Exciting game with sudden end.

This trend of posting stuff from last season will soon end as the Easter Tournament will start in a few hours and I will have new games to analyze. In the meantime, here is the the game between the two players who scored 7/8 last year:

The great escape

I love to be in Stockholm during the winter and when the snow falls I love it even more. The Rilton Cup is a very nice tournament that is played annually just after Christmas, but it is possibly my love for snow that is the main reason why I play there whenever I can. This year there wasn’t much snow, but on the upside, instead of losing ten or fifteen Elo-points, I managed to play a few good games. However, my most vivid memory of tournament is watching the following game, thinking: “that will not end well” (for Black) and then being witness the veritable Houdini act that came to pass. It’s instructive:

A fantastic and instructive game. I recommend anyone rated below 2400 to play through it more than once.

Looking forward to the Easter Tournament in Norrköping.

I have fond memories from last year, not the least because I was able to win against Ulibin with the black pieces in the last round. This year the Easter Tournament, in Norrköping, will be quite strong again, with eight grandmasters participating. Still, I will miss the opportunity to study the Stonewall up close as Gleizerov and Ulibin (both Stonewall aficionados) gave me the chance to do last year. This reminds me that it was some while ago since last I posted one of Gleizerov’s games, so it’s about time I do it again. I don’t need a better reason:

Tiviakov wins…

This is a game that I intended to post a long time ago, but my new book on the Modern came in between.

I often tell ambitious players to find and study the games of a player who has strengths others than the ones they have themselves. It is honest advice since I have myself done just that for at least fifteen years. In October last year I went to play the annual Guernsey Chess Festival and was especially looking forward to playing since it would give me an opportunity to play against one of the players that I had formerly studied, Sergei Tiviakov. In the end it so happened that I played so badly that I did not even get a chance to play him. Tiviakov, on the other hand, played a convincing game and in round 5 he faced his main adversary, Mark Hebden, with the black colours:

In the end chess is about making many strong moves and Sergei just seems to make quite a lot of them.