Latest Posts - Page 103
Worrall Attack of the Ruy Lopez: The popularity of 1…e5 has increased greatly in recent years. For a long time, this response against white’s move 1.e4 was considered a less ambitious option for black than, for example, The Sicilian Defense. However, times have changed, and so has the way we perceive 1…e5 nowadays.
Vasily Smyslov was a World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958. He was also a candidate for the World Championship Matches on 8 different occasions and has won 17 (!) Chess Olympiad medals (all time record). Smyslov was a strong positional chess player, and at the same time a very technical endgame expert. He made a gigantic contribution in development of the opening theory, especially in openings like English, Sicilian and Grunfeld.
Queen and Knight vs Queen and Bishop: It is a well-known concept that the queen and knight team works better than the queen and bishop. All the experienced and strong players are well aware of this strategic nuance.
However, at a lower level, even though this concept is told several times, the less experienced players fail to understand WHY and, what’s more important: exploit its advantages.
In our previous article on this subject, we wrote about the characteristics of the exchange sacrifice, dividing them in two groups. Sacrifices are done in order to attack the opponent’s position and in order to defend from our opponent’s threats. Let’s review our list from our previous article.
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It is quite difficult to write something about Kasparov that has not been written before. Without a doubt, he is one of the best players in the history of Chess, if not the best. It’s been more than ten years since Garry’s retirement and the chess world is yet to find a replacement.
Boris Spassky was the 10th World Chess Champion, holding the title from 1969 to 1972. He has defeated Petrosian to become world champion. Spassky is known for his universal playing style, excelling in the middle-game and tactics, but inferior in the opening phase. He is known as one of the greatest living chess GMs and currently the oldest living world champion.
Our first game is the recent victory of Carlsen over the former World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. A quiet Ruy Lopez (Berlin variation) in which Carlsen shows how he can set problems for his opponents even in quiet positions that are close to equal.
Kramnik did not react in the best way to Carlsen’s a4-a5 idea and couldn’t find the right defense.
Mikhail Tal was the 8th World Chess Champion and widely recognized as a creative genius and one of the best attacking players of all time. “Misha” was known for his unpredictability and superb improvisation. Tal holds the records for the first and second longest unbeaten streaks in professional chess. There is a lot you can learn from his attacking masterpieces.
Most chess players believe that ability to adequately play blindfold chess is common only to elite players. What makes blindfold chess so hard to master for others? How do elite chess players remembering position of all pieces on the board, even playing on 10 or 20 boards simultaneously? Most importantly we will try to find out if it is possible for a club level player to possess the art of blindfold chess, improving visualization skills and calculating ability.
Chess position visualization is a very important ability. This ability allows a chess player to calculate tactics precisely multiple moves ahead and most importantly it makes it possible to picture and evaluate the final position correctly. This is exactly what Magnus Carlsen was referring to when he was asked how many moves ahead he can calculate. Carlsen replied that the trick is to evaluate the final position, not simply to calculate the moves.
