ChessBase Magazine #140

ChessBase Magazine starts the 2011 issue with a premiere. For the first time a women�s tournament, namely the Women�s World Championship in Antakya in Turkey, constitutes the main theme of the DVD. A lot of games from the WCh have been annotated by the players and even World Champion Hou Yifan, who is just sixteen, comments on two of the wins which were decisive for victory in the race for the title. The other two tournament highlights of this issue are the London Chess Classic with another triumph for Magnus Carlsen and the 53rd Reggio Emilia tournament with its top class field, which ended in a photo finish between Gashimov and Vallejo Pons. Amongst the star authors on the DVD there are World Champion Vishy Anand, Magnus Carlsen, Sergei Karjakin, Luke McShane and the two victors of Reggio Emilia. In addition, with its 13 articles on openings the DVD offers you a host of ideas for your repertoire and tailor made training lessons in the fields of strategy, tactics and endgames.
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Introductory videos
Grandmaster Karsten M�ller from Hamburg sets the mood for you in his video introduction to this issue. As well as some pearls from the top tournaments, he draws to your attention in openings articles on the Scandinavian with ...Qa5 and ...Bg4 (by GM Christian Bauer), the Sicilian with 4...d5 (GM Dejan Bojkov) and the Ruy Lopez Steinitz Variation with, e.g.g, 5.c3 f5 (GM Leonid Kritz) to three aggressive repertoire suggestions for Black. And as an appetiser to Oliver Reeh�s tactics column, M�ller demonstrates a fantastic combination from the Women�s WCh.

GM Dorian Rogozenco reviews the tournament highlights of the last two months on video. In the case of the London Chess Classic he concentrates above all on the performance of the surprisingly strong English player Luke McShane, who was not only able to defeat Magnus Carlsen but who also went through the whole tournament undefeated. As far as the top tournament in Reggio Emilia is concerned, Rogozenco explains Gashimov�s coup in his game against Vallejo Pons who had made such a fast and furious start � an absolute must for all friends of the Pirc Defence! To close this first video review the Romanian GM summarises for you events in the Russian Superfinal.

In his second video Rogozenco concentrates totally on the Women�s World Championship in Antakya in Turkey. He uses selected games and game fragments to sketch in the route to the final taken by the two Chinese players, Hou Yifan and Ruan Lufei. In particular in her semi-final game against the Indian co-favourite Humpy Koneru, the new world champion treated us to some first class chess. Rogozenco also points out with reference to analyses by GM Evgeny Postny how in the second game in the final Ruan Lufei could have found a tricky way to a draw in the rook ending.

Reggio Emilia 2010/11
Exactly 20 years ago in Reggio Emilia the greatest members of their guild - Kasparov, Karpov and the young Anand � fought it out for victory. In the 53rd running of the traditional tournament this year, there were perhaps not the absolutely top names, but players of the calibre of Ivanchuk, Gashimov, Morozevich, Caruana, Short, etc. meant that the list of participants was a distinguished one. But at the start the pace was set by the top Spanish player Francisco Vallejo Pons. No one could match his lightning start of 3.5 of 4. However, in the long run it would only be sufficient for a shared first place. You will find on the DVD a detailed tournament report as well as games analysed by joint winners Gashimov and Vallejo Pons and also Caruana.

Women's WCh Antakya
The Women�s world championship was held over almost three weeks in the city of Antakya in the south of Turkey. For those players who had advanced so far in the tournament this meant an enormous distance and a battle of the nerves. Because up to the final the tournament rules meant a k.o. mode in two-game matches. One of the Elo favourites and at the same time one of the youngest players in the field, Hou Yifan from China, made all the running. At the age of 16 Jahren she even outdid the performance of Maia Chiburdanidze, who previously (1978) became world champion at 17. Hou Yifan is, in the footsteps of Xie Jun (1991-1996 and 1999-2001), Zhu Chen (2001-2003) and Xu Yuhua (2006-2008) already the fourth Chinese women�s world champion.

London Chess Classic

Four absolutely world class players and the four best from England. In addition a very strong subsidiary programme with daily live commentary by GM Daniel King, GM Chris Ward, GM Stephen Gordon etc. Star appearances by Garry Kasparov and Viktor Korchnoi and so on and so on... That was for the second London Chess Classic the entertaining and completely successful plan of the organisers. And even the players themselves did their part in ensuring success as they did their post-mortem analysis of their games in front of the public and the cameras. On this DVD you will find, in addition to analysis by the stars such as Magnus Carlsen, Vishy Anand and Luke McShane, excerpts from the live streams from London with a toal running time of more than 6 hours!

Russian Super Final
On his very first appearance in the Russian Superfinal ex-Ukrainian Sergey Karjakin was well on the way to winning the title. With four victories and six draws, Sergey Karjakin had shown the most stable performance before the final round and had half a point of a lead over the. For example, the former child prodigy had beaten a rival for the title in Ian Nepomniachtchi. A draw in the final round would have sufficed to give Karjakin the title. But just at that point there was a �blip� and he lost to Malakhov. A play-off against Nepomniachtchi had to decide, and at the very last moment Karjakin lost out in the so-called "Armageddon" game. But at least he had amongst his wins one against the victor in the tournament. Dorian Rogozenco has already described the decisive moments of the game Karjakin - Nepomniachtchi in his first introductory video.

From the opening trap to the endgame study
Training in ChessBase Magazine begins with the very first moves and takes in all the phases of a game of chess. The 13 up-to-date Openings articles with numerous ideas and suggestions for your repertoire can be found here or above amongst the links. Rainer Knaak�s opening trap (including its Fritztrainer video) contains a relatively simple example this time. The openings articles of Leonid Kritz (French Steinitz Variation), Valeri Lilov (Dutch) and Adrian Mikhalchishin (Gr�nfeld Defence and also Ruy Lopez) have also been produced in video format. You will find these videos and other clips in Chess Media format in the column Fritztrainer. Peter Wells� subject in his Strategy column is called: "The anatomy of a key pawn advance (e5-e6) Part 2". In Daniel King�s long-running favourite Move by Move he deals with a game in the King�s Indian. And in the columns for Tactics and Endgames Oliver Reeh and Karsten M�ller have once more selected for you all that is best in the latest tournament practice.

Opening articles

Bauer: Scandinavian B01