Jun-18-06
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| KingG: Fedorov improved on this game later with 22.Kd2! in Fedorov vs S Safin, 2001, but unfortunately could not convert any of his winning opportunities. As indicated on that game page, 10.Kf2!? may be stronger than 10.d3, although to my knowledge, it has never been tried in practice. |
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Jun-18-06
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| KingG: By the way, these are Nigel Short's notes posted on chessbase. I don't know if they are still available online, but luckily i had them saved on my hard disk. <Wijk aan Zee, for those of you who have not been there, is a wind-swept hamlet on the Dutch coast. Photographs, purportedly taken in Wijk, show happy families gaily playing on the beach in the warm sunshine, but in January there is only an icy sea breeze and the emissions from the steel works for company. Talking of companies, Corus is the product of the merger between British Steel and Hoogovens. Mergers are to the corporate world what beautiful women are to the rest of us: seductive, alluring, irresistible even. However, they are never quite as satisfactory as one hopes, and in the long run they invariably cost a lot of money. Anyway, whatever troubles Corus might have in melding these two distinct industrial entities they have had no difficulty whatsoever in putting together a real humdinger of a chess tournament. It contains more world champions, past, present and future, than I have had hot dinners. So let us begin with the most recent champion, Vishy Anand. His fourth round opponent, Alexei Fedorov, is a man whose mission in life is to prove that the King's Gambit does not lose by force. Let us see how he fared.> 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 d6 <The problem for black players in the King's Gambit is that there are too many good continuations and, of course, he can only play one at the time! Actually, almost every known move is playable here except perhaps 5...h5?! which is not at all recommended. Vishy chooses the trendiest continuation.> 6.Nxg4 Nf6 7.Nxf6+ Qxf6 8.Nc3 Nc6 9.Nd5 <I played 9.Bb5 against Shirov in Las Vegas 1999 but was unable to obtain any advantage. Fedorov tries something more ambitious and risky.> 9...Qg6 10.d3!? Qg3+ 11.Kd2 <What can one say? Wandering around with the king is not to everyone's taste but at least he has a good pawn structure.> 11...Ne7N <In the three previous games in this line Black had tried Be6. I have absolutely no idea what is happening after that.> 12.Qe1 <At some point around here Mr. Tendulkar, otherwise known as Peter Svidler, remarked that Fedorov had real courage playing this opening against Vishy. The expression "all balls and no brain" inexplicably drifted into my consciousness for a moment before passing on its way.> 12...Nxd5 13.exd5+ Be7 14.Qxg3 fxg3 15.Be2 Rg8 16.Kd1 Bg4 17.Bg5! <The game is heading towards a draw.> 17...Bxg5 18.Bxg4 Bf6 19.Bf5 Kf8 20.c3 Re8 21.d4 h5 22.Rh3 Bg7 23.Rxg3 <White offered a draw as 23... Bf6! spoils the fun. An interesting attempt to rehabilitate this ancient opening and an important game for the variation>. |
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