Multi-Tasking to the Max

This review has been printed in the September 2019 issue of Chess Life.  A penultimate (and unedited) version of the review is reproduced here. Minor differences exist between this and the printed version. My thanks to the good folks at Chess Life for allowing me to do so.

———————

Edouard, Romain. My Magic Years with Topalov. Nevele: Thinkers Publishing, 2019. ISBN 978-9492510440. PB 310pp.

Edouard, Romain. “Play the French.” video series at chess24.com.

The immortal James Brown is often said to have been the “hardest working man in show business.” Recently I found myself wondering who would hold the same title in the chess world.

One way to answer the question would be to look at the new Leader Boards page at uschess.org. For the year running from June 2018 through May 2019, New York’s “chess ironman” Jay Bonin has played a whopping 578 regular and dual rated games, good for second place in the games count. The leader is a 7 year old girl from California, Dada Cabrales-Goldstein, who has an amazing 655 games to her credit.

If we take a broader view, including chess labor that is not strictly ‘at the board,’ the candidate pool broadens. Seconds for the world’s elite, such as Peter Heine Nielsen (second to Magnus Carlsen) or Rustam Kazimdzhanov (Fabiano Caruana’s trainer), are logical choices, as are top streamers like Agadmator or ChessNetwork.

My pick, however, might be GM Romain Edouard. Currently rated 2647 and a recent member of the +2700 club, Edouard is an active player, playing on multiple club teams around Europe. He is the editor-in-chief of Thinkers Publishing, and the author of six titles for his imprint, including his newest, My Magic Years with Topalov, which we’ll look at this month.

Edouard has also begun to move into chess streaming and videos, having recently worked as a French commentator for the Grand Chess Tour livestreams. He has also released two video series for Chess24: “Veselin Topalov: The Initiative in Chess,” derived from his Topalov book, and “Play the French,” which will occupy the bulk of this month’s column. A third, titled “10 Endgame Principles You Should Know,” should be out by the time you read these words.

My Magic Years with Topalov tells the story of Edouard’s time (2010-2014) as Veselin Topalov’s second. A second, for those unfamiliar with the term, functions as a “chess assistant” for an elite player, helping them with opening analysis, serving as a sparring partner in training games, and sometimes playing the role of confidant and psychologist.

Edouard worked as Topalov’s second during the later part of Topalov’s years in the elite, including the 2012-13 Grand Prix cycle and the 2014 Candidates Tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, where Topalov finished in a disappointing eighth place. Here he spills the beans on his work for Topalov, offering readers an intimate, unvarnished account of his role as second, of Topalov’s games in that period, and of Topalov ‘the person.’

In his Preface to the book, Topalov lauds his former assistant, saying that he “believe[s] chess fans will like the honesty of the stories as nothing is hidden.” (7) Edouard’s candor does both players a service: we obtain important insights into his work with Topalov, and we also get a sympathetic portrait of Topalov himself that, in part, erodes the damage done to his reputation by the ‘Toiletgate’ episode in 2006.

Chapters 2 and 3 of Edouard’s book lay out the nature of his job as Topalov’s second. He explains how the second must merge silicon insights with human intuition to produce useable analysis, and how organizational skills – presenting the material in a succinct, digestable manner – are critical to the task. And even then, players have to read their emails, lest they overlook important novelties cooked up by their team! See Edouard’s account of the Gelfand-Topalov and Giri-Topalov games at the 2012 London Grand Prix for this tale that turned out well. (86-89, 104-108)

The great bulk of My Magic Years with Topalov consists of tournament recaps and dense game analysis. Here Edouard shines. Without shying away from sometimes necessarily deep analytical dives into key positions, Edouard largely manages to keep things comprehensible for the amateur reader, and he is very generous in providing ‘unexploded’ opening ideas along the way. As a collection of Topalov’s games, this book is a standout, but when combined with the behind-the-scenes stories and insights, My Magic Years with Topalov becomes one of the year’s best works.

“Play the French” is a set of 13 videos, running 5 hours and 13 minutes in all, presenting a repertoire in the French Defense. The stated goal of the series is “[t]o provide the viewer with a complete Black repertoire after 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5.” In this Edouard largely succeeds, offering a set of fighting variations for Black to play for a win. There are some key omissions, which we will note along the way, but Edouard manages to pack an impressive amount of material into five hours of video.

