In Street Smart Chess, model players teach how to play against opponents of different strengths. The chapters do inevitably clash against each other. If one of the players want to create a tactical game and the other a boring game, both can’t succeed. The question is who manages best. A few days ago, David Navara mentioned that he will play Baskaran Adhiban in Mr. Dodgy Invitational. It was a test for both of them, as Navara’s chapter in Street Smart was beating lower rated opponents, and Adhiban’s was beating higher rated opponents. This time both could succeed with their intentions: winning games. After eleven games, they had played only one draw, with Navara winning 6,5–4,5. But did they follow their own advice? Let’s examine one win each.
Adhiban
first step in the ideal attacking game is to “strive for a pawn structure
where it’s possible to throw pawns at the opponent’s king at a later
stage.” King’s Indian is a good choice doing that.
GM Gawain Jones and GM Jacob Aagaard will be live on “Thinking Aloud”, this Thursday at 16:00 UK time on Killer Chess Training. This class is one of the favourites in the chess academy: Two people. Six positions. Real-time solving.
Join them for a small preview of the second volume of Gawain’s Coffeehouse Repertoire 1.e4, which will be out in August (the first volume will be out in June).
This class is free for the members of Killer Chess Training, but I have set aside a few places for Quality Chess readers. You can join either by sending me a message on the Facebook page or on the KillerChessTraining (a) gmail.com email.
Jacob is extra busy these last few days; on top of finishing some books and training people all over the world, he is going live on YouTube for a quick view on the games of the day in the ongoing Candidates tournament.
You can see here the scheduled times, here the videos, and here the analysis in replayable format. For those who prefer paper, boards, and pieces, John Hartman from uschess.org has created pdf versions.
Congratulations from everyone at Quality Chess to GM Gawain Jones, the new European Blitz Champion! The event was held on-line for obvious reasons, with Gawain topping a stellar field, including beating GM David Navara in the semi-final and GM Alexei Shirov in the final.
Gawain is of course the author of two superb books on the Dragon. And Gawain will be back as a Quality Chess author in 2021 when we publish his 1.e4 repertoire books – his recommended variations are dangerous but not the biggest-theory main lines, so we are calling it the 1.e4 Coffeehouse Repertoire. No publication date is fixed, but somewhere in the first half of the year.
This seems as good a place as any to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
If you are watching TV in the USA this evening, there is a chance you may see a Quality Chess book lurking as a ‘background prop’. It is on a show called “The Blacklist”, 8:00–9:00 PM EST 13th December on NBC . Apparently there is also an NBC app.
It’s not certain The Thinkers will make the ‘final cut’. And even if it does, the book does not feature in the story; it’s just part of the background scenery. But I hope the point will be to show that one of the main characters has great taste in books.
If you do see David Llada’s book on NBC, then please let us know in the comments. As we Hollywood types say – that’s a wrap.
Small Steps to Giant Improvement by Sam Shankland has been available on Chessable for some time, but now extra video content can also be bought. It’s over 10 hours of Sam on video, being instructive. As is usual on Chessable, new content is introduced at a sales price, so if you are interested in this video then go for it in the first week.
You can see the introduction to Sam’s video below.
Boris Avrukh was recently interviewed by Chess Life writer John Hartmann. A webpage about the interview is here, while the direct Youtube link is here.
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