The journey of a chess player is no easy thing. When looking from the outside, it may seem so easy the way Grandmasters play. Their moves just flow and everything makes sense. They find amazing ideas that sometimes seem so simple and logical anyone could do it. In fact, all that great play is the result of endless hours of sitting in front of the chessboard, analyzing interesting positions and studying thousands of games.
The development advantage is one of the most important pluses in chess and can become a powerful weapon in the hands of those who know how to use it. Unlike other types of advantages in chess, if you are ahead in development you have to act fast. This is an advantage that can dissipate in a very short time if you don’t make the most out of it. If allowed, your opponent will simply develop his remaining pieces to catch up with you and maybe even equalize. This is why in such positions time is of the essence. It is important that your moves restrict your opponent as much as possible and force him to delay his development even more.
I have never considered myself an attacking player even though most of my games when I was young were decided by attacks on the king. I attribute it to youth and not feeling too comfortable in other areas of positional play.
Still, I was good at seeing tactics and calculation, but I had a rather limited vision of how the game should be played and what is possible in chess and what is not.
Chess is a complex game that takes a lot of time and dedication. We all know that improvement does not come overnight and, to make things even better, it is not so easy to measure it either in chess. You need to play many tournaments and, even after a long period of training, things may go wrong due to other factors that are not chess-related.
If there is a player that everyone likes that has to be Viswanathan Anand or the way we all know him, “Vishy” the Tiger from Madras. Vishy has been in the selected group of elite players for decades, winning tournaments and leaving behind a thread of great games for chess history.
In recent years people have adventured to announce a certain decline in his play, but he keeps proving them wrong time after time.
Chess players are usually highly interesting people.
Chess stands somewhere between art, sports, and science, universes where a chess player can drift away from the real world for as long as he wants. The chess world is full of unique stories. Every player has hundreds of anecdotes with things that have happened during tournament trips, chess training, games, foreign countries, etc.
The engines really don’t care about us, humans, who have to play a position that they happily evaluate as equal. Feed it a symmetrical position with equal material and no apparent weaknesses and it will tell you it is “just equal,” sometimes even a “dead draw.”
Lev Polugaevsky was one of those Grandmasters from a generation of great players who left a mark in the chess world. A player with a unique style, one mostly positional but also aggressive when given the opportunity, his games are truly a delight to study and represent a never-ending source of learning. His first international success came in the early 60s when he won the Mar del Plata tournament obtaining this way the Grandmaster title. Later, the “great Poluga” won the URSS in 1967 and 1968 and finished third in 1969.
After the closing ceremony of European Individual Championship that crowned him a champion, I had a chance to talk with the rising Russian star Vladislav Artemiev.
A humble fellow, but one that knows his talents. He knows he is good, though he also knows he needs to work more if he is to become better. Currently sitting at number 13 in the world his main ambition is to qualify for the Candidates tournament via either the World Cup or the Grand Swiss.
This year has started with rather sad news for the chessplayers all around – Vladimir Kramnik, or Big Vlad, as he has been known for years, one of the classics of our times, has decided to retire from competitive chess. His game and style of play have been an inspiration for many strong and aspiring players and we can only say that this is a big loss for the whole chess community.
However, 2019 seems to be the year of another, rising Vlad – one who has shown great form and beautiful chess – the recently crowned European Champion, Russian Grandmaster Vladislav Artemiev.