World Class Training: Adrian Mikhalchishin
Adrian Bogdanovich Mikhalchishin, 54, is a Ukrainian chess grandmaster now
playing for Slovenia and training the Turkish youth. Don't be put off by his
surname (originally Mihalcisin or Mihalčišin). It is pronounced Me-hahl-chee-sheen
– an hour of practice will make you fluent in it.
Adrian, as we like to call him, started off as a student of the famous chess
trainer Viktor Kart, together with Oleg Romanishin, Aleksandr Beliavsky and
Iossif Dorfman (later Kart trained Vassily Ivanchuk, Andrei Volokitin, the Muzychuk
sisters and other young GMs). The youthful Adrian became USSR Junior Champion
and, in 1984, was fourth in the regular Soviet Championship.
First generation of Lviv grandmasters: Mikhalchishin, Romanishin, Beliavsky
Mikhalchishin was also a member of many winning teams: the Soviet Union, Ukrainia,
Slovenia and Yugoslavian, all of which won team championships with him on board.
His training career began when he was invited by Romanishin to be his second
during the Soviet Championships and Interzonals in the middle of the 70s. After
that he helped Beliavsky, Anatoly Karpov (in his matches against Garry Kasparov)
and the Polgar sisters. It continued with the Polish juniors, Germany's Arkadij
Naiditsch, the Dutch National Women’s Team. Adrian was captain of the
Agrouniverzal Belgrad team, which had as its players Karpov, Anand, Kramnik,
Beliavsky, Short, and Gelfand.
Today Mikhalchishin spends a lot of time with the Women’s Team in Turkey,
and also trains the young
Turkish talents there as well (picture above). You can read all about his
work in the following indepth interview with Özgür Akman: Adrian
Mikhalchishin: Grandmaster, author and chess trainer.
Adrian
Mikhalchishin: The Arkhangelsk
The Ruy Lopez represents one of the oldest and best openings for the first
player, and everyone going for the Spanish game with black faces the question
of how he wants to tackle the white ideas. One of the more aggressive fighting
methods is the move order 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0
b5 6.Bb3 Bb7
This line was developed in the early sixties by players from the north Russian
town of Archangelsk and has carried this name ever since. Later, the variation
was intensively analysed by players from Lvov – among them Mikhalchishin
and Beliavsky – and applied in tournament practice. In the second half
of the seventies it gained great popularity for the first time.
In the Archangelsk Variation (or Archangel Defence), Black defines the position
of this queen’s bishop early on with 6...Bb7 in order to exert pressure
against the opponent’s centre, in particular the point e4. White must
decide whether he protects this pawn solidly with 7.d3 or goes for the unfathomable
complications after 7.c3 Nxe4. Another option is 7.Re1 Bc5 8.c3 d6 9.d4 Bb6,
which is closely related to the Moller System. The experienced trainer and Grandmaster
Adrian Mikhalchishin is an outstanding connoisseur of these variations, the
ideas of which he goes on to explain in nearly five hours video playing time.
System requirements: Windows XP, Windows Vista, DVD drive, mouse, sound
card.
