Informant 135: A Nice Mix
The latest issue of Chess Informant, covering the period from the end of November 2017 through the beginning of March 2018, looks like a good one, and a step back in the right direction after a disappointing 134th issue. The usual features are all there (200 languagelessly annotated games, the best game and best novelty from the preceding issue, sections on combinations, endgames, and studies - and with a new section called "endgame blunders" [though in fact the errors were all subtle; there weren't any "blunders"], and the tournament results from the period covered), so let's have a look at the articles.
There are two articles on the Gibraltar Festival. The first is by super-GM Richard Rapport, who was part of the big tie for first (Levon Aronian eventually won in a playoff). He presents two of his victories, and his annotations are very good. (There were quite a few typos and other minor infelicities, however, so the Informant staff should do a better job on their editing.) The other piece is by WGM Aleksandra Dimitrijevic, covering some of the ladies' highlights from Gibraltar.
Then it's time for another pair of columns focused on a particular event; this time, the subject is the Rapid & Blitz World Championships, held in Saudi Arabia last December. First, the very well-known (and very strong) GM Baadur Jobava presents five games, four from the Championship (including two of his own). Then GMs Jan-Krzysztof Duda and Kamil Miton present eight fragments from the Rapid portion of the Championship.
GM Mihail Marin is back with his "Old Wine in New Bottles" column. Beginners sometimes suffer when they send their queens on early adventures, losing time and sometimes getting their queens trapped. Marin focuses on a different problem that can arise when the queen goes off on a journey: her king suffers from the absence of a key defender.
Then it's time for some opening theory. GM Ivan Ivanisevic offers a compact white repertoire in the English built on 1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.e3. He doesn't promise an advantage, but the positions are fresh and not easy for Black to solve at the board - especially if he doesn't play the Sicilian with White, as many of the positions transpose into reversed Sicilians.
Next, the well-known theoretician (and GM) Aleksander Delchev suggests 4.Bg5 in the Exchange Slav, which has more poison than one might suspect.
Speaking of "poison", there was an opening book that came out in 2017 called "e3 Poison", and GM Robert Markus offers a suggestion along the same lines. His point of departure comes after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 4.e3, when he has chapters on 4...Be7, 4...c6, 4...Bb4+, 4...a6, 4...b6, and 4...c5.
GM Milos Perunovic is best known for his opening work, but here he writes an article on transitions to pawn endings. One must be very careful about going into king and pawn endings, as the weaker side's defensive options are usually quite limited. One would think that professional players would always get these decisions right, but his article shows that this is far from the case.
The last article is on the 28th World Correspondence Chess Champion, Leonardo Ljubicic. It begins with an interesting interview, and then Ljubicic takes us through four of his games.
Finally, there's a mini-Informant within the Informant on Maxime Vachier-Lagrave's career, including 32 of his games, 12 of his most important opening novelties, 28 tactics from his games, and 13 of his endings.
It was a good issue, and a big step back in the right direction. Ordering info here.
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