New Chess Video for November 19 – 23
Monday, November 19
GM Eugene Perelshteyn Leela Chess Gives a Positional Lesson to Stockfish in the Benoni | Strategy, Endgame
The time of a computer overlord is near as the truly A.I. engine crushes Stockfish. Leela Chess follows the footsteps of Google’s Alpha-Zero and quickly rises in the ranks of top engines. Learn how it plays a purely positional game, figuring out typical GM ideas such as exchange sacrifice and dark-square strategy.
Tuesday, November 20
IM Bill Paschall Highlights from the 2018 World Junior, Part 2 | Opening, Strategy
In an exciting battle from the event, the promising GM Alexander Donchenko turns in a great effort with interesting theoretical implications in the exciting Flohr-Mikenas variation of the English. A favorite of Victor Kortchnoi, the Flohr-Mikenas is probably the sharpest variation of the English Opening. Donchenko tried to sacrifice a piece with a new idea, but Black defends stubbornly while declining the sacrifice. In the game we see a great technical effort by one of the most talented players in the field. Although Donchenko only finished with 7.5/11 he is a player to keep a close eye on in the future.
Wednesday, November 21
FM Dennis Monokroussos Dramatic Defense Overcomes White’s Whirlwind Attack | Strategy, Tactics
In this game between a pair of strong Soviet masters, Vasily Panov went all out for an attack, attempting to blow Mikhail Yudovich off the board. Panov’s play made for a thrilling game, but Yudovich’s defense was even better. Sometimes, a great defense is not only more successful than the attack it bests, but more beautiful as well!
Thursday, November 22
GM Nadya Kosintseva Systems for White in the Spanish Game: Part 4 – Avoiding the Marshall | Strategy, Tactics
In this lecture we will consider what happens if Black attempts to sacrifice a central pawn playing …d5, the so called the Marshall variation of the Spanish game. In this move order Black castles instead of classical 7..d6 that leads to Breyer, Chigorin and Zaitsev systems that we covered in the previous lectures. I do not recommend accepting the sacrifice, since it requires a lot of memorization and leads to a long theoretical discussion. Instead, we will cover Anti-Marshall lines that start with 8.a4. It forces Black to postpone activities in the center and take care of the queen side. As a result, we get a positional battle with typical maneuverings when White hopes to get a slight advantage targeting Black’s queen side and at the same time aiming at the center after he finishes the development. White does not hurry to cross the middle of the board and sometimes just provokes Black to go forward in a hope to counter attack.
Friday, November 23
GM Leonid Kritz Don’t Forget to Use Your King in the Endgame! | Strategy, Endgame
An interesting strategic game where White was pressuring all the time, but Black had multiple occasions when he could improve his position by playing Kg7-f6 and then starting to bring the king closer to where the main action was taking place. Very often, even the strongest players forget about very basic facts, namely that in the endgame the king gets a different role than in the middle game.