3/28/2019 – With an Elo rating of 2736, Vladislav Artemiev is the top seed at the European Championships in Skopje. And after a convincing attacking victory in round eight, he drew in the ninth round, along with the other players with 6½ points, resulting in a seven-way tie on 7 points together with two other young Russians — Andrey Esipenko and Grigoriy Oparin (pictured) — plus Kacper Piorun, Maxim Rodshtein, Nils Grandelius and David Anton. GM DANIEL FERNANDEZ examines the highlights. | Photo: Patricia Claros
new: ChessBase 16 - Mega package Edition 2022
Your key to fresh ideas, precise analyses and targeted training!
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. Start your personal success story with ChessBase and enjoy the game even more.
The aim of these Dvd's is to build a repertoire after 1.c4 and 2.g3 for White. The first DVD includes the systems 1...e5, the Dutch and Indian setups. The second DVD includes the systems with 1...c5, 1...c6 and 1...e6.
The new Opening Encyclopaedia offers fast access to all openings. Openings are sorted via the menu by name & ECO Code for fast and easy access to your favorite openings.
€99.90
Artemiev on the Attack
The quintet of players with 6½ out of seven rounds drew on Wednesday, allowing two more players from the 6-point group — Grigory Oparin and David Anton — to catch up and join the lead.
Now Artemiev, who also celebrated his 21st birthday on March 5th, has his eyes set on the title of European Champion. In the eighth round he underlined his ambitions with a nice attacking victory against Zbynek Hracek. With this victory, "the new Vlad" was in 13th place in the live world rating list, ahead of fellow Russians Sergey Karjakin and the recently retired Vladimir Kramnik.
Artemiev vs Hracek | Photo: Patricia Claros
GM Daniel Fernandez takes a look at this fascinating game and other highlights of the eighth round:
Click or tap a game in the list to switch games
The other top pairings of the eighth round all ended in draws leaving five players with 6½ points at the top of the standings.
The World Cup spots are going to be in the back of the minds of many of the players in Skopje, and we will see who's really trying to win the title versus prioritising qualification.
The Sicilian has been known for decades as the most reliable way for Black to obtain an unbalanced but good position. Among the most popular Sicilians at the top level the two that certainly stand out are the Najdorf and the Paulsen.
Andrey Esipenko adopted the fashionable 6.♘b3 in the Sicilian against Nils Grandelius with the idea to meet 6...♞c6 7.♗e3 e6 with 8.g4:
This idea has been seen already in Skopje in earlier rounds (e.g. in Valsecchi vs Semjonovs, round five). White claims that ♘b3 is more useful than the alternative h3 preparing g4. In this game, however, Grandelius had no trouble equalising and mass-exchanges in the middlegame led to a 28-move draw, the first among the leading group to finish.
Grandelius with his girlfriend Ellen Kakulidis | Photo: Patricia Claros
The Rossolimo Variation of the Sicilian Defence (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) is always an excellent choice with White if you want to avoid the deeply analysed main lines of the Open Sicilian. Alexei Shirov provides you with the requisite understanding of the opening's subtleties, by annotating extensively his most important games in this variation. During his career, he has played the 3.Bb5 system with both colours and he shares with you on this DVD his valuable experience.
Artemiev showed he's not trying to avoid a fight in the ninth round on the top board as Black against Kacper Piorun. Piorun met Artemiev's Sicilian with 3.♗b5+, but later transposed into an Open Sicilian Maroczy setup.
After 12.♖ac1 Artemiev passed up playing ...♜xc4, although it was possible to do so. 13.♘b3 ♛a6 14.e5 looks a bit scary but Black has 14...♞e4 (14...dxe5 15.♘c5 is great for White) and the position remains level. Instead, after thinking it over for 16 minutes he castled 12...O-O and returned the knight to d7: 13.b3 ♞bd7 leaving White with a pleasant position.
A few moves later, Piorun employed a typical trick to force the exchange of queens and pressurise the black d-pawn:
19.♘d5 ♛xd2 20.♘xf6+ ♝xf6 21.♖cxd2 — but even with a slight plus, Piorun was unable to make serious headway in the face of Artemiev's defence and by the time control he was able to solve most of the problems, liquidating into a rook and knight ending with a pawn less but a holdable position.
The purpose of this DVD is to explain the viewer all main methods of defence: exchanging pieces, creating a fortress, eliminating dangerous enemy pieces, escaping the danger zone with the king, improving the position of the pieces.
Piorun did miss one golden opportunity to play for a win, however:
Here, 48.♔f4 allowed Artemiev to equalise with 48...♜d4+ forcing the king back 49.♔g3 ♞e4+ winning the g5 pawn because 50.♔g4 fails to ♞d6+, ♜xh4 and ♞f5+.
