André Diamante é o mais novo talento do xadrez brasileiro

Retirado do R7.

Assista à matéria da TV Record com o GM e ex-campeão brasileiro André Diamant. A reportagem é de Adriana Bittar, do programa Esporte Fantástico. André Diamante campeão brasileiro de xadrez, foi para a rua enfrentar desafio de xadrez na cidade.

Assista em: http://videos.r7.com/andre-diamante-e-o-mais-novo-talento-do-xadrez-brasileiro/idmedia/f731ec40a17e609c8e0a5112816bfc24.html

Your judgement, please - Pt. 37

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

The pawn roller
31.12.2009 – After the final rounds of the Russian Championship, our endgames expert Karsten Müller casts an eye back at the remarkable and extremely original endgame Timofeev-Khismatullin from round five. The position in the diagram arose after 50.bxa5, after which the two black rooks had to take up the fight against four linked passed pawns and a knight – and it turned out to be hopeless for them.

Karsten Müller shows you for CBM Online how this unusual position came about and how the game ended.

Position after 50.bxa5

Your judgement, please - Pt. 36

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

Both kings threatened by discovered check...
28.12.2009 – ... was the situation in this recent game from the German Bundesliga, where White to play had to calculate the consequences of 27.Rf7-f4+. How would you assess the position after that (diagram)?
A) White is better;
B) the position is balanced;
C) Black has the advantage.

The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

Position after 27.Rf7-f4+
A) White is better;
B) the position is balanced;
C) Black has the advantage.

Your judgement, please - Pt. 35

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

To exchange or not to exchange?
26.12.2009 – Correct evaluation of pawn endings is an important pillar of good endgame technique. So, e.g., in the following position Black had to come to a judgment as to whether, after the exchange of rooks with 47...Rxe2 48.Kxe2, the ensuing pawn ending is a draw. Otherwise, he would be obliged to do without the exchange and to defend the rook ending.
What do you think? Does the exchange of rooks lead to a drawn position?

The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

Does 47...Rxe2 48.Kxe2 lead to a drawn position?

Falsa especulação acerca de Magnus Carlsen treinar Anand para o Mundial

Corrigindo a notícia anterior publicada neste blog, o pessoal do site Chessbase.com cometeu um engano no entendimento da reportagem do jornal indiano. Abaixo a mais nova notícia:

Speculation about Carlsen being Anand's second
23.12.2009 – An article in the Indian newspaper The Telegraph set off a flurry of excitement in news pages and chess blogs. "Magnus Carlsen will be one of my seconds [in Sofia]," World Champion Vishy Anand was quoted as saying. A misunderstanding, since Magnus, who is a great friend and will surely root for Anand, will not be assisting him in at the 2010 World Championship. Details.

The passage in the Telegraph interview that caused all the confusion reads as follows:

Whether Surya Sekhar Ganguly will be his one of his seconds this time too

[Anand]: He may be. I am not sure. Seconds are a very secretive thing. Even if I tell you that he will be one of my seconds, the rival camp will not believe me. But one thing is for sure, Magnus Carlsen (the world No. 2) will be one of the seconds.

[Late in the evening, Surya told The Telegraph that he did have a talk with Anand in the afternoon, but nothing has been finalised. “It will take some time,” he said.]

Due to time difference and social engagements we were not able to reach Anand, who is currently in India, on Wednesday evening, when the news hit the blogs. A likely explanation – which we shall confirm or correct on Thursday – for the above passage is that Anand said "Nielsen", referring to his second of many years, Peter Heine Nielsen. The journalist, whose ears have been ringing in the past few weeks with one Skandinavial "-sen" name, remembered "Carlsen", googled it and came up with the above story.

We were able to contact Magnus' father Henrik Carlsen, who like us is a creature of the night. He confirmed that his son, who has been good friends with Anand for a number of years now, and has in fact worked with him in the past, now has his own plans and schedule. These do not include working for or with Anand for his World Championship match in Sofia.

More details to follow later...

Magnus Carlsen será o treinador de Vishy Anand para o Mundial!

