The Covid-19 situation has been tough on professional players. All the top tournaments across the world have been called off. So, what is the 2012 World Championship Challenger Boris Gelfand up to? He has been working extremely hard to finish two books, with Jacob Aagaard and Quality Chess. In between he even played in online chess events. It gives us immense pleasure that he found time from his busy schedule and agreed to be the guest of the 6th episode of Grandmaster Chess series.

What's Grandmaster Chess?

After completing the series of Improving Chess  (100 episodes!) ChessBase India is now moving to a new series, with top stand-up comedians: a top grandmaster shows his best game, choosing ten critical moments, where the comedians try to guess the moves. The grandmaster helps to clear a lot of doubts and improve the chess level of the comedians and viewers – and give insight into his chess thinking. At the same time the host of the show, IM Sagar Shah, tries to ensure that maximum learning takes place.

Every time a critical position is reached the comedians get a specified amount of time to come up with their moves. Based on their answers, they are either awarded one full point for the right move, half a point if their move made sense, but was not the best move, and zero points if the suggestion was illogical.

At the end of the session there is a winner for the day, and the points are accumulated to find the ultimate winner at the end of the series! How long will this last? This is not fixed, but if previous experience is anything to go by, we can be sure that this one would not end before the 50 episodes mark!

The GMs who have been on previous shows are Vidit Gujrathi, Tania Sachdev, Surya Ganguly, Parimarjan Negi and Srinath Narayanan (click to review).

ChessBase India channels on YouTube:

• Improve your chess with IM Sagar Shah; 
• Improving chess with Comedians; 
• Chess Principles for Beginners
• Classics you must know
• And many more.

Achievements of Boris Gelfand

1. He is a six-time World Championship candidate (1991, 1994–95, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2013)
2. Winner of the Chess World Cup in 2009
3. Winner of  the 2011 Candidates Tournament, making him challenger for the World Chess Championship 2012.
4. Tied the World Championship match with Anand in 2012 at 6-6 in Classical time control before losing in the rapids with a score of 1.5-2.5.
5. Winner of major tournaments at Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg, Moscow, Linares and Dos Hermanas.
6. Has competed in eleven Chess Olympiads
7. Held a place within the top 30 players ranked by FIDE from January 1990 to October 2017.