I had the opportunity to be a student in Michal Krasenkow's lecture on Ivanchuk's positional games. This was quite a new experience for me. Until now I had only been associated with Pro Chess as a coach giving a lecture, and this time thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to attend Grandmaster Krasenkow's lecture as a student. First of all it was a welcome invitation to look at the games of one of my favourite players- the inimitable Ivanchuk! Krasenkow is a very strong Grandmaster who is a contemporary of Ivanchuk and has unique insights into the games of Ivanchuk.
In the backdrop of a raging war at his doorstep he could not hide his emotions, but nevertheless did his first lecture for Pro Chess. I liked the way he presented his lecture, first he gave several positions with time to think for the students to come up with their own decisions. This way we progressed through the game Ivanchuk-Beliavsky Eu Club Cup-2001 pondering over several critical moments. I will present a couple of positions to illustrate the point.
 |
| Diagram 1 |
 |
| Diagram 2 |
It is White to move in both the positions. Readers can ponder over it for a while.
Krasenkow was giving his own views of the various positions at the end of questions over the critical moments session. There were several key features which were explained, which were, although quite basic and fundamental to good positional play are nevertheless missed during the heat of the battle and the pressure of the clock.
For example in diagram 1, I wanted to play a developing move like Rfd1 to capture the d-file and retain the pressure, whereas Ivanchuk had in fact played Qc5! and as Krasenkow rightly put - " The advantage of Bishop over a knight increases in the endgame"
And in the second diagram, my choice was to play b3, though I was not too happy with moving my Queenside pawns up the board and creating some targets in terms of weak squares. Ivanchuk came with the creative and strong Re2! which I had failed to consider. His point is to use a rook for the defence of the second rank and activate his other rook via the 5th rank to probe Black's weakened pawns.
To conclude: In Krasenkow's opinion this was one of the very best games of Ivanchuk! I had not seen this earlier, truly showing that there are hidden gems scattered around amidst the pebbles on a river bed. Readers can find the link to the above mentioned game here below.
No comments:
Post a Comment