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There are many cases of material imbalance in chess. In this video series, GM Dejan Bojkov of Bulgaria makes an attempt to systematise the most important ones and gives valuable advice on how to handle the resulting positions.
GM Dejan Bojkov from Bulgaria gives you an insight into the properties of those pieces which move in straight lines, and tips of how to best exploit the open diagonals, ranks and files to get the maximum out of each piece.
This week's games are by Manuel Infante, an American in his mid-sixties who featured here a couple of years ago. He wrote then:
I was born on 18 March 1954 at Vance Air Force Base in Enid Oklahoma and grew up as an Air Force brat. I survived cancer when I was 12 years old. God gave me a second chance and I decided to dedicate myself to helping others and became a Mathematics school teacher and coach. I taught 26 years, the last 20 where at the school I graduated from, Western Heights public schools in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
While there, I was the chess club sponsor, and my kids won back to back state chess championships in 1996 and 1997. I took early retirement from teaching in 2002 and currently work at Tinker Air Force Base. I enjoy listening to classic rock music and reading books on military history. I started playing chess in high school and was so terrible my opponents would give me queen odds. I played over the board and postal chess in the 80s and started to show improvement but had to put my chess studies and tournaments temporarily on hold as being a parent was more important After retirement from teaching and no young ones at home I was able to renew my chess studies and began once again to participate in chess tournaments.
His two games today feature an “Agonising” loss which he really should have won and a nice win, somewhat spoilt at the end by a huge double blunder. Manny was a little embarrassed by this but I assured him that grandmasters can make enormous blunders too and I'm appending my own rather extraordinary game against Daniel Campora, in which after a huge time scramble my 40th move put a whole queen en prise but so shattered was he too, that he failed to take her!
Click or tap the second game in the list below the board to switch games
Meanwhile, 1.b3 has also found its way into the practice of today's world elite, and now finally a modern top ten player has taken on the subject for ChessBase: none other than Grandmaster Wesley So!
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Did you enjoy the column and instructive analysis by GM Jonathan Speelman? Do you wish you could have a world-renowned grandmaster analysing your play? You can!
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