Quem segura esse garoto? Até onde pode ir Magnus Carlsen? Quem diria que o número 1 do ranking atual estaria treinando o atual campeão do mundo...

Carlsen ainda fará muita história no xadrez, com certeza!

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

Carlsen será el entrenador de Anand para el Mundial en Sofía
El pasado lunes, Viswanathan Anand visitó Calcuta, para felicitar a los ganadores de la zona oriental de la "NIIT Mindchampions Academy". Aprovechó l aportunidad para dar una rueda de prensa. El periódico "Telgraph Calcutta" publicó ayer un resumen de las intervenciones de Anand. Entre otras cosas, anunció que ya tiene entrenador para el duelo por el título mundial contra Veselin Topalov en Sofía. ¡No será nadie menos que el propio nuevo número uno del mundo, Magnus Carlsen! El noruego ya había apoyado a Anand en el último Campeonato del Mundo contra Kramnik. Además está también negociando también con Ganguly. Anand comentó que ya se está preparando de manera muy intensa al duelo ahora mismo y que se está entrenando hasta 12 horas (¡!) al día. El artículo en Telegraph Calcutta (en inglés).

Your judgement, please - Pt. 34

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

La variante del peón envenenado...
... de la Najdorf solía ser una de las armas favoritas de Bobby Fischer cuando quería ganar una partida (o sea, prácticamente siempre). Hoy en día muchas líneas han sido analizadas hasta que terminan en tablas. Aún así, las fascinantes complicaciones siguen atrayendo a los jugadores. Esta posición surgió el fin de semana pasado en la Bundesliga Alemana. Tras 28...Ta7, en su opinión, ¿cuál de las afirmaciones sería la correcta? A) Las negras tienen una posición ganadora. B) Las blancas deben dar jaque continuo. C) En realidad no es jaque continuo, sino que ganan las blancas. Tiene la solución aquí, pero antes de mirarla le sugerimos que reflexione sobre el problema

Juegan las blancas. Es la posición tras 28...Ta7

¿Cuál es la respuesta correcta?

A) Las negras tienen una posición ganadora.
B) Las blancas deben dar jaque continuo.
C) En realidad no es jaque continuo, sino que ganan las blancas .

Your judgement, please - Pt. 33

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

Un caballo con truco
Muchos jugadores aficionados de ajedrez tienen un tremendo respeto al caballo, en muchos casos porque han sufrido dolorosas experiencias con él. En su análisis de una partida de la Bundesliga Alemana contra el Wattenscheid del pasado fin de semana, el GM alemán Karsten Müller nos enseña que el caballo puede presumir de todas sus habilidades tácticas no solamente en el medio juego, sino también durante el final. En la posición que se ve en el tablero, iban a jugar las negras y parece que lo único que debe hacer para ganar la partida es avanzar con los peones del flanco de dama. Pero, ¿con cuál de los peones debería avanzar mejor? ¿Qué opina Ud.? ¿55...b3 o 55...c3?Tiene la solución aquí, pero antes de mirarla le sugerimos que reflexione sobre el problema

Juegan las negras: ¿55...b3 o 55...c3?

Your judgement, please - Pt. 32

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

A coffin nail...
11.12.2009 – ... in chess is a pawn which has advanced to the sixth rank in the enemy king position, creating all kinds of mate motifs. Here Black had to decide whether he could allow White's pawn to go to h6 or not. 37...Ra4xe4 in your opinion leads to which result?
A) win for Black;
B) positional draw;
C) win for White.
The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

Position after 37...Ra4xe4



A) win for Black;
B) positional draw;
C) win for White.

Your judgement, please - Pt. 31

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

Malakhov and his Slav with 4...a6
09.12.2009 – Vladimir Malakhov is the man of the hour at the World Cup in Khanty Mansiysk. Having beaten his opponents (Smirin, Eljanov and So) in rapid chess, he went on to defeat Peter Svidler in normal chess with the black pieces - and once again with his beloved 4...a6 Slav (which had already downed Pavel Eljanov and Wesley So). Incidentally, the discussed variation - 5.e3 b5 6.c5 g6 - was extensively analysed by Dorian Rogozenco in his contribution for CBM 119. Rainer Knaak has annotated this game.
Svidler-Malakhov on ChessBase Magazine Online...

