[chessmind] Dennis Monokroussos: This Week's ChessBase Show: Bologan-Anand
Email subscription to blog articles
chessmind at lists.powerblogs.com
Wed Jan 9 02:32:47 EST 2008
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos:
This Week's ChessBase Show: Bologan-Anand
http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1199863960.shtml
Most of us are very familiar with the usual suspects in today's
super-tournaments; players like Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Leko,
Svidler, Morozevich, Ivanchuk and so on are household names - at least
when the household includes the sorts of people who read this blog!
But there are a host of other great players, players whose ratings
reside just a notch or two below that of the Linares crowd. Given half
a chance, they are capable of the highest results as well.
For instance, there was Khalifman's victory in the 1999 FIDE world
championship and Kasimdzhanov's triumph in the 2004 edition of the
same competition. Examples can be multiplied, but even the foregoing
is enough to confirm something Moldovan grandmaster [1]Viorel Bologan
has written [2]in his recent best games collection: "There are many
more than ten people who know how to play chess"!
As you may already suspect from the title of the post, Bologan
considers himself one of the more-than-ten, and he can make an
excellent case for the claim. There have been many notable successes
in his career, but the greatest achievements to date came in 2003. At
the start of the year he won the incredibly strong Aeroflot Open,
which qualified him to play in the Dortmund super-tournament later
that year. Although his rivals included Anand, Kramnik, Leko and
Radjabov, he won the 10-round event by a full point!
Appropriately, then, we'll have a look at his win over Anand from this
event. The opening was a Classical Caro-Kann, but this didn't produce
a dull game, but only one where the hand-to-hand fighting took a
little while to develop. But it wasn't that long, and soon interesting
things were happening all over the board. Anand is not just a great,
great player, he's probably the best defender in the chess world. Yet
in our game, Bologan somehow managed to keep him under complete
control, winning in impressive fashion.
The fun is in the details, of course, and this is a game that repays
careful study. I hope, therefore, that you'll join me tonight -
Thursday night - at 9 p.m. ET (that's Friday morning at 3 a.m. CET) as
we investigate this fine game from the recent past. The shows are
free, as always, and if you're not sure how to watch the directions
are [3]here. See you there!
References
1. http://www.bologan.md/index_en.html
2. http://www.amazon.com/Victor-Bologan-Selected-Games-1985-2004/dp/1888690372
3. http://chessmind.powerblogs.com/posts/1114234449.shtml
More information about the chessmind
mailing list