BOTW: 2016.12.09

John Upper's picture
Submitted by John Upper on Fri, 12/09/2016 - 19:56

London Chess Classic
December 9-18,2016.

The final stage of the 2016 Grand Chess Tour starts this week in London. It is a 10-player RR featuring 8 of the world's top 10 players: 

Name.....    FIDE rating .......  World Rank

  1. Caruana, Fabiano ....... 2823 ..... 2
  2. Kramnik, Vladimir ...... 2809 ..... 3
  3. Vachier-Lagrave, M. ... 2804 ..... 4
  4. So, Wesley .................. 2794 ..... 5
  5. Aronian, Levon ........... 2785 ..... 7
  6. Anand, Viswanathan.... 2779 ..... 8
  7. Nakamura, Hikaru ...... 2779 ..... 9
  8. Giri, Anish .................. 2771 ..... 10
  9. Topalov, Veselin ......... 2760 ..... 15
  10. Adams, Michael .......... 2748 ..... 19

In addition to the games themselves, the tournament should be interesting for two other reasons:

    • it's the final stage of the Grand Chess Tour, and Wesley So can cement his place among the world's best: he leads the Grand Chess Tour after winning in St.Louis and finishing second behind Carlsen in Leuven, and he needs only 6 points to break 2800. 
    • if Caruana has an excellent result (+4) he will pass Magnus Carlsen and become the new World #1.

homepage
http://www.londonchessclassic.com/

live games 
with commentary by GMs Seirawan and Ramirez, IM T. Sachdev, & London interviews with Maurice Ashley.

http://live.londonchessclassic.com/grand-chess-tour-2016.php

http://grandchesstour.org/watch-live-0

https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/london-chess-classic-2016/1/1/1

Interview with Mark Dvoretsky
A three-part interview with world famous chess trainer and author Mark Dvoretsky, who died in September. Although Dvoretsky's higest FIDE title was IM, his chess books made him more famous and influential than most GMs.
Indian IM Sagar Shah visited Dvoretsky at his Moscow home in March, and the interveiw appeared on the ChessBase website in October and November. In it, Dvoretsky discusses his training sessions with Anand and Topalov, his students Yusupov and Dreev, working with computers (including a remark that ChessBase has eliminated one of his favourite features from CB7), and his preference for not working on openings. A few quotes:
His own books:
"I think it's very difficult to say which one is my favourite, but I can surely point out that there is no book which I am ashamed of. I have never seen any bad reviews about my books anywhere. This is because I never wrote a book just for the sake of writing."
Favourite chess authors: 
John Nunn, Jonathan Rowson, Grigory Sanakoev (World Correspondence champion), and Andy Soltis -- the ones Andy writes for pleasure, not the ones he writes for money.
Accumulating information vs training skills:
"I feel that many chess trainers think that chess is a game based on information. They try to collect data from various sources, learn them and then teach it to their students. But we mustn't forget chess is also a sport and to be successful at a sport it is not enough to just have knowledge, you should have skills too. And for the development of skills you need to train."
Link to part 3, which has links to parts 1 and 2:
http://en.chessbase.com/post/mark-dvoretsky-s-final-interview-part-iii
Mark Taimanov 
Russian Grandmaster Mark Taimanov died November 28, at the age of 90.
He was one of the strongest players in the 1950s through 1970s: playing in 23 Championships of the USSR, tying for first twice. He contributed important opening ideas for Black which now bear the name "Taimanov variation" in both the Sicilian (2....e6 and 4...Nc6) and the Nimzo-Indian (4.e3 Nc6). He is unfortunately best known for losing a Candidate's match to Bobby Fischer 6-0 in Vancouver in 1971. 
 
Unlike almost all modern grandmasters, Taimanov had successful careers outside of chess: as a youngster he appeared in films, and as an adult he had a successful career as a concert pianist specializing in piano duos. You can find links to videos from his film and piano careers below.
 
"Kontsert Bethovena"
A short clip from the 1937 film. Taimanov is the curly haired boy with the violin:
 
Piano Duet (1963)
"Brazilieira" from the suite "Scaramouche" by Darius Milhaud
Dvoretsky analyzes Taimanov
Finally, an excerpt from Dvoretsky's masterpiece Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, where he annotates a very complex endgame played by Mark Taimanov.
This excerpt is from the first edition of DEM, and it is by no means Dvoretsky's last word on this ending: in 2016 he recorded a series of endgame videos with Jan Gustafsson for chess24.com and there he returned to this ending to add even more discoveries:
..
() - ()
 
 Round:  Result:
..

Category: