Robert Ris' Fast and Furious: The Queen's Gambit: Botvinnik shows the way

by Robert Ris
11/12/2020 – In this week's show, well-known Dutch trainer Robert Ris takes a look at a classical game, in which Botvinnik introduced a fascinating and aggressive idea in the Queen's Gambit into practice. | "Fast and Furious" is available from 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 16:00 EDT) on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
Pattern recognition is an important tool in modern chess, as it helps you to understand better the characteristics of a position. Particularly when you have been confronted with a surprise opening system played by your opponent, it helps when you can just

Botvinnik plays the Queen's Gambit

Robert Ris: "The main game of this week's Queen's Gambit special is Botvinnik-Keres, USSR championship 1952. Botvinnik was the first one to create the setup with Nge2/f3/0-0 aiming for a central approach in the Exchange Variation, deviating from the Classical plan of a minority attack (Nf3, Rb1 and b2-b4) and the more aggressive idea of castling queenside and launch a pawn storm on the kingside.

My DVD The Queen's Gambit Declined - A World Champions Repertoire, released in 2014, is based on this stem game. I try to explain the key ideas for both sides and how theory has evolved since then."

This DVD offers a complete repertoire for handling this solid opening, often featuring a dynamic approach to pose the opponent more practical problems. Both of the main continuations 3...Nf6 and 3...Be7 are covered in two separate parts.

Warming up exercise: It's White to move. What would you play?

 
M. Botvinnik vs P. Keres, USSR ch, 1952
White to play

You can move the pieces on the live diagram!

This week's show

Robert is on air every other Thursday at 18:00 UTC (19:00 CET / 16:00 EST)

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Robert is an International Master who mostly spends his time training and coaching talented youngsters. On the PlayChess server The Fast and the Furious is a popular show where he explains sharp opening lines for a wider audience. He is also a well-known ChessBase author who produced numerous DVDs and regularly contributes to ChessBase Magazine as well. Since 2015 he is the organizer of the Dutch Rapid Championships in his home town Amstelveen. He has started a YouTube channel with chess analysis as well.

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