After a short introduction, and a 44 minute video on the Exchange Variation where … Nc6 lines are largely avoided, Edouard spends 74 minutes over two videos proposing 5. … Bd7 against the Advance Variation. Against White’s three main choices, he recommends 6. Be2 f6!?, 6. a3 c4, and heading into the main lines of the Milner-Barry with 6. Bd3 cxd4 7.cxd4 Qb6 8.0–0 Nxd4 9.Nxd4 Qxd4 10.Nc3 a6 11.Qe2 Rc8!, following Sulskis-Giri, Batumi 2018.

Edouard’s analysis is solid, and he does a good job of explaining the ideas in the video, if perhaps a bit too quickly at times. He also omits coverage of important sidelines, particularly in the Milner-Barry. The dangerous 9. Nbd2, or the ‘Nun’ variation, is not included in the video. Nor is 9. Nxd4 Qxd4 10. Nc3 a6 11. Re1, which is the second most popular continuation in the database.

Edouard needs five videos, and 90 minutes, to unpack his recommendations against the Tarrasch. Here he analyzes the trendy 4. exd5 Qxd5 5. Ngf3 cxd4 6. Bc4 Qd7!? as his main line, along with 4. exd5 Qxd5 5. dxc5 Bxc5 6. Ngf3 Nf6 7. Bc4 Qc6 and 4. Ngf3 cxd4 5. Nxd4 (note that 5. exd5 transposes to the main line above) 5. … Nf6 6.exd5 Qxd5 7.Nb5 Na6 8.Nc3 Qd6. I found the coverage to be convincing and comprehensive, with no major omissions to note.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Edouard’s repertoire is his recommendation against 3. Nc3. Across three videos, running 89 minutes in length, Edouard proposes that readers play 3. … Nf6 and aim for two intensely aggressive variations.

If White plays 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5, Edouard recommends the “neo-Morozevich” variation (per Larry Kaufman in NIC Yearbook 90): 4. … dxe4 5.Nxe4 Be7 6.Bxf6 gxf6 7.Nf3 f5. Play is sharp in all variations, but the key line, where White sacrifices a piece for the attack – 8. Nc3 a6 9. g3 b5 10. Bg2 Bb7 11. 0–0 c5! 12. d5 b4 13.dxe6 bxc3 14.exf7+ Kf8 – is analyzed to equality by Edouard, following Kosten-Bluebaum, Brest 2018.

If, instead, White plays 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. e5, Edouard proposes we play a new line in the Steinitz: 4. … Nfd7 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 Be7 8. dxc5 0–0! 9. Qd2 Qa5 and after 10. 0-0-0 b6 11. Bb5 we try 11. … Nb4!? This is a recent idea, offering to sacrifice a piece for a serious attack, and it was seen in one of the most brilliant games of recent months:

FRENCH DEFENSE STEINITZ VARIATION (C11)

GM Alireza Firouzja (2669)
GM Constantin Lupulescu (2634)
Reykjavik Open (7.1), 14.04.2019

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 5.f4 c5 6.Nf3 Nc6 7.Be3 Be7 8.Qd2 0–0 9.dxc5 Qa5 10.0–0–0 b6 11.Bb5 Nb4 12.a3 bxc5 13.Bxd7 Bxd7 14.axb4 cxb4 15.Nb1 Rfc8 16.Nd4 Qa2 17.f5 exf5 18.Rhf1 a5 19.Nxf5 Bxf5 20.Rxf5 a4 21.Bd4 a3 22.e6 f6 23.Qd3 b3 24.Rf2 Ra4 25.c3 Rxd4 26.Qxd4 Bc5 27.Qd2 Bxf2 28.Qxf2 Qa1 29.e7 a2 30.e8Q+ Rxe8 31.Qf5 d4 0–1

White can vary at a number of places – 10. a3, 13. Kb1! (which may be best), etc. – or can avoid taking the c-pawn entirely. After 8. Qd2 0-0 9.Be2, Edouard looks at 9. … b6 10. 0-0 f5!? and assess the resulting lines as unclear. While this recommendation will require some memory work, Edouard does a fine job of synthesizing and summarizing his analysis, and I think viewers would feel comfortable playing the variation after watching the video. That Edouard, a long-time French player, has played this exact line with Black (Santos Ruiz-Edouard, Skopje 2019) is a good sign that he believes in what he’s offering here.

