Monday, October 14
IM Bill Paschall – Practical Play: Evaluating and Converting Advantages, Part 2 | Endgame
Renowned as a great attacking player, GM Matulovic is famous for his aggressive play aimed at the enemy king. In this interesting battle we see a unique and forcing middle game interpretation by which White opts for a solid lasting endgame advantage instead of pursuing typical attacking play with the Queens on the board. White identifies and then exploits the weaknesses in his opponents position methodically.
Tuesday, October 15
GM Eugene Perelshteyn – Destroy the Berlin Defense Once and for All! | Openings, Tactics
In the year 2000, Kramnik re-invented the opening that would take down the great Garry Kasparov. Then for 19 years it would be the rock solid choice of almost every elite player in the world. Finally, Karjakin decides to crack this solid opening with an amazing idea! He destroys Topalov with a swift attack that for sure was prepared at home. Can you guess the attacking ideas? Learn this line well and destroy the Berlin Defense once and for all!
Wednesday, October 16
FM Dennis Monkroussos – A Flawed Brilliancy in the English | Openings, Tactics
This is two games in one. In the first part, Vasily Smyslov shows his positional chops by completely outplaying Vladimir Liberzon in a slow system of the English Opening. In the second part, a desperate sacrifice by Liberzon, whose position was becoming more cramped every move, provoked Smyslov to unleash the Mikhail Tal side of his personality. A calm reply would have kept control and led to a smooth and speedy win, but instead he met Liberzon’s sac with a fascinating counter-sac of his queen. Objectively, the idea as a whole was seriously mistaken, and had Liberzon managed to keep doing everything right he would have saved the game. Doing so proved too great a challenge, and in likely time pressure he missed trick or two and lost a wonderfully entertaining game.
Thursday, October 17
GM Leonid Kritz – A Classic Kingside Attack Against the World #4 | Strategy
A very strong game from Teimour Radjabov, who shows how to play the pawn structure with e5 vs. e6 pawns and open d-file. He uses his space advantage on the kingside without giving his opponent any real chance.
Noteworthy also the decision of MVL to keep queens on board by playing 6… Qc7?! – a typical example when Black overstretches in an attempt to fight for win in a position where he should take the easy draw.
Friday, October 18
GM Nadya Kosintseva – Play the Sozin Attack vs the Najdorf Sicilian, Part 1 | Strategy
In this lecture we start learning the Sozin Attack from White’s point of view that can be used to meet the Najdorf Sicilian with the following moves: 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 and then 6.Bc4.
This system became more popular after Bobby Fischer included it in his opening repertoire. It’s a pretty aggressive system that allows White to quickly finish the development on the king side, castle and then start
advancing the central pawns in order to get more open lines for his pieces. The role of the bishop on the a2-g8 diagonal cannot be overestimated since thanks to this bishop White immediately creates a pressure on the e6 point and can sacrifice a piece right after Black moves his light-squared bishop away. Today we will go over the line when Black quickly moves the queen side knight to c5 to attack the e4-pawn: 6…e6 7.Bb3 Nbd7 8.0-0 Nc5. White in his turn is not going to spendtime on defense and instead proceeds with 9.f4. We will see what happens after Black accepts the sacrifice, playing 9…Nxe4.