ChessBase Magazine #155 – Never write off Gelfand

ChessBase Magazine #155

Review by Prof. Nagesh Havanur

They had written off Gelfand. His form had reached its peak with his world championship duel with Anand last year. However, he missed his opportunity, having come so close to success. Then followed the Candidates’ Tournament this year and he finished a miserable fifth.

Chess has become a fierce competitive sport demanding tremendous energy and stamina. At this level it is only for the young. Perhaps it’s time for the veteran to retire, murmured the pundits and even diehard fans of Boris began to worry about their hero. But no one had reckoned with Boris. He staged a triumphant return to form with second prize in the Alekhine Memorial Tournament, Paris and has now followed it up with first prize ahead of Carlsen and Mamedyarov in the Tal Memorial Tournament.

It speaks for the strength of the field that both Anand and Kramnik occupied the last places in the tournament table. This issue of CBM 155 rightly celebrates the outstanding event, with the tournament winner himself annotating the encounter with Nakamura who was leading till that point. Magnus fans, however, had less to complain about, with him beating both Anand and Kramnik in this event. Arguably, his performance was better in although he came “only” second behind Karjakin. He did have the satisfaction of beating the tournament winner, though.

That decisive encounter is beautifully annotated by Mihail Marin in this issue.

Over the years Magnus has turned into a shrewd psychologist over the board, lulling the opponent into complacency over better positions and then outwitting him in ensuing complications. In this respect he is following the footsteps of an illustrious predecessor, Dr. Emanuel Lasker. The game shown here is a fine example.

Reports on other events are as worthy of attention, especially the FIDE Grand Prix and European Individual Championship. For reasons of space I shall not dwell on them here.

In all there are 2133 OTB games of which 124 are annotated. The Tele-Chess section carries a game file of 8000 games and 46 additional games are annotated by Juan Morgado and Roberto Alvarez. In my previous reviews I have not been able to do justice to the efforts of this duo.This time we are going to see an exciting game with fine analysis by Roberto Alvarez.

A terrific lesson in the art of defence and counterattack

This brings me to other sections of the DVD. There are as many as fourteen opening surveys ranging from the Italian to the King’s Indian. Here I shall mention a few of them. The first relates to 3.Nf3 a6 line in Queen’s Gambit Accepted. Alexey Kuzmin, the author of the survey opines that the classical line 4.e3 b5 is OK for Black, although playing for a win is ruled out. He does not see much in the other line 4.e4. But I think it deserves a reappraisal. The second relates to a rare bird in Spanish, 3…Nd4 (pun intended). Here the opening video by Robert Ris is worth a watch. Last but not least is Mihail Marin’s opening video on QGD Exchange Variation, very useful for 1.d4 d5 players.

Besides these surveys the DVD also offers trademark sections with middlegame tactics and endgame exercises. Here I have space for just one training position.

All in all, there is much to learn and enjoy in this DVD.

Recommended

• Full description of the contents of CBM 154