Since 12th of March I haven't left my house anymore except for the few times I needed to buy food and drinks. I strictly follow the regulations of the government which are necessary to slow down the pandemic although I do miss playing chess at a real board. I hear the same kind of sounds in the mails of other players as playing online can never compensate the social interactions in a club. We are getting detoxed of chess. I expect some players will decide after things have normalized again that they can live perfectly without chess and will never return anymore. Playing chess demands a huge investment of time which some people will prefer to use for other activities. A crisis always creates new views.
Meanwhile we are week 7 and I haven't bored myself yet at home. Besides having more time for my wife, kids and the household, I also spent plenty of hours at removing the backlog of analyzing my own games. At March 12 there were still 12 of my standard games not yet analyzed. Currently I am working at my penultimate one. It concerns a mainline of the French Winawer which I hadn't studied for 5 years so I have a lot of work at catching up the theory.
2 computers are almost non stop generating analysis for this job. On one of them Leela is running. On the other one it is Stockfish as I like to double-check all my analysis. Yes my analysis are top notch. Besides I am not talking just about the engines which are analyzing for many hours. Tablebases (maximum of 7 pieces) are often consulted for the endgames. For the opening I check not only all the standard games played by the masters but also correspondence games and even games played between engines. Especially in this last category of games I see a drastic increase of interesting discoveries. Hereby I like to call my readers for help finding the most recent engine-games played at chess.com as I am very interested to download them.
However this also means that I expect others to put a lot of effort in their published analysis. Contrary to a reaction of Richard on my previous article I personally find the language or the didactic aspects of an article not critical. A writer must for me run the extra mile in his analysis. If I spend time to read an analysis then my primary goal is to win time and not to lose it due to correcting errors. As a consequence books are for me very quickly outdated. Sometimes people are offering me some old opening-books for free but then I always tell them that those are not helping me in my analysis.
Unfortunately I discovered last year that this is also the case for my book about the Leningrad. I talked earlier about some mistakes in the analysis of the book see part 1 but that wasn't critical as we were just discussing some sidelines. However a couple of months later I discovered that the mainline also has serious defects which I couldn't ignore anymore. I want to use the Leningrad more than just an excellent weapon of surprise. That is only possible if the mainlines are solid and can't be refuted.
The book of Malaniuk was published in 2014 but already in 2015 some important ameliorations were found for white which more or less degrade the book as a footnote of the chess-history. I put a lot of efforts into saving the opening but eventually I had to admit that black is always slightly worse out of the opening and will suffer a lot to make a draw against best play. As I haven't played yet any important games in this line, I use as proof instead some recent games of the Polish international master Piotr Nguyen whom is an expert in this opening and even planned to publish a book about it see this tweet. In the years before 2014, Piotr achieved some solid results with the opening but after it things became much more difficult. I start with the line which I played myself last year against the Belgian FM Adrian Roos.
Meanwhile we are week 7 and I haven't bored myself yet at home. Besides having more time for my wife, kids and the household, I also spent plenty of hours at removing the backlog of analyzing my own games. At March 12 there were still 12 of my standard games not yet analyzed. Currently I am working at my penultimate one. It concerns a mainline of the French Winawer which I hadn't studied for 5 years so I have a lot of work at catching up the theory.
2 computers are almost non stop generating analysis for this job. On one of them Leela is running. On the other one it is Stockfish as I like to double-check all my analysis. Yes my analysis are top notch. Besides I am not talking just about the engines which are analyzing for many hours. Tablebases (maximum of 7 pieces) are often consulted for the endgames. For the opening I check not only all the standard games played by the masters but also correspondence games and even games played between engines. Especially in this last category of games I see a drastic increase of interesting discoveries. Hereby I like to call my readers for help finding the most recent engine-games played at chess.com as I am very interested to download them.
