What's New - May 2001
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Welcome to the May Update! This month features wonderful new games, and important new ideas from the World's best. Bye for now! Ruslan Scherbakov |
Main Line Slav
Alexander Morozevich scored a glorious victory over the World Champion Vladimir Kramnik at Wijk aan Zee 2001. However he experienced certain problems in that game, so his improvement here came just in time for him to hold his own against Garry Kasparov! See MAY01/01.
After this last game, everybody was looking forward to an interesting theoretical duel in the next one, against Kramnik. And it did happen, but not quite the expected one! In MAY01/02 Morozevich successfully defended a rather suspicious idea, which he introduced in another game versus ...Kasparov (Wijk aan Zee 2000- RS167).
By the way, an improvement, which served him very well this time, was suggested in my comments more than one year ago. Stay with ChessPublishing and keep up-to-date with all modern opening investigations!
Meran
The sharp Reynolds Attack is thought not to be too dangerous for Black but he must know what to do. In MAY01/03 Vladislav Tkachiev attacked in a very beautiful way and eventually broke down Black's defences, but objectively it seems that Black could have organised a better defence with his extra piece. Nevertheless a very exciting and theoretically important game. Watch and enjoy!
Evgeny Bareev is one of the leading Meran experts - he used to play it with both colours. Here, in MAY01/04 he introduces a promising-looking novelty in a complex and theoretically important line
theory of the variation 9. ..a6 10.e5 cxd4 11.Nxb5 Ng4 is not as well-developed as the older moves 11...Nxe5 and 11...axb5. Black often sacrifices a pawn for quick development and it looks like White has no clear way to achieve more than a slight edge. In MAY01/05 we discuss an ambitious novelty by Boris Alterman- it is interesting but double-edged, and as yet it's too early to draw any conclusions.
MAY01/06 Jeroen Piket here takes his opponent unawares in a complex variation which was popular about ten years ago. Curiously enough, he tries a well-known idea with the omission of the moves Re1 and ...Rc8, which were previously thought to be almost forced. It may just lead to the main variations by a different move order but the rapid time control didn't give Black the chance to realise this.
In modern chess, players really need to know their openings. In MAY01/07 Black tries to entice his opponent into the sharp Vienna variation. White refuses and prefers the Queen's Gambit Accepted and the result is the Meran Variation! The position is harmless for Black and therefore Kasparov tries to get more than simple equality... in vain as Kramnik's counter action was brilliant and made him winner of the tournament.
QGA
Recently Black has found some good ways to counter the set-up which became popular after the game Kasparov - Ivanchuk, Linares 1999 (RS64) so White has started to pay more attention to other possibilities. Here is a fresh attempt from Etienne Bacrot: MAY01/08.
The system with a2-a4 is thought to be harmless for Black, but recent games show that his life is not as easy as it seems. Vladimir Kramnik pressed Garry Kasparov very hard in the 6th game of their match in London 2000, and in MAY01/09 the World Champion gave an instructive lesson to his young opponent, finishing the game with a series of very beautiful blows.
Anti-Moscow
MAY01/10 Alexey Dreev here shows a wonderful refutation of White's new idea in a recently fashionable line. A very spectacular and theoretically important game.
MAY01/11 Another excellent performance by Alexey Dreev, who accepted all White's sacrifices and did not lose control of the position despite big complications. However White's approach does not seem to be well-grounded.