Dear Chess Friend,

Every day, on chess boards all over the world and here at ChessBase, things happen that every chess enthusiast is interested in. And I would like to tell you what is going on, for example....

From the tournament scene

By now it's almost a tradition that the chess season begins with one of the highlights of the chess year - the Corus tournament in Wijk aan Zee. Actually, these are three highly interesting tournaments. In the A-tournament Carlsen, Anand and Kramnik were arguably considered favourites. However, it was Shirov who started with 5 out of 5 and pushed himself to the fore. The Spaniard seemed well set for tournament victory but then he blundered away a winning position against Anand - to lose in the end - and afterwards he missed a winning possibility against Kramnik's Petroff to draw the game. And in the final round against Dominguez he agreed to a draw in a winning position.

Shirov, A.- Dominguez Perez, L.

30. ... Bg7 (the correct move was 30... Be5=) with a draw. Shirov missed 31. b4! and now White wins after 31...Qc7 32. Qa8+ Bf8 33. Rf1.

Half a point more and Shirov would have been co-winner. Now Carlsen took first place. But the Norwegian was not content with his play. Anand played in a somewhat restrained manner but not as badly as in the tournament in Bilbao before his last World Championship match. In view of the circumstances the World Champion was not entirely dissatisfied. The B-group was more or less smoothly won by Anish Giri. The Nepalese-Russian "wunderkind" with a Dutch passport could soon follow in Carlsen's footsteps.

The current edition of ChessBase Magazine (April 2010, No. 135) contains audio, video and written comments from the Corus tournament not only by Anand, Carlsen, Kramnik and Shirov.

Almost parallel to the Corus tournament the Gibtelecom-Masters took place in Gibraltar, an open in attractive surroundings and an equally attractive prize-fund. The Norwegians sent a huge delegation, among them Magnus Carlsen's sister Ingrid. In the end several players shared the lead. The best four played a tie-break, which was won by Michael Adams.

The next big tournament followed in February, geographically not that far away from Gibraltar - in Linares. Here the World Championship challenger Veselin Topalov showed that he is not at all inhibited by the forthcoming match for the World Championship. He won in superior style, even if Alexander Grischuk stopped his momentum briefly.

In the beginning of March many top players again stepped into the ring at the European Championship in Rijeka. In this tournament top players take part who want to qualify for the World Cup and are not automatically qualified by a high Elo-rating - all in all 400 players came to Rijeka and more than 160 players started in the Women's European Championship. After a couple of rounds the players drew up a petition to complain about the rigidly applied rules of having to be absolutely on time for the round. If you were not at your board when the clocks were set running you lost by default. Some players were accommodated quite far away from the tournament hall and thus in every round a couple of players fell victim to this rule. But as the rule had been applied at the start of the tournament it could not be changed later on.

In Ian Nepomniachtchi (20) it was a very young player who won this tournament. In the ultimately decisive game against his biggest rival for the title, Baadur Jobava, the young Russian decided to play the so-called Fantasy Variation against Jobava's Caro-Kann: 1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 and 3.f3. This underestimated sideline offers White an opportunity to steer Black away from his familiar Caro-Kann patterns and to set the pace in mainly relatively unexplored territory. This line was also the topic of an extensive review in the last three issues of ChessBase Magazine. And in the European Championship it was played in a couple of games.

Nepomniachtchi-Jobava and Fantasy at the Euro...

At the European's Women Championship experience won in the shape of Pia Cramling. The delicate Swede is a veteran of women's chess and was one of the first women to play regularly in men's tournaments.

Training:

In the last weeks a number of training DVDs have appeared in Chessmedia format. The advantages of this format for your own opening study are obvious. Instead of searching for the right way with the help of database statistics and engines you simply let the experts show you what to do. Who, for instance, knows the idea to attack Philidor's Defence with 5.g4 better than its creator Alexei Shirov? Compared to books, in the Chessmedia format chess is presented in a more compact way and it is easier to remember crucial points. Basically the DVDs are training lessons with a coach appearing on the screen - as often as you want.

New DVDs:

Open and Semi-Open Games

Andrew Martin Spanish Exchange Variation
On this DVD the experienced chess trainer and prolific chess author Andrew Martin explains the Spanish Exchange variation, with which you do not only avoid all dangerous variations in the Spanish but also reach a strategically won position - the pawn endgame is won for White. In English.
More information...
€27.50

Lawrence Trent: Two Knights Defence
The English IM shows the current theoretical situation in the Two Knights Defence. Recently a couple of theoretically important games were played in this line. In English.
More information...
€27.50

Valeri Lilov The Sicilian Kan Variation
The young Bulgarian Valeri Lilov is a new member in the team of ChessBase authors. In a very short time his training lessons on the playchess server have attracted quite a large community of regular fans - a good reason to record a training DVD. Here he presents the Sicilian Kan Variation, a very flexible opening. In English.
More information...
€27.50

Nigel Davies  French Defence Strategy
Nigel Davies shows plans and strategies in the structures of the French Defence.
More information...
€29.90

Thomas Luther: Französisch 1 – 2nd Edition
The successful DVD of French expert and several times German champion GM Thomas Luther in an enlarged and updated new edition. Volume 1 deals with the Advance Variation, the Closed Variation and sidelines. In German.
Mehr Information...
€ 29.90

Thomas Luther: Französisch 2 – 2nd Edition
Enlarged and updated edition of volume 2 with the systems arising after 3.Nc3 (Winawer, Classical, Rubinstein) and 3.Nd2 (Tarrasch). In German.
Mehr Information...
€29.90

Closed Games

Nigel Davies  Build a 1.d4 repertoire
Nigel Davies shows how to reach good playable positions with 1.d4 and queen pawn openings such as the Torre-Attack or the Colle-System without having to know the theory of the main defences against 1.d4. In English.
More information...
€27.50

Valeri Lilov The Queen's Gambit Accepted
On this repertoire DVD about the Queen's Gambit accepted Valeri Lilov presents two strategies (a6, b5, Nbd7, Bb7 and Bg4) which allow you to fight for the initiative with Black early on.
More information...
€ 27.50

Behind the Scenes: Bologan, Relocation, Shirov, Short

The ChessBase office was on the right, in the reddish house, top floor, behind the windows on the left.

