ChessBase Magazine 140:Review
ChessBase Magazine 140(DVD+Booklet)
February 2011
When the Russian women’s team won gold in the Chess Olympiad last year there was euphoria in the air. Sadly, it was short lived. A few months later the Chinese, their nearest rivals led by Hou Yifan and Ruan Lufei came back to claim the World Championship. The highlight of this issue is that event in which the duo overcame the challenge of experienced campaigners like Alexandra Kosteniuk and Koneru Humpy to lead the tournament table. In the final round Hou Yifan prevailed over Ruan Lufei with a score of 5:3 to win the title. All the games from this event are to be found in here, several of them annotated by the players themselves and there is a commentary on the openings by Mihail Marin.One encounter that interested me was the semi-final match between Koneru Humpy and Hou Yifan.
The first of them, a long tough game was won by Hou and it is annotated by her in this issue. In the second game
Koneru made a determined bid to level scores,
but missed it by a hair’s breadth. Hou annotated this game elsewhere (New in Chess, 1/2011), but not in this magazine. I have used some of her comments and my own are separately marked in the Move List.
A battle of nerves! The games of the final match between Hou Yifan and Ruan Lufei are no less interesting.
A fine shot, if you did not miss that one. But there is an object lesson in that position. We should learn to distinguish between real and imagined threats. Wecannot take them on trust from the opponent. I guess, in the postmortem both players saw what they missed.But remember, this was the decisive game of the world championship and in the heat of the moment you tend to overlook things.
This issue also deals with London Chess Classic, Reggio Emilia and Russian Championship events that took place at the end of the year 2010.The London Chess Classic has been widely reported in the media. The highlight of this issue, however, is Anand’s video commentary on his victory over Carlsen
who won the event any way on account of the new scoring system.The Reggio Emilia tournament was won by Vugar Gashimov
ahead of Paco Vallejo (superior tie-break) and favourites like Vassily Ivanchuk and Alexander Morozevich.
Both Ivanchuk and Morozevich overplayed their hand in won positions to lose against less fancied opponents.
The Russian Championship was won by Ian Nepomniachtchi ahead of Sergei Karajkin (superior tie-break again!).
But it was the fate of two "also-rans" that attracted my attention here.
Both Alexander Grischuk and Peter Svidler (seen here with Karjakin) had distinguished themselves, winning the Russian Championship before. But not this time! Grischuk remained unbeaten, but was bogged down by draws. Svidler fared better until he lost to Nepomniachtchi
in the 9th round, knocking him out of contention for the title.Apart from coverage of these events this issue has trademark sections with opening surveys, middlegame tactics and endgame positions. In all there are 347 OTB games of which about 75 are annotated.
Recommended
Acknowledgements:The images of the Women's World Champioship Match are taken from the official site: http://wwcc2010.tsf.org.tr/
(Thanks, Mr.Melih SAGIT!)
Link:For more info. on this issue, see the publisher's site:
http://chessbase-shop.com/en/products/5888
Notes:
1)The two rivals, Koneru Humpy Hou Yifan met again in the recent Women's Grand Prix Tournament at Rostov. Having outplayed her opponent, Koneru blundered and lost in time trouble: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7429
Both are now preparing for the world championship match to be held in Tirana, Albania in November, 2011.
2)As is well-known, Hou Yifan became the youngest women's world champion by winning the title at the age of 16.
3)Peter Svidler has redeemed his record by winning the 64th Russian Championship held this year. Morozevich was second and Grischuk, third. Nepomniachtchi ended up sixth with a minus score, 3/7 points. It's tough, playing in the Russian Championship:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=7461
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