"ChessBase
Magazine 150 is packed with enough material to keep even the greediest of chess
students feel that there hunger has been satiated for some time to come. The
tournament coverage includes comprehensive reports from Biel and Dortmund. Indeed,
in the case of the former there are numerous videos featuring post-mortem analysis
by the players themselves, running at 1 hour and 40 minutes!" – From
a review by Sean
Marsh.
Professional chess is a world that knows no mercy. Often “nice” guys finish last and “mean” guys finish first. So on the rare occasion when a nice guy finishes on top he deserves applause. And who is a nice guy, if not Wang Hao, that gifted player from China? Yet when he was declared winner of the recently concluded Biel tournament there were dissenting voices. No, it was nothing personal. It was all about the three point rule that enabled Wang to come first. On the normal count he should have finished second with 6.5/10 (+6, =1, –3) and Carlsen first with 7/10 (+4, =6, –0). But the three point rule gave him a whopping score of 19 points as against Carlsen’s 18. The irony was not lost on observers: Magnus had not only remained unbeaten, but also inflicted two defeats on Wang in this tournament.
Where did I go wrong? – Wang Hao and Magnus Carlsen in Biel
A ChessBase reader wryly
commented: "Karpov has long ago made clear the stupidity of the 3-1-0
points system. Take a nine-round tournament: one who wins three games and loses
six games gets the same amount of points as the one who scores nine draws. Well,
one more proof with Biel 2012."
While I agree with the observation I should mention that Wang Hao played his
heart out in this tournament and took some terrible risks to score as well as
he did. ChessBase Magazine 150 gives him his due and also offers a comprehensive
view of the event.
Wang Hao, the first Chinese player to win an international Super GM tournament
One player who could have added greater zest to the tournament was Alexander Morozevich. Sadly, he had to quit on account of illness, but not before this entertaining game that saw him at the receiving end.
A brilliant miniature with fine annotations by Krasenkow in CBM 150. Do not miss other heavyweight battles like Wang Hao-Carlsen in which Black knights perform some wonders to give Magnus a victory.
The other major event, Dortmund, was won by Caruana ahead of Karjakin and Kramnik who finished second and third. The Dortmund trophy is no longer the preserve of Vladimir Kramnik, who has won it a record number of ten times in the past. In this tournament he did play some inspired chess as in the game against Gustafsson.
Shall I surprise him? Vladimir Kramnik at the start of game against...
... German GM Jan Gustafsson: Vlad playing the King’s Indian? Am I
dreaming?
But a marathon draw with Peter Leko left him completely drained. Sensing his weariness, Caruana, his next round opponent attacked from the start and was rewarded for his effort. The game is well annotated by the winner in CBM 150. The opening in the above game deserves a special mention: Caruana met Kramnik’s Berlin Wall with 4.d3 reaching a complex middlegame. One wonders what would have happened if Kasparov had adopted a similar strategy against Kramnik in the Brain Games World Championship 2000 instead of struggling with all those dreary endings, essentially a Vlad territory.
Something for everyone: a boat-load of content on the ChessBase Magazine
150 DVD
This brings me to the other sections of the Magazine. There are 13 detailed opening surveys ranging from the Slav to the Sicilian. Among them I would single out Evgeny Postny’s update on the Caro-Kann Classical Variation and Martin Breutigam’s delineation of the Trompowsky Attack with 3. h4!? The other surveys are as good. However, I do not share Arkadij Rotstein’s enthusiasm for the Snake Benoni. The black bishop is first developed at d6 and then forced to retreat to f8. His only hope for activity is placement at g7 after …g6. All this amounts to poor development and loss of time. In my view the Modern Benoni is a more logical system. Here the bishop is posted at g7 in the beginning itself.
Apart from these surveys, there are the regular exercises in opening traps and middle game tactics. Essentially, these exercises are aimed at the intermediate player. However, Karsten Müller’s commentary on endings belongs to a higher order. Here is a glimpse of the analysis.
Overall, this DVD has 417 games of which nearly 100 are annotated. While the absence of annotations by players like Carlsen and Karjakin is a cause for concern, it is compensated by Karsten Müller and Dorian Rogozenco’s live commentary and notes by outstanding experts like Mihail Marin and Igor Stohl.