Svidler-Malakhov, position after 7.Bd3

Your judgement, please - Pt. 30

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

A mate attack out of the blue
09.12.2009 – Today will see the first game of the final Gelfand-Ponomariov at the World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk. Opportunity for us to look back on an exciting moment from the endgame Karjakin-Mamedyarov. The latter has just played 49...Rb2? (diagram), thus giving his young opponent the unexpected chance to decide the game by mating threats. Which surprising move helped the 19-year-old Ukraine to secure victory now? Use this larger diagram to work it out for yourself. Grandmaster Karsten Müller has analysed the endgame Karjakin-Mamedyarov for ChessBase Magazine Online.

Position after 49...Rb2? How did Karjakin continue?

Qual foi o torneio mais forte de todos os tempos?

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

07.12.2009 – The Tal Memorial this year in Moscow? It has been billed as such, but it all depends on how you evaluate such events. If you correct for rating inflation, and especially if you consider the world ranking of the participants, other tournaments easily outstrip this one. Very plausibly AVRO 1938 was the strongest – or at least the most elite, since players #1-8 were present. Jeff Sonas explains.

What was the strongest tournament of all time?

By Jeff Sonas

As with most of the "greatest-ever" debates, there are many ways to answer this question. The simplest answer is to compare the average FIDE rating of the participants in each tournament. That is how a tournament's "Category" is calculated, with 25-point intervals. Thus if the average rating is 2751-2775 it's a "Category 21" tournament; if the average rating is 2726-2750, it's a "Category 20" tournament, and so on.

The 2009 Tal Memorial in Moscow, recently won by Vladimir Kramnik, was a Category 21 tournament, and I don't believe there has ever been a Category 22 tournament. Thus by this approach, the 2009 Tal Memorial would be in a tie for the strongest tournament of all time. However, I do not place much emphasis on "Category" as a measure of tournament strength, mostly because of the large amount of rating inflation that has taken place in the past 25 years. Recent tournaments will look unusually strong by this measure. There must be a more sophisticated way to measure tournament strength.

There is also the problem that official FIDE ratings have only been around since about 1970, yet there were important chess tournaments going back more than a century before then. You can't calculate the strength of a tournament if there are no ratings available! But fortunately we do have the Chessmetrics historical ratings that provide month-by-month ratings from January 2005 all the way back to January of 1843. I haven't calculated new Chessmetrics ratings since January 2005, so for this current analysis, I just used FIDE ratings for the period from January 2005 to the present.

Nevertheless, in order to really assess which were the "strongest" tournaments of all time, you need a method that is completely immune to the effects of rating inflation. Thus I have decided to avoid using ratings directly, and instead to use players' world rankings (e.g. #1 in the world, #7 in the world, etc.) at the time they played in the tournament. This should hopefully eliminate any problems caused by rating inflation.

Ten years ago I developed a simple trick for calculating a Category-like number, using just the world rankings (not ratings) of top ten players in a tournament. I called this alternate number the tournament's "Class", and it was designed to be in the same magnitude as Category (at least for what Category meant ten years ago). Here is the calculation:

• A tournament gets 4 points for each participant ranked #1 or #2 in the world.
• A tournament gets 3 points for each participant ranked #3 or #4 in the world.
• A tournament gets 2 points for each participant ranked #5 or #6 in the world.
• A tournament gets 1 point for each participant ranked #7, #8, #9, or #10.

