A Cute Winawer Trap
After the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.a4 Qa5 8.Qd2 b6 9.Ba3
should Black play the strategically desirable 9...Ba6? What do you think (without running engines!)?
After the moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.a4 Qa5 8.Qd2 b6 9.Ba3
should Black play the strategically desirable 9...Ba6? What do you think (without running engines!)?
The first three games of the rapid tiebreak followed the pattern of the regular games - draw, win for Hou Yifan, draw - but this time there was no lapse in game four. Hou confidently outplayed Ruan Lufei in the last game as well to win the tiebreak 3-1, the match 5-3, and the 2010 Women's World Championship. Congratulations to Hou, who at just 16 is the youngest women's champion ever.
Black often plays ...e5 in the Najdorf Sicilian (in fact, it was an integral part of the original plan), and in the process creates a hole on d5. Once that happens, one of White's typical ideas involves putting a knight there - one he hopes to keep there in a fairly permanent way. To achieve this goal involves certain things (e.g swapping off all or as many of the Black minor pieces that can guard the square, ideally leaving Black with a dominated and bad dark squared bishop), but once it's done - if it can be done - it can be extremely potent.
The late great Bobby Fischer both played and faced the Najdorf on a regular basis, and as such found himself on both sides of the aforementioned plan as well. In this week's show we take a look at several of those games: two where he has White and puts the plan into practice and two where he's Black and successfully defends against it. As you'd expect from Fischer, the games are models of strategic and tactical excellence, so you'll be able to combine instruction with aesthetics and entertainment.
The show is free, as always (free registration required) and will be available on-demand for the next month or so.
Amazingly, Ruan Lufei will have her sixth tiebreaker in six matches. Nothing if not dogged, she came through in a must-win situation against Hou Yifan, and the women's world championship will be settled in rapid (and if necessary, blitz) games tomorrow. By rating I'd still expect Hou to win, but Ruan has shown incredible toughness and good nerves in this event. We'll see!
The news is that there won't be any more news. (The deadline has passed, so there's no chance for Magnus Carlsen to waffle back in.)
The Russian Championship had been a dream for Sergey Karjakin but finished as a nightmare. He started the round half a point ahead of Ian Nepomniachtchi, and since the latter drew his final game Karjakin could win the title by following suit. Instead, he seemed to crack under the pressure and lost to Vladimir Malakhov, who had been -1 up to that point.
Unfortunately for Karjakin, the title was determined by a playoff rather than tiebreaks, and after a pair of draws in rapid games - both of which saw Karjakin enjoy an edge at some point - it was on to an Armageddon game. Here it is:
Drawing with Black, Nepomniatchi thus won the playoff and the title. A real pity for Karjakin, but a great tournament and year for both players.
Meanwhile, in the Women's World Championship, Hou Yifan again got nothing - or less than nothing - with White against Ruan Lufei. Indeed, it was Ruan who won a pawn and pressed for the win - but without success. Hou held, continues to lead (2-1 now), and will become the women's world champion with any positive result in game 4.
The European Rapid Championship took place in Warsaw this past weekend, and with tons of strong players there were many fine games and exciting moments. Not all the games were so impressive, however - witness this:
Tomasz Markowski (2625) - Radoslaw Wojtaszek (2726) (Round 8):
1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 c6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Qb3 dxc4 5.Qxc4 Bg4 6.Nc3 Nbd7 7.e4 Bxf3 8.gxf3 e5 9.Be3 Bd6 10.0-0-0
This line has fared pretty well for White, but Black's position is certainly playable.
10...exd4
This has only been played once before, by Boris Gelfand against Ruslan Ponomariov in the finals of the 2009 World Cup. Ponomariov recaptured with the bishop and eventually won a hard battle (though he lost the war, as Gelfand eventually won the match and the tournament), but Black was not in trouble at this point.
11.Qxd4
And now Wojtaszek, all 2726 rating points' worth of him, played 11...Qc7?? and resigned after 12.Qxd6. There's hope for us all...or is it that we're all hopeless, at least sometimes?
Here's another one:
(Position after 23...Bg7-h6 in Alexander Moiseenko (2670) - Artur Jussupow (2589), round 13)
White sees the threat of 24...Be3, evaluates it as no big deal, and plays 24.Rxc7. Or rather, 24.Rxc7?? White is only half right: ...Be3 isn't a big deal right now or immediately after a rook trade, but it is in fact a VERY big deal! It just needs a little setting up, that's all:
24...Qxf2+!!
Oops. White resigned after 25.Rxf2 Rb1+, because after 26.Rf1 Be3+ - now! - drives the king into the corner and forces mate in two more moves.
Ruan Lufei started her final match with Hou Yifan the right way, drawing the first game with Black, but part two of the plan - winning with White - was unsuccessful. There was nothing wrong with the start, as Ruan had a promising position out of the opening, but the advantage ebbed away. Later, Hou played very adeptly in the rook and bishop vs. rook and knight ending to reach a winning rook ending, which she converted to victory. If she can win with White in the next game, the match is over and she will be the women's world champion.
Meanwhile, the Russian Championship is becoming a great success for Sergey Karjakin. He defeated Evgeny Tomashevsky while his main rivals all drew, and now he leads with 7/10 with one round to go. Ian Nepomniachtchi is in second with 6.5, and Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler have 6 points apiece. Further good news for Karjakin is that his rating is now over 2780, and if he wins in the last round he will pass Vladimir Kramnik to reach fourth place on the list. Very impressive!
It isn't difficult to find giant databases nowadays, but ChessBase's Mega Database (updated yearly; the 2011 edition is now out) has advantages its bareboned rivals lack. The minor frills are the player encyclopedia (lots of pictures of many players, both contemporary and historical, from across their careers when possible) and the weekly updates (that can be done manually through TWIC and other sources already, though it's designed to be more convenient and efficient with ChessBase); both convenient, neither necessary.
The main selling point for Mega, for me, at least, is the very large number of annotated games - 65,000 in all. People still buy game collections regularly - not unreasonably - but if you think of how many books you'd have to buy to get the same number of annotated games, there's clearly a big advantage to buying Mega. (Additionally, it's a lot easier to scroll through annotations on your computer, rather than having your head half-buried in the book, then constantly resetting the board to where it was at the start of the variations.) Many of the annotated games are of recent vintage, and that makes them very useful for opening study as well. Theme keys help you select games for their tactical or endgame or strategic pluses too, so it's a fine tool for training purposes. So although the one-time price is relatively hefty, its value by volume makes up for it and then some.
More info here.