Review: "Learning from the World Champions"

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Sergey Tiviakov: Learning from the World Champions

A Review by GM Matthew Sadler

I’ve been very positive about Sergey Tiviakov’s recent DVD’s on the Italian and Spanish so I was looking forward to this latest offering from ChessBase: Learning from the World Champions. The DVD is a typical mix for Sergey: lessons from famous players related to examples from his own games. The introduction started a little slowly, but once Sergey moved onto the chess content, I was extremely impressed. It’s a lovely way of learning. Sergey explains a couple of typical themes from a famous game and then shows from his own practice where he was also able to apply these themes. That gets you enthusiastic about this way of studying from the start! On top of this, when demonstrating his own games Sergey is also able to give extra detail about additional practical factors that cropped up in the game. It means that you don’t just reinforce what you’ve learnt from the classic game, it also takes you up a little notch higher as well with new and interesting practical knowledge. Let me show you what I mean.

One of the games early on in the DVD is the classic Karpov-Unzicker, Nice Olympiad 1974. Tiviakov flags three key moments of interest in this game:

And here we get the additional practical dimension that I talked about. Sergey explains that Black has defended well and that it isn’t possible to break through directly. So Sergey begins to manoeuvre around without any clear direction to ‘make the opponent fall asleep’! He explains this very well in the rest of this video, and you see how Black loses his concentration a couple of times, which is enough to lose the game.

Later on, there is also a fantastic examination of a Tal opposite-coloured bishop ending against Radulov and a corresponding game of Sergey’s against Miladinovic in 2015. It’s high-class stuff! The really good thing about it is that Sergey’s commentary is high-level without any long variations – I really think that a club player could follow his explanations with­out any trouble and learn enormous amounts from it. For me it’s 5 stars! I hope you think so too!

First published in New in Chess, (03/2016), p. 103-104. Republished with kind permission.

Sample Video:

Sergey Tiviakov Learning from the World Champions €29.90 €25.13 without VAT (for Customers outside the EU) $27.14 (without VAT) • Video running time: 5 hours 45 min (English) • With interactive training including video feedback • Extra: Database with 50 model games from World Champions • Including CB 12 Reader This DVD can be purchased as a hard copy or it can be downloaded directly from the Internet, that way sparing you the few days needed for it to arrive by post. Order this Fritztrainer in the ChessBase Shop