6/29/2018 – Chess reports are filled with news and updates, but this report from Commonwealth 2018 is different. It is filled with high level of instructional content. IM SAGAR SHAH, says, "To go through this entire report will take two hours of your time. But if you do it carefully, it is bound to teach you a lot about chess." Games, training, video and, to add more flavour to it, you have some world class photography by Amruta Mokal. | Pictured: Standing out from the crowd - GM Deepan Chakkravarthy!
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Sagar Shah shows you on this DVD how you can use typical patterns used by the Master of the past in your own games. From opening play to middlegame themes.
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more.
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Lessons from Delhi
The Commonwealth of Nations, often known as simply the Commonwealth, is an intergovernmental organisation of 53 member states that are mostly former territories of the British Empire. The Commonwealth covers more than 29,958,050 km2, equivalent to 20% of the world's land area and spans all six inhabited continents. With an estimated population of over 2.4 billion people, nearly a third of the world population lives in Commonwealth countries!
This year the Commonwealth Championships — just like the last year — is divided into 15 categories. We have 14 age categories and one open event. Earlier, the age category prizes used to be given based on the open tournament itself, but since the last year, the Commonwealth Association have wanted to pit the youngsters against players of their age category in order to determine the medals. This is the reason why you have under-8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20 in both open and girls section, which comes to 14 age category events.
Deep Sengupta is the top seed of the tournament | Photo: Amruta Mokal
In the absolute Open section, we find a very good turnout of Indian GMs, but the tournament lacks International Grandmasters.
In the first round, Lalith Babu played a very nice game from the white side of the King's Indian and won against Karan Trivedi.
It's positions like these that Jacob Aagaard explains in the chapter "Comparison" of his book Grand Master Preparation - Calculation. What Jacob essentially mentions is that you go ahead with one line, for example, Bxe5 Bg5 Qxh3 Qd2 f4 and now in this position replace the bishop on e5 with pawn on e5, assuming that if you took dxe5 this position would have arisen! You have to compare both the positions in this particular manner and when that is done, you have to choose which move is better. It is quite apparent that the bishop on e5 works much better than one on g7 hemmed in by his own pawn on e5. Karan's decision to take on e5 with the pawn was wrong and he lost the game. ...Bxe5! would have given Black a good position.
Bologan: "If you study this DVD carefully and solve the interactive exercises you will also enrich your chess vocabulary, your King's Indian vocabulary, build up confidence in the King's Indian and your chess and win more games."
Lalith Babu, number 23 in India | Photo: Amruta Mokal
The biggest casualty of day one was IM Tania Sachdev who blundered in a completely winning position against V.S. Negi.
Tania, in this position, played 43...Ra8. Can you see how White can come back into the game?
The aim of this course is to help you understand how to make tactical opportunities arise as well as to sharpen your tactical vision - these selected lectures will help to foster your overall tactical understanding.
Tania's don't mess with me look! After her first-round loss, she was back with a win! | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Even after Negi played 44.Ne2, the game would not have ended had Tania played Qc4, as Nxd4 is met with Rd8. But in the game, Tania played 44...Qc5 and after 45.Nxd4 Rd846.Qb3+, the game was all but over!
Abhijit Kunte won a nice game against talented J Saranya | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Try to assess the consequences of Nxd4. Kunte calculates the complexities well.
Using ideas and games of great masters from the past, the famous Ukrainian trainer GM Adrian Mikhalchishin deals with various themes.
The art of winning won positions!
A lot of people complain that they are unable to win winning positions. Often they reach winning positions, and then blunder, or make inaccuracies and the game either ends in a draw or a loss. What exactly happens there? Why are we not able to finish a winning position? Well, apart from distractions, lack of concentration and getting really excited or scared, the main reason often comes down to lack of calculation. I think it is extremely important to keep your emotions aside and calculate with the same energy and resoluteness when you are winning, as you do at the start of a game. Here's a very good example that I would like to share with you to make my point clear:
White is just winning here. He has excellently placed pieces, black king is weak and to add insult to injury, black is a pawn down! But it is very important to calculate accurately and finish off the game in the next few moves. Look how Pranavananda goes wrong and very nearly makes a draw from this completely winning position.
In the Open section, Shantanu Bhambure fought really hard, but once he had a positionally lost situation out of the opening against a player of Deep Sengupta's calibre, it was not going to be easy to survive! Yet, the game was quite complex and there is a lot to learn from it.
I have analyzed the opening phase because I think Deep's idea is very interesting for white players who go for the London:
"Simple yet aggressive!" Enjoy this new exciting DVD by Simon Williams. Let the famouns Grandmaster from England show you how to gain a very exciting yet well founded opening game with the London System (1.d4 d5 2.Bf4).
Shantanu Bhambure | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Vishnu Prasanna played a fine game out of a sedate opening to beat his top Kenyan opponent Ben Magana.
The Italian Game is considered a sound but quiet opening without early trades, giving rise to rich positions where plans are more important than forced variations. So shows black's plans on this DVD.
Vishnu Prasanna (click or tap to expand) | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Debashis Das showed why a GM is a dangerous beast!
First, he made a great positional decision and then followed it up with tactical brilliance!
Debashis Das | Photo: Amruta Mokal
Learning the Ruy Lopez, Exchange variation
Here is a very popular position of the exchange variation of the Ruy Lopez:
Do you have a problem playing it from the black side? Well, you should definitely spare 20 minutes and listen to GM Pravin Thipsay's fine analysis.
GM Pravin Thipsay explains the intricacies of his game against Kiran Manisha Mohanty
Deepan won a fine game with a rook sacrifice towards the end. Here's a small task for you:
Calculate the consequences of Rxg6 in this video and then check what Deepan has to say:
Always something to learn from Deepan!
White has just taken on d6. How do you defend as Black?
P. Karthikeyan shares his analysis with us
Final thoughts
We hope you got a bit wiser from the lessons above, though perhaps not as wise as IM Wazeer Khan from Uttar Pradesh, possibly the oldest active IM from India.
Sagar ShahSagar is an International Master from India with two GM norms. He loves to cover chess tournaments, as that helps him understand and improve at the game he loves so much. He is the co-founder and CEO of ChessBase India, the biggest chess news portal in the country. His YouTube channel has over a million subscribers, and to date close to a billion views. ChessBase India is the sole distributor of ChessBase products in India and seven adjoining countries, where the software is available at a 60% discount. compared to International prices.
In this course, you’ll learn how to take the initiative against the London and prevent White from comfortably playing their usual system by playing 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bf4 Nh5.
London System Powerbase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
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