Guest star analysis from St. Louis

Today in Chess special guest segments

Each day, the Saint Louis Chess Club invited one or more special guests to their live commentary webcast. We've embedded video players for each day's guest segment linked directly for each access. At the bottom of the post, you'll find all the 'World Championship Edition', plus all the ChessBase annotations for each game. Expanded versions of our own guest annotators thoughts will be in the upcoming issue of ChessBase Magazine.

Game 1 — Garry Kasparov

How I became World Champion Vol.1 1973-1985

Garry Kasparov's rise to the top was meteoric and at his very first attempt he managed to become World Champion, the youngest of all time. In over six hours of video, he gives a first hand account of crucial events from recent chess history, you can improve your chess understanding and enjoy explanations and comments from a unique and outstanding personality on and off the chess board.

Kasparov makes his first appearance

This show was also the genesis of the infamous "leaked" training video which got noticed worldwide a few days after it originally aired, prompting the live webcast to be unpublished. They haven't republished the video, but you can watch that segment below:

Caruana and his team at a pre-match training session

Game 2 — Bruce Pandolfini

Bruce Pandolfini is an American Master and prolific author who Caruana's first chess coach

Game 3 — Vladimir Kramnik

My Path to the Top

On this DVD Vladimir Kramnik retraces his career from talented schoolboy to World Champion in 2006. With humour and charm he describes his first successes, what it meant to be part of the Russian Gold Medal team at the Olympiad, and how he undertook the Herculean task of beating his former mentor and teacher Garry Kasparov.

Game 4 — Irina Krush

Game 5 — Cristian Chirila

Game 6 — there was no live guest

Game 7 — Viswanathan Anand

My Career Vol. 1

The first DVD with videos from Anand's chess career reflects the very beginning of that career and goes as far as 1999. It starts with his memories of how he first learned chess and shows his first great games (including those from the 1984 WCh for juniors). The high point of his early developmental phase was the winning of the 1987 WCh for juniors. After that, things continue in quick succession: the first victories over Kasparov, WCh candidate in both the FIDE and PCA cycles and the high point of the WCh match against Kasparov in 1995.
Running time: 3:48 hours

Game 8 — Peter Leko

Game 9 — Peter Leko

Game 10 — Viswanathan Anand

My Career Vol. 2

Vishy Anand is one of the greatest chess talents of all times. On this DVD he speaks about his career, his views on chess, and presents the most beautiful and interesting games of his career.

Game 11 — Garry Kasparov

Game 12 — Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik

Kramnik is introduced at 2:44:30 in the video below.

Today in Chess, World Championship edition playlist

The path to tactical strength

Despite the fact that many books have been written on tactics in chess, many players still find it extremely difficult to recognise tactical patterns and calculate ensuing lines. With this disk the author not only gives a large number of examples of the most different kind, trying to cover as many ideas as possible, but also suggests a method which will greatly help you to see various tactical motives and systemise your calculation.

The Saint Louis Chess Club YouTube channel put together a playlist of all ten "fireside chats", four advance interviews with players about the World Championship shot a few months prior, and all 13 daily live shows, all of which you can replay in the video player below. Click the playlist icon in the upper left corner of the video player to select a video, and you can also follow along via the game viewer below.

All ChessBase guest annotations

All Round-up show

Links

• USChessChamps.com