Alterman on the Max Lange Attack

He never lost a tempo, the center was the main goal of his strategy. When he had an advantage in development he would smash open the position for a crushing attack. "His mastery of open positions was so vast that little new has been learned about such positions after him," wrote Botvinnik. On Sunday GM Boris Alterman lectures on the 'Morphy Attack', on Monday you can try it out in a simul against him. Details...

Boris Alterman writes: The topic of the today's lecture is th "Max Lange Attack " 1. e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.d4 ed 5. 0-0 Bc5!? This black move move characterizes the starting point of the Max Lange Attack. Black protects the center pawn d4 and gets ready for the powerful counterattack.

Being one of the stormiest opening systems for more then 50 years of the 19th century, the Max Lange Attack has rarely been a guest in the recent games. The reason seems to be very practical one. After 5…Bc5 we get very unbalanced positions which you have to know extremely well, otherwise one inaccurate move could cost you a game.

This involved opening system had been analyzed by many well-known strong chess players of the 19th century, such as Staunton, Chigorin, Tarrasch, Rubinstein and others.

GM Boris Alterman is 34, and lives in Israel. He was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, where he started playing chess at the age of 7. His career highlights include earning the IM title in 1991 and the GM title in 1992.He is the winner of the following Open and GM tournaments: Haifa 1993; Bad Homburg 1996; Rishon LeZion 1996; Beijing 1995 and 1997; Munchen 1992. His hobbies include computers and swimming, his favourite food is Chinese, he speaks fluent Russian, Hebrew and English.

Boris has worked for and against Garry Kasparov. In 1999 he assisted the world champion in his spectacular Microsoft match Kasparov vs The World, and was also part of the team that built up the web portal Kasparov Chess. In 2003, on the other hand, he was part of the Deep Junior team that gave Kasparov a run for his money in the New York match.

Boris Alterman will hold his lectures on Sundays at 21:00h Server time and a simultaneous exhibition on Mondays at 21:00h server time (in the "Simultaneous Exhibitions" room).

Here are the world-wide starting times for Alterman's lectures.
The simuls are at the same times one day later.