Monday, October 22
IM Bill Paschall World Championship Warm-Up, Part 1 | Opening, Endgame
In preparation for the upcoming World Championship, we will review the most recent decisive games between the World Champion and his challenger. This battle from Altibox 2018 really highlights Carlsen’s strengths. The opening is relatively harmless, but Caruana seems too ambitious. Carlsen shows a spark of genius with a Nimzovichian pawn sacrifice to gain control. The World Champion’s endgame technique is beyond reproach. Carlsen seems brilliant while Caruana’s play feels awkward.
Tuesday, October 23
IM Valeri Lilov Signs of Bad Attack | Strategy, Middlegame
What does it mean to lead a bad attack? It means we don’t know what makes the attack bad. Knowing how to defend successfully and more importantly, knowing when the attack simply cannot progress is the key to increase our chances both in attacking and defense.
Wednesday, October 24
FM Dennis Monokroussos Some Lessons in Handling “Drawn” Rook Endgames | Endgame
The Chinese women won their section of the 2018 Olympiad on tiebreaks over Ukraine, and this game played a huge part in it. Ukraine was leading the match 2-1 and only needed a draw here, and the ending was in fact drawn – practically “dead” drawn for a professional player. And yet…Ushenina lost, both thanks to her opponent’s wiliness and her own poor decision-making at some critical moments. Both players have something to teach us, so let’s learn from both of them.
Thursday, October 25
GM Nadya Kosintseva Systems for White in the Spanish Game: Part 1 – Facing the Breyer | Openings
The greatest of champions, Garry Kasparov, once famously said: If you know how to play the Spanish Game (Ruy Lopez), then you really know how to play chess. In this series, I will introduce you to each of Black’s popular schemes of development in this most classical of all openings, which begins 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5. These lectures can be beneficial and enhance your strategic understanding of chess even if you are not an 1.e4 player.
In part 1, we examine how to meet the Breyer Variation, in which Black maneuvers the c6-knight to the d7 square to clear the route for the c-pawn and open up a long diagonal for the light-squared bishop to target the white’s e4-pawn. Both sides spend the beginning moves to relocate their pieces. White usually focuses on the king side, whereas Black tries to advance on the queen side. However, to stretch Black’s defense, White often organizes an additional pawn play there, too. We will go over typical plans of White’s attacks on the king side as well as emphasize Black’s counter play to see the challenges both sides may face playing this Breyer system.
Friday, October 26
GM Leonid Kritz A Great Strategic Fight, But a Tragic End | Endgame
In this game Gelfand showed a couple of interesting ideas; especially positioning of the light-squared bishop on c6 to protect the pawn d5 was impressive. Unfortunately, at the moment when it seemed that a draw is unavoidable, the unbelievable happened. Make sure you don’t ever let this happen to your rooks!