CBM 226: The play’s the thing

Deep, instructional analyses

My first reaction to this issue was a slight disappointment. No sign of Carlsen, Caruana and Nakamura. Besides, only one major tournament finds coverage. That’s the European Championship 2025. However, “The play’s the thing” as the Bard put it. This Championship turned out to be a keen contest between Matthias Bluebaum, Frederik Svane and Maxim Rodshtein, who finished with the same score. On tiebreaks, Blubaum finished first. Among the contenders, Daniel Yuffa was singularly unlucky. He was leading for six rounds till he met Bluebaum in the seventh round. This decisive game is annotated by the eventual winner of the championship:

A dramatic game in which the loser deserves as much credit as the winner.

Matthias Bluebaum, Frederik Svane and Maxim Rodshtein reached the podium of the 2025 European Championship in Eforie-Nord, Romania

Among other players, Vasyl Ivanchuk deserves special mention. His native land, Ukraine, has been under siege for the last three years and the veteran battles on irrespective of the result. The winner of this game shows great respect and sympathy for the Ukrainian maverick in his deeply personal annotations:

Among the young players, 16-year-old Ediz Gürel and 14-year-old Yadiz Erdogmus impressed with their performance. Take a look at the following game from this issue:

Opening videos

There are three opening videos in this issue. The first of them by Luis Engel deals with an offbeat line, 6.Bd3 against the Najdorf Sicilian (B90). White hopes to play e4-e5 opening lines in the centre and target Black’s kingside against the castled Black king. Here the author considers lines like 6…e6 and 6…Nc6. In the second part of the series, he analyses 6…e5. This line would meet White’s aggressive plans halfway. However, it also weakens d5.

Let us wait and see how the author deals with this question in the next CBM issue.

In the second video, Danny King deals with an offbeat line, 5…h5!? in the Czech Benoni (A56) and a possible response like 6.h4 followed by 7.g3. Perhaps White should play the immediate 6.Bg5 instead. There is little material here by way of over-the-board play. The Czech Benoni has a reputation of solidity and demands patience from Black. It could make a return to tournament practice as currently Modern Benoni is facing problems.

In the third video, Mihail Marin offers a discussion of a trendy variation in the French Advance Variation based on a recent game. For readers less familiar with theory, I am offering the game with a road map of opening lines. The later middlegame and the final phase are long and complex. They are best followed with Marin’s commentary.

Take your pick.

Opening surveys

There are as many as 11 feature articles on the openings, ranging from the Berlin (Spanish) to the Blumenfeld Countergambit, in this issue. I would single out two among them. The first is the analysis of a curious line in the Sicilian Sveshnikov Variation (B33) by Lars Schandorff. Here is an illustrative game, and I have kept the annotations simple and short for readers not familiar with theory:

From Mating with a queen; a rook; two bishops; a knight and a bishop; to the basics of pawn endgames – here you will gain the necessary know-how to turn your endgame advantages into victories!

The second is an analysis of a little-known line in the Albin Countergambit by Luc Henris, a leading authority on this opening. For some reason, he seems to have missed the correspondence game in which the idea first became known. It was Alejandro Melchor who first employed this idea of 10…Bc5!? in an ICCF email game way back in 2018. At first, it seems to lose a piece.

Alejandro Melchor

However, his opponent, Carlos Lerida, rightly suspected a trap and responded with the calm 11.Bxd4. The game was a hard-fought draw. Unaware of these games, Luc Henris has still come up with his own analysis. I have offered it here with my own commentary. At the end of it all, White looks slightly better. However, he has to navigate many a stormy sea before he reaches the shore.

I still think there are issues with the Albin in other lines. Maybe Luc Henris would revisit the opening again.

Besides opening surveys, this issue has standard features on tactics, strategy and the endgame. Here I would make a special mention of a video lecture by Dorian Rogozenco on a modern classic, Kramnik-Ehlvest from the Tal Memorial 1995, featuring the Botvinnik Slav. For now, I am giving here the bare score of the game:

This DVD allows you to learn from the example of one of the best players in the history of chess and from the explanations of the authors (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) how to successfully organise your games strategically, consequently how to keep y

Vladimir Kramnik in 1993 | Photo: Frederic Friedel

Endgame play

In the regular column, “Fundamental endgame knowledge”, Karsten Müller offers a demo lecture on the queen versus pawn positions.

Also noteworthy of attention is Dorian Rogozenco’s demo lecture on the fortress theme in queen and pawn versus rook and pawn positions.

This section also offers a column, “Readers write”, in which we find contributions on the endgame by experts like Zoran Petronijevic, Alex Fishbein, Wolfram Schoen, Remy Heimers and Rene Kalmes

Summing up

The main database of the issue has 2028 games of which 27 are deeply annotated. There is much else in this DVD that deserves to be explored. Apart from the players I have already mentioned, the commentators include David Navara and Ivan Cheparinov, among others. It may be noted that there are more annotated games in the opening and training sections of this issue. Well, practice makes perfect.

Notes

1) Years before, ChessBase published a DVD Monograph by Rustam Kasmdzhanov. In recent years it has also offered a DVD by Lawrence Trent:

https://shop.chessbase.com/en/products/trent_the_amazing_albin_counter_gambit

2) More information on the European Chess Championship is from the official site:

https://www.eicc2025.com/

3) Alejandro Melchor has been a leading specialist of the Latvian Gambit.

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