Championship, which followed this game to the very end, with a meaningless, quickly erased deviation on move 39. I assume the game was a pre-arranged draw, though maybe Benen was only testing Hoekstra's memory.)

Fast forward nine years to the 2005 Dutch Championship. On his way to winning his 6th national title, Loek van Wely decided to test the conclusions of theory. Shirov just barely drew against Azmaiparashvili by activating his bishop for the defense, and thus van Wely's novelty was designed to keep Black's light-squared bishop from meaningful employment. You can find the details here, as well as the Yermo-Gurevich, Azmai-Shirov and Benen-Hoekstra predecessors. Further, I've also included (though without comment) two subsequent BVSS games from the Dutch Championship.

If you're looking for a crazy opening to add to your Black repertoire, I think you'll enjoy the BVSS, and even if you don't want to play it, this variation will provide you with hours of entertainment and analytical homework. Have fun!

We continue our San Luis preview with a game between rating favorite and former FIDE world champion Viswanathan Anand and current FIDE champ Rustam Kasimdzhanov. In a recent rapid event, Kasimdzhanov gave Anand a run for his money in the finals, taking the first game before going down by a 2.5-1.5 margin, but overall, Anand has a huge plus (+7 -1 =3) in their head to head battles.

This week, we'll take a look at their most recent decisive game at a classical time control, their second game from this year's Linares super-tournament. Kasimdzhanov, with White, repeated an anti-Sicilian sideline he had tried in several previous games. It's a line with some bite - Svidler famously beat Kasparov with it in Tilburg 1997 - but Anand was ready. Black equalized, and thereafter the position took on a strange cast. White's position was okay, but somehow, he never quite managed to finish his development. How Anand managed to keep control, and almost imperceptibly increase his advantage and convert it into a winning attack, makes the game a model of exploiting the initiative. We generally associate that term with attacking play, but in this case, it's an initiative in the service of positional ends first; only later will Anand's positional trumps cash themselves out in a winning attack.

So join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET on the Playchess.com server for a great game and the usual post-show banter (but bring your own pizza). As usual, directions for watching live (or archived) shows can be found here, while a list of past shows' games is available to anyone clicking on the last word of this sentence.

We continue our series previewing the upcoming World Championship in San Luis, Argentina, and this week it's Veselin Topalov and Peter Leko taking center stage.

As the number two and three seeds by rating, the title could quite conceivably come down to their mini-match, and if it does, Leko will be in excellent shape, if history is any guide. Even when Leko was in his early teens, he was torturing the older, higher-rated Topalov, and on this week's show we'll take a look at one of those early games.

In Vienna 1996, the 21-year-old Topalov was in fine form, tying for first with Gelfand and Karpov and adding to his impressive 2750 rating. Yet although just short of his 17th birthday, Leko was a contender as well, finishing just half a point behind the victorious trio and destroying Topalov in their individual game.

Leko played the Caro-Kann in that game, and despite the defense's ultra-solid reputation, their game (as with most of their games over the years) became complicated in a hurry. Topalov had chances to develop a queenside attack, and over a period of several moves, if Leko hadn't played incisively, White would have been in good shape. He did, however, and while Topalov was repeatedly just one move short of consolidating, Leko's initiative grew into an overwhelming attack, and White was crushed.

In addition to the value of the game as a whole, it's also of interest from a theoretical standpoint for those who play either side of the Panov-Botvinnik Attack against the Caro-Kann. So I hope to see everyone this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET!

As always, directions for watching the show can be found here, and a list of past shows' games are available here.

In anticipation of the forthcoming FIDE World Championship in San Luis, Argentina, we continue our preview by presenting an unusual game between Judit Polgar and Michael Adams. Polgar is known for her prowess as an attacking player, while Adams is generally thought a positional player, but it's impossible for anyone to reach 2700 without possessing a high degree of excellence in all aspects of the game.

Thus, while we're used to seeing Polgar demolish opponents with aggressive attacking play, Adams is capable of doing the same - and in this week's game, he does. Essaying the Marshall Gambit against Polgar's Ruy Lopez in their game from Dos Hermanas 1999, Adams achieves the initiative characteristic of this variation. Black's kingside play is counterbalanced by White's extra pawn and potential queenside and central play, and indeed, the position remained in a razor-sharp balance for quite some time.

It often happens that even the sharpest positions can be resolved into "normal" positions, and at such moments accurate judgment is a must. Polgar could have neutralized Black's kingside play, albeit at the cost of her own counterattacking ambitions, but that was a price she was unwilling to pay. Against a lesser player that might well have succeeded, but on this occasion Adams's assessment, position, and subsequent play proved superior.

A fine game by Adams, and of theoretical significance to boot. In short, a great game, and one worthy of your time. I hope, therefore, to see all of you this upcoming Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. It's free to watch the show live, after all, and if you're not sure how to do it, you're in luck: the directions are here. Can't make that time? No worries; the preceding link also explains how to watch the show in the archives (the show will almost surely get uploaded within an hour of its completion), and the same goes for the 80+ other shows I've done in my year and a half with ChessBase. (To see a list of games covered in previous shows, click here.)

As all of you probably know, I have a weekly show on ChessBase's playchess.com server. Many of you might not know, however, that I'm not the only person with a weekly program on that server; IMs Jacob Aagaard and John Shaw hit the virtual airwaves every Wednesday at 2:30 ET.

On yesterday's show they had a special guest, Mark Dvoretsky, the doyen of trainers. It's a show worth checking out in the archives (as with my archived shows, it costs two ducats = approx. 25 cents), both for the Q & A with Dvoretsky as well as the games presented by Shaw & Aagaard.

The highlights:

The games: van Wely-Karjakin (covered here yesterday, and I'm happy to report that my brief annotations came out well), Spraggett-Quezada from the American Continental Championships, and Vaisser-Legrave from the French Championships.

Books given the Dvoretsky imprimatur: Nimzowitsch's My System, Bronstein's Zurich 1953, Mueller & Lamprecht's Fundamental Chess Endings, Kasparov's My Great Predecessor series, Rowson's Seven Deadly Chess Sins, and Aagaard's books in general.

Books panned by MD: Dorfman's books on method in chess.

Most creative players around today: Morozevich was the obvious answer and the one he gave first, but he was quick to add that there are different kinds of creativity. [DM: perhaps it's better to say that creativity can be manifested in different ways.] He thus cited his former student and long-time collaborator Artur Jussupow as a creative player in more classical sorts of positions, and in passing offered Radjabov as a third example.

San Luis prediction? It's a lottery.

Does blitz have any value? Yes - for pleasure. For improvement, no.

If you're interested in listening to the entire show, the instructions are essentially the same as for watching my archived shows (directions can be found here), except that in the directory tree under Chess Media System-Radio ChessBase-English, go to GlasgowShow rather than Great Games with Dennis Monokroussos. (Once there, it's the last show on the list: "31 Aug - This time with Mark Dvoretsky as guest".)