1/30/2020 – IM Robert Ris discusses the revival of a variation of the Petroff Defence to 1.e4 which has gained new life thanks to the work of World Champion Magnus Carlsen, among others. Tune into the live show at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 1 PM EST) which is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. In the diagram, it's Black to play!
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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
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3.d4 ♞xe4 4.♗d3 d5 5.♘xe5 ♞d7 6.♘c3
For many years the line 3.d4 ♞xe4 4.♗d3 d5 5.♘xe5 ♞d7 had considered to be pretty harmless for Black. In this lecture I will show matters aren't that simple for Black after the move 6.♘c3, which leads to positions where White accepts an inferior pawn structure in return for wonderful attacking prospects. Recently various top players, including the World Champion Magnus Carlsen, have picked up this variation again after it went out of fashion about ten years ago. Interestingly, Black is struggling to find a safe place for his king in almost all the lines! A very practical and dangerous weapon to add to your White repertoire.
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!
Do you see White's surprising idea?
Sutovsky vs Sakaev, Dresden 2007
Position after 11...O-O-O
Move the pieces on the live diagram — solution below!
The Petroff (or Russian) Defence which is characterised by the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 has been popular at the highest levels for many years and enjoys the reputation of being an extremely solid defence.
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.
Robert RisRobert is an International Master who mostly spends his time training and coaching talented youngsters. On the PlayChess server The Fast and the Furious is a popular show where he explains sharp opening lines for a wider audience. He is also a well-known ChessBase author who produced numerous DVDs and regularly contributes to ChessBase Magazine as well. Since 2015 he is the organizer of the Dutch Rapid Championships in his home town Amstelveen. He has started a YouTube channel with chess analysis as well.
Rossolimo-Moscow Powerbase 2025 is a database and contains a total of 10950 games from Mega 2025 and the Correspondence Database 2024, of which 612 are annotated.
The greater part of the material on which the Rossolimo/Moscow Powerbook 2025 is based comes from the engine room of playchess.com: 263.000 games. This imposing amount is supplemented by some 50 000 games from Mega and from Correspondence Chess.
Focus on the Sicilian: Opening videos on the Najdorf Variation with 6.h3 e5 7.Nb3 (Luis Engel) and the Taimanov Variation with 7.Qf3 (Nico Zwirs). ‘Lucky bag’ with 38 analyses by Anish Giri, Surya Ganguly, Abhijeet Gupta, Yannick Pelletier and many more.
Throughout the video course, Sasikran shows various examples from his career to explain sacrifices for initiative, an attack, a better pawn structure and much more.
In this insightful video course, Grandmaster David Navara shares practical advice on when to calculate deeply in a position — and just as importantly, when not to.
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