Quality Chess Newsletter – Judit beats Magnus – rematch at the London Classic
Dear Quality Chess Reader,
Judit Polgar, author of How I Beat Fischer’s Record, achieved the remarkable feat of beating World Number 1, Magnus Carlsen. Judit won the battle but lost the war, as Magnus stormed back to win the UNAM chess festival in Mexico City. The pair will face each other again at the London Chess Classic which starts this Saturday. They are joined by an incredible field – Anand, Kramnik, Aronian, Nakamura, Adams, McShane and Jones.
GM Boris Avrukh’s Grandmaster Repertoire 11: Beating 1.d4 Sidelines has been received with extraordinary enthusiasm. It is too early for official reviews, so I will quote a blog comment from a happy customer: “I would like to say ‘Congrats’ to Boris, Jacob, John and Andrew and the rest of the QC staff for GM11, another home run!!!” The customer is always right; well at least this one is.
Our chess file (in pgn or pdf) contains a range of material, so I shall just mention a few highlights. Of course this includes Judit’s win over Magnus. It is always fun to see an author in action or our repertoires being tested. In four of the other games we have both at once – GM Sabino Brunello following the repertoires suggested by GM Lars Schandorff. Sabino often follows Lars (with White and Black) with great results. I think Sabino may even be unbeaten when playing as ‘Lars’.
Finally, Quality Chess would like to congratulate Jens Kristiansen of Denmark on his superb play and victory at the World Seniors Championship in Greece. The GM title is automatically awarded with the ‘Senior’ title, so this enables Jens to make a well-deserved step up from IM (a title he achieved in 1979). But what has this to do with Quality Chess? Well, Jacob recently became Denmark’s national coach. One weekend training session and he creates a World Champion! That would be the tabloid version, but in fact Jens could not attend the only training session there has been so far. So all credit to Jens himself. There is a serious lesson here – whatever your age, improvement is possible if you put in enough time and effort. Jacob tells me that Jens is undoubtedly stronger now, aged just over 60, than he ever was before.
Regards,
John Shaw
Chief Editor
Quality Chess
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