Category: The Middlegame

February 16, 2017 Matthew Sadler 2 comments

The 4NCL continued in Northampton on 14th-15th January 2017. Fortified by 2 lovely meals courtesy of our generous captain Roger Emerson, I managed to produce a nice attacking finish on the Sunday morning. Presumably I’d need 4 great meals to play well both days! The attack had some unusual points and my investigations prompted the…

January 19, 2017 Matthew Sadler 1 comment

November and December have been crazy months, primarily from a work point of view but also from a chess point of view. On the 4th December I took part in the first Rapid Chess Tournament organised by the British Bangla Chess Association (http://britishbanglachess.com/4th-december-2016/)     It was a fun day though the chess ended in…

January 12, 2017 Matthew Sadler 4 comments

While researching a previous blog article on the plan of …c5-c4 in Queen’s Gambit Declined positions, I came across the game Botvinnik-Capablanca AVRO 1938. None other than Garry Kasparov dedicates great attention to this wonderful game both in Chessbase and in his book “My Great Predecessors Volume II”. His comment to Capablanca’s 14th move (14…c4)…

January 5, 2017 Matthew Sadler No comments exist

My second game of the 4NCL weekend was a tough battle against Andrew Lewis. As Black, I won a pawn in the opening but never quite managed to neutralise the compensation White enjoyed due to his 2 bishops and my awkwardly-placed queen.   As always a playable version of this article is available at http://cloudserver.chessbase.com/MTIyMTYx/replay.html…

November 4, 2016 Matthew Sadler No comments exist

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…