1/30/2012 – The Greek grandmaster is a highly experienced chess trainer and chess author. He has participated in the ChessBase sponsored program of training sessions for talented young players. In addition he has recorded a number of training DVDs, the latest of which deals with the endgame. In addition to a description of this product we bring you a valuable lesson in an important ending.
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ChessBase is a personal, stand-alone chess database that has become the standard throughout the world. Everyone uses ChessBase, from the World Champion to the amateur next door. It is the program of choice for anyone who loves the game and wants to know more about it.
In this video course, twenty-nine examples with multiple questions are presented in the interactive format, which is ideal for a range of playing strengths. Step by step you will be taken through the complex positions.
€29.90
Efstratios
Grivas: Chess Expertise Step by Step
Vol. 4: Endgame Magic
The last part of the game is where a well educated player can set the opponent
the most problems. The weight of each move increases; each mistake can prove
very costly, great accuracy is required.
In our times, with the abolition of adjournments and the increasingly faster
time-controls, endgame knowledge has acquired greater significance than never
before.
This DVD, called ‘Endgame Magic’, tries to cover important parts
on this field and help to assimilate knowledge and understand in depth the proper
handling of endgame in certain cases. We will examine how to benefit from the
isolani in the endgame, how to try to win or defend when a rook and rook-pawn
vs a bishop and rook-pawn (on the same side) endgame arise, the technique of
the ‘square’ when the advantage of the exchange-up seems to be difficult
to capitalise, how to win or defend with a plain queen vs a plain rook, how
to benefit from our opponent’s shattered pawns, how to play some specific
pawn endings and finally what are the problems of the exchange-up when facing
the bishop-pair.
As Laurence Fishburn said in ‘Matrix’, ‘There is a difference
between knowing the path and walking the path’.
Video running time: 4 hours
Video sampler from Efstratios Grivas: Chess Expertise Step
by Step, Vol. 4: Endgame Magic
Earlier this year GM Grivas held a series of lectures for young German talents,
in the offices of ChessBase in Hamburg. The aim of this series of lectures is
to enable participants to teach young and gifted players in schools and chess
clubs, and to educate trainers and chess teachers not only in their own countries
but also on an international basis.
Successful chess trainer GM Efstratios Grivas
The material started to develop in early 2004 and was used Grivas' personal
training sessions, where he developed a system based on serious sport (chess
is treated like a sport) and chess material (focusing on middlegame and endgame).
In 2005 this material was first printed in Greek, in a series of training books
called ‘Skakistiki Proponisi’ (six volumes, 680 pages). It then
appeared in an improved version in an English series ‘Chess
College’ (Gambit 2006, three volumes, translator Sotiris Logothetis)
and ‘Practical
Endgame Play’ (Everyman 2008). It was also translated (in another
improved version) into Turkish in 2009. Finally a further improved version appeared
in the latest FIDE book for training the trainers called ‘Syllabus’
(FIDE 2010, proofer Andrew Martin).
"I use this material to make my students understand that health and other
sport assets are valuable for a chess player's improvement, and not just never-end
analysis in openings," says Stratos (as his friends call him). "For
example in Turkey, where I am working on my program, all my trainees exercise
some physical activity in accordance with their chess education." Since
middle of 2006, when he started training youthful Turkish talents, three players
have made their grandmaster norms and two more are close to this goal. And a
number of IMs have also arisen in the process.
In the meantime Grivas, Adrian Mikhalchishin, Alexander Beliavsky and Georg
Mohr are cooperating to produce a total training system, which will appear in
30 books (around 3,000 pages) based on the idea of full training in the middle
and endgame. The work is being edited by the Turkish Chess Federation (which
has the rights) and for the moment it is printed only in the Turkish language.
The project started in early 2010 and it will be completed in 2012.
Trainers (and players) all over the world can use the series presented on
the ChessBase news page freely. Any question can be addressed directly to the
author: GrivasEfs (at) yahoo.co.uk.
Grivas in a lecture session for young German talents
5. Activity of Bishops and Knights
Terminology
This part of the lecture is devoted to cases of Good Bishop vs Bad Bishop
and Good Knight vs Bad Knight. But rather than using the terms ‘good’
or ‘bad’, we will mostly opt for ‘active’ and ‘activity’, in order to best understand
the comparison between these specific minor pieces.
The Bishop’s Concept Description
An active bishop can be a positional or a tactical asset, and therefore a
permanent or temporary feature of a position. The active bishop occurs frequently
in practice, and its owner can, for a number of moves, dictate the course of
the game. He should usually utilize this time to get an attack or generally
the initiative going, an important feature in modern chess practice. When there
are various fixed pawns on the board, it is important to have a bishop which
can attack the enemy pawns. This is known as the good or active bishop. The
advantage of having such a bishop is not only that it can threaten the opponent's
pawns, but also that it can move around more easily, its own pawns not being
in its way. In contrast with all this, there is the bad bishop.
