Review: Viswanathan Anand: My Career, Volume 1 (DVD)

This week ChessCafe features my review of World Champion Viswanathan Anand's ChessBase DVD titled Viswanathan Anand: My Career, Volume 1.

This DVD consists of twenty-three video segments, totaling just less than four hours of playing time. It contains an astounding 1,423 games, from early 1984 through October 1999; many are annotated by Anand or others. Interspersed among the games he presents are a number of interesting stories...

The full review can also be viewed in the ChessCafe book review archives.

Review: Pawn Sacrifice!

Pawn Sacrifice! is devoted to what IM Timothy Taylor refers to as “real” sacrifices. He explains, “A real sacrifice is by definition incalculable: the player ventures a real sacrifice based on various positional considerations, or psychological considerations, without any idea if or when he will get the material back.”

“What interests me,” Taylor writes, “are the courageous, imaginative sacrifices that involve risk and have no clear result. This, to me, is really playing chess!” He provides sixty-seven complete games with an interesting method of analysis; at the point of the pawn sacrifice in question, Taylor examines it from three different perspectives: ...

Read the full review for the next week at the ChessCafe main book review page. It is also permanently archived here.

2008 Denker and 2008 World Junior Championships

My September Scholastic Chess column is now online at ChessCafe.

The 2008 Denker Tournament of Champions ended in a three-way tie for first, and we include a nice game from one of the co-winners. Also, we have reports and games from both U.S. representatives, Tatev Abrahamyan and Tyler Hughes, at the 2008 World Junior Championships in Turkey.

The entire column can also be viewed at the ChessCafe archives.

Review: Jon Speelman’s Chess Puzzle Book

The question might well be asked, “Is there really a need for yet another tactics puzzle book?” In fact, author Jon Speelman asks this very question in the first paragraph of his introduction to Jon Speelman’s Chess Puzzle Book. The British GM answers by pointing out, “There is a fairly simple message which is worth hammering home: tactics is a combination of vision and calculation; both are necessary and neither is obvious.”

For the rest of the review, including three puzzles from the book, see the ChessCafe book review home page. You can also find it in the permanent book review archives.

A Surprising Study

This is the starting position in the study composed by national master Dennis Monokroussos at chessvideos.tv. White is a pawn up, but things aren't as clearcut as they may seem.

Which would you rather be, White or Black?

They're Ready in Turkey

As you'll be able to read in my September Scholastic Chess ChessCafe column next week at www.chesscafe.com, Tatev Abrahamyan did not care for the food at the recent World Junior Championships. A number of other players apparently felt likewise.

Let it not be said, though, that the Turkish hosts were unprepared, as the photo above (courtesy of fellow U.S. representative Tyler Hughes) indicates.