Lessons from a 2600+ grandmaster (2)

Surya Shekhar Ganguly annotates (2)

In the first part of our interview with Surya Shekhar Ganguly we had promised to bring you three games annotated by the Indian GM. They are his favourite from his one-month tour where he played 27 games in three different events. These games have been meticulously annotated by the 2627 player and he has revealed many interesting points not only related to calculations and analysis but also with human psychology, preparation and playing under pressure in crucial games.

Lovers of the game can go over Ganguly’s analyses on our JavaScript boards or download the PGN and have a look at them on their ChessBase software. For ambitious players, however we recommend the latter. But before going through the analyses, you can spend ten minutes on the two test positions given at the beginning of each game. Write down your analysis and then go over the game on a chess board. This might be time consuming, but you are effectively receiving lessons from a 2600+ GM.

Ganguly vs Wang Hao, final round of the Bangkok Open 2015

This is the position reached after White’s 19th move Bd2. How do you assess this position and what is the best plan for White here. You can later compare your answer with Ganguly’s text and see how close you were to his thinking.

Position after 19.Bd2. How do you assess the position and what is the best plan for White here.
You can later compare your answer with Ganguly’s text and see how close you were to his thinking.

Variation to Black’s 38th move. This is an excellent position to hone your skills in strategic thinking.
You need to come up with a plan as to how you can put maximum pressure on the black position.
You can later compare your answer with Ganguly’s thought process.

In the following JavaScript replay screen you can use the browser magnification function (Ctrl + in Chrome and Firefox) to enlarge the board and notation. You can also download the PGN and do your own research and analysis in ChessBase or Fritz.

The lists above show all Gagnuly's opponents in each event, their ratings, nationalities,
the points they finished the tournament with, the colour he had and the result.

Sagar Shah, who received the game annotations from Ganguly, writes: "Personally for me, these have been the best annotated games I have seen in the recent times. I cannot stress how much I learnt going over these games with Ganguly’s annotations. I hope you too enjoyed them and learnt a lot. A huge thanks to Surya Shekhar Ganguly for treating the readers of ChessBase with some really high quality annotations."

Achievements of Surya Shekhar Ganguly

• World U-10 Championship, Warsaw 1991: Won bronze medal in his first foreign trip, at the age of eight.
• World U-10 Championship, Bratislava 1993: Shared bronze medal with Jakovenko, ahead of Grishchuk.
• World U-12 Championship, Szeged 1994: Shared bronze medal with Ponomariev, Vallejo Pons behind Levon Aronian and Bacrot, and ahead of Grishchuk.
• World U-12 Championship, St. Lorenzo 1995: Won silver medal behind Bacrot.
• In 1995, at the age of 11, he beat a Grandmaster, the youngest player ever to do so until that time.
• Ganguly became an International Master at 16 and a Grandmaster at 19.
• He won Indian National Championship for a record six consecutive times from 2003–2008.
• Winner of the Asian Championships in 2009.
• World Team Chess Championship 2010: His team India won bronze and he won the individual gold for himself.
• Winner of many international events like Bangladesh International 2005, ONGC International 2006, Sydney International 2008, Parsvanath 2009, Indonesia Open 2011, Fujairah Open 2012.and many more.
• He was awarded the Arjuna Award in 2005 by the Government of India for his outstanding achievement in sports.
• He worked in the team of seconds that assisted Anand in winning the World title matches against Vladimir Kramnik, Veselin Topalov and Gelfand in 2008, 2010 and 2012 respectively.

(Source: Wikipidea)