ChessBase Magazine 154 - DVD

The long awaited candidates tournament in London exceeded expectations and has already secured itself a special place in the annals of chess. The result is that the challenger to World Champion Anand is Magnus Carlsen, the one the world of chess wanted to see. But some of the heroes of London were active shortly after at the Alekhine Memorial – Aronian and Gelfand came out on top just ahead of Anand.
The third tournament on the DVD is the FIDE Grand Prix in Zug with an outstanding display by Topalov. Amongst the start authors in this issue are Kramnik, Aronian, Caruana, Gelfand and Ponomariov. At the same time, the DVD with its 12 openings articles again offers numerous ideas and suggestions for your repertoire, e.g. Najdorf with 6.h3, three articles on the French and a contribution by Zoltan Almasi on his special variation in the Nimzo-Indian.

Intro
In his introductory video Grandmaster Karsten Müller takes a first glance over the contents of the DVD. For example, he casts some light on the decisive moments of Carlsen’s victory as White over Gelfand in the candidates tournament in London. Of the 12 openings articles on the DVD the one which particularly attracted Müller was the contribution by Zoltan Almasi on the Parma Variation in the Nimzo-Indian Defence.

Tournament highlights
Dorian Rogozenco devotes the first of his two highlights videos entirely to the candidates tournament. For example, he presents Aronian’s fantastic endgame victory over Gelfand. A further focus of Rogozenco’s attention in this video is Kramnik’s various opening innovations in London. For the second video the Romanian GM has, e.g., picked out Topalov’s win over Nakamura (Zug) and Aronian’s brilliant victory against Svidler’s Grünfeld Defence (Paris/St Petersburg).

Aljechin-Memorial Paris/St Petersburg
It will hardly have been a real consolation for Levon Aronian, but at least some sort of satisfaction. At the WCh Candidates Tournament (see below) he still had good chances of victory in the tournament after the first flight of games, but then decisively fell behind. However, in the Alekhine Memorial he managed to win the tournament ahead of Boris Gelfand who had the same number of points, and he achieved this not only ahead of Kramnik but also of World Champion Anand. As in the candidates tournaments the deciding criterion in the Alekhine Memorial was also the number of games won.

FIDE Grand Prix Zug
In April the FIDE cycle saw its third event take place in the Swiss town of Zug. Unlike the previous tournaments in London and Tashkent there was no neck and neck finish on this occasion. With his victory over the pursuing Caruana in penultimate round Veselin Topalov secured himself sole victory in the tournament with a round to go and on the following day even scored another win, over Karjakin this time. You will find on the DVD two games by the victor annotated by GM Krasenkow.

• Marca ChessBase
• Code SCBM154