The Chess Mind

The last week or two have seen both Hikaru Nakamura and Boris Gelfand win prestigious events: the U.S. Championship for Nakamura and the 3rd ACP World Rapid Cup for Gelfand. Both players like sharp chess, and it's not surprising that when they meet the result is an exciting and uncompromising game.

It's just such a game that we'll look at in this week's ChessBase show. Gelfand played the Najdorf, and Nakamura went into the abyss that is 6.Bg5. Herein one finds some of the most complicated and theory-intensive variations in all of chess, and as Gelfand regularly plays the variation 6...e6 7.f4 Nbd7 8.Qf3 Qc7 9.0-0-0 b5, Nakamura decided to put his opponent to the test. Gelfand passed, and when Nakamura pressed a bit too far, he won. As we'll see, the victory was a triumph on multiple levels: good preparation, good calculation, and good nerves, too. For us, it's not only an illustration of fine and entertaining play; it also illustrates the kind of all-out assault Black must survive in the 6.Bg5 Najdorf, along with the tremendous resources he enjoys - if only he knows how to use them.

So for the Najdorf players and others, join me tonight and take a step along that path. Watching is easy, too: just log on to the PlayChess server at 9 p.m. ET (tonight, Wednesday night; for those of you in Europe, it's 3 a.m. CET), go to the Broadcasts room and either look for my handle (Initiative) or Nakamura-Gelfand in the Games tab.

Hope to see you there!

P.S. for ChessVideos viewers. I've been doing a series on the Najdorf, and this show makes an excellent complement to what I've been doing there.

Leonid Stein (1934-1973) was one of the great players of his day. He won three Soviet championships, two super-tournaments (at a time when they came once every several years rather than several times for every one year), twice earned (but failed to receive) entry into the Candidates cycle and had an overall plus score in his 56 battles with world champions.



Good enough? If not, there's more.

He was a great attacking player, and he not only defeated his fellow greats on a regular basis, he defeated them with speed and in style. Here's a partial list of very strong players he defeated in 26 moves or fewer: Petrosian, Portisch, Ljubojevic, Gheorghiu, Uhlmann, Dzindzichashvili, Bagirov, Bilek and Robert Byrne.

The game we'll look at for today's show went a bit longer - but not really. Icelandic IM (GM in 1975) Gudmundur Sigurjonsson made it to move 41 - through the time control - before resigning, but the heavy lifting was long over by then. As often happened against Stein, Sigurjonsson made what looked like nothing more than a minor inaccuracy here or there. Sigurjonsson was White in a 6.f4 Najdorf, and one would have thought that Black would have achieved equality or a slight edge at best. Instead, Stein's position came alive to both its strategic and tactical capabilities, and his opponent's seemingly solid position blew apart.

Stein was a great master at combining strategic pluses with tactical shots, and that makes his games both instructive and exceptionally exciting; this game is a case in point. So join us as we have a look tonight. The show is free to watch on ChessBase's Playchess.com server. Log on at 9 p.m. ET (3 a.m. CET), go to the Broadcast room, and either click on my nickname ("Initiative") or on Sigurjonsson-Stein under the Games tab. Turn your engines off, your minds on, and sit back and enjoy a fine historical game.

See you then!

It's sad that British grandmaster Matthew Sadler is no longer with us. No, don't worry - I don't mean that he has died. It's rather that he's no longer part of the chess world, deciding in his mid-20s (around the turn of the millennium) that he'd prefer a larger and more stable income in IT to the vicissitudes of life as a chess professional. That's a pity, as Sadler was not only an elite GM (near-2700 when that was much rarer than it is today), but also one of the best writers on the game.

We'll commemorate his short but successful career with a short and successful game of his. Played in 1995 against the strong Spanish GM Miguel Illescas Cordoba, the game highlights Sadler's ingenuity in opening preparation. With Black in a Queen's Gambit Accepted, Sadler found a major new idea on move 7, with the startling idea to sacrifice a piece a move later. To say that it worked brilliantly would be an understatement - but I'll leave the gory details for the show. Let's put it this way: the show might well last longer than the game did.

I think you'll enjoy it, but see for yourself. It's free if you watch it live, and here's how to do it: log on to the Playchess server Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET/Thursday morning at 3 a.m. CET, go to the Broadcasts Room, and then either double-click on "Initiative" under the list of players or Illescas-Sadler under the Games tab. After that, sit back and enjoy - and don't blink, or you might miss it. See you then.

The late Miroslav Filip (1928-2009) isn't well-known to contemporary chess fans, and that's partially the fault of his fairly solid style. Perhaps it's true, as one recent obituary article suggests, that after achieving his greatest successes he became a more safety-first player, someone who hated losing more than he liked to win. Possibly so. Nevertheless, anyone who qualifies for two Candidates events, as Filip did in 1956 and 1962, deserves to be remembered by chess fans.

Therefore, we'll take a look in our ChessBase show for this week at one of his best-known games: his win over the great Mikhail Tal in the 1962 Candidates tournament in Curacao.


(This picture is from the post-mortem of the game in question.)

Tal, just one year removed from the title, had a very good score against Filip in their previous encounters, and with the white pieces went for the attack. The aim was justified, but Filip kept his cool. Normally Tal wore his opponents out in the complications, but not this time. Filip gave as good as he got, and when Tal went awry he took over, winning with a powerful counterattack. It almost looks easy, but considering how many players over the years buckled when Tal attacked, it turns out to be an impressive achievement.

In addition to the game's historical value, it's also a nice model of some typical Sicilian themes, so I believe viewers will benefit from that aspect of the show as well. To tune in, just show up on the Playchess server at 9 p.m. ET tonight (Wednesday night; or, if you're across the pond, use 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning as your reference). Once there, go to the Broadcast room and either double-click on my handle (Initiative) or find Tal-Filip under the Games tab. Hope to see you there!

[Addendum/errata to the Akopian-Kasparov show a couple of weeks ago:

(1) I wrote in my blurb that their career score in tournament games was +1 -0 =3 in Akopian's favor. That's true, but it's also misleading, as the "+1" - the game I presented - was from a rapid event. Their classical score is simply =3, and Akopian enjoys a 1-0 edge in rapid chess.

(2) Using Wikipedia before finding the quote, I claimed that Kasparov labeled "most" of the participants in the 1999 World Championship event in Las Vegas "tourists". In fact Kasparov's comment was made before the quarter-final matches, and only applied to three of the eight remaining players (Movsesian, Nisipeanu, and...Akopian). The full quote can be found here.]