10 Things I learned from Watching the Chess World Cup

A few months ago, I watched probably almost 50 hours of Sergei Shipov analysing live (in Russian) the games of the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. Was this the best use of my chess study time? Probably not, but I was so fascinated by the drama of the tournament, and Shipov’s skill and dedication as a commentator, that I could not stop watching. Guest commentators included Valery Yoshan, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Alexander Khalifman and this allowed to also compare how different strong players approach the game. A chess amateur like myself would not be able to tell the difference in strength between all these players, but if you watch them analyse together for few hours, it becomes obvious who is in a better shape, and who has more experience in a variety of middlegame positions.

To reap at least some benefit from it, I made a series of blog posts, but also here is my general observations and notes on interesting things that commentators have said:

1. Grandmasters seem to remember an enormous amount of opening theory, but they can surprise each other in every game – in fact they do!
2. Khalifman seems to also know every opening in the world (indeed as a player he had a very wide opening repertoire)
3. Khalifman seems a bit more careful at evaluating positions than Shipov. Shipov would say “the endgame is winning”, Khalifman says “good winning chances”.
4. As you get older, your decisions to take risks on the board are less influenced by the position and more by how you feel today
5. Ivanchuk is really tricky when playing against opponent’s time trouble
6. Judit Polgar is great at attacking, but is not as good at defending and being careful
7. Grandmasters seem to be understanding positions better than IM’s, formulating their assessment of each position much quicker
8. In each position, there are a lot of very interesting moves, and one has to have a really good decision process to identify candidate moves, and pick the best ones
9. Grandmasters sometimes make moves that are hard to understand, but there is nearly always some idea behind that move
10. Ivanchuk’s moves are particularly hard to guess or explain

Book Review – Khalifman’s Opening For White Series

If you are are looking into buying a chess opening book these days, many books lack depth. This is clearly not the case with Alexander Khalifman’s “Opening for White according to Anand”! I have a copy of volume two – about the mainline Spanish Opening, and I must say the book provides the necessary combination of depth and detail. A few more good points on the book:

• Specific moves are in most cases presented in the context of strategic plans
• Most of the theory is up to date – at the time of the writing
• The book is a solid foundation for a full repertoire
• Transpositions are generally explained
• Final positions are given evaluations
• If necessary to illustrate the ideas of the middlegame – entire games are provided
• The author is a reliable authority on opening theory
• The entire mainline Spanish is covered – which must have been a ton of work for the author(s)

If you play the mainline Spanish as White (or even as Black), and have no coach to walk you through it, this book is a “must have” in your chess library!

Chess Grandmaster Audio Interviews in Russian

Russian website http://chess-news.ru/ is one of the most informative and up-to-date Russian chess resources on the web, and it has a few audio interviews of grandmasters. Unfortunately I have not been able to find an audio podcast feed for these interviews, but with a little Google Reader search trick, I can download them almost as easily. Khalifman, Shipov, Karjakin, Vasjukov – this is a feast for a Russian Speaking chess fan.

Alexander Khalifman on Opening Preparation

I just watched a pretty entertaining interview with former FIDE World Chess Champion Alexander Khalifman. When asked why he made a quick draw with White against a lower rated grandmaster (who was rated 2530), Alexander the Great made a few remarks on how opening preparation works these days:

• If your opponent prepared the opening variation with Rybka, his rating is not 2530, his rating is 3000!
• There is a saying that if a grandmaster looked at the opening variation a week ago, it feels like as if he never looked at it
• Memory is the main skill that gets affected as chess players get older, or stop studying chess intensely
• Khalifman’s former strength – broad opening repertoire – is now becoming a vulnerable spot, since that requires keeping too many sharp variations in his head

The last remark definitely resonated well with myself, as I had to considerably constraint my repertoire, choose between 1.e4 and 1.d4 as White and focus my study on lines that I actually intend to play – a reasonable approach for a chess amateur. Here is the video of the interview – in Russian (which I loosely translated), recorded at the just finished Aeroflot Open

Studying chess in Miami

I have not posted on my blog for a while, I was on vacation in Miami, and had little time for writing new entries.

I’ve however been studying chess quite actively while on the trip, mostly going through my opening repertoire. Khalifman’s book on the Spanish opening has been of enormous help. Not to beat this subject to death, but wanted to comment that I realize now more and more that putting together a foolproof set of responses against every possible move an opponent can throw at you is quite a hustle. But then again, it’s something you inevitably must do, sooner or later, and once you have such a repertoire in a database, you can print it to study more conveniently, and preparing for each game is way easier. I also found a related series of blog posts - http://www.chessedelic.com/2009/04/25/how-to-build-a-chess-opening-repertoire-part-i-getting-the-lay-of-the-land/ that are a lot more detailed than anything I wrote on the subject so far.

Las Vegas - gambling vs. games (and Khalifman)

I just got back from a short trip to Las Vegas. Among other things I was impressed by how many people are actually glued to the slot machines. The atmosphere reminded me of chess tournaments (in a sense that people are stuck to their chairs for days), but obviously a lot more people are into slot machines than into French defense. In some ways, you'd think chess would be a lot more appealing to folks who want to kill time, but perhaps the amount of effort and dedication required is too much. Even if you win some cash in an open chess tournament, that happens only once per trip. Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that 99.99% of people care about money a lot more than about any pawn structure nuances. Below is the picture of Caesar's Palace hotel where Alexander Khalifman won his FIDE Champion title in 1999. Apparently at the time, nobody in town knew about the event going on, and if they did, they probably would not care.

Khalifman, incidentally is an awesome chess player, often underestimated because he won his title without beating Kasparov, however as it often happens - lesser (compared to Kasparov) players can have a lot of very instructive games in their collection. I have a copy of Khalifman: Life and Games in Russian, and each game seems to contain a sacrifice that would win a beauty prize in a major tournament. His opening repertoir is sharp and extensive, so you'd find an instructive example from any major opening. It's too bad that his playing strength declined since the period of 1999-2000.