Dawn Novarina

Monday, April 28 IM Valeri Lilov London System by Blackburne (strategy, middlegame)
Joseph Blackburne (also nicknamed “The Black Death”) was a leading 19th century chess player who became legendary for his wide-open and highly tactical style of play. His openings were often new and hard to prepare against. In one of these games, Blackburne found his next prey by using the London System as white!

Tuesday, April 29 GM Eugene Perelshteyn A Common Trap in the Accelerated Dragon (opening traps, tactics)
White plays an unusual combination of Be2 and Qd2 against the Accelerated Dragon and gets duly punished by a clever knight recapture in the center. White loses a pawn for some initiative, but with clever …Qh3! idea Black stops the h-pawn run and eventually converts the extra pawn. Try to find the spectacular Middlegame tactic that was missed by both sides!

Wednesday, April 30 FM Dennis Monokroussos Queen’s Gambit & Friends, Part 8: A New Gambit in the Slav (opening)
19th century favorites like the King’s Gambit and the Evans Gambit aren’t very popular nowadays, but new gambits have sprung up to take their place, even in the quietest of openings. Our show this week illustrates this with an almost brand-new pawn sac in the Slav that offers Black compensation and play across the entire board.

Thursday, May 1  GM Leonid Kritz A Terrific Blunder from an Ex-World Champion (opening, strategy)

Friday, May 2  IM Bill Paschall Candidates 2014:  Grudge Match (opening, middlegame)

Monday, April 21 IM Valeri Lilov Exploiting a Space Advantage
The most common advantage in chess is the space advantage. Often many players get to a position where they have a lot of space and control of many squares, but they don’t know how to use them. In this lecture, IM Valeri Lilov provides a good direction on how to plan once you get that kind of advantage.

Tuesday April 22 IM Bill Paschall Candidates 2014: Aronian’s Lucky Bluff
Aronian fails to seriously challenge Mamadyrov’s Queen’s Gambit Ragozin with the backward looking Nd2. The game morphs into an innocuous looking exchange variation when suddenly Aronian plays f4 ?!? White creates an ugly looking backward pawn on e3, along black’s own half open file. Objectively unsound, the space gaining trick f5 by Aronian works as Mamadyarov misses the key move …Qg5 ! Aronian uncorks a devious, hidden queen trap and Mamadyarov loses, despite fighting down to the bitter end.

Wednesday April 23 FM Dennis Monokroussos Queen’s Gambit & Friends, Part 7: A Common Trap in the Slav
Our subject this time isn’t a great historical game or some cutting-edge theory, but rather a simple but important trap that is surprisingly prolific at the amateur level. After 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Black would love to play 4…Bf5, but as we’ll see it isn’t safe to do so. Be sure to avoid it, and know how to exploit it!

Thursday, April 24 GM Leonid Kritz Sicilian Paulsen 2…. e6-a6-Bc5-Ba7
A very modern variation where black shows good results in recent times. There are many ways white can play against it. I think, however, that the idea with putting knight on d2 is pretty interesting and can be played at any level. Certainly, it is impossible to claim a feasible opening advantage, but it looks like it is easier to play this kind of position with white.

Friday, April 25 IM David Vigorito Understanding a Typical Pawn Structure in the Sicilian
In this game I face a very young and talented your player who quickly reels off 14 moves of theory. The position is not tactical however, and it is an understanding of the typical middlegame that allows Black to get the upper hand.

Monday, April 14   IM Valeri Lilov – Attacking a Weakness by Steinitz (strategy, middlegame) Exploiting a weakness has always been problematic for many chess players. While it’s not too challenging to spot a weakness (pawn, king, etc.), many players don’t know the correct approach to exploiting it.. The first world champion Wilhelm Steinitz was the one who first discovered the best way to exploit weaknesses in a positional manner.

Tuesday, April 15   GM Eugene Perelshteyn – Building up Positional Pluses to Outplay a Strong GM (middlegame, strategy) In this GM vs GM battle White builds up small positional pluses to get an open file. Domination on the open file results in winning a pawn, but things are not so simple as White still needs to demonstrate good technique to convert. Watch out for instructive king play in the endgame!

Wednesday, April 16  FM Dennis Monokroussos – Queen’s Gambit and Friends, Part 6: Handling the Minority Attack (opening, tactics) In our last video we saw how effective the minority attack could be. Could be – but isn’t always. Here we see Predrag Nikolic attempt to use it against Vladimir Kramnik, but the seemingly small differences between the position they reach when White went for the b2-b4 advance and what we saw in the Ruban-Panchenko game made all the difference in the world. In that game, Black suffered and lost a long game; this time, White was crushed pretty quickly. Master the differences and you can play either side of this plan!

