The Chess Mind

Monday is Halloween, and we'll give the day a chessic spin. Normally, our show celebrates the great moments from the past and present of our game, but this week, we'll take a look into the abyss. Opening blunders, chokes, draws agreed in won positions, falling for unethical bluffs - you name it! It's time to put fallen humanity on center stage; a chance to remind ourselves that we're all human - even the best of the best are capable of missing tactics club players can find on a bad day.

So, I hope everyone will join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET for some instruction and a lot of amusement. Instructions for watching the show can be found here, while a list of previous shows' games is available here.

What, another Boris Gelfand win? No, this week he's the victim, losing to another relatively unnoticed member of the sometimes-2700 club, Alexey Dreev. With White, Dreev likes to play solidly, and likewise when facing 1.e4 - he's a Caro-Kann specialist. Against 1.d4, however, it's as if he becomes a different person: he's a Semi-Slav specialist!

The many-headed Semi-Slav is one of the sharpest variations (really a cluster of variations) in all of chess, and that's just what we get in this week's game, from the 1993 edition of the sadly defunct yearly event in Tilburg. The opening is precisified into the Meran Variation, and Dreev achieved quite a nice position in the early middlegame. What makes the game special is his decision to first sac the exchange (on move 24) and then a piece for two pawns (on move 29 - and quite possibly foreseen at the time of the first sac). Neither sac won outright; they were genuine offers for long-term control, for enduring pressure.

While it takes both imagination and guts to make sacrifices of that sort, it's easier, once the sac has been made, to be on the aggressor's side. It's difficult both from a purely chess standpoint and especially from the psychological perspective to defend against an opponent's long-term initiative. Gelfand is a gifted defender of such positions in the Najdorf (see last week's show; see also his games this year with Radjabov and Nakamura), but on this occasion he wasn't up to the job, and Dreev brought home the full point on move 44.

With a sharp opening, long-term sacrifices and aggressive positional play, there's something of instructional and entertainment value for virtually all chess fans! I hope, therefore, to see all my readers this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. (Let's set a non-April Fool's show record!)

The link with instructions for watching live or archived shows is here, while a list of games covered in previous shows can be found here.

N.B. The shows for the last four weeks have not been posted by ChessBase. I'm not sure why this is, but they've been apprised and will remedy the situation soon. (I hope.) Give them a little more time: they've recently changed servers, are releasing Fritz 9 and some of them were in San Luis. If it's not up by the end of the month, I'd suggest writing them via their feedback form.

Among those players narrowly missing out on the FIDE World Championships was Israeli grandmaster Boris Gelfand. He isn't as prominent as he was in the mid-90s, but he's still near the top (number 13 in the world; number 12 if one excludes Kasparov) and a very attractive player. He works hard, plays sharp openings and loves complicated positions - what more could a fan want?

So I'll assume his relative lack of prominence as a fan favorite is an exposure problem, and will strive to remedy the problem with this week's game, from the 1995 Dos Hermanas tournament. Gelfand essayed the Najdorf against Alexei Shirov, who utilized the old main line with 6.Bg5 and followed it up with a quick Nd5 piece sacrifice. A razor-sharp middlegame turned into a razor-sharp endgame, but Gelfand's (more) accurate play, culminating in study-like finish, eventually brought him the full point.

It's an amazing game - a tactical feast - one so rich we could easily take two shows to cover it properly (and depending on how things pace, we just might take that second show)! I hope my readers will join me on the playchess server this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET; for directions on accessing the show live (or this or my past shows in the archives), click here; for a list of games covered in previous shows, click here.

P.S. For my review of Gelfand's recent work My Most Memorable Games, click here.

The Kasparov-Short match was the most lopsided world championship match of the post-WW II era (12.5-7.5), but that score belies just how hard-fought it really was. Short had serious opening problems with Black, but with White he had Kasparov on the run in almost every game. With a small break or two for Short early in the match, it could have been a real battle.

The outcome notwithstanding, the match produced a large number of extraordinarily complicated games, and in this week's show we'll look at one of the craziest, the eighth game of the match. Short essayed 6.Bc4 against Kasparov's Najdorf, and mayhem ensued as short sacrificed first a piece and then a further exchange. The game wasn't perfect, but both sides performed brilliantly - Short in attack, Kasparov in defense - and it wound up a hard-fought, well-deserved draw.

If that's not enough to whet your appetite, then have a look - you can replay the game here. If you want to see what in the world is going on (at least as far as I can figure it out!), join me this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET. It will be a great show and a reminder, lest we start to forget, that giants walked the Earth before Topalov, too.

Instructions for watching the show (live, preferably, but afterwards in the archives, if need be) can be found here, while a list of games covered in past shows can be found here.

As the FIDE World Championships continue in San Luis, Argentina, we'll take a look to an earlier FIDE event, the knockout tournament in Las Vegas in 1999. Stars like Kramnik, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Kamsky, Adams, Gelfand and Polgar were playing, but the winner was not from among this group.

Instead, the winner was a 33-year-old Russian, Alexander Khalifman. A very strong player long recognized as a genuine talent by his peers, "Khalif" never managed to break into the world's super-elite.

Until this event.

After come-from-behind match wins against GMs Dibyendu Barua and Gata Kamsky, Khalifman found his stride, defeating GMs Karen Asrian and Boris Gelfand without losing a game. Next up was Judit Polgar, and despite his underdog status, he won an attractive first game and held on nicely for the draw in the sequel. That put him in the semi-finals, where he defeated Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, and from there into the finals, where a 3.5-2.5 triumph over Vladimir Akopian made him the FIDE World Champion.

In this week's show, we'll take a look at his victory over Polgar. Khalifman is an aggressive positional player and an openings specialist, and these qualities are on display in this game. Polgar produced the novelty, but it was Khalifman who achieved an opening edge. Subtle play in the early middlegame let him increase his advantage, which he duly converted with the help of some fine tactics. It's a strategically complete game, a model for players of all styles, and a worthy demonstration of one of the great but underappreciated players of our time.

So I hope you'll join me on the playchess.com server this Monday night at 9 p.m. ET! If you'd love to but have no idea about how to watch, you can find directions for watching live or archived shows here. Once there, you might want to take a look at some of those archived shows; if you're interested, a list of games covered in those shows is available here.