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Mastering Pattern Recognition in the Opening
Pattern recognition is an important tool in modern chess, as it helps you to understand better the characteristics of a position. Particularly when you have been confronted with a surprise opening system played by your opponent, it helps when you can just
The Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee is in full swing. Most of the attention has gone to the World's best players competing in the Masters section, but in this Fast & Furious show we will have a look at a near-miniature (it lasted 26 moves...) played in the Challengers. After four rounds, Indian grandmaster Surya Ganguly is in the sole lead with 3/4. In the fourth round he used a very aggressive system (4...dxc4 and 5...a6) against the Catalan to crush the talented Kazakh player Saduakassova in great style. This fashionable setup has recently produced several sharp battles at the highest level, so this could be a very nice weapon with Black for you as well!
The live show is free to watch and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium accounts.
The Catalan: A complete repertoire for White!
The Catalan is one of the most solid openings for White. It forms part of the large and strong fianchetto family in which White builds his strategy mainly around the bishop on g2. Grandmaster Victor Bologan covers all of Black’s replies to the Catalan, some of which can even transpose to other openings such as the Tarrasch System and the Queen’s Indian. Suffice it to say that the Catalan rules!
First, try to find the winning sequence of moves for Black!
Move the pieces on the live diagram — solution below!
Power Play 24: A repertoire for black against the Catalan
On this DVD Grandmaster Daniel King offers you a repertoire for Black against the Catalan, based around maintaining the rock of a pawn on d5. Keeping central control ultimately gives Black good chances to launch an attack against the enemy king.
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Robert is live at 19:00 CET
Special attention will be paid to Intermediate Moves, Quiet Moves, Sacrifices on Empty Squares, Mating Patterns, Ignoring Opponents Threat, Calculation in Defence and Method of Comparison. Plus 50 interactive examples to test your knowledge.
Many more Fast and Furious episodes are available in ChessBase Videos
