Kasparov – picking games for the Chess Informant

Garry's Choice

By Josip Asik

Garry Kasparov, the thirteenth World Champion, tremendously influenced the development of chess with his games, analyses, and writings. The quality of this work has greatly enriched our chess culture, and Chess Informant has had the privilege of presenting the fruits of his deep analytical work for more than thirty years.

The number thirteen has always been Garry's lucky number, and Chess Informant 113 sees the return of his analytical work in the pages of our publication. Seven years after his retirement from professional chess, we are deeply honoured to welcome Garry back to Chess Informant! In the new column, "Garry's Choice," he will be annotating select games from recent practice, casting his critical eye on the efforts of modern chess stars – and mere "mortals" – in his trademark style.

You would never guess in a hundred tries as to what game Garry chose to start his inaugural column. We couldn't, either! I will only reveal that he describes it as "a unique guest even on chess Olympus" and claimed he "had never seen anything like it in my chess career"!

We call Chess Informant 113 the Clockwork Edition, and it is the culmination of changes that began incrementally with Volume 109 – let's call it the modern Informant era. I am proud that many readers and reviewers have recognized the value of our new content. Another new column being introduced in Volume 113 is "Top Five." Here, five top players offer their insight into some of their best recent achievements. In this issue they are, from Russia and the Ukraine, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Nikita Vitiugov, Ernesto Inarkiev, and Alexander Moiseenko.

The "Top Five" column is in English, but we asked that the players submit the material in their native language in order for them to give the clearest expression to their thoughts. Our staff was, of course, prepared to translate, but no one could foresee that we would receive six scanned large-format, handwritten papers like Morozevich sent us! If one of the world's brightest players was willing to put so much effort into his annotations, we could hardly ask him to resend it as a computer file. So we took up the challenge and decoded it!

Since its debut in Volume 110, with five contributors, the CI Labs column has now grown to having ten grandmaster authors. This time Ivan Cheparinov, Veselin Topalov's second and close associate, graces our pages with his original analysis and textual explanations. He is joined by fellow new contributors Erdos, Halkias, Sanikidze, and Pap, as well as returning authors Markus, Delchev, Ivanisevic, Sundararajan, and Perunovic. The featured theoretical surveys are on the English Opening [A20 and A30]; the Benko Gambit [A57]; the Sicilian Defence [B42]; the French Defence [C02]; the Ruy Lopez Berlin Defence [C67] and Rio de Janeiro Variation [C67]; the Queen's Gambit [D35] and [D39]; and the King's Indian Defence [E97].

In the "Rising Stars" column, newly promoted hero from the Aegean Sea, IM Antonis Pavlidis presents two of his beautiful game from his winning performance at the Greek Championship. The "Best of Chess Informant" article highlights the career of Alexander Morozevich. And, as usual, readers will enjoy the sections on Combinations, Endings, Excellent Moves, Studies (by Yochanan Afek), Problems (by Milan Velimirovic), and the best game and best novelty contests.

The other major announcement concerning Volume 113 is that it kicks off our new publication schedule of four issues per year: March, June, September, and December. That is about 1,000 annotated high-level games per year! Stay tuned.

This month we are pleased to present the best game from Volume 112:

And here his how this best game was selected – by a jury by GMs Beliavsky, Christiansen, Marin, Matanovic, Mikhalchishin, Ribli and Speelman.

• Source: Chess Cafe, where you can buy the Chess Informant.
• Chess Informant home page, where you can also place your order – the Chess Informant editions appear four times per year, every third month starting from March 1st.

Josip Asik (b.1969 in Belgrade) is Director of the Chess Informant since second part of 2010. Josip is a graduated sports manager and FIDE chess master. He also works as a chess columnist of different Serbian newspapers and magazines. Before joining the Chess Informant, Josip was sports editor and presenter of Television Politika in Belgrade. He is co-author of the book ”Olympiad United – Dresden 2008” with Harald Fietz and Anna Burtasova. Josip Asik is married to IM and WGM Alisa Maric, with whom he got girl-and-boy twins.

Copyright Asik/ChessBase