Thursday, April 17   IM Bill Paschall – Aronian Gets Tactical (opening, tactics) Aronian goes back to the 90’s with the Modern Exchange variation against Svidler’s Grunfeld. Black goes into the pawn grab variation with Qxa2 but forgets that f7 can become weak ! We see a classic Bxf7 sacrifice after Svidler is baited into moving his f8 rook. The game could perhaps be salvaged by a computer but technically very difficult and Svidler succumbs.

Friday, April 18   GM Bryan Smith (middlegame, strategy)  – The Best of Lone Pine 1979, Part 4 In the fourth part of his series on the 1979 Lone Pine tournament, GM Bryan Smith looks at an important encounter from the seventh round, Larsen – Lein. In this game Bent Larsen manages to carry out a sparkling but rather unclear attack against Anatoly Lein’s Dragon.

Monday, April 7  IM Valeri Lilov Structural Weaknesses (Middlegame, Strategy)
We all know what weaknesses are. The weak pieces and squares are well known to all. How about the structural weaknesses though? These types of weaknesses are crucial for many games, yet many people don’t know how to exploit them. Learn more about them from this lecture.

Tuesday, April 8 IM Bill Paschall The Redundant Queen (Middlegame, Tactics)
Dubov expands classically in the center with e5 against Jobava’s Benoni Defense. Black’s pieces gain sufficent activity and his bishop pair compensate for white’s central pawn advantage. At the key moment Dubov fails to stop black’s advancing queenside pawn, instead promoting his own second queen! Unfortunately , Dubov’s extra queen cannot prevent a multitude of black threats and he must resign with 2 queen’s on the board in the middlegame ! A truly amazing party.

Wednesday, April 9 FM Dennis Monokroussos Queen’s Gambit and Friends, Part 5: Winning With the Minority Attack  (Opening, Strategy)
We’ve been looking at the Carlsbad Structure (the structure characteristic of the Exchange Variation of the Queen’s Gambit) the past couple of shows, but in those shows we looked at plans where White pushes the pawns in the center or on the kingside. In this video we have a look at the classic minority attack plan, and see it work to near perfection. It’s a very solid and sturdy approach, and in many circumstances it allows its user to play very comfortably: either you win or the opponent achieves a draw after some suffering.

Thursday, April 10 GM Bryan Smith The Best of Lone Pine 1979, Part 3  (Opening)
In the third part of GM Bryan Smith’s series on the Lone Pine, 1979 tournament, we see a short, tactical game in which GM Sahovic takes advantage of his opponent’s rather ambitious and unnatural play.

Friday, April 11  LM Dana Mackenzie  Terrific Teens, Episode 1: A Future World Champion? (Middlegame, Tactics)
In January 2014 I had the opportunity to play in a tournament in which the world’s youngest grandmaster, Wei Yi of China, played and tied for first. In this complex game,Wei plays an ambitious and relatively untried pawn sacrifice in the Pirc against John Bryant. Bryant defends quite well and it is not clear that Wei achieves full compensation. But then he doubles the stakes, sacrificing a second pawn. As is often the case, accepting that pawn was Bryant’s downfall.

Monday, March 31  IM Valeri Lilov Keys to a Successful Attack (Middlegame, Strategy)
Everybody loves attacking. There is no question about that. But what are the most relevant things we need to know about attacking? Check the keys to deliver smashing combinations against your opponent!

Tuesday, April 1 Bill Paschall Letting the Cat out of the Bag (Middlegame, Strategy)
IM Paschall faces the oldest of Nimzo-Indian Variations…the Samisch, whereby white quickly plays a3 to gain the bishop pair at the detriment of his pawn structure. Black plays a flawless game until a point; creating a textbook blockade position against the bishop pair and doubled pawns. Paschall missed the key chance to win a pawn and eliminate the opponents bishop pair as the game begins to open up. Just when all hope seems lost for white, the talented Petrisor finds his only chance! A brilliant knight sacrifice to open the black king; with chaos ensuing

Wednesday, April 2  Dennis Monokroussos The Queen’s Gambit and Friends. Part 4.  (Openings, Strategy)
By playing 3…Be7 in the Queen’s Gambit Black can avoid the potent plan we looked at in part 3, but it doesn’t mean that White is without resources after 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bf4. Knaak pushes his g- and h-pawns, and Geller quickly wound up with a cramped position and an endangered king. This form of the Exchange Queen’s Gambit is also quite dangerous for Black!