Simple Endings
In order to evaluate the presence of a good/bad bishop in any given position,
it is important to consider how much material remains on the board. The superiority
or the weakness of the good/bad bishop is highlighted as the endgame approaches.
And this brings us to the important conclusion that, while the bad bishop can
be quite useful at times, this asset diminishes with exchanges or the unsuitable
placing of other pieces.
The following three important endings are typical examples:
Example 1
This type of endgame is always very pleasant for White. Black's bad bishop
and his weak a5 and e5 pawns make his life miserable and impose on him laborious
defensive duties. White is hardly risking to lose (except if he overdoes it!),
but of course the main question is if he can win. In such endgames it is ‘hard’
to claim that White is better; it must be proved that he either wins or that
the ending is a draw.
In my opinion White wins, following a four-step plan:
Activate his king and place him on the c4 square, from where he will threaten
to penetrate Black's camp through the weak light squares.
Activate his bishop.
Move his king to the kingside, trying to penetrate.
Use his kingside pawns to break through on the kingside.
Let's examine all this in practice:
The other two examples will follow soon...
Efstratios Grivas
Efstratios Grivas is a grandmaster and highly experienced chess trainer
and chess author.
He lives in Athens, and he is also a FIDE Senior Trainer (Secretary of
the FIDE Trainers' Commission), an International FIDE Chess Arbiter and
an International FIDE Chess Organizer. He has represented his country
on a great many occasions, winning the fourth position in the World Junior
Championship 1985, an individual gold medal at the 1989 European Team
Championship and an individual silver medal at the 1998 Olympiad.
In 2010 he was awarded the worldwide highly important FIDE TRG Awards
– the Boleslavsky Medal (best author) for 2009.
Previous lectures
Grivas: Chess Expertise Step by Step 05.11.2011 – Greek grandmaster Efstratios Grivas
is a highly experienced chess trainer and chess author. He has participated
in the ChessBase sponsored program of training sessions for talented young
players. In addition he has recorded a number of training DVDs, the latest
of which deals with rook handling in the endgame, with four hours of personal
video instructions. Do
not miss this one.
Grivas Training: Building a Repertoire 18.04.2011 – "In contrast to the middlegame
and the endgame, where theory is objective and accepted by everyone, in
the opening each chess player makes his choices in accordance with his
emotions and his personal experience. Noopeningloses, noopeningwins."
World renown chess trainer GM Efstratios Grivas explains how you should
build your repertoire in Part
3 of his lecture series.
Grivas Training: Getting to Know Ourselves 13.02.2011 – Young chess players need to be
able to identify the assets and weaknesses of their chess personalities.
Many trainers and trainees have wondered how this can be done properly.
The basic resource are one's recent games, which are used to produce an
"X-ray image" of one's chess-self. GM Efstratios Grivas, a world-class
trainer, tells us how to go about it, in Part
2 of his lecture series.
ChessBase Training with GM Efstratios Grivas (Part 1) 28.01.2011 – How do you help talented young
chess players to realize their potential? Working with a world-class trainer
is a good way to start. ChessBase has started a program to sponsor a series
of training sessions, which started, logically, in our offices in Hamburg.
Five young talents got a full-day session with an internationally known
chess coach, who has graciously placed his entire lecture at
our disposal.
The starting point of this video course is 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 e5. Rogozenco explains the ins and outs of the mainline and sidelines.
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The greater part of the material on which the Sicilian Sveshnikov Powerbook 2023 is based, comes from the engine room in playchess.com: 199 000 games. This imposing number has been supplemented with another 14 000 games from the Mega Database and from cor
Most players prefer to attack rather than defend. But what is the correct way to do it? GM Dr Karsten Müller has compiled many rules and motifs to guide you, along with sharpening your intuition for the exceptions.
Videos: Caro-Kann with 2.Nf3 d5 3,d3 by Christian Bauer and Saemisch Benoni by David Navara. "Lucky bag" with 45 annotated games - analyses by Anish Giri, Alexander Motylev, Romain Edouard et al. Update service with 43,000 new games.
2nd Move Anti-Sicilian Powerbase 2023 is a database and contains a total of 10131 games from Mega 2023 or the Correspondence Database 2022, of which 847 are annotated.
Powerbook based on more than 508 000 games in which White already sidesteps the main variations of the Sicilian on move 2.
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