The Patriarch of Soviet Chess

From the mid-1930s to the early 1960s, one man towered above all other chessplayers. That was the sixth world chess champion, Mikhail Botvinnik. His calm, deep analytical approach, supplemented by careful attention to his mental and physical conditioning served him well throughout his career.

BRAK NA MAGAZYNIE - produkt może zostać sprowadzony "NA ZAMÓWIENIE"

Siegbert Tarrasch and Aron Nimzowitsch could be called the two vainest chess players in history. This book tells the fascinating story of their lifelong rivalry. They clashed as personalities, as players and as chess writers, both searching for the truth in chess, but with very different perspectives.

BRAK NA MAGAZYNIE - produkt może zostać sprowadzony "NA ZAMÓWIENIE"

The Fascinating Chess and Football Careers of Simen Agdestein

Simen Agdestein was awarded the title of chess grandmaster at the age of eighteen, the youngest in the world at the time. Two years later he wrote in his diary that he believed he could become the best in the world.

„Mistrzowie Polski w szachach” to oryginalna pozycja na rynku literatury szachowej dotyka bowiem tematyki nie do końca precyzyjnie opracowanej przez innych autorów, tj. naszych rodzimych, polskich szachistów. Napisana została w sposób, który pozwala na to, by czytelnikiem mógł być każdy pasjonat szachów, bez względu na siłę gry. Znajdziemy w niej zarówno biografie mistrzów uszeregowane chronologicznie według daty zdobycia najcenniejszego tytułu w kraju wraz z wybranymi fotografiami, jak i analizę twórczości poprzez pryzmat granych przez nich partii. Zwieńczeniem tematyki są wybrane przez autorów kombinacje zaczerpnięte z praktyki turniejowej bohaterów publikacji. Interesującym aspektem są także liczne tabele z wynikami poszczególnych Mistrzostw Polski, które pozwalają na analizę ich przebiegu. Autorzy poświęcili wiele czasu i sił, by książka, a właściwie książki (ponieważ materiał przez nich zebrany przy pracy podzielony został na dwie części) „Mistrzowie Polski w szachach” stanowiły profesjonalny i ułożony zbiór istotnych informacji historyczno-biograficznych oraz rozwijających szachowych materiałów.

Niniejsza publikacja to całkowity „must have” dla każdego miłośnika szachów , zarówno tych, którzy chcą polepszyć swoje umiejętności jak i tych, którzy zainteresowani szachową historią chcą oddać się przyjemnej beletrystycznej lekturze.

New In Chess Yearbook, which appears four times a year, contains the latest news in chess openings. Each issue brings you dozens of new ideas on the cutting edge of modern chess opening theory. Have a look at what this issue has to offer.

Forum

This issue’s Forum Section features an article by René Olthof on the stunning piece sacrifice with which Fabiano Caruana took Maxime Vachier-Lagrave by surprise in the second leg of the Candidates Tournament. This is followed by some unique analysis material by Ganguly on a game he lost against Pavel Eljanov! Two other grandmasters, Mikheil Mchedlishvili and Max Warmerdam, also made a contribution, and you should certainly check out IJntze Hoekstra’s short but intriguing note to the book Side-Stepping Mainline Theory by Gerard Welling and Steve Giddins!

From Our Own Correspondent

Our GM correspondent Erwin l’Ami starts his column with a good equalizing method for Black in the Tarrasch and then presents a thorough analysis of a correspondence game with the Delayed Poisoned Pawn in the Najdorf. L’Ami has played the Black side of Kramnik’s QGD endgame and demonstrates that Black is OK here – which cannot be said of his two final subjects, the Poisoned Pawn line in the London System and the Winawer French with 7…0-0.

Reviews

Part of Glenn Flear’s Reviews column is dedicated to modern media again. The 2-volume ebook The Modern French by Kryakvin is reviewed and compared to two other recent works on the French: Anish Giri’s awesome Lifetime repertoire course; The French Defense (for Chessable) and Pentala Harikrishna’s book Beat the French Defence with 3.Nc3. The Englishman also pays attention to Ilya Smirin’s book Sicilian Warfare – arguably more than just an opening book – and of course the latest masterpiece by Parimarjan Negi: Grandmaster repertoire: 1.e4 vs Minor Defences.

