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Sicilian Defence, Najdorf Variation
The Najdorf Variation ( ) of the Sicilian Defence is one of the most popular, reputable and deeply studied of all chess openings. ''Modern Chess Openings'' calls it the "Cadillac" or "Rolls-Royce" of chess openings. The opening is named after the Polish-Argentine grandmaster Miguel Najdorf, although he was not the first strong player to play the variation. Many players have relied on the Najdorf (notably Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov, although Kasparov would often transpose into a Scheveningen). The Najdorf begins: :1. e4 c5 :2. Nf3 d6 :3. d4 cxd4 :4. Nxd4 Nf6 :5. Nc3 a6 Black's 5...a6 aims to deny the b5-square to White's knights and light-square bishop while maintaining flexible development. If Black plays 5...e5 immediately, then after 6.Bb5+ Bd7 (or 6...Nbd7 7.Nf5) 7.Bxd7+ Nbxd7 (or Qxd7) 8.Nf5, the knight on f5 is difficult to dislodge without concessions. Games in the Najdorf frequently feature opposite-side castling, where White castles queenside and both s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miguel Najdorf
Miguel Najdorf (born Mojsze Mendel Najdorf) (15 April 1910 – 4 July 1997) was a Polish–Argentinian chess grandmaster. Originally from Poland, he was in Argentina when World War II began in 1939, and he stayed and settled there. He was a leading world player in the 1940s and 1950s, and is also known for the Najdorf Variation, one of the most popular chess openings. Early life in Poland Najdorf was tutored first by Dawid Przepiórka, then by Savielly Tartakower, the latter of whom he always referred to as "my teacher". At the beginning of his chess career, around 1930, Najdorf defeated a player believed to be named "Glücksberg" in a famous game often referred to as "The Polish Immortal". In 1930, he tied for 6th–7th at the Warsaw Championship, an event won by Paulino Frydman. In 1931, he took second in Warsaw, behind Frydman. In 1932, he tied for 9th–10th in Warsaw. In 1933, he won in Warsaw (''Quadrangular''). In January 1934, he finished second to Rudolf Spielmann, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Nunn
John Denis Martin Nunn (born 25 April 1955) is an English chess grandmaster, a three-time world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician. He is one of England's strongest chess players and was formerly in the world's top ten. Education and early life Nunn was born in London. As a junior, he showed a prodigious talent for the game and in 1967, at twelve years of age, he won the British under-14 Championship. At fourteen, he was London Under-18 Champion for the 1969–70 season and less than a year later, at just fifteen years of age, he proceeded to Oriel College, Oxford, to study mathematics. At the time, Nunn was Oxford's youngest undergraduate since Cardinal Wolsey in 1520. Graduating in 1973, he went on to gain his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1978 with a thesis on finite H-spaces supervised by John Hubbuck. Nunn remained in Oxford as a mathematics lecturer until 1981, when he became a professional chess player. Career In 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fabiano Caruana
Fabiano Luigi Caruana (born July 30, 1992) is an American chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, Caruana became a grandmaster at the age of 14 years, 11 months, and 20 days—the youngest grandmaster in the history of both Italy and the United States at the time. Born in Miami to Italian parents, Caruana grew up in Park Slope, Brooklyn. He played for the United States until 2005, when he transferred his national federation affiliation to Italy. He earned his grandmaster title in 2007, and in the same year won his first Italian Chess Championship, a feat he repeated in 2008, 2010, and 2011. He won the Dortmund Sparkassen Chess Meeting in 2012, 2014, and 2015. Caruana also won the Sinquefield Cup 2014, recording a 3098 performance rating, the highest in history at the top level, and improving his rating to 2844, becoming the third-highest rated player in history. He transferred back to the United States in 2015. Having won the FIDE Grand Prix 2014–15, Caruana qualified for the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Gelfand
Boris Gelfand ( he, בוריס אברמוביץ' גלפנד; be, Барыс Абрамавіч Гельфанд, Barys Abramavich Hel'fand; russian: Борис Абрамович Гельфанд, Boris Abramovich Gel'fand; born 24 June 1968) is a Soviet-born Israeli chess player. A six-time World Championship candidate (1991, 1994–95, 2002, 2007, 2011, 2013), he won the Chess World Cup 2009 and the 2011 Candidates Tournament, making him challenger for the World Chess Championship 2012. Although the match with defending champion Viswanathan Anand finished level at 6–6, Gelfand lost the deciding rapidplay tiebreak by 2½–1½. Gelfand has won major tournaments at Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg, Moscow, Linares and Dos Hermanas. He has competed in eleven Chess Olympiads and held a place within the top 30 players ranked by FIDE from January 1990 to October 2017. Early years Boris Gelfand was born in Minsk, in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, on 24 June 1968 to Belaru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lev Polugaevsky
Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky ( rus, Лев Абрамович Полугаевский, p=pəlʊɡɐˈjefskʲɪj; 20 November 1934 – 30 August 1995) was a Soviet chess player. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1962 and was a frequent contender for the World Championship, although he never achieved that title. He was one of the strongest players in the world from the early 1960s until the late 1980s, as well as a distinguished author and opening theorist whose contributions in this field remain important to the present day. Career Lev Polugaevsky was born in Mogilev, in the Soviet Union (now Mahilyow, Belarus), and, after being evacuated during the Second World War, grew up in Kuybyshev (modern Samara). He began playing chess around the age of 10. In 1948, he attracted the attention of Candidate Master Alexy Ivashin, who became his first teacher. International Master Lev Aronin, who lived in Moscow but had family in Kuybyshev, eventually becam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chessgames