Thursday, April 3  Eugene Perelshteyn The power of the Dark Square Bishop on the Long Diagonal (Middlegame, Strategy)
White plays a dubious line in the Trompowsy by giving up his dark square bishop and the long diagonal.  The result is a strategy victory by the g7 bishop that GM Gufeld would be proud of!  However, White doesn’t want to go down without a fight and after a series of tricky maneuvers Black has to resort to tactics to trap White’s queen.

Friday, April 4  David Vigorito Another Look at a King’s Indian Sideline (Middlegame)

Monday, March 24  IM Valeri Lilov Attacking Potential (Middlegame, Strategy)
The key principle to a successful attack is one’s potential. The following lecture provides some good ideas on how to analyse and build up the potential for a prominent attack against the opponent.

Tuesday, March 25 GM Eugene Perelshteyn  Unexpected Tactical Blow in the Middlegame (Middlegame, Tactics)
Black wins a pawn in the opening and plays creatively to keep it. However, White identifies the real weakness in Black’s position — his King, and finds a nice tactical blow in the Middlegame to start a deadly attack. The ensuring tactics are both instructive and beautiful to watch.

Wednesday, March 26 IM Dennis Monokroussos  The Queen’s Gambit and Friends. Part 3 (Middlegame, Tactics)
When one has an extra central pawn, sometimes it’s possible to create a mobile center that sweeps away everything in its path. Mikhail Botvinnik discovered ways to use such a plan in both the Exchange Variation of the Queen’s Gambit and the Nimzo-Indian, and in today’s game we see some examples of this potent plan in action – a plan we can still use today.

Thursday, March 27 GM Bryan Smith  An Exciting Answer to the Leningrad Variation of the Nimzo-Indian (Opening, Middlegame)
In this video, GM Bryan Smith looks at a sharp, gambit answer to the Leningrad Variation of the Nimzo-Indian (4.Bg5) in the context of his game against IM Elmir Guseinov.

Friday, March 28 IM David Vigorito Grandmaster Versus Amateur (Middlegame)

This is the last week to see Part 1 of Grandmaster Bryan Smith’s series on his final GM Norm. In the Michigan Fall Festival, Smith got his final norm for the grandmaster title. In this series he shows some of the games from that tournament – part 1 covers his game with GM Timur Gareev from the second round.  Smith has been a regular contributor on ChessLecture.com since 2007.

• Matchup: Bryan Smith vs. T. Gareev
• Skill Level: Intermediate
• Category: Strategy; Annotated Games
• ECO: E42
• Opening: Nimzo-Indian Defense; Rubenstein Variation
• Run Time: 00:50:02

If you enjoyed this video by Smith, become a member and see parts 2 through 4!  Just click here: Join

Monday, March 17, IM Valeri Lilov A GM Approach to the Middlegame (Middlegame, Strategy)
The lecture provides some important ideas on how Grandmasters approach the middlegame and planning. Learn by following the play of the great masters!

Tuesday, March 18, IM Bill Paschall A Problem for White in the English Flohr-Mikenas Variation (Openings, Middlegame)

Wednesday, March 19, FM Dennis Monokroussos The Queen’s Gambit and Friends, Part 2: Dynamics Beat Statics (Openings, Tactics)
The game we’ll look at was a Queen’s Indian, but there are such strong Queen’s Gambit motifs (e.g. the hanging pawns and the way both sides developed their pieces) that a careful look at this game will help us better understand the Queen’s Gambit. As in the game featured in part 1, White hoped to enjoy a long-term plus based on the static features of the position, but a pawn sac created a dynamism that White was unable to cope with. Akopian never managed to resolve the shaky situation of his king, and it finally cost him the game.

Thursday, March 20, GM Eugene Perelshteyn Teaching a Young Star a Lesson or Two in the Exchange Slav (Strategy, Tactics, Opening)
White completely outplays the young star, IM Sam Sevian using the classical approach and c5 outpost in the Exchange Slav. Tha game is very instructive from both strategy and tactics, as White needs to find the finishing blow to open up the enemy king. The rest is just massacre.

Friday, March 21 LM Dana Mackenzie The Mike Splane Question (Middlegame, Strategy)