In “French Toast: How Harikrishna fries 1. … e6,” his new Anti-French repertoire just out from Chessable, GM Pentala Harikrishna recommends that White avoid the mainline Steinitz by varying with 5.Nce2 c5 6. c3 Nc6 7. Nf3.

Here Edouard first offers 7. … Qb6, when both he and Harikrishna follow the same path: 8. a3 f6 9. exf6 Nxf6 10. g3 cxd4 11. cxd4 and now the novelty 11. … e5!?. (Note: this has now been tested in Jacobson,A-Shetty, Philadelphia, 2019). Edouard analyzes out to move 22, finding that White gets a slight advantage in sharp play, while Harikrishna extends Edouard’s line two moves and concludes that “White is still pushing.”

It’s not clear to me that Black is that much worse after 11. … e5, and I’m not sure why both analysts reject the natural 11. … Bd6 12. Bg2 0–0 13. 0–0 Bd7 14. Bf4 Bxf4 15. Nxf4 (Bologan-Svane, Berlin 2015) and now 15. … Ne4. Still, despite deeming 7. … Qb6 and 11. … e5 playable, Edouard offers 7. … a5 as an alternative.

After 7. … a5 Harikrishna likes 8. a4, and Edouard analyzes 8. … Qb6 9. g3 Be7 10. Bh3 0–0 11. 0–0 Qa6 12. Nf4 b5 as “unclear.” This line is not forced, as we see when we compare Harikrishna’s main variation: 8. … Qb6 9. g3 cxd4 10. cxd4 f6 11. exf6 Nxf6 12. Nc3 e5!?, leading to a slight advantage for White. Suffice to say that there is room for creativity and debate here.

At least four important lines are missing from Edouard’s Steinitz coverage. After 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.e5 Nfd7 White can play 5.Qg4, 5.Qh5 (the “Haldane Hack”) and 5. Nf3 c5 6. dxc5 Nc6 7. Bf4. He also overlooks 5. f4 c5 6. Nf3 Nc6 7. Be3 Be7 8. Qd2 0-0 9. h4, an idea covered in Chessbase Magazine 188 and played by the likes of Wang Hao and Ray Robson.

Because it omits sidelines like these, and because the final video, covering “odds and ends,” is relatively slight, new French players will have to supplement the series with another resource. Of the standard titles – Berg’s three volumes from Quality Chess, Moskalenko’s Even More Flexible French, and Watson’s Play the French 4 – none completely matches Edouard’s choices, with Moskalenko’s being the relatively best fit.

Perhaps it is too much to ask Edouard to analyze everything in just over five hours of video. What is covered in “Play the French” is outstanding, providing the framework for a master or even Grandmaster-level French repertoire. Any French player looking to add some new ideas to their arsenal would do well to check it out.

Eat your Oatmeal!

This column has been printed in the February 2018 issue of Chess Life.  A penultimate (and unedited) version of the review is reproduced here. Minor differences may exist between this and the printed version. My thanks to the good folks at Chess Life for allowing me to do so.

———-

Edouard, Romain. Chess Calculation Training: Volume 2, Endgames. Gent: Thinkers Publishing, 2017. ISBN 978-9492510150. PB

Grivas, Efstratios. TP Endgame Academy: Bishop Endings, an Innovative Course. Gent: Thinkers Publishing, 2017. ISBN 978-9492510174. PB.

Lakdawala, Cyrus. First Steps: Fundamental Endings. London: Everyman Chess, 2017. ISBN 978-1781944516. PB 272pp.

Lund, Esben. Sharp Endgames. Glasgow: Quality Chess, 2017. ISBN 978-1784830397. PB 312pp.

Mikhalchishin, Adrian, and Oleg Stetsko. Mastering Complex Endgames. Gent: Thinkers Publishing, 2017. ISBN 978-9492510112. PB 414pp.

What does it mean to know something?

Don’t worry. I’m not going to get all epistemological on you, hard as it may be for this former philosophy teacher to restrain himself. There’s no exam at the end of your reading, and I’ll try to keep the ten dollar words to a minimum.

Still, in writing this month’s column, I kept circling back to the question. We say we ‘know’ lots of things, but what does it mean to really know them? How can we verify that our beliefs are true and justified?

The occasion for these musings was my most recent tournament outing, one of my worst in recent years. I should have recognized the ominous clouds on the horizon after my first game, where I self-immolated in spectacular fashion.

[A replayable version of this analysis will be linked after the Chessbase website returns to functionality.]

