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Showing posts from February, 2016

Does Vishy really need another 'title' to prove.....!?

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" Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them....! " - William Shakespeare Every time .... the time comes to determine who will compete for the title of Championship of the World, since the time he became one....eons back.....Vishy had been a force to reckon with! Since the time he passed it on to the next generation....after all it has to happen one day....there has been murmurs about - not only " will he again ...." - but also the lame and rubbish question of " will he retire ".... Why, why should he..... and what right these murmurers have, to raise that question...even under the garb'age of freedom of expression.... Forget about the brilliance and greatness of the games that he produced in all these years.....Do the doubters know the amount of passion for this great game that lies behind this career spanning 39 years since inception..... Do the doubters realise the amount of phenomenal work that

Fight for the central squares! Anto Guijarro - Harikrishna, Gibralter; 2016

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As we all know, the primary struggle in chess is to control as many squares as possible, which will extend to control of areas; files and diagonals.  But, the most intriguing aspect is the control of center and center resolution in particular, which is like a childbirth.....has to happen at the appropriate time, not too early; not too late! Whilst watching the games played in the current Gibralter tournament, I was particularly intrigued by the game played in the penultimate round between Guijarro - Hari. This is the position after Hari's 12th move ......Nbd7. This was also the position reached in a game played between Lajos Portisch - Gennadi Sosonko, Tilburg, 1984; with a little difference that they had played only 11 moves and White's Bishop was on d2 instead of c1! Portisch took a different path to control the pivotal 'e5' and 'd4' squares in conjunction with the control of the light diagonal which crosses these two squares! This game is v