Quality Chess co-sponsors the Herbert Garrett Memorial grant in Italy, which supports up and coming talents; previously Vocaturo and Caruana, who are now GM’s. This year’s award was presented by World no. 6, Israeli GM Boris Gelfand. If you read Italian, you can find some information about the award here.
On the Sunday we all moved on to play the 12th edition of the 15-min rapid tournament in Rocca di Papa, a mountain village outside Rome. Gelfand was seeded 1st Read more…
In his excellent Checkpoint column at Chesscafe, FM Carsten Hansen gives Sabino Brunello’s Attacking the Spanish a 5/5 review.
However, Quality Chess does get some criticism for being too pushy with our author:
“The back cover tell us that the author “is one of the leaders of the youthful revival in Italian chess” and that he “is still a teenager, but his rating is already 2550 and increasing daily. By the time this book is printed he will probably be a grandmaster.” This is an odd embellishment to say the least. A quick check on FIDE’s website shows that he has yet to become a grandmaster (at least the title hasn’t been awarded yet) and his rating is down. However, the poorly worded promotion was completely unnecessary, because he is already a stronger player than most authors today.”
You can fairly accuse us of pushing our book and our author. We are terribly proud of both, especially as Sabino is also my student. However, when we send a book to the printer in June, please do not have a go at us for not predicting that the author might lose rating points in August! (And sadly September too.) Sabino has two norms and is a very strong player. He will be a GM the moment he makes the third norm. This can happen at any moment, for example at the World Juniors in Argentina in October.
If you have always wanted to watch two International Masters playing chess 400 feet off the ground in a helium-filled balloon, then today is your lucky day.
During the recent British Championship IMs Andrew Greet and Jack Rudd (rivals from the neighbouring English counties of Cornwall and Devon) played just such a match. Andrew has been working at Quality Chess for a few months, so we pay particular attention to what he gets up to on his holidays.
YouTube has the story in two parts:
Part One Part Two
Our authors have been playing great chess recently.
At the very strong Politiken Cup in Denmark, Boris Avrukh was first equal, while Tiger Hillarp Persson won the Best Game Prize. Lars Schandorff scored a respectable 7/10.
Mihail Marin played a couple of tournaments. He was first in Benasque (with 9/11) and second in Andorra. These fantastic results have pushed his rating up to a personal best of 2610.
John Shaw
1.d4 d4 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.e3 Bf5 5.Nc3 e6 6.Nh4 Be4 7.f3 Bg6 8.Qb3
This is a line recommended by Boris Avrukh in Grandmaster Repertoire 1: 1.d4. The usual replies are 8…Qb6 and 8…Qc7. In January this year Sweden’s No.1, Tiger Hillarp Persson, introduced a stunning new idea: 8…b5!!?
Last month, in a training session in Edinburgh, Tiger explained how he came up with the idea. Most new ideas are prepared in advance at home and computer-checked: Tiger’s was an over-the board inspiration. He had intended to play 8…Qb6, then he suddenly thought, “Was 8…b7-b6 so bad?” and then 8…b7-b5 popped into his head. He quickly checked that 9.cxb5 c5 offered some play, and that he had some ideas against 9.c5, and then Tiger was ready. He used less than 10 minutes before playing 8…b5: a new move in a position that had been played over 400 times.
So if you follow Avrukh’s repertoire, how should you reply to Tiger’s gambit? Playing 9.c5 with the idea of a2-a4 to follow is interesting, but my suggestion is to try to refute the gambit by accepting it: 9.cxb5 c5 10.Nxg6 hxg6 11.g3!? White’s king will often find a home on g2. For example if 11…Bd6 then 12.Kf2 (stopping …Bxg3) 12…Qc7 13.Kg2 (again stopping …Bxg3). The king looks safe and White is a pawn up.
So far 8…b5 has been played 4 times and no one has tried 9.cxb5. If you have the chance, give it a go.
John Shaw
Boris has written a bit about GM Repertoire 1 at his site. Visit it at:
http://avrukhboris.wordpress.com/my-first-book/
Although not individually, this time…
We have promised to recommend people to go to http://avrukhboris.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/we-are-the-champions/ if they are looking for top training from one of the best players in the world, Boris Avrukh. There you will also find the story behind the headline.
Jacob
In the recent Mitropa Cup Sabino Brunello seemed on his way to make his final GM-norm, but for some reason Italy did not field the strongest team in the 8th round, and Brunello was elevated from the 3rd to the 2nd board, and for this reason did not play a third grandmaster, which he would have done on board 3.
Either way, he won his games, beating a 2575, 2525 and 2550 player in the last three rounds. His performance in 2009 (39 games – 31.5 points) is now 2652. His elo is set to be 2550 on the next list, overtaking Michele Godena and becoming Italy’s number two, after Caruana.
But most importantly, his book Attacking the Spanish, is set to be out early in July. The editing is basically at an end and typesetting has begun. With the three weeks of turnover at the printer, we hope that the book will be out five weeks from now. We think it is really really good, but this will of course be for the critiques and readers to decide.
Jacob
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