After pressing a bit too hard with Black, I found myself in this position, a pawn down but with good drawing chances. The placement of White’s rook in front of his a-pawn seemed a particularly auspicious omen. Having studied similar rook endgames in the recent past, I decided to “allow” White’s trick with 44. …Bd4!? as I guessed that my opponent would not know the winning technique. This gamble was justified after

45.Ne6+ Kf6 46.Nxd4 Rxd4 47.g4 Rb4 48.a5 Ra4 49.Kg3 Ke6 50.a6 h5 51.h3 Kf6 52.Ra8 hxg4 53.hxg4 Kg5 54.f3 Kf6 55.a7

when the position is dead equal. The White rook is trapped on a8 and if the Black king stays on g7 or h7, White cannot make progress. The White king cannot assist with promotion as the Black rook will never run out of checks. Play continued

55. …Kg7 56.g5 Ra5 57.f4 Ra3+ 58.Kg4 Ra4 59.Kf3 Ra3+ 60.Ke4 Ra4+ 61.Kd5

And here, with plenty of time on the clock, I inexplicably lost my head.

61. …f6??

61. …Ra1 62.Kc5 Rc1+ 63.Kb4 Rb1+ 64.Ka3 Ra1+ 65.Kb2 Ra6 and White has nothing more than a draw.

62.gxf6+ Kxf6 63.Rf8+ 1–0

Did I “know” how to draw the game? It would appear not. But I had studied that exact ending – single rook, four pawns vs three, extra a-pawn – and, despite its being theoretically unclear, gotten a drawn position on the board. It was my practical knowledge, for lack of a better word, that was deficient.

If only there was something that could help me improve my concrete endgame play.

NARRATOR: There is.

Endgame books have traditionally come in three main types. There are (a) theoretical encyclopedias (Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual, for example) (b) manuals dealing with specific material configurations (Secrets of Pawn Endings by Müller & Lamprecht), and (c) books that aim to teach technique instead of theory (Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky).

To these we can add a fourth: the “workbook.” The widespread influence of Mark Dvoretsky’s training techniques have created something of a niche market for collections of difficult positions. Their purpose is to provide useful fodder for solving or ‘two-handed’ play, giving players a chance to put their theoretical knowledge into practice without risking rating points. Jacob Aagaard’s Grandmaster Preparation: Endgame Play is a fine example of the genre.

An avalanche of new endgame books have appeared in recent months, and we’ll take a look at five of them here. We begin with yet another book by one of America’s most prolific authors, and – stop the presses? – I kind of like it.

Regular readers of this column will know that I have been fairly tough on Cyrus Lakdawala, taking him to task for what I see as excessive and often useless verbosity. He has curbed some of these tendencies in his latest effort, First Steps: Fundamental Endings, and the result is a much tighter and satisfying read.

Lakdawala’s book is part of the new “First Steps” series from Everyman, which (per the back cover) emphasizes “the basic principles, the basic strategies, [and] the key tricks and traps.” His explanatory skill shines in this book, but while the basics are well-treated in Fundamental Endings, I’m less convinced that he covers all the fundamental positions. The section on rook endings is typical of this difficulty, where some standard situations are underbaked or left untreated.

Capablanca-Yates (Hastings, 1930) is a famous example where White manages to win with rook and three pawns versus rook and two pawns, all on the kingside. Lakdawala’s analysis is adequate, but improvements found in Averbakh – whom he cites – are missing.

There is, moreover, no coverage of rook and four pawns against rook and three pawns on the kingside, an ending Mickey Adams had to defend twice at the 2017 London Chess Classic, nor the ending I botched at the beginning of this article: rook and four pawns against rook and three where one side has a passed pawn on the queenside. Both are extremely common, and both should qualify as “fundamental.”

While it would have been strengthened by a more judicious choice of examples, First Steps: Fundamental Endings remains a very friendly introduction to the whole of endgame theory. With Bishop Endings: An Innovative Course, Efstratios Grivas takes a different tact, dedicating an entire book to the theory and practice of same-colored bishop endings.

More precisely, Bishop Endings also covers endings with bishops against pawns, and bishops and pawns against pawns, but in terms of bishop and pawn(s) against bishop and pawn(s), only same-colored bishop positions are treated. This fact is nowhere to be found in the book or promotional materials. I discovered it by playing through the examples and wondering where the opposite colored bishops were!

