What's New - June 2001
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The June update is completely dedicated to the recent Europe Championship in Ohrid, Macedonia. Without any doubt the most popular opening was the Queen's Gambit Accepted - this is where the principal arguments took place. There were also a few interesting innovations in some other openings... It was interesting to see the effect of the new accelerated time control. At first glance, a good opening preparation should became more important but sometimes players preferred not to enter into deep lines being probably worried they won't have enough time to recall all the subtleties. Bye for now! Ruslan Scherbakov |
Marshall Gambit
A tricky and rather strange variation was tested in JUN01/01- Black invited the rival queen deep into his own camp, gave up a bishop but then trapped the invader after a quick chase forced White to give a piece back. The line looks suspicious for Black, but it's still alive!
...a6 Slav
JUN01/02 One of the main heroes of the Chebanenko System, Sergey Volkov, was smashed in excellent style. Vadim Milov introduced an interesting set-up and gave his opponent no chance to escape.
Tarrasch
JUN01/03 A very interesting and rather unexpected novelty by Gennady Timoschenko in a well-known position helped him to achieve a winning endgame quickly, although he failed to lead it to the logical finish. Actually it was not just that the move itself was unexpected as the fact that this is really new! An important theoretical game.
Noteboom
JUN01/04 is a rather strange game - White fell into a trap which has already been known for about 40 years!
QGA
JUN01/05 A little improvement allowed Black to avoid more testing lines and obtain a comfortable ending, which he eventually won after tense fighting thanks to several White inaccuracies.
Ruslan Ponomariov successfully defends a rather suspicious set-up, he allows White to occupy the center and then counters it by early queenside actions. In JUN01/06 White introduced a new idea but it didn't work well due to Black's enterprising play.
JUN01/07 A principled battle in the opening - Yury Shulman played his pet variation against one of the main QGA experts, Sergey Rublevsky. The line is not very popular as it does not look too promising for White, but Black should know what to do, and very well. I remember how I was suffering myself against Yury (twice!) and Sergey used a small part of my experience to develop a reliable way to hold the balance, which he successfully tried in this game.
In the game Bareev - Shirov, FIDE Wch, New Delhi 2000, Evgeny Bareev introduced a new idea suggested by Vladimir Kramnik and achieved some advantage. In JUN01/08 another of Kramnik' seconds, Joel Lautier, revealed a little secret from the Champion's laboratory, demonstrating how Black can counter White's idea without a weakening of the queenside pawn structure.
JUN01/09 A slight innovation compared to the game Kramnik - Kasparov, Braingames WCC (m/6), London 2000 although in my opinion Kramnik's play was no less enterprising. It seems that the variation is acceptable for Black but it is fairly complicated and requires a good understanding of the position and precise play - this time White successfully exploited some inaccuracies of his opponent.
The line Black chose to counter 7. Bb3 looks risky but no refutation has been found yet... until JUN01/10, perhaps! I was upset over my friend's loss but at the same time I was lost in admiration watching the wonderful play of Oleg Romanishin. Look and enjoy!