Millennium Chess Link

In de tweede stap begint het 'grotere' werk. Na de spelregels en de basisvaardigheden van de vorige stap staan nu de eerste beginselen van tactiek en positiespel op het programma. We leren aanvalstechnieken aan om op slimme wijze materiaal buit te maken.

Konstantinopolsky - Obsession : A Chess Biography of Vsevolod Rauzer. Vsevolod Rauzer, born in Kiev in 1908, was one of the world’s leading chess opening theoreticians and thinkers in the 1930s. As a player, he was an uncompromising attacker, trying to avoid draws as well as to prove that 1.e4 wins by force. According to Mikhail Botvinnik, “His opening research…with linked middlegame plans, gives us every reason to place V. Rauzer among the founders of the Soviet chess school.”

Awarded the Master of Sport title in 1929, Rauzer’s best tournament performances included joint eighth place in the 1931 Soviet Championship, sixth in 1933 and eighth in 1937. According to Chessmetrics, he was ranked in the world’s top 30 for several years.
He made big contributions to theory in the Sicilian, French and Caro-Kann defenses among others. The book’s introductory articles contain deep dives into Rauzer’s opening laboratory and shed light on the historical development of key variations.

The present work contains 96 games, nearly all of them played by Rauzer. Opponents include Botvinnik, Fine, Levenfish, Lilienthal, Romanovsky, the author and other leading pre-War Soviet players. Many games come with Rauzer’s own annotations together with analysis by Konstantinopolsky, Botvinnik, Levenfish and others. The commentary has been updated by International Master Grigory Bogdanovich using the latest engines. Ultimately, Rauzer’s story was a sad one. Chess, and especially opening analysis, was an obsession for him: he once told Panov: “Unfortunately, I just can’t make myself work on theory of the game for more than 16 hours a day! My head can’t endure more.” This obsession eventually drove him mentally ill and he spent much of his final period in care. Vsevolod Rauzer lived largely in poverty and tragically died in the Siege of Leningrad. 237 pages

The English Opening is very popular nowadays, but 1.c4 e5! is a serious challenge and not to everyone's taste. Here comes 1.Nf3, with the idea to transfer the game into the English with c2-c4 to follow. The only hurdle on that path is 1...d5. Then White is at a crossroads. 2.c4 allows 2...d4 3.b4, while 2.e3 is an attempt to deny ...d4. Black can revive the threat with 2...c5, and again, White has a choice. 3.c4 d4 4.b4! leads to the Blumenfeld with reversed colours. Or he can continue to fight against ...d4 with 3.b3. White's decisions on the second and third move depends on the way he wants to meet the Queen's Gambit and the Slav/Meran/Chebanenko. Semkov covers in detail the different options, and also devotes several chapters on 1.Nf3 d5 2.e3 Nf6 3.c4 c6 and 3...e6 4.b3! (avoiding the innocuous version of the QGA after 4.Nc3 dxc4). There is another chapter on 1.Nf3 d5 2.e3 Nf6 3.c4 dxc4, where the absence of Nc3 allows White to get some pressure by refraining from d2-d4.   244 pages

La ressemblance (sans doute voulue) du titre avec la classique trilogie de Max Euwe est superficielle : ici, sept des auteurs de l'écurie Quality Chess viennent nous parler de leur passage (plus ou moins lointain) des rangs amateurs au statut de grand maître, et tentent d'en tirer des enseignements utiles au commun des mortels. Inévitablement, le résultat est inégal, mais l'ensemble se laisse lire, et le joueur ambitieux pourra sans doute en retirer quelques précieuses leçons.