domingo, 9 de diciembre de 2007

Errors in books (Khalifman Series)

I will be posting errors, mistakes or omissions in chess books and cd/dvd material.
My first one on this subject is to be found in Khalifman's work Opening for White according to Kramnik Vol. 2. This serie of 5 volumes is indeed very well done and researched, although one may suspect that a lot of the work comes from the brain of Khalifman's team, particularly IM Semkov -who, BTH, is a first class theoretician-
It is impossible to make the perfect book on openings(or the "perfect" anything to be fair)therefore, the mistake pointed out here is just for sake of correcting in order to avoid coming in for a shock.
Lets go to the board now...





This appears as a subvariation in page 43 of the aforementioned book. But instead of 17...h6?, Black has an immediate draw as follows:




As the entrance of the Black Knight at g4 obliges White to accept the perpetual.
This is no big deal, but if you want to play for a win, an improvement must be find at move 12...I haven't find one strong enough yet. If you do, please let me know sending a comment here!!!!

sábado, 8 de diciembre de 2007

Beware of...the annotator! Part 1

Sometimes you find quite awful annotations. Sometimes, you will find them in the generally best available chess stuff. Such an incidence has occurred with Chessbase annotated games, which my be found at the usual Chessbase Megabases, as in the usually excellent Chess Magazine. There is guy annotating there..Well, I just do not know how to describe it without incurring into nasty mode.
He is an International Master from Israel, Mr.Ilya Tsesarsky. I have nothing against the man, but he just could keep playing...and stop annotating games. Any game. As this is quite a long topic (I have found several nonsensical examples coming out from his pen) I will post them separately, one by one, in order to save my time...and yours!

Let us go to my first example.
Below you can replay, and behold, what Mr.Tsesarsky is writing about one of the most topical lines for White against the King's Indian.







There you are. It seems as if Mr. Tsesarsky have been possesed by the spirit of, let's say, Tarrasch, or some other player from the early XX century. Forgetting about several decades of high level chess practice.
He is giving a ?! sign to the move 6.Bg5
, which of course, is the Averbakh variation, an absolutely sound system against the King's Indian which has been a favorite with many of the strongest grandmasters along the decades.In case that someone believes that Mr.Tsesarsky has just made a typo, he continues: "regular continuation..is Nf3" And just in case someone is still pondering, he concludes this magnificent piece of theoretical -BTH,very elementary- ignorance with -after 7...Qe8- "Elegant refutation"...So behold, my friends, the Averbakh -a ?! system-has been "elegantly" refuted at last!
You will be introduced soon to further examples coming from Mr.Tsesarsky's imagination. This is just to prove, once more, that you can be an International Master and a complete theoretical idiot. What simply lies beyond my understanding is how and why Chessbase hires such a moron to annotate so many games!