Events in the Interim

The Wijk aan Zee tournament starts later this week, but other events have transpired in the meantime.

One relatively minor event was the Paul Keres Memorial in Tallinn, a two-stage affair won by Alexei Shirov with 6/7, a full point ahead of Jaan Ehlvest and Normunds Miezis.

A second, smaller but stronger event was a rapid and blitz match between Sergey Karjakin and Ian Nepomniachtchi, apparently reprising their tiebreak battle in the recently completed Russian Championship. Both rapid games were drawn, and four blitz went 2-2 (Karjakin won, then lost, then two draws) before they once again went to Armageddon. In the Russian Championship Karjakin had White in that game, stood better, but only managed a draw; this time it was the reverse. Nepomniachtchi had White and was probably winning the queen vs. rook and knight ending, but missed some tactics and stood worse when the draw was agreed. This was apparently for the something called the Russian State Social University Championship, where I'm sure the two study academic subjects at least as hard as top athletes do in the United States before they turn pro in football and basketball.

This Week's ChessLecture Show: The Keres Structure

I knew about the structure before watching some clips from GM Adrian Mikhalchishin's DVD "Winning Structures", but hadn't realized it was first discovered (at least in big-time chess) by Paul Keres or thought to consider it as a general structure in the way we might think of the IQP or the French pawn chain. Mikhalchishin's discussion was a real eye-opener for me, and in my presentation this week for ChessLecture.com I hope to give my viewers a similar Eureka moment.

What is the Keres structure? Watch one or both of the M-guys with long last names to find out! (Note: I do present one of the historic games Mikhalchishin uses, but also present a game he doesn't cover, a Kasparov-Karpov battle that introduced me to this pawn structure almost a quarter of a century ago. [Yikes.])