November 4, 2016
Matthew Sadler
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One of the rewarding things about analysing the games of the old masters is that there is always plenty new to discover – not only in the games themselves but also in the annotations. That’s doubly true with Alekhine, strangely enough due to the excellence of Alekhine’s own annotations! Subsequent annotators have seemed intimidated by…
October 28, 2016
Matthew Sadler
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While flicking through Alekhine’s collection of his Best Games, I came across this game against Euwe from the latter part of the 1937 World Championship Match. After an early exchange of queens, Alekhine won a pawn fairly quickly and I was intrigued to know where Euwe had gone wrong. As always, there were a couple…
October 21, 2016
Matthew Sadler
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In 1927, Bogolyubow beat Reti twice from the same opening: 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 e6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 Nbd7 5.e3. The first game was a sharp fight in an IQP structure; the second was an instructive example of the fight against hanging pawns. In a previous article – https://matthewsadler.me.uk/the-middlegame/hanging-out-with-efim/ – we saw Bogolyubow in trouble while…
October 13, 2016
Matthew Sadler
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It never ceases to amaze me how many complicated games Alekhine played in his career. While browsing through collections of his games, I’m constantly coming across positions where my first instinct is “That can’t possibly work… can it?” In this post we take a look at a couple of Alekhine tactical tidbits that I analysed…
October 6, 2016
Matthew Sadler
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Watching Mihai’s Marin analysis of Karpov’s middlegame skills on a recent Chessbase DVD has been a wonderful learning experience. Marin identified a facet of Karpov’s play that I had never noticed before: moving the same piece many times in succession. After this manoeuvre, no one knows why, but he’s better! Marin cites many examples. This…