Some Chess in Times of War
I wasn’t updating my chess blog for a while, as it’s hardly a time now for my most usual topics. Re-publication of the more or less curious old Chess Today stuff is something that I hope to continue doing after the Ukrainian victory in the war! For obvious reasons, there are no over-the-board chess events in Odessa since the beginning of Russian massive invasion on February 24th.
Nonetheless, I continued my regular online chess coaching work, and I am ready to accept new students as of now. The price is 40 USD/hour; see my profile page for details.
Good news is that a book From Ukraine With Love For Chess has been published shortly by New in Chess. It can also be purchased in eBook format.
Contributors are all the leading Ukrainian players: Vasyl Ivanchuk, Ruslan Ponomariov, Anna and Mariya Muzychuk, Anton Korobov, Vladimir Tukmakov, Pavel Eljanov, Andrei Volokitin, and many others. The project is co-ordinated by the former FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov and all proceeds of the book will go to charities in Ukraine. I’m glad to be involved, annotating one of my games for this book.
Sample Pages: https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/9127.pdf
New in Chess belongs to the chess world’s most established and respected publishers. It’s sad that one of their regular publications, Yearbook, which is devoted to the openings theory, was discontinued after 142 issues. In the last years, I prepared several surveys for them, including one on the Sicilian Dragon (a complete coverage of the tricky line 9.0-0-0 d5 10.Nxc6 bxc6 11.Bh6) for the penultimate Yearbook 141. It turned to be quite a big and, hopefully, good piece of work...
Earlier this year, after a long break, I contributed again to another famous magazine, Chess Informant, and wrote an article on the White’s curious weapon against the Ruy Lopez Berlin Defence for issue 151, finishing work on it on February 23rd, the last day before the insane Russian attack.
Being almost paralysed these days, Ukrainian chess life nevertheless reaches the focus of attention.
In his article "Hohe Schule der Kombination. Meine Ukraine", published in German magazine Schach 4/2022, Grandmaster Michael Prusikin, who devoted the entire piece to tactics of Ukrainian players, called my 1992 game vs. Renzo Mantovani "die Ukrainische Unsterbliche der juengeren Geschichte!" What to say? I am surprised and grateful.
Links to my own various comments/interviews related to the Russo-Ukrainian war can be found on my home page. In particular, "Chess and War" was an interview in Russian, published in Vechernyaya Odessa newspaper on 31st March 2022.
Lately, playing chess, as a rule, means for me playing against some of my students, or playing the Titled Tuesday blitz: place 32 in a tournament, won by Magnus Carlsen, was possibly best among my results in these events.
Very special was the ECF Charity Marathon for Ukraine, the 24-h long 5+0 blitz tournament in the Arena format, which took place at Chess.com on 2nd-3rd April. I placed 17th among 461 players, scoring +56 =6 -12 in 74 games. 26 of participants played more than 100 games each, and the winner GM Keith Arkell had as many as 248 games! Many thanks to the English Chess Federation for their efforts, and below are several chess examples from my games in this tournament.
Last but not the least: these days I do not care much about the FIDE politics, but indeed it’s just unacceptable for the World Chess Federation to have a former Russian top official as president, and I wish Baryshpolets/Nielsen team to win the elections.
