Grandmaster strategy for everyone!
10/2/2008 – Top-level middlegame and endgame strategy is often thought to be beyond the average player's understanding, but an ex-world champion has managed to close the gap. Rustam Kasimdzhanov's Fritz-Trainer DVDs were greeted enthusiastically by Hedinn Steingrimsson, who highly recommends them for players of all levels.
Buy them now or read his review.
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Rustam Kasimdzhanov: Endgames for Experts
In this DVD Rustam Kasimdzhanov shows some of the most instructive strategical endgames that he has played. Many important themes are covered like a pair of bishops, playing against a bishop pair, centralized king, initiative, how to play with material advantage, how to play for practical chances, finding a plan and how to defend a worse endgame. Some of the games presented where of huge importance like Kasimdzhanov´s wins against Adams in the final match of the World Championship.
Generally I find this topic suits Kasimdzhanov´s style very well and I find this DVD the best Multimedia DVD that he has done. Many of the games are true beauties like the game that he won with the bishop pair against Baklan. In this game the way to victory was to force Baklan to press his passed c-pawn forward in order to occupy squares behind it with the bishops. The final position in his game against Stevic is also pretty.
Kasimdzhanov patiently and quite deeply explains why he chose the moves he played and it is easy to follow his logic of reasoning.
The Bottom Line: Endgame Strategy for Experts gets 5 out of 5 possible stars. Many instructive and beautiful strategical endgames are presented in a way that is easy to understand and a lot to be learned from.
Rustam Kasimdzhanov: Strategy - Step by Step
In this DVD Rustam Kasimdzhanov analyses many of his best strategic games in depth. He explains accurately why he played the moves he chose and gives excellent insight into the thinking prozess of a very strong player and a former World Champion.
He starts with his famous win over Anand in the World Championship tournament in San Luis 2005. Kasimdzhanov explains this game extremely deeply, but it also takes more time than I have ever seen a single game been given on a DVD or more than one hour for this single game.
Click here for replay a sample video from the Kasimdzhanov-Anand lectures.
In about 4 hours there are 6 games analysed. I have also never seen a strong player take so much time to explain in detail very high level games in a manner that should be understandable to the average club player.
The Bottom Line: The DVD gets 4 out of 5 possible stars. Generally I found the DVD quite instructive and helpful and give insight into a realy important topic that is how one can select ones moves, specially in a strategical situation.This is arguably the most important aspect of chess, but also the one which is most difficult and hardest to learn. What can be improved is to connect the analysis better to middle game positions that are the topic of current theoretical discussion. Generally it is quite possible that I have learned more from this DVD than any other.
Review by GM Hedinn Steingrimsson
