Anand is the new (old) World Champion

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A last two games with normal time control finished with a draws, and actually without any fight like in the games 6-10 (which was best part of the match).
Today, Anand and Gelfand played a tie-break and Anand won game number two and games 1,3 and 4 were draws, so Anand defended his title.
Of course that every win in WC match is deserved and I don´t complain about outcome of this match.

Anand vs. Gelfand after 10 games

Moscow in 1908

A second part of match between World Champion  Vishvanatan Anand and a challenger Boris Gelfand is by far more interesting than first half of it.
Let´s begin with Gelfand´s wins in game number seven. As I was told by one grandmaster, Anand probably played a Meran variation one time more than he should.
If I recall something from a famous match between Kramnik and Kasparov in London 2000, everybody knows that Kramnik played the Berlin defence of Ruy Lopez and that he stopped Kasparov´s 1.e4 with it.

Solutions for 3/5 combinations and little about Anand and Gelfand

Bejtovic-Kutynec

This is a position from IM tournament in Olomouc, Czech Republic 2008. I was white and I was playing against Russian IM Kutynec.
As I said, main idea is to breakthrough with a queen but black has a safe square on h7.
I played:
25. g4! This is a multifunctional move. First thing first, I am threatening 26.gxf5 or 26.gxh5 , and that forces black either to take on g4 or to play something more convincing.
Black played:
25...Qxc3 So, what was my point if he just takes a pawn?

Missed and spotted combinations

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Today, I will present five positions in which I missed or spotted good combinations. I shall not give solutions to these positions in this post, and it is easy to find these positions (some of them) in databases, but of course without commentary. 
Some of them are not leading to winning positions but are clearly best continuations and have good tactical background (which made them became combinations, not variations).

Anand vs. Gelfand after four games

Picture by Chessbase

It is enough to see FIDE rating list to understand that World Championship Match in Moscow between Vishvanatan Anand from India and Boris Gelfand from Israel is not a match between two best players in the World.
Of course, Anand is a worth World Champion, and Boris Gelfand won a completely legal candidate matches and deserved his right to play WC match.
Other question is how serious were candidate matches when some of candidates were eliminated in blitz games.

Reportage from Sarajevo - Part two

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Today, I will continue with my games from Bosna 2012 tournament, and give some thoughts about tournament.
As I presented previously, I had some luck in round number five.
It was fourth day of the tournament and sixth round was later that day. I was white and I had some expectations.
However I played my worst game not just in this tournament, but in a whole year.

Reportage from Sarajevo - Part one

 It is very important to be as much objective as possible when analysing own games, but at the same time it is not good to criticize too much just to make a false picture of objectivity.
I really don´t need to paint with lively colours any of my games because there are simply no room for that.
As I said in previous post, I had one more black game and that means that I played with black in the first round.
I will go trough all my games (critical positions) just for a reader to get a better picture of my poor play.

A quick overview

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A tournament in Sarajevo was finished yesterday and I am writing this lines from Mostar. I am completely exhausted and can not write a big report ( which I will do tomorrow). A winner of Bosna 2012 is Hungarian GM Viktor Erdos who managed to overtake a first place in the very last round from young Russian guy  Mikhail Antipov.

Problem Solving Techniques

White to move

When I am trying to figure out how strong is some of my students, and how good is his thinking technique, first of all I am trying to test them in two important things. First one is calculating technique (How I do that, I already explained in one of very first posts on this blog) and second one is how they solves problems.
To test that I usually prepare some of endgame examples, because in the endgame you can see how somebody thinks in a purest form. This is one of these examples. This position is actually very famous and you can find it in every decent endgame book which analyse endgame in encyclopaedic way (Averbah, Fine....).

Kramnik vs. Aronian, The final word

Black just played 13...Qb8

A friendly match between Kramnik and Aronian is finished, and nobody won. Or maybe everyone won?
However, a result was 3-3 (yes, this time my prediction was good) but there were a plenty of chances for both players.
If we want to analyse this match objectively we have to put clear distinction between competitive role of this match and promotional role.
Both of players already gave some interviews and I will not repeat their opinions here (except to underline my opinions).
As I already talked about games 1-4, I will focus on game five and six.