may 20 2003
Master's word
The author of the 3# is Alexeï Ivanovitch. He should not be confused with the grandmaster Alexander Kotov, author of a successful book inviting the reader, if not to become a grandmaster himself, at least to "think like a grandmaster". His advice has helped many players, even if the principles he sets out often have to be circumvented. The key to this problem is surprising.
The 6# is a brilliant and difficult work that prefigures the work of a French composer of the 50s and 80s. And this time it is indeed the very strong Polish player Dawid Przepiorka (pronounced pjépiourca) who counts victories over Janowski, Fahrni, Spielmann, Mieses, Duras, Rubinstein, L. Steiner, Tarrasch, Opocensky, Saemisch, Nimzovitch, Sultan Khan and many others.
Finally two helpmates, the easiest not necessarily the easiest being the one who seems to be...
How can bishop and pawn dominate a rook? A small Latvian miracle. Then a study of the former world champion, that you will solve better than a computer. And a curiosity: the study that prevented the current world champion of solving, Piotr Murdzia, from doing 100% in Portoroz last September. But, unlike him, you have the solution in front of you!
The part of the day is a demonstration of who was to become world champion five years later. He plays a gambit whose acceptance gives a strong centre of pawns to Black. This allows the initiative and then an attack on the white castling: too good a gift in front of such a creator. It is curious that the same idea is found 50 years later in Spassky-Tal, with the same effect, with the outgoing world champion being deconquered in the same way. Not to say crush.
Not everyone can, like Kortchnoï, swallow pawns without damage. Passing from Quebec directly to Africa, I will recall this salutary advice: "If you can't digest the cassock, don't eat the missionary" (Bantu proverb).
A passing comment on Alekhine's alleged "antisemitism". He must have been quite a masochist, considering that his 4th wife (since 1934), Grace Wishard-Freeman, was an American Jew; she is buried with him in Montparnasse. This is probably unknown to the sycophantic inkwell and viperine journalists.
Imagine that I married an English woman, instead of a woman further east. But no, I'm joking...
Enjoy your meal.
Add a comment