New In Chess review: Marin’s Power Strategy 2

Mihail Marin’s Power Strategy 2

New In Chess review by Matthew Sadler

Mihail Marin’s Power Strategy 2 – The Middlegame – Static Positions (Chessbase DVD) is another one that elicited a violent ‘What??’ reaction! It came during Marin’s explanation of the game Drasko-Timoshenko, Tallinn 1989.

Here Marin recommended the move 23.Ne4, which is fair enough. After 23...Bxd5, he recommended 24.Nxf6+ gxf6 25.Rxd5 Nxd5 26.Bxd5+ Kh8 27.Bxa8 Rxa8 with a complicated position. After 23...Nxd5 he said ‘Similar variations are possible. Actually White can start with 24.Rxd5 Bxd5 25.Nxf6+, which is more or less the same thing’. Even with a few glasses of wine inside you, it takes a fraction of a second to spot that 23...Nxd5 loses to any number of moves: 24.Nd6, 24.Nxc5, 24.Qb3 and the list goes on. It’s a strange oversight for a player of Marin’s class.

By this stage I was getting a little bit worried because I had been having problems getting into the opening couple of games of the DVD. Somehow, I found it hard to get a grasp of which theme precisely Marin wanted to talk about and I found my attention wandering. Just in time however, Marin got into his stride and the next series of games were of the high quality we expect of him. I’m not at all familiar with the Karpov-Kortchnoi Baguio 1978 match, so it was very interesting to see some examples from this match, and his comments to the Karpov-Gligoric game, a fantastic Breyer System from the 1973 Leningrad Interzonal, were superb.

So what theme was Marin talking about during the Drasko-Timoshenko game? He called it the theme of playing with stable pieces – usually a knight – which are placed on a stable and well-protected square. It was a theme which he associated with the Soviet Chess School. Marin’s point was that both the knight on b6 and the bishop on b7 were very stable and placing big pressure on White’s centre. When I watched the DVD, I was rather dubious about this particular example, to be honest – I don’t know how impressed I really am with the power of Black’s minor pieces – but that phrase ‘stable pieces’ has kept resonating in my mind. So much so that I’ve been using it again and again to find moves in analysis! So in conclusion, a slightly mixed experience though the best stuff is really very good!

Order the Marin's Power Stragegy DVD in the NiC Shop or directly from ChessBase

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