Anish Giri - Master class ( ProChess Diaries)

 I came to know of Anish Giri's master class in ProChess not so long ago, and without second thoughts joined it! I remember first meeting Anish as a young prodigy completing his second Gm norm( if i remember correctly) at the Groningen Open 2008-2009. The next time I met him it was already in the Qatar Masters where he was one of the elite and was almost winning the event with a 6/6 start. His journey from a child prodigy to one of the very best has been filled with excitement for chess lovers. Besides his achievements, he has always maintained a friendly and pleasant demeanor and that perhaps made him a crowd puller always. 

So, coming back to the master class lesson, he started off the session with his usual pleasant humour and made everyone comfortable by letting everyone know that he  knows all the students of the class ! To warm up he shared a few positions from a recent chess.com Blitz event, which would usually be blasphemy in Soviet times, but he clearly elaborated on why he did this. People (especially the elite group students) would have seen all top level games and it would be hard to quiz them there, so he chose his online Blitz game- fair enough logic!

Ivanchuk's classics by Krasenkow ( Prochess diaries)

 After a month, it so happened that again I could attend another Krasenkow's lecture on Ivanchuk. This time he looked two games of Ivanchuk in contrasting styles, one a positional build up ending up in a complex endgame and the other a famous attacking masterpiece.

The first game was Ivanchuk's victory over Azmaiparashvilli from 2002. I had not seen this game earlier, and that gave a greater freshness in approaching the position. Like last time I will offer a few interesting moments from the lecture with the explanatory ideas. Without further ado let us jump into the positions.