By narrowing his field of study, Grivas is able to bring great analytical focus to bear on these endings, and readers will certainly learn a lot about them. Those interested in endings with bishops of opposite colors, however, will just have to wait for a second book in the series.

In contrast to the two titles just discussed, Mastering Complex Endgames by Adrian Mikhalchishin and Oleg Stetsko is a broad study of endgame technique. By “complex endgames,” the authors seem to mean those kind of positions that can straddle the line between late middlegames and multi-piece endgames. The book, whose closest read-alike is How to Play Chess Endgames by Müller and Pajeken, consists of eleven chapters that cover broad piece configurations (“Opposite Colored Bishops,” “Rook against Two Minor Pieces”) and typical endgame situations (“Structural Concessions,” “The Technique of Defending”).

Mastering Complex Endgames was first published in Russian in 2012, and I suspect that this edition is a direct translation of that text. Very few post-2012 examples are included, and some of the older analysis seems not to have been engine checked. Indeed, as a rule I found that the older the position, the more likely I was to encounter analytical problems, with well-trodden classics being something of an exception.

I have to admit that I was surprised by this finding. Mikhalchishin is a very well-known trainer and author with an excellent reputation. Perhaps part of the problem comes from his public distain for computer and tablebase analysis, both of which are essential in this day and age for analytical accuracy. As it stands Mastering Complex Endgames is a rich source for study material, but a healthy skepticism is warranted with some of the older positions.

Silas Esben Lund’s Sharp Endgames is a very high-level example of the modern endgame “workbook” described above. About half of Sharp Endgames is wrapped up in its third chapter, “Introduction to Endgames.” This material – covering theoretical knight (3.1), rook (3.2), bishop versus knight (3.3), rook against minor piece (3.4), and queen endings (3.5) – is of the highest quality, and it prepares readers for the real work of Lund’s book.

Each of the 64 exercises in Sharp Endgames – readers are also encouraged to ‘solve’ the 33 examples in chapter three – are designed to be played out against another person or against the computer. Each exercise is coded with a suggested level and time control, and borrowing from the literature surrounding “deliberative practice,” Lund embeds a novel account of 16 subjective features of “critical moments” in his exercise solutions.

Having written on the role of the computer in chess training myself – see US Chess Online for those articles – I cannot speak highly enough of Lund’s work here. Sharp Endgames is the first major title I have seen that outlines a thoughtful strategy for training against an engine, and Lund makes a persuasive case for the practical importance of such activity.

The book is not perfect, of course. The 16 parameters can feel unwieldy and intimidating, and Lund wrongly attributes the theory of “deliberative practice” to Geoff Colvin. (It was Anders Ericsson who popularized it.) I also think it makes little sense to train against a modern engine at full strength when other, ‘lesser’ programs are available. But none of this should detract from what is a deeply original effort, and every player over 2000 should strongly consider the ideas in Sharp Endgames for their own training.

Our final book this month, one perhaps better suited to the techno-phobic, is another endgame workbook: Chess Calculation Training Volume 2: Endgames, by Romain Edouard. This is actually Edouard’s third collection of problems, the above title notwithstanding, and the second in his current series.

Volume 2: Endgames contains 424 problems across ten sections that are divided by task (“Find the Technical Win!,” “Find the Missed Move!”) and not by material. The positions run the full range of endgames, from multi-piece through tablebase territory, and the solutions are thorough and often mini-lessons in themselves. Many of the examples could be used in training sessions against the computer, although it is certainly not required, and class players will find Edouard’s problems perhaps more palatable than Lund’s.

One of my old teachers once described reading the great American philosopher John Dewey as being akin to eating a bowl of oatmeal. It’s not the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s nourishing and will hold you in good stead for the rest of the day. Endgame study is, to my mind, much the same. While I am especially convinced that practical sparring a la Lund is of particular benefit, the best endgame books are those that you actually read. I hope that some of those listed above will be of assistance in your search for endgame knowledge… except, of course, in your games against me.

Resolved: Stick with it!

This review has been printed in the January 2017 issue of Chess Life.  A penultimate (and unedited) version of the review is reproduced here. My thanks to the good folks at Chess Life for allowing me to do so.

—–

Edouard, Romain. The Chess Manual of Avoidable Mistakes, Part 2, Test Yourself! Gent: Thinkers Publishing, 2015. ISBN 9789082256642. PB 152pp.