In December 2012 Magnus Carlsen won the prestigious London Chess Classic and in doing so he became the highest-rated chess player in the history of the game, beating Garry Kasparov's 13-year-old record. Carlsen followed up this performance with another phenomenal tournament win at Wijk aan Zee, pushing his peak rating to an astronomical 2872. He didn’t lose a single game in either tournament.

Grigory Levenfish was twice Soviet Champion and drew a match with the great Botvinnik, yet despite his skills, he was never a favoured son of the Soviet Union. Rejected for selection to key events and the only Soviet grandmaster to be denied a stipend in later life, Levenfish was a Soviet Outcast .

Korchnoi and his Chess Grandchildren features 25 of Viktor Korchnoi’s best games from the latter stages of his glorious career. The latest game is from 2011, when Korchnoi was still potent enough to defeat Fabiano Caruana. 

Tаль Михаил Нехемьевич (9.11.1936—28.06.1992) восьмой чемпион мира (1960—1961), международный гроссмейстер (1957). Чемпион Латвии 1953, 1965 гг. Чемпион СССР 1957, 1958, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978 гг. 

The World Championship match between Fischer and Spassky in Reykjavik 1972 was played at the height of the Cold War. The image of a lone American genius defeating the Soviet machine captivated a worldwide audience unlike anything else in chess history. Exactly fifty years later, Fischer – Spassky 1972 takes a fresh look at both the chess and the human aspects of this monumental match.

With contributions by Vasyl Ivanchuk, Ruslan Ponomariov, Mariya and Anna Muzychuk and many, many others

This fascinating biography of over eighty-five annotated games and stories are being presented by grandmasters Georg Mohr and Adrian Mikhalchishin. It covers Planinc’ entire life and chess career, including his most fascinating games. This fitting tribute of a forgotten chess genius should be found in anyone’s chess library. Thanks to this colorful book Albin Planinc will continue to inspire us all and will keep his spirit alive.

New In Chess Yearbook, which appears four times a year, contains the latest news in chess openings. Each issue brings you dozens of new ideas on the cutting edge of modern chess opening theory. Have a look at what this issue has to offer.

Forum

The experiments have continued in the many online events held during the OTB lockdown. That makes excellent Forum material! Han Schut writes about Magnus Carlsen’s 7.g4 in the QGD (it gets played earlier and earlier) and René Olthof was pleasantly surprised by a Vasily Ivanchuk win with the King’s Gambit – an opening on which we also have a Survey, for the first time in ages, by Bogdan Lalic. And be sure not to miss Krishnan Sasikiran’s amazing analysis of a recent correspondence game featuring the Anti-Sveshnikov Sicilian.

From Our Own Correspondent

This time Erwin l’Ami presents a mixture of standard and non-standard openings. You’ll be surprised to know that From’s Gambit seems to hold up even in correspondence games! That is an encouraging thought for all those gambiteers out there. The Catalan and the QGD are also extensively scrutinized, the latter with a correspondence game by the Dutch GM himself, and he concludes with a study of two nice offbeat openings.

Reviews

The same juxtaposition as in the Correspondence column can also be found in Glenn Flear’s reviews this time. A Complete Opening Repertoire for Black after 1.e4 e5! by new author Yuriy Krykun (who will be awarded the IM title soon and has also written Surveys for us) features some fresh out-of-the-box ideas, and this is even more so in the case of Unconventional Approaches to Modern Chess Volumes 1 and 2 by Alexander Ipatov, whose middle name seems to be ‘Unorthodox’. More classical approaches can be found in Martyn Kravtsiv’s thorough work The Italian Renaissance (also 2 volumes!) and Squeezing 1.e4 e5: a solid strategic approach by Alexander Khalifman and Sergei Soloviov.