Monday, March 6
IM Bill Paschall – Sacrifice! For the Initiative! Part 3 | Middlegame
This year’s edition of the usually strong Aeroflot Open provides us with another example of sacrificing material for the initiative. Black, a veteran grandmaster, was out to win against an upstart youngster before he realized how dangerous his situation was. The “upstart” planned a devious piece sacrifice to completely turn the tables! The very surprising sacrifice – by simple abandonment! – of a whole piece by White in this games illustrates the power of White’s coordination and development lead, as well as the irreparable weakness of the dark squares around the Black’s king position. Black faces an enormous defensive task and could not cope.
Tuesday, March 7
GM Eugene Perelshteyn – Fighting for Advantage in the Grunfeld with a Forgotten Line: 5.Bd2 | Opening, Strategy, Endgame
How do you fight for the advantage vs the Grunfeld? In this game, GM Perelshteyn uncorks an old line 5.Bd2. This is a very annoying line for Black as White is quite solid and doesn’t allow the typical pawn weaknesses. Black tries to use the extra tempo to blow up the kingside but finds himself in the worse endgame a few moves ago. The endgame looks very difficult to convert yet once again it is Black who is about to be checkmated in the middle of the board! Can you spot the killer idea?
Wednesday, March 8
FM Dennis Monokroussos – Crushing the Grunfeld, Alpha Zero Style | Tactics
One of the characteristic developments in chess the past 2-3 years, since the advent of Alpha Zero and now other neural net-style engines, is an increased appreciation for the power of attacks based on ramming the h-pawn to h6 (or by Black’s pushing to h3). It’s not that no one ever thought of doing this before – of course they had – but now it’s almost treated as an end in itself, as if the game is half-won once the pawn has achieved its aim. This recent game is a splendid example: once White pushed his pawn to h5, Black’s position was soon in disarray, and Bluebaum’s attacking potential seemed to grow every move. The game culminates with a nice combination — appropriately enough involving the h-file. Have a look, and see the PGN for further evidence of the challenge of the h-pawn. Someday Black will figure it out, but for now it’s a potent weapon.
Thursday, March 9
GM Leonid Kritz – Critical Opening Decisions: To Exchange Queens – Or Not? | Opening
This game is a typical example of a binary decision that needs to be made in the opening – whether to go into an endgame directly, or not. Here Black decided to exchange queens and play an endgame that is quite passive. Tastes differ, of course, but personally I do not recommend this line and think Black should take more risk, especially if he chose to play Grunfeld.
Friday, March 10
GM Robert Hungaski – Two Knights Defense: The Fried Liver – Main Sidelines | Strategy
In this video we resume our journey across the Fried Liver. This time we will discuss what I consider to be Black’s main sidelines: The Ulvestad and Fritz Variations. These lines enjoyed quite a bit of popularity before the era of the engine, but now are struggling to survive. However, I aim to provide you with articulated ideas on how to combat these without having to rely on the memorization of computer moves.