Yusupov, Artur. Revision & Exam 1: The Fundamentals. Glasgow: Quality Chess, 2016. ISBN 978-1784830212. PB 208pp.

The gym is full of people you’ve never seen, and won’t see again after February. All of the ‘healthy’ food is on sale. November’s onslaught of political ads have been replaced with commercials for weight loss services and plastic surgeons.

Happy New Year, everyone!

We chess players are not immune to the spirit of the season. We’d all like to see our results improve, and a new year marks a new chance to make some changes and get things right. But how?

For my part, I’m resolving to make solving a bigger part of my improvement strategy. Here I refer not simply to the solving of tactical problems, which is a necessary but not sufficient condition for improvement. A strict focus on tactics can make a player myopic, narrowing our thinking so that we treat every position we encounter like a tactical puzzle.

What I have in mind are books with a wide variety of positions for solving, each requiring (and training) different facets of chess knowledge, and with the aim of honing my intuition and practical skills. Those of you who read last month’s column might recognize the influence of Mark Dvoretsky’s philosophy in this, albeit on a much simpler level.

Here you might try your hand at this kind of work. Set a clock for 15-20 minutes and find the winning move for White in this position. Write down your analysis, and compare it to the answer that appears at the end of this article.

Until recently there were relatively few books that provided this type of training material. Hort and Jansa’s The Best Move is the most famous book of this kind, but it is out of print and hard to find. (As always, avoid dodgy reprints.) Perfect Your Chess by Volokitin and Grabinsky is excellent but fiendishly difficult. And while both Dvoretsky and Jacob Aagaard have published books with training problems in the last few years, they too are perhaps too complex for most non-masters.

Two collections of exercises have crossed my desk in recent months, both of which are eminently suitable for the kind of work I’m hoping to undertake this year. Together, the two offer a broad swath of exercises for the improving player to grapple with, and I’d recommend both, if to players of slightly different strengths.

Artur Yusupov’s nine-volume training series from Quality Chess is, along with the Dutch Stappenmethode books, one of the best chess training systems in print. His newest title, Revision & Exam 1: The Fundamentals, is a collection of exercises designed to complement the first three books in that series, but it can equally well serve as a stand-alone set of problems for solving.

Revision & Exam 1 consists of 432 positions broken down into 72 chapters, each corresponding to a lesson in the first level of his training books. The problems are well chosen and tremendously varied, the answers are mini-lessons in themselves, and the production values are high. Players rated above 1600 would do well to make this book part of their training regimen.

The Chess Manual of Avoidable Mistakes, Part 2, Test Yourself! is Romain Edouard’s second book from Thinkers Publishing. His first book, which shares the same title, was a thought-provoking work marred by poor editing and translation. Test Yourself! manages to avoid both of these flaws, in part because it is largely languageless, and it provides readers 280 meaty positions for solving.

I have spent some time with Edouard’s book, from which our exercise above is drawn, and the more I work with it, the more I like it. The exercises appear in random order, and beyond the short stipulation given via chapter headings, readers must use their full range of chess knowledge to correctly solve the problems.

Test Yourself! is slightly more taxing than is Revision & Exam 1; as such, it’s best suited for A players and above. Resolute effort in solving will be rewarded in both cases… provided, of course, you stick with it!

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

ANSWER to diagrammed problem:

(1) Radjabov,T (2726) – Karjakin,Sergey (2767) [C26]
Tashkent (analysis) (1.6), 21.10.2014
[Hartmann,John]

Problem #17 in Edouard. Your task is to “find the winning move.” 17.Kf2!

[17.Be3 Qf6 18.Bd4 Qg6+ 19.Qxg6 fxg6 20.Nxd6 cxd6 21.Rbe1= 1/2–1/2 (45) Radjabov,T (2726)-Karjakin,S (2767) Tashkent 2014]

17…Bd7 [17…Bc5+ 18.d4!; 17…Qf6 18.Rg1 Bc5+ (18…Kh8 19.Be3!? (19.Rxg7 Rg8 20.Rxf7 Qg6 21.Qxg6 Rxg6±) 19…Qxc3? 20.Rbd1 Qxc2+ 21.Rd2 Qc3 22.Nxh6+–) 19.d4+–; 17…Kh8 18.Nxh6 g6 19.Nxf7+ Kg7 20.Nxd8 gxh5 21.Ne6++–] 18.Nxh6+ gxh6 19.Qxh6+–