Vassily Ivanchuk is one of the greatest players of our time, and in this position he found a way to increase his advantage against another great player.
Ivanchuk – Kortchnoi, 1994
See the entire game for the solution.
Hint: remember Bronstein’s explanation: the weakness of the dark squares is also the weakness of light squares because opponent’s pieces can occupy key dark squares and attack your pieces that are placed on light squares! This rule applies perfectly in this position.
I would describe the spirit of White’s attack as “he can only take them one at a time”; several of White’s pieces are being attacked, and he keeps sacrificing … In this game Korchnoi shows that he is not only a great defender, but is also able to attack with vigour when necessary. The video has the solution and goes over the whole game (you may notice that this line of the French defence had also occurred in one of my recent games). The game is also discussed on the chessgames forum.
Kortchnoi – Dreev, 1992
Having invested one piece into opening up Black’s king, Viktor Kortchnoi should have thrown in another one!
19. Bb4 would have won the game, since after 19… Bxb4 20. Re3, the rook threatens to swing both to g3 and to h3.
Instead Viktor the great must have overlooked the idea completely and settled for perpetual check! Click here for the complete game.
Have a look at this position, which arises in Panov Attack in the Caro-Kann, or from some lines of Queen’s Gambit Declined.
1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. exd5 cxd5 4. c4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6 6. Nf3 Be7 7. cxd5 Nxd5 8.
Bd3 Nc6 9. O-O O-O 10. Re1 and now Black can play Qa5, which is a very rare sideline
Say, the database will tell you that 4 games have been played with this move, and black scored 50% with Qa5. The move itself sure does not look quite right, but Viktor Korchnoi himself played it, and the score seems not too bad. The 50% however is completely deceptive, have a look at another position from Brodsky – Maiorov, one of the games played in this line.
White (a Grandmaster) is completely winning, but he played the completely inexplicable 47. Rd2?? dropping the rook on c4, and resigned a couple of moves later. So that 50% should have really been 75% in White’s favour! 4 games is really too small of a pool to rely on the numbers, so you should really look at objective value of Qa5 instead of relying on rather meaningless percentage from a database. I had failed to do that, so Black’s other loss is mine – from my 2002 game against Stephen Glinert! The title of the post is of course not fully true – sometimes you should check how well each side is scoring in a line before playing it, but it’s more important to understand the meaning of moves while building up your opening repertoire, especially if you rely on sidelines like Qa5.
B. Gelfand (2704) - V. Korchnoi (2617) [D18]
GM/Biel SUI (1) 2001
One of the first games played by Korchnoi that I saw was Korchnoi-Kinteros, 1973, where White very convincingly refuted Black's strategy in the Benko gambit. Here is another example of Korchnoi refuting a pawn sacrifice, but in a game played 3 decades later:
1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Nf3 dxc4 5. a4 Bf5 6. e3 e6 7. Bxc4 Bb4 8.
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10. e4 I am sure that Gelfand was aware that this move involves a pawn sacrifice, and also that Korchnoi is particularly known for being a greedy defender- accepting sacrifices and then displaying great creativity in surviving opponent's initiative. Going through the game, it is not too clear what he missed in his preparation, as White's compensation never looks quite sufficient.
10. h3 Bh5 (10... Bxf3 11. Qxf3 
)
11. Rd1
10... Nb6 White's pi eces and pawns are placed very prettily on c4, d4, and e4, but every one of them is under attack, and also both knights on f3 and c3 are under attack. This is a great example of a pawn centre collapsing under intense piece pressure.
11. Bb3 Bxf3 12. Qxf3 Qxd4
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13. Rd1 Qe5 14. Bf4 Qh5 15. Qd3 15. Qxh5 Nxh5 16. Be3 Nf6 17. a5 Nbd7
15... Nbd7 16. e5 Nxe5 17. Qd4 Bxc3 18. bxc3 Ng6 19. Bd6 Qa5 20. Bc5 b6 21. Bb4 Qe5 22. Qxe5 Nxe5 23. Bd6 Ned7 24. a5 Ne4 25. axb6 Nxd6 26. Rxd6 Ke7 27. Rxc6 axb6 28. Rb1
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28... Rhc8 The rest of the game is mostly a display of Black's technique in converting the extra pawn. 29. Ba4 Nc5 30. Bb5 Rxc6 31. Bxc6 Ra2 32. h4 Kd8 33. Rd1+ Kc7 34. Be8 f6 35. Bb5 Ra3 Black neutralized the counterplay and now himself begins to attack weak pawns. 36. c4 e5 37. Kf1 Ra2 38. Rd5 e4 39. h5 h6 40. Kg1 Ra3 41. Kh2 Rd3 The main pr oblem with defending this kind of positions is that when you are a pawn down, you cannot trade rooks, so you are forced to retreat your pieces into passive squares. 42. Rf5 Kd6 43. Rf4 Ke5 44. Rg4 Ne6 45. Bc6 Ng5 46. f4+ desperation. 46... Kf5 47. Rh4 Ne6 48. g4+ Kxf4 49. g5+ Kxg5 50. Rxe4 Nd4 0-1
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