This was the watchword of Grandmaster Dragoljub Velimirovic, one of the leading players of the former Yugoslavia. I first encountered Velimirovic when he represented Yugoslavia on top board in the Students’ Team Championship of Harrachov 1967. He already enjoyed a reputation as a ferociously aggressive player, and he went on to win both individual and
Petrosian Move by Move is a new book published by Everyman Chess written by the Swedish international master Thomas Engqvist. The book consists of 60 closely annotated games, all wins, by Tigran Petrosian, world champion from 1963 to 1969 and an inspiration for the recent successes of the Armenian team, who have won the Olympiad
Chess, unlike football, appears to confer little or no home advantage. In a recent article for Kensington & Chelsea Today, my esteemed colleague Barry Martin, who enjoys more space than any other chess columnist in the UK, and possibly even the world, inveighed against the psychological pressures which seem to afflict great players operating on
For the second year running, 24-year-old Sergei Karjakin has won the Norway International, on both occasions ahead of Magnus Carlsen. The final scores, out of 9, were as follows: Karjakin 6; Carlsen 5½; Grischuk 5; Caruana and Topalov 4½; Aronian, Svidler, Kramnik and Giri 4; Agdestein 3½. Of the world elite, only Anand and Nakamura were absent.
As I write, the former world champion Vladimir Kramnik is leading in the Norway tournament in Stavanger. The line-up is impressive, including Magnus Carlsen, Lev Aronian, Fabiano Caruana and Sergei Karjakin, and missing only Viswanathan Anand, who was defeated in last year’s World Championship match by Carlsen. At his best Kramnik is a subtle tactician,
The last great tournament to have been completed before the outbreak of war in 1914 was St Petersburg, which saw a sensational triumph by the world champion Emanuel Lasker, ahead of Capablanca, Alekhine, Tarrasch and Marshall. It is a testament to the political naivety of both players and organisers that an event was set for
Although world champion Magnus Carlsen clearly secured first place in the Gashimov Memorial tournament, he did not have things all his own way. Indeed, just before the halfway point he lost two consecutive games and appeared to be in a state of collapse. However, in the style of his hero Emanuel Lasker, Carlsen struck back
The game that clinched Magnus Carlsen’s victory in the Gashimov Memorial came, fittingly, in a last-round cliffhanger against his closest rival, Fabiano Caruana. Both players were on 5½ points out of 9 possible, hence a win for either grandmaster would determine the laurels in his favour. A draw, leaving them both tied on 6 points,
In my column of 26 April I suggested that the new world champion Magnus Carlsen was in need of some stiff opposition in preparation for his title defence, scheduled for later this year. Since winning the championship six months ago, Carlsen has been indulging himself with a series of PR events and victories against (by
From 1950 to 1962, the challenger for the world title was determined by a Candidates tournament of the world’s leading grandmasters, apart of course from the world champion. This was deemed an improvement on the previous system whereby the incumbent could accept or decline challenges as he saw fit, subject to pressures of finance and
The history of the world chess championship includes five title matches where the challenger was the former champion, seeking his revenge. These are Steinitz v Lasker, 1896; Alekhine v Euwe 1937; Botvinnik v Smyslov, 1958; Botvinnik v Tal 1961 and Karpov v Kasparov 1986. Steinitz and Karpov both failed in their bids to reclaim the championship,
While Viswanathan Anand, the former world champion, has been qualifying for a revenge match for the world title, Magnus Carlsen, the new champion, has been awaiting the identity of his challenger. Now that Carlsen knows that he will have to face Anand once again, the time has come to do some serious preparation and get
The erratic Ukrainian grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuk has scored an overwhelming victory in a rapidplay tournament sponsored by the Latvian railway. Leading scores were as follows: Ivanchuk 13 (out of 14); Malakhov 10; Fridman 9½; Bologan 9; Shirov (and many others) 8½. There is something symptomatic about the colossal scale of Ivanchuk’s victory in this event.
The Candidates tournament has been won by Vishy Anand who adopted the safety-first policy of winning two of his first three games and then drawing most of the rest. By avoiding defeat, Anand more or less coasted to victory, since all of his rivals slipped up on various occasions. Anand, at the age of 44,
This week I focus on a number of key positions from the World Championship qualifier, the Candidates tournament, which concluded at the beginning of this week in Khanty-Mansisk in Siberia. The Candidates was a remarkable event, with two former world champions, Viswanathan Anand (the ultimate winner) and Vladimir Kramnik, competing, along with a former Fidé
As the World Championship qualifier (aka Candidates tournament) approaches its final rounds in Khanty-Mansisk, it is worth emphasising the Everest which the eventual challenger will have to climb when facing the new world champion, Magnus Carlsen. A new book by the international master Colin Crouch (Magnus Force, Everyman Chess) enters in great detail into Carlsen’s most prominent
The Oxford v. Cambridge Varsity Match held at the Royal Automobile Club two weeks ago ended in a draw. This is the longest-running chess fixture in the world, dating originally from 1873, when such luminaries as Howard Staunton and Wilhelm Steinitz were in attendance. Cambridge now lead by 58 wins to 53 with 21 drawn
It is a little known fact that Emanuel Lasker, the German world chess champion, who reigned from 1894 to 1921, was keen for Germany to enter the first world war. This seems at odds with his internationalism (he spent a long time in Britain, and represented England, rather than Germany, in the great Hastings tournament
On Saturday 8 March the 132nd Varsity match between the teams of Oxford and Cambridge will see Oxford seeking to reduce its historic deficit in a match which can claim to be the world’s longest-running chess fixture. Scores stand as follows: Cambridge lead by 58 wins to 53 with 20 drawn matches. This year’s contest
This week I pay tribute to the chess grandmasters from Ukraine, led by Vassily Ivanchuk, many times a candidate for the world championship. Ukraine occupies an honourable place in the history of chess, for example winning the gold medals in the chess Olympiad of 2010, held in one of the World Chess Federation’s favourite venues,
