This Week's ChessBase Show: The Art of Counterattack
Few things in chess are more satisfying than winning a model game. The opening prep goes smoothly, one gains an advantage of some sort of another, and a series of fine moves leads to the inexorable conclusion: we win!
And then there's the other 90% of the time.
Sometimes the success story takes place before our very eyes, but usually something else happens. Maybe the game is settled by a blunder, ends in a draw, or - worse still - we lose. Alternatively, the result is satisfactory but the path is a wild one. First one side has the advantage, then the other side fights back, and at the end of the slugfest an unpredictable conclusion appears. When that happens, then although we may not have the deep satisfaction of winning a model game, the resulting feeling might be even better: the feeling of having experienced and survived an adventure.
It's just such a game we'll look at in our ChessBase show this week, played in the FIDE World Championship in San Luis 2005. Peter Svidler had White against then-champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and the game took an incredible course. Kasimdzhanov introduced a novelty, but Svidler reacted well and obtained an edge. The position was incredibly sharp though, and when he erred Kasimdzhanov found a brilliant resource that gave him a big advantage. Then he too erred...but these are the sorts of errors that are far easier to spot in analysis than over the board. Besides, without the errors along the way, we would have been deprived of a truly amazing conclusion.
What happened? Join us and see! The show is free, after all - just log on to the Playchess.com server at 9 p.m. ET tonight (Wednesday night; that's 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning), go to the Broadcast room and select Svidler-Kasimdzhanov in the Games list. Hope to see you there!
And then there's the other 90% of the time.
Sometimes the success story takes place before our very eyes, but usually something else happens. Maybe the game is settled by a blunder, ends in a draw, or - worse still - we lose. Alternatively, the result is satisfactory but the path is a wild one. First one side has the advantage, then the other side fights back, and at the end of the slugfest an unpredictable conclusion appears. When that happens, then although we may not have the deep satisfaction of winning a model game, the resulting feeling might be even better: the feeling of having experienced and survived an adventure.
It's just such a game we'll look at in our ChessBase show this week, played in the FIDE World Championship in San Luis 2005. Peter Svidler had White against then-champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and the game took an incredible course. Kasimdzhanov introduced a novelty, but Svidler reacted well and obtained an edge. The position was incredibly sharp though, and when he erred Kasimdzhanov found a brilliant resource that gave him a big advantage. Then he too erred...but these are the sorts of errors that are far easier to spot in analysis than over the board. Besides, without the errors along the way, we would have been deprived of a truly amazing conclusion.
What happened? Join us and see! The show is free, after all - just log on to the Playchess.com server at 9 p.m. ET tonight (Wednesday night; that's 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning), go to the Broadcast room and select Svidler-Kasimdzhanov in the Games list. Hope to see you there!
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Wednesday July 1, 2009 at 4:19am