Yelena Dembo's Blog » yelenadembo

We learn from Anatoly Karpov

yelenadembo — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:20:42 +0000

WE LEARN FROM ANATOLY KARPOV

The 12th World champion Anatoly Karpov has no as well-known students as Kasparov was in Botvinnik’s chess-school and Yussupov in chess-school of Dvoretsky. First of all he is a chess-player. Preferring to create works of art but not “to make Grandmasters” he is a great practical worker in chess. Why? Each person has his own mission!
But any genuine work of art (it makes no difference if it is music of Mozart, pictures of impressionists or games of best chess-players) can be considered in two aspects:
1) you can admire and enjoy it,
2) you can learn to use it.
Today we’ll see one of the most interesting moments of Karpov’s games – his interpretation of the theme “Opposite color Bishops with Rooks”. I don’t want to press on anybody but I am sure that Karpov is one of the best specialists in this subject. And therefore just now we all are students of Karpov in this matter.

Conclusions

So how to win positions with opposite color Bishops and Rooks?
Necessary condition: our last minor piece (Bishop) has to be better than its opponent. But what does it mean: a better Bishop?
It is a Bishop, which:
a) attacks a King of a rival better than its opposite color colleague one and creates threats of mate without counteract of a rival’s Bishop (!); as a particular case it is possible to notice an active participation of King and pawns in making checkmate positions;
b) attacks weaknesses;
c) captures important squares.
By the way, very often a pair of Bishops leads to good for one side opposite color Bishops. Let’s remember one of the well-known phrases of not less well-known Grandmaster E. Gufeld:”What is there a pair of Bishops for? To exchange one of them in right moment with advantage!”
As a summary of above-stated it is possible to say that good for you opposite color Bishop is a result of an art of piece exchange; it is a very interesting and global theme. And it would be good to return to it later!

Analysis, thoughts, etc

yelenadembo — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:35:47 +0000

So, the holidays are over and it is time to analyse the events, successes and failures of last year Understanding what you did well or not so well will help you to play and think better in the future. For me, the whole 2011 was very pleasant, so the difficulties I was having in the very last event of the year – the women’s world team championship in Mardin, couldn’t spoil anything After all, I had to play against the likes of the current World Champion Hou Yifan, 2nd player in the world – Koneru and many other very strong GMs. Here is a small selection of annotated games from the last two events of mine – the Mind Sports Games (Beijing) and Women’s World Team Championship (Mardin, Turkey).

Hopefully we will all learn from our mistakes and play better this year! Good luck!

Happy New Year!

yelenadembo — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:58:02 +0000

Wish you and your family a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!

Morning exercise

yelenadembo — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:41:26 +0000

White to move and win

Selection of my games from Mind Sports Games

yelenadembo — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:36:47 +0000

Here is a selection from my games:

Rapid

1.Rd8 and Black resigned!

Blitz

Blindfold

The official website of the Chess event was http://sportaccord2011.fide.com/index.php and you can still download games or just view them there!

Mind Sport Games in China

yelenadembo — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 11:26:32 +0000

This tournament was organized on a very high level and included several disciplines such as Go, Bridge, Chinese Chess, Draughts and Chess. In Chess there were two separate Elite sections – Men and Women – with three events each: Rapid, Blitz and Blindfold. And if some men have played Blindfold Chess before in Monaco, this was the first ever such event for women! So, in total there were 32 chess-players – 16 men and 16 women. I was rated 13th in all these events but managed to finish on much higher places! In Rapid event I shared 8th-10th with 3.5 points out of 7, in Blitz I shared 6th-7th with 8 out of 15 and in Blindfold I shared 2nd-6th and was 5th with 4.5 out of 7!

China

yelenadembo — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 13:25:48 +0000

I am currently in China, playing in the World Mind Sports Games 2011. Unfortunately, Facebook and Twitter access in China is not easy, so I won’t be updating till my return on December 17th.

New ideas in chess :) – Rapid and Blitz ratings

yelenadembo — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:45:04 +0000

Recently FIDE has been discussing the addition of Rapid and Blitz ratings. So, here we are: we will have new ratings in the two new “disciplines” already next year. For some it will be easy and pleasant and for some it will be necessary to adapt themselves to a new rate of play.

Here is what FIDE has to say about the matter – http://www.fide.com/component/content/article/1-fide-news/5721-rapid-and-blitz-rating-lists.html

What do you think about it?

European women’s team championship 2011

yelenadembo — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:39:47 +0000

I finished the event on +2 on first board with a single loss (playing against 6 GMs among other titled players) and won 0.2 points which is also something Unfortunately, the team didn’t didn’t finish on a good place Here are the final results – http://chess-results.com/tnr57855.aspx?art=0&rd=9&lan=1&turdet=YES&flag=30

And here are the rest of my games in the event

And a selection of my and my team’s photos from various sources

Women’s European Team Championship

yelenadembo — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 10:19:21 +0000

So far the Greek team has been playing very well, losing narrowly to Ukraine and winning against Austria. Here are two my first games:

Today we play Hungary, so wish us luck!