A truly historic game!

Isle of Man R09: How to mate a 2645 opponent in one hour!

Report by Sagar Shah

You are eleven years and two months old, and you are playing against an established grandmaster who is rated 2645 – one of the best players from South America.

The world's youngest IM, R. Praggnanandhaa, was up against GM Axel Bachmann in the last round of Isle of Man. A little respect to such a strong opponent is natural, right? Well, in chess, as in life, you get what you give! Axel Bachmann began with an offbeat opening, trying to show that he can outplay Praggnanandhaa in non-theoretical lines.

The Nc3, Qd2, Bf4 setup is similar to the 150 attack and is quite potent if Black does not play up to the mark

Praggnanandhaa was ready for the opposite side castling and immediately attacked with ...c5!

The move c5-c4 is a common idea in the French Defence. It's very strong if White cannot do much. But Bachmann understood the urgency and immediately broke with e4!

Once you say A, you must say B! Praggnanandhaa keeps up his attack with the pawn sacrifice ...b5!

Blunders do not occur in vaccuum. The persistent black pressure forced Bachmann to make an error. White's last move, 14.Na3, was met with 14...c3!, when White is completely lost.

A picturesque final position. The entire black army has ganged up on the white king, and a forced mate is coming up.

Famous chess writer Leonard Barden posted on English Chess Forum: "India's 11-year-old youngest ever IM with the unpronounceable name has this afternoon won an 18-mover against a 2645-rated GM which will go round the world and be compared to Fischer's Game of the Century." The age difference between Praggnanandhaa and Leonard is close to eighty years.

I would say that Fischer's Game of the Century with Donald Byrne was much better in terms of quality. But Fischer was 13 years old when he played that game, while Praggnanandhaa is still just eleven!

See also ChessBase report Praggnanandhaa – youngest chess IM in history!

Full report on the final round in Isle of Man to follow

Not all of us are as talented as Praggnanandhaa. Some of us have to work hard in order to get better at the art of attack. One of the DVDs that I liked very much was Daniel King's Powerplay 2 on How to build an attack. Here is one of my favourite examples from the DVD.

According to Daniel King, in order to successfully launch a mating attack, you need your heavy pieces close to the opponent's king. The faster you can get them across there, the quicker your attack is successful. This happens in one of the variations of the Queen's Indian [E12]: 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.a3 Bb7 5.Nc3 d5 6.cxd5 Nxd5 7.Qc2 Be7 8.e4 Nxc3 9.bxc3 0-0 10.Bd3 c5 11.0-0 Qc8 12.Qe2 Ba6

Black does the right thing by threatening to exchange the light squared bishops. But White has an interesting move. Can you find it? Well, the move is 13.Rd1! The point is to recapture with the rook when it will be useful on the third rank for an attack. I don't know but this rook lift has stuck in my head since the time I saw it!

What Daniel King does in this DVD is not just show you successful attacks. He also shows you failed attacks and teaches you how burning the bridges doesn't always work. Take for example the game between Toulzac and Sokolov. White tried to play as originally as possible. He wanted to avoid castling so that his rook could be activated via h4. But against a strong grandmaster like Sokolov such ideas do not work:

Learning the art of Attack from Daniel King is a pure joy!

This DVD is many years old (you can guess that from King's look), but the instruction is timeless. I would heartily recommend Powerplay 2 if you want to become a strong attacker, or just spend hours going over beautiful attacking games. You can buy the DVD in the ChessBase Shop.

Links Official tournament site Download all games in PGN (courtesy TWIC) The games are being broadcast live on the official web site and on the server Playchess.com. If you are not a member you can download a free Playchess client there and get immediate access. You can also use ChessBase or any of our Fritz compatible chess programs.