2/1/2018 – There's a lot more going on every year in Gibraltar aside from the main Masters tournament. From player interviews, to master classes, to the always entertaining "Battle of the Sexes" here's some of what's been happening. | Photo: Sophie Triay
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In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of King’s Indian and Pirc structures with colours reversed, often arising from the French or Sicilian.
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Massive Media
The media team has been prolific, posting around a dozen video clips each day, hosted by IM Tania Sachdev. These mostly consist of short spot-interviews, but there was also an hour-long lecture from Nigel Short on "Becoming a Candidate", and a lively humanising short piece featuring several of the competitors:
Rapid-fire questions for chess stars
Tania followed up with a personal five minute featurette:
Tradewise Gibraltar Chess Festival through Tania Sachdev's Eyes
Another regular feature of Gibraltar which returned again this year is the "Masterclasses" where one of the participants is invited to present an hour lecture on a theme. This year's guest stars were Russian GM Valentina Gunina, and Armenian-American Varuzhan Akobian.
On this DVD a team of experts gets to the bottom of Kasparov's play. In over 8 hours of video running time the authors Rogozenko, Marin, Reeh and Müller cast light on four important aspects of Kasparov's play: opening, strategy, tactics and endgame.
No other World Champion was more infamous both inside and outside the chess world than Bobby Fischer. On this DVD, a team of experts shows you the winning techniques and strategies employed by the 11th World Champion.
Grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco delves into Fischer’s openings, and retraces the development of his repertoire. What variations did Fischer play, and what sources did he use to arm himself against the best Soviet players? Mihail Marin explains Fischer’s particular style and his special strategic talent in annotated games against Spassky, Taimanov and other greats. Karsten Müller is not just a leading international endgame expert, but also a true Fischer connoisseur.
Another traditional and unique feature of GibChess is the "Battle of the Sexes", which is available in a three minute version of condensed highlights, and a full webcam stream of an hour and forty minutes. Take your pick or watch them both!
Battle of the Sexes highlights
Full and unedited Battle of the Sexes
Long Story Short
In between a post-game interview and a master class is "long story short" a slightly longer but still digestible chat with a celebrity grandmaster. This year host Tania Sachdev talked to Russian GM Alexandra Kosteniuk, and Indian GM (the second after Anand to surpass 2700 Elo) Pentala Harikrishna.
Alexandra Kosteniuk
Pentala Harikrishna
Q & A panel
A new initiative this year was a question and answer panel night, hosted by webcast co-host GM Simon Williams, featuring panelists David Howell, Emil Sutovsky, Elisabeth Paehts, Batchimeg Tuvshintugs and Nigel Short.
Lots more chess
The list of players who chased Nakamura over the past ten days reads like the who's-who of top chess, with a few exceptions. The name of the French Grand Master Jules Moussard is reasonably new. The 22-year-old has won the youth championships of his age group several times. In 2004, he was split first in the Under-10 World Youth. He equalled Vachier-Lagrave for much of the tournamentat until losing to the French number one, and the English number one Michael Adams in back-to-back games.
On this DVD Davies presents a variety of tricks and traps that can arise after 1.d4 by White, breaking them down into a number of different categories. The examples are designed to appeal to players of every level and feature a wide variety of systems. Besides coverage of some of the classics, Davies reveals some little known ploys and explains how likely these traps are to succeed. Accordingly the viewer should gain some psychological insights into the art of trapping and this should help his game as a whole. Video runnig time: 4 hours.
John Saunders, reporting from Gibraltar for the official site, provided daily annotated games, which we've aggregated in one place below, along with a slection of player interviews. But there's much much more on the tournament's YouTube channel.
Click or tap a game in the list to switch games
Indian prodigy Praggnananda after round three
'Prag' did not manage to score a GM norm
Vassily Ivanchuk after round five
The other Indian supertalent in Gib, Nihal Sarin, after round eight
The Caro Kann is a very tricky opening. Black’s play is based on controlling and fighting for key light squares. It is a line which was very fashionable in late 90s and early 2000s due to the successes of greats like Karpov, Anand, Dreev etc. Recently due to strong engines lot of key developments have been made and some new lines have been introduced, while others have been refuted altogether. I have analyzed the new trends carefully and found some new ideas for Black.
Finally, if you can't make it to Gibraltar yourself, you take a mini-tour of the Rock with some of the players in this extensive photo album from house photographer Sophie Triay.
Batchimeg Tuvshintugs, Josefine Heinemann, Valentina Gunina, Irine Kharisma Sukandar, Margit Brokko, Karl Erik Olde, Pavel Tregubov, Alexandra Kosteniuk | Photo: Sophie Triay
Macauley PetersonMacauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.
GM Blohberger presents a complete two-part repertoire for Black: practical, clear, and flexible – instead of endless theory, you’ll get straightforward concepts and strategies that are easy to learn and apply.
GM Blohberger presents a complete two-part repertoire for Black: practical, clear, and flexible – instead of endless theory, you’ll get straightforward concepts and strategies that are easy to learn and apply.
GM Blohberger presents a complete two-part repertoire for Black: practical, clear, and flexible – instead of endless theory, you’ll get straightforward concepts and strategies that are easy to learn and apply.
Opening videos: Sipke Ernst brings the Ulvestad Variation up to date + Part II of ‘Mikhalchishin's Miniatures’. Special: Jan Werle shows highlights from the FIDE Grand Swiss 2025 in the video. ‘Lucky bag’ with 40 analyses by Ganguly, Illingworth et al.
In this video course, Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explores the fascinating world of King’s Indian and Pirc structures with colours reversed, often arising from the French or Sicilian.
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