Chessgames.com is an Internet chess community with over 224,000 members. The site maintains a large database of chess games, where each game has its own discussion page for comments and analysis. Limited primarily to games where at least one player is of master strength, the database begins with the earliest known recorded games and is updated with games from current top-level tournaments. Basic membership is free, and the site is open to players at all levels of ability, with additional features available for Premium members. While the primary purpose of Chessgames.com is to provide an outlet for chess discussion and analysis, consultation games are periodically organized with teams of members playing either other teams of members or very strong masters, including a former US champion and two former world correspondence champions. Members can maintain their own discussion pages, and there are features to assist study of openings, endgames and sacrifices. The front page also feat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francisco Vallejo Pons
Francisco Vallejo, son of Ángel R. Vallejo Jiménez, military academy graduate in Law, and Felicidad Pons Gomila. He was born in Mahón, where the main hospital on the island of Menorca was located, but he has never lived there, but rather in Es Castell (until 1989 called "Villacarlos"). In the family everyone played chess: his father with his grandfather and his brothers among them, so at the age of 5 he already knew how to play: he had learned by watching them. 2 A family friend, named Nissio, noticed his abilities and without knowing the rules perfectly, he was sent to the Villacarlos Chess School, where first Guillermo Simó, and later Jaume Villalonga and Pep Suárez were his teachers. His first international triumph was in 1991 when he won the title of world under-10 runner-up in Milwaukee. At the age of 11, his life radically changes: he goes to live without his family in Galicia, at the Marcote School in Mondariz-Balneario. There he combined his studies with his chess ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poisoned Pawn Variation
The Poisoned Pawn Variation is any of several series of opening moves in chess in which a pawn is said to be "poisoned" because its capture can result in a positional loss of or a loss of . Sicilian Defense, Najdorf The best known of these, called the Poisoned Pawn Variation, is a line of the Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation that begins with the moves: :1. e4 c5 :2. Nf3 d6 :3. d4 cxd4 :4. Nxd4 Nf6 :5. Nc3 a6 :6. Bg5 e6 :7. f4 Qb6 after which 8.Qd2 Qxb2 usually follows, accepting the "poisoned" b2-pawn. White can also play 8.Nb3, protecting the pawn. One of the pioneers of this line was David Bronstein, who tied the 1951 World Championship match against Mikhail Botvinnik 12–12. Bobby Fischer later became a proponent, playing it with great success. The line was most famously played in game 7 and game 11 of the 1972 World Chess Championship match between Fischer and Spassky. In both games Fischer played Black and grabbed the pawn. In the first, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portorož
Portorož (; it, Portorose) is a Slovenian Adriatic seaside resort and spa town located in the Municipality of Piran in southwestern Slovenia. Its modern development began in the late 19th century with the vogue for the first health resorts. In the early 20th century Portorož became one of the grandest seaside resorts in the Adriatic, along with Abbazia, Lido and Grado, then as part of the Austrian Littoral. It is now one of Slovenia's major tourist areas. Located in the centre is the Palace Hotel, once one of the most important resorts for the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, and currently one of the finest hotels between Venice and Dubrovnik. The settlement and its surrounding areas are served by Portorož International Airport which is located in the nearby village of Sečovlje. Name The Slovene name ''Portorož'' is borrowed from Italian ''Portorose'', literally 'port of roses', which was recorded in the 12th century as ''Porto di rose''. The name is derived from ''Santa Mari ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Svetozar Gligorić
Svetozar Gligorić (Serbian Cyrillic: Светозар Глигорић, 2 February 1923 – 14 August 2012) was a Serbian and Yugoslav chess grandmaster and musician. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record twelve times, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia. In 1958, he was declared the best athlete of Yugoslavia. In the 1950s and 1960s, Gligorić was one of the top players in the world. He was also among the world's most popular players, owing to his globe-trotting tournament schedule and a particularly engaging personality, reflected in the title of his autobiography, ''I Play Against Pieces'' (i.e., without hostility toward the opponent, and not differently against different players for "psychological" reasons; playing "the board and not the man"). Life Gligorić was born in Belgrade to a poor family. According to his recollections, his first exposure to chess was as a small child watching patrons play in a neighborhood bar. He began to play at the a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Efim Geller
Efim Petrovich Geller (russian: Ефим Петрович Геллер, uk, Юхим Петрович Геллер; 8 March 1925 – 17 November 1998) was a Soviet chess player and world-class grandmaster at his peak. He won the Soviet Championship twice (in 1955 and 1979) and was a Candidate for the World Championship on six occasions (1953, 1956, 1962, 1965, 1968, and 1971). He won four Ukrainian SSR Championship titles (in 1950, 1957, 1958, and 1959) and shared first in the 1991 World Seniors' Championship, winning the title outright in 1992. Geller was coach to World Champions Boris Spassky and Anatoly Karpov. He was also an author. Early life Geller grew up in Odesa, USSR, and was Jewish. He was a fine basketball player, and earned his doctorate in physical education before specialising in chess. His development as a top player was delayed by the inception of World War II. Geller's first notable result was sixth place in the 1947 Ukrainian SSR Chess Championship a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interzonal
Interzonal chess tournaments were tournaments organized by the World Chess Federation FIDE from the 1950s to the 1990s. They were a stage in the triennial World Chess Championship cycle and were held after the Zonal tournaments, and before the Candidates Tournament. Since 2005, the Chess World Cup has filled a similar role. Zonal tournaments In the first year of the cycle, every FIDE member nation would hold a national championship, with the top players qualifying for the Zonal tournament. The world was divided into distinct zones, with the USSR, United States and Canada each being designated a zone, thus qualifiers from these three zones went directly to the Interzonal. Smaller countries would be grouped into a zone with many countries. For example, all of South America and Central America combined originally formed one zone. Interzonal tournaments The top players in each Zonal tournament would meet in the Interzonal tournament, which would typically have between 20 and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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