Oct-23-19 P Romanovsky vs A A Smorodsky, 1924
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| Nerwal: The position before 33. ♘a5 is featured in <Think like a Grandmaster> by Kotov. Of course nowadays nobody would wait to be squashed like Smorodsky did and something like 33. ♘a5 cxd5 34. exd5 ♖xd5 would be tried. |
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Aug-05-19 A Triapishko vs A Esipenko, 2019
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| Nerwal: 17. ♖fd1 is a nice case of wrong rook. The critical point to defend is f2, not a2 : 17. ♖ad1 a4 18. ♘d2! (not 18. ♘c1 e4) ♗xa2 19. ♘c4 =/∞; 17. ♖fd1 a4 18. ♘d2 e4 19. f3 ♘e5! -+. |
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Jul-30-19 Etienne Bacrot
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| Nerwal: <What's Bacrot doing these days?> Working for MVL. |
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Jul-27-19 Grischuk vs Anand, 2019
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| Nerwal: <Why not 15. Bxf8?> It is playable but Black gets full compensation for the exchange : bishop pair, extra pawn and lack of useful files for the white rooks. For instance 15. ♗xf8 ♗xf8 16. e3 dxe3 17. fxe3 ♗h6 18. ♕e2 ♘f6 and Black's minor pieces ... |
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Jul-26-19 Viswanathan Anand 
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| Nerwal: <He came in and out of the top 10 many times already, since the first time he was out back in 2016.> Indeed after a disastrous Gibraltar Open.
However he has always kept a published rating superior to 2750 since 1996 which is an amazing achievement. |
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May-30-19 I Nepomniachtchi vs Grischuk, 2019
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| Nerwal: <10.Re2 what's the idea of this square for the rook in this very very drawish line anyone?> Since the e file is the only open file, fighting for its control is most important. Therefore White keeps the e1 square unoccupied hoping to play ♖ae1 in the future. |
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May-30-19 Karpov vs Gelfand, 1995
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| Nerwal: In Excelling at positional chess Aagard wrote at length how 25. h4 is premature and the manoeuver of the game has to be prefered. 20 years later 25. h4 turns out to be the engine's first choice. Another case of annotating by final result in a very complicated position where the truth |
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Mar-03-19 Kramnik - Topalov World Championship Match (2006)
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| Nerwal: <refusing to take part in the FIDE World Championship 2005 and then still get a World Championship match on older merits.> San Luis 2005 happened only because FIDE had failed to fulfill its part of the Prague agreement. There was no reason for Kramnik to take part in this. |
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Feb-20-19 V Gunina vs E Paehtz, 2019
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| Nerwal: <Why doesn't black play 17...RxP?> It's playable but it's quite dangerous since Black's development is already quite poor; sensibly Black doesn't want to fall even more behind against a dangerous attacking player. White has several plans available to prove more than adequate ... |
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Feb-19-19 N Dzagnidze vs V Gunina, 2019
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| Nerwal: <Dzagnidze's decisions from move 40 onwards are simply inexplicable> The explanation might be simple : this rook endgame is actually lost (or practically lost) and normal moves won't do either. To me the big lemon is 37. ♖c1 made in bad time trouble. White should block ... |
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Kibitzing