Instead 48.♔g4 aims to meet 48...♜d4+ with 49.♔h5! winning. E.g. 49...♜d1 50.♞f4+ ♚f8 51.g6. Otherwise 48...♞d7 49.♖e8 is also very strong for White.
In any case, the draw keeps both players in shared first place.
GM Daniel Fernandez takes a close look at this game, as well as other key battles from round nine:
Endings with rook and minor piece against rook and minor piece occur very frequently, even more often than rook endings, yet there's not much literature on them. This endgame DVD fills this gap. The four different material constellations rook and knight vs rook and knight, rooks and opposite coloured (and same coloured ) bishops and rook and bishop vs rook and knight are dealt with. In view of the different material constellations Karsten Mueller explains many guidelines like e.g. "With knights even a small initiative weighs heavily".
Artemiev vs Piorun | Photo: Patricia Claros
Maxim Rodshtein continued his strong play in Skopje, this time against Anton Korobov. The Ukrainian number two thought that move 9 was already a good time to lash out with g5!? — played after a 10-minute deliberation:
There followed 10.hxg5 h4 (played after a further 7 minutes of consideration) 11.♖xh4 ♜xh4 12.gxh4 ♞f5 and here Rodshtein found a clever idea which is the best way to maximize White's advantage: 13.♔d2! ♞xh4 14.♕h1!
The Israeli hung on to the extra pawn and manoeuvred patiently, eschewing a couple of entreaties to repeat moves. When he reached move 40, however, he seemed to hit a wall.
Rodshtein's 41.♖d2 c4 42.♕d4 (42.♔a1 ♝xd5 43.exd5 ♞f4! 44.♕xf4 c3! results in a queen and pawn ending) ♞e7 allowed Korobov to win back his pawn and a draw was soon agreed.
But 41.♕b3 was the way to keep the game going — the main point being that 41...♛xb3 42.axb3 ♜xb3 is good for White after 43.♘c7+ and 44.♘xe6. Despite the material equality, White's g-pawn is dangerous and his bishop is more useful than Black's knight.
Korobov, who only had 6 points, remains a half point back | Photo: Patricia Claros
On this DVD GM Adrian Mikhalchishin presents games of the World Champions of the past to explain typical patterns and strategic concepts of these games and to show how grandmasters apply these ideas today.
Commentary by GM Ivan Sokolov and GM Adrian Mikhalchishin | European Chess TV on YouTube
Macauley PetersonMacauley served as the Editor in Chief of ChessBase News from July 2017 to March 2020. He is the producer of The Full English Breakfast chess podcast, and was an Associate Producer of the 2016 feature documentary, Magnus.
Videos: Romain Edouard starts his series "Critical Lines in the Dragon", Leon Mendonca shows Caro-Kann (3...dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bf5 5.Ng3 Bg6 6.N1e2). "Lucky bag" with 44 annotated games - analyses by Kapnisis, Mikhalchishin, Sasikiran and many others!
Let us learn together how to find the best spot for the queen in the early middlegame, how to navigate this piece around the board, how to time the queen attack, how to decide whether to exchange it or not, and much more!
Let us explore together how the rooks should enter the game in the early middlegame, how they operate on open files and how they sometimes join a deadly attack, being transferred in front of the pawn chain and many more topics!
Let us learn together how to find the best spot for the queen in the early middlegame, how to navigate this piece around the board, how to time the queen attack, how to decide whether to exchange it or not, and much more!
Ruy Lopez Powerbase 2023 is a database and contains a total of 10947 games from Mega 2023 and the Correspondence Database 2022, of which 1232 are annotated.
In this 60 Minutes video course you will learn the ins-and-outs of the Grivas Sicilian which starts after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Qb6!
€9.90
Fritztrainer in App Store
for iPads and iPhones
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, analysis cookies and marketing cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies. Here you can make detailed settings or revoke your consent (if necessary partially) with effect for the future. Further information can be found in our data protection declaration.
Pop-up for detailed settings
We use cookies and comparable technologies to provide certain functions, to improve the user experience and to offer interest-oriented content. Depending on their intended use, cookies may be used in addition to technically required cookies, analysis cookies and marketing cookies. You can decide which cookies to use by selecting the appropriate options below. Please note that your selection may affect the functionality of the service. Further information can be found in our privacy policy.
Technically required cookies
Technically required cookies: so that you can navigate and use the basic functions and store preferences.
Analysis Cookies
To help us determine how visitors interact with our website to improve the user experience.
Marketing-Cookies
To help us offer and evaluate relevant content and interesting and appropriate advertisement.