In fact a couple of buildings in the City Nord are connected by a platform for pedestrians but get their addresses from streets that lie elsewhere. Confused, lost pedestrians wondering that number 25 is directly next to number 35 while they see another number 35 directly opposite are a common sight in the City Nord.

One thing I will miss in particular is the freight elevator. The elevator buttons were marked T, Z, E, 1. Obvious, isn't it? Using the elevator on Friday afternoon was not advisable unless you happened to have a weekend off and did not mind spending lots of time on your own. Every so often the doors of the machine simply got blocked.

The elevator of horror (to the right)

I once freed a man from UPS who had stepped off the elevator on level E, which, however, brought him to a store room he could not leave because he did not have a key for the exit door. Meanwhile, the elevator was gone and did not come back. One floor below someone had left the elevators doors open.

The last time the elevator transported ChessBase items was early in February - this time, however, reliable and uncomplaining.

Pascal Simon and Steffen Giehring clear the store

Data security is for the management – with hammer and chisel ChessBase CEO-Matthias Wüllenweber
destroys old hard drives to destroy all (secret) data before throwing the hard drives away.

Now we are located a bit further south from the "Stadtpark", Hamburg's municipal park. And we no longer have a freight elevator. The ChessBase office is on the ground floor.

The last guest in our old recording studio was Moldavian grandmaster Viktor Bologan.


Viktor Bologan and André Schulz show the photographer what they think about his pictures

Last summer Bologan recorded DVDs about the King's Indian Defence and the Caro-Kann, two openings from his own repertoire. Bologan follows a concept of his own when presenting openings. Similar to classical opening books he only shows the beginning of the illustrative games and breaks off at a suitable moment. This has the advantage of showing you more lines. And Bologan believes that not seeing the whole game is not such a big drawback. Now Bologan has recorded DVDs about the Philidor and the Rossolimo Variation in the Sicilian. The Philidor is an underestimated but completely playable and complete defence against 1.e4 ( via 1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 e5); the latter opening allows you to give to the Sicilian your own more positional slant.


Viktor Bologan  The King's Indian
A complete repertoire for Black in the King's Indian Defece based on Bologan's own King's Indian repertoire.
More information...
€ 27.50

Viktor Bologan  The Caro-Kann
Bologan's Caro-Kann repertoire based on the line 4...Bf5 followed by castling queenside (classical).
More information...
€ 27,50

The first studio guest in the new office was Alexei Shirov. Apart from visiting ChessBase the native Latvian has even better reasons to come to Hamburg regularly. His daughter is living here. This time the "Fire on Board" artist made a little stop on his way to Heidelberg, where he played for Baden-Baden in the Bundesliga top match against Werder Bremen antrat. In the new studio he recorded four games from the Corus tournament in the Chessmedia format. Which you find in the April edition of the ChessBase Magazine (No. 135).

ChessBase Magazine, April 2010, No. 135

Soon after Shirov, Nigel Short came for a visit and recorded two DVDs with his best games. The World Championship challenger of 1993 is an bottomless well of stories, anecdotes, reports and general information about chess. And there was enough time between the recordings to tell the stunned listeners in the ChessBase office about some incident or other in the chess world. And as you know, the former wunderkind is not someone to bite his tongue.

Nigel Short tells us funny stories about his preparation before playing against Karpov in
the candidates match (l. André Schulz, r. Oliver Reeh)

Autograph at the picture gallery. Who am I...?

His DVDs will definitely offer entertainment but first and foremost Short is a witty player with an amazing ability to explain the ideas behind the moves in a comprehensible way. Another highlight of his visit was his appearance on the TV ChessBase Show, where he showed a game from his candidates match against Karpov and also treated the spectators to a fine e-guitar performance

Short is a master on the guitar and plays everything from Led Zeppelin to Bach

Deep Fritz 12

You need to have a "premium membership" for the Fritz-Server to have access to TV ChessBase, a lot of live commentary - e.g. during the coming world championship match between Anand and Topalov -, training and occasional simultaneous events on the playchess.com server. This membership costs about 50 Euros per year. If you have Fritz 12 or the new Deep Fritz 12 you automatically receive a serial number for a one-year-premium-membership as well.

And for all those who are difficult to reach by "snail mail", there is now a download version of Deep Fritz 12. This version has a different database and opening book and can only be ordered with certain online payment systems, but also includes a premium-serial-number.

Deep Fritz 12 download version...

Work in Progress:

Rybka 4

In an interview in the current issue of the ChessBase Magazine Vasik Rajlich provides some insights into the eagerly awaited new Rybka version. Amazing: to turn Rybka 3 into Rybka 4 3000(!) different test versions are tried. Rybka 4 is expected to appear in May 2010.

See you next time and have fun playing and watching chess!

Yours,

André Schulz

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