9/23/2023 – An exciting first day of action saw Levon Aronian grabbing the lead at the Levitov Chess Week rapid tournament in Amsterdam. Aronian collected three wins and two draws to end the day as the only player with a 4/5 score. Vishy Anand, who obtained a good-looking victory over an out-of-form Wesley So, stands in sole second place, a half point behind the leader. | Photo: Levitov Chess webcast
new: ChessBase Magazine 225
Chess Festival Prague 2025 with analyses by Aravindh, Giri, Gurel, Navara and others. ‘Special’: 27 highly entertaining miniatures. Opening videos by Werle, King and Ris. 10 opening articles with new repertoire ideas and much more. ChessBase Magazine offers first-class training material for club players and professionals! World-class players analyse their brilliant games and explain the ideas behind the moves. Opening specialists present the latest trends in opening theory and exciting ideas for your repertoire. Master trainers in tactics, strategy and endgames show you the tricks and techniques you need to be a successful tournament player! Available as a direct download (incl. booklet as pdf file) or booklet with download key by post. Included in delivery: ChessBase Magazine #225 as “ChessBase Book” for iPad, tablet, Mac etc.!
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A beautiful setup
The Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Amsterdam consists of six 17th century canal palaces. With elegant, bright and uniquely decorated guest rooms, lofts and suites, the hotel offers views of the canal and the courtyard garden. And this is where the second edition of the Levitov Chess Week tournament is taking place.
Ilya Levitov, the man behind this event, organized the first edition on his 40th birthday, four years ago. A former Managing Director of the Russian Chess Federation, he endorsed the importance of creating more rapid and blitz tournaments while in office. By organizing an event with a 10-minute time control in such an elegant venue, he combines the glamour associated with 20th-century classical chess and the excitement of quick-paced chess action.
This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors how to successfully organise your games strategically, and how to keep your opponent permanently under pressure.
In an interview conducted by Yury Vasiliev in 2011, and translated by Colin McGourty for his excellent Chess in Translation webpage, Levitov had this to say about the need to promote more rapid-chess events:
I agree that given the contemporary rhythm of life you need to think quicker. No matter how much of a genius a director is, it’s impossible to film a thriller that the spectator will watch with interest for seven hours in a row.
No-one’s planning to get rid of or replace classical chess. For me, classical chess is opera. It’s not something I love, but there are connoisseurs who really do like it. Men turn up in suits, and women in evening dresses. But let’s not forget about rock concerts when people arrive in ripped jeans, but fill up entire stadiums!
Now that he decided to organize a tournament privately, he did not do without the suits and evening dresses, but also opted for a “quick rapid” (or slow blitz?) time control. A welcome change from the at times dizzying string of online events.
The playing hall | Photo: Levitov Chess webcast
Aronian’s creativity, Anand’s brilliancy
After five rounds, Levon Aronian is the sole leader of the event, with 4 points to his name. Standing in sole second place is Vishy Anand, with 3½ points. Daniil Dubov and Peter Svidler are the two remaining players with plus-scores, as they share third place with 3 points each.
Aronian beat an out-of-form Wesley So in the first round and also scored victories over Ian Nepomniachtchi and Alexander Grischuk, both with black. His creative style worked wonders on the first day of action, as he outplayed his opponents from imbalanced positions to end the day atop the standings.
In round 2, for example, he got to trap Nepo’s queen on the kingside.
30.f4 was a blunder in a double-edged yet close-to-equal position. Aronian quickly replied 30...Rg8 31.Qh7 Rh8 32.Qf5 Be6 33.Qg6 Rbg8
In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Judit Polgar. Let them show you which openings Polgar chose to play, where her strength in middlegames were, or how she outplayed her opponents in the endgame.
Vishy Anand and Levon Aronian | Photo: Levitov Chess webcast
The most attractive game of the day, however, was Anand’s 24-move victory over So in the third round. Anand’s kingside attack featured a great-looking queen sacrifice.
23.Qxd6+ does not blunder 23...Rxd6, since 24.gxh7+ is a killer double-check (e.g. 24...Kh8 25.Rg8#). So played 23...Kf8 and resigned after 24.gxh7. Beautiful!
In this video course, twenty-nine examples with multiple questions are presented in the interactive format, which is ideal for a range of playing strengths. Step by step you will be taken through the complex positions.
Carlos Alberto ColodroCarlos Colodro is a Hispanic Philologist from Bolivia. He works as a freelance translator and writer since 2012. A lot of his work is done in chess-related texts, as the game is one of his biggest interests, along with literature and music.
London System PowerBase 2026 is a database and contains in all 11 285 games from Mega 2026 and the Correspondence Database 2026, of which 282 are annotated.
The London System Powerbook 2026 is based on more than 410 000 games or game fragments from different opening moves and ECO codes; what they all have in common is that White plays d4 and Bf4 but does not play c4.
In this course, Grandmaster Elisabeth Pähtz presents the London System, a structured and ambitious approach based on the immediate Bf4, leading to rich and dynamic positions.
Opening videos: Open Spanish (Sipke Ernst) and Classical Sicilian (Nico Zwirs). Endgame Special by Igor Stohl: ‘Short or long side’ – where should the defending king be placed in rook endgames? ‘Lucky bag’ with 35 master analyses.
YOUR EASY ACCESS TO OPENING THEORY: Whether you want to build up a reliable and powerful opening repertoire or find new opening ideas for your existing repertoire, the Opening Encyclopaedia covers the entire opening theory on one product.
The Queen’s Gambit Declined Exchange Variation with 5.Bf4 has a great balance between positional play and sharp pawn pushes; and will be a surprise for your opponents while being easy to learn for you, as the key patterns are familiar.
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