The Active King
Endgame makes a mating attack much less likely than in a mid-dlegame. This means that the king no longer needs to be guarded so closely and in fact it really must take an active role in the proceedings. In most endgames you should be thinking from the outset about how you should use your king. If you leave it passively placed you will lose its invaluable fighting power, which is approximately equivalent to that of a rook. This position, from Tartak-ower-Trifunovic, Paris 1950, showed the king's...
Rather a forlorn attempt a c d
Alekhine of course would not allow stalemate with 54 < > f6. Perhaps you were more impressed by Alekhine's play in the Bogolyubov game Well, perhaps not when I tell you know that this second example was from an exhibition game in which Alekhine played blindfold excellent visualisation skills, but ordinary mortals usually experience more difficulties in this area. One of the main sources of error in analysis comes from the problem caused by the residual image of pieces in the mind's eye. The...
Xe Sxe Wc f gxf We xf Wxf d e
As I developed a taste for such play rather than the spectacular beauty of Zita-Bron-stein, I felt myself being transformed. The carefree boy who wanted to make long-diagonal combinations was becoming a cynical GM who likes to neutralise his opponents' counterplay and then watch them squirm. These days I prefer to play these positions with White and look forward to playing prom ising young players who adopt this variation. My main idea in the early stages is just to stop Black's counterplay...
D d g h h c eb
This makes perfect sense nce White's queen's bishop has left the b-pawn defenceless. Hodgson and Adams have been trying repair this line for White, but so far without notable success a 5 d2 Hodgson specialises in this kind of pawn sacrifice in the opening and has won many spectacular games with such methods. In this game Re-net shows that Black can refuse the offer and obtain an excellent position 5 f5 6 i.d3 i.xd3 7 cxd3 gt d7 8 gt gf3 e6 9 0-0 e7 10 i.xe7 ixe7 11 b4 a5 with the simplest of...
Trouncing the Trompovsky
Characterised by the moves 1 d4 gt f6 or l d5 2 i.g5, the Trompovsky Attack is very popular right now thanks to the efforts of the British Grandmaster Julian Hodgson. Hodgson has played this opening with considerable success, made videos, written books and given lectures about it. Indeed, he has even persuaded super-GM Michael Adams to take it up White's main idea is to capture the knight on f6 in order to weaken the black pawn structure slightly. The Trompovsky generally leads to relatively...
If exf Sxe ixe c
Was this a premature resignation from Kasparov or did he want to save himself further embarrassment 19 bxc4 20 Wxc4 amp b7 21 Wa6 mate is hopeless, but 19 fo4 20 Wxf5 2f8 21 We6 bxc4 22 e5 would have been worth playing on for a while, at least against an organic opponent. When I first saw this game, my impression was that Kasparov was unrecognisable and in fact various reports suggested that he was very nervous during this match. What exactly had My own theory is that Kasparov finds it...