However this also means that I expect others to put a lot of effort in their published analysis. Contrary to a reaction of Richard on my previous article I personally find the language or the didactic aspects of an article not critical. A writer must for me run the extra mile in his analysis. If I spend time to read an analysis then my primary goal is to win time and not to lose it due to correcting errors. As a consequence books are for me very quickly outdated. Sometimes people are offering me some old opening-books for free but then I always tell them that those are not helping me in my analysis.
Unfortunately I discovered last year that this is also the case for my book about the Leningrad. I talked earlier about some mistakes in the analysis of the book see part 1 but that wasn't critical as we were just discussing some sidelines. However a couple of months later I discovered that the mainline also has serious defects which I couldn't ignore anymore. I want to use the Leningrad more than just an excellent weapon of surprise. That is only possible if the mainlines are solid and can't be refuted.
The book of Malaniuk was published in 2014 but already in 2015 some important ameliorations were found for white which more or less degrade the book as a footnote of the chess-history. I put a lot of efforts into saving the opening but eventually I had to admit that black is always slightly worse out of the opening and will suffer a lot to make a draw against best play. As I haven't played yet any important games in this line, I use as proof instead some recent games of the Polish international master Piotr Nguyen whom is an expert in this opening and even planned to publish a book about it see this tweet. In the years before 2014, Piotr achieved some solid results with the opening but after it things became much more difficult. I start with the line which I played myself last year against the Belgian FM Adrian Roos.
A couple of recently played correspondence-games still show some hope for black as black was able to draw but it wasn't fun at all. Besides black must be ready to cope with several annoying white tries which sounds for me impractical for playing in a standard game especially against a well prepared opponent. Just like the Polish master I had a look at the alternatives but I don't think 8...Pa6 is better than 8...e5 which below game demonstrates clearly.
After making those analysis I tried to contact the Dutch grandmaster Roeland Pruijssers as he recently published a dvd about this line but he didn't reply to my mails. Anyway I think the chance is very slim that the dvd will add something to my elaborated analysis. Again maybe a reader has more information about the dvd and is willing to react below this article.
Last year I achieved with black a good position against Adrian and even generated winning chances. So the dvd of Roeland can obviously be used to just add an extra weapon in your repertoire to surprise 1 or 2 opponents but I don't think it will work each time against everybody.
In the meantime I also discovered that 7...Qe8 is already for some time not anymore the most popular line of the Leningrad. Today 7...c6 is the main choice of the strongest players. Lately I also learned about the 7....e6-line thanks to the superfinal of the TCEC season 17 between Leela and Stockfish. It appears we then get some sort of crossover between the Leningrad and the Stonewall. Maybe that fits to my repertoire as I have more than 2 decades of experience with the Stonewall. Black had to defend in both games but managed to make a draw each time. I like the one Leela playing the black pieces the most as she managed to equalize convincingly.
Last year I achieved with black a good position against Adrian and even generated winning chances. So the dvd of Roeland can obviously be used to just add an extra weapon in your repertoire to surprise 1 or 2 opponents but I don't think it will work each time against everybody.
In the meantime I also discovered that 7...Qe8 is already for some time not anymore the most popular line of the Leningrad. Today 7...c6 is the main choice of the strongest players. Lately I also learned about the 7....e6-line thanks to the superfinal of the TCEC season 17 between Leela and Stockfish. It appears we then get some sort of crossover between the Leningrad and the Stonewall. Maybe that fits to my repertoire as I have more than 2 decades of experience with the Stonewall. Black had to defend in both games but managed to make a draw each time. I like the one Leela playing the black pieces the most as she managed to equalize convincingly.
So there exist other moves next to the 7....Qe8-line. For the moment I don't want to discuss yet the other lines. I am still learning and discovering. Currently I can't complain about the Leningrad as I scored 2 wins and 3 draws with it in my standard games but I doubt that this percentage can be maintained when my opponents start to see my Leningrad games appearing in the databases. I hope by making a lot of analysis and preparing many ideas that I can stay ahead of my future opponents.
Brabo
Brabo
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