Thus the theoretical maximum, if a tournament included all ten players in the top-ten, would be a Class of 22. There has never been a Class 22 tournament; the ten all-time strongest tournaments by this measure have ranged from Class 19 through Class 21:

	Tournament	Class	Top-10 Participation	Missing Top-10 Player(s)
#1	Vienna, 1882	21	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #10	#9 S.Rosenthal
#2	Linares, 1993	21	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #10	#9 N.Short
#3	Nottingham, 1936	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8	#9 A.Lilienthal #10 P.Keres
#4	AVRO, 1938	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8	#9 E.Eliskases #10 V.Pirc
#5	Linares, 1992	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8	#9 M.Gurevich #10 A.Shirov
#6	Wijk aan Zee 2001	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8	#9 E.Bareev #10 B.Gelfand
#7	London, 1883	19	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7	#8 L.Paulsen #9 V.Hruby #10 A.Wittek
#8	Wijk aan Zee 1999	19	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7	#8 M.Adams #9 A.Karpov #10 N.Short
#9	Linares, 1994	19	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9	#6 V.Salov #10 N.Short
#10	Hastings, 1895	19	#1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #7, #8, #9	#5 P.Lipke #10 J.Showalter

As you can see, there have been six tournaments that had the eight top players in the world, and two of those also had the #10 player (but not the #9 player). Thus the two highest-Class tournaments of all time were Vienna 1882 and Linares 1993, both Class 21. As a tiebreaker, I would give the nod to Vienna 1882 because it also included World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz, who was inactive on the rating list (having not played in six years) and thus not a member of the top ten.

I have previously used the Class calculation to identify the "super-tournaments" throughout chess history, referring to any tournament having a Class of 15 or better. There have been 57 such tournaments, including seven during the current decade (2000 through 2009). The only decade having more super-tournaments was the previous decade (1990 through 1999), which had thirteen. Here are those seven tournaments from the current decade (2000 through 2009):

	Tournament	Class	Top-10 Participation
#6	Wijk aan Zee, 2001	20	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8
#25	Corus A, 2005	17	#2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9
#27	Linares, 2000	16	#1, #2, #3, #4, #5
#29	Corus A, 2008	16	#1, #2, #3, #6, #8, #9, #10
#35	Tal Memorial, 2009	16	#2, #3, #4, #5, #7, #8, #9, #10
#39	Linares, 2005	15	#1, #2, #3, #5, #6
#41	Wijk aan Zee, 2000	15	#1, #2, #3, #5, #7, #9

However, this is not the end of the story. The above approach places the most emphasis on how many top-ten players participated in a tournament, especially top-six players, but there is no penalty if the tournament includes one or more lower-rated players. In fact, from that list of the ten tournaments from history having Class 19+, all but one of them (AVRO 1938) included at least one participant who wasn't even ranked in the top-50 in the world. This is a real problem with the above methodology, since I think a lot of people mean "most elite" when they are talking about the "strongest" tournaments.

So, how can we measure the "most elite" tournament, using only world rank and not directly using ratings? I would say that however many players a tournament has, if they are all taken exactly from the top of the rating list, then it is a perfectly elite tournament. And it should be possible to come up with a formula to measure how close each tournament came to being perfectly elite.

Las Palmas 1996 is frequently cited as being the most elite tournament of all time, supposedly including the top six players and nobody else. However, this does not appear to be true. From the July 1996 FIDE rating list, we find that Vassily Ivanchuk (lowest-rated of the six players at Las Palmas) was #7 on the rating list, with Gata Kamsky (who did not play at Las Palmas) 15 points ahead of him at #6. Perhaps the "live FIDE ratings" at the time would have had Ivanchuk higher up and Kamsky down at #7, but of course those are not available and we wouldn't want to use them even if they were.

Similarly, my Chessmetrics historical ratings for 01-Dec-1996 (right before the tournament) also have Kamsky at #6 on the list, half a rating point ahead of #7-ranked Las Palmas participant Veselin Topalov. So it turns out the Las Palmas 1996 was not perfectly elite. Very very close, but not quite. The only tournament in history that was perfectly elite was AVRO 1938, which had the top eight players from the 01-Nov-1938 Chessmetrics rating list, and nobody else in the tournament.

To continue this analysis, let's look at the recent ten-player Tal Memorial tournament. An "ideal" ten-player tournament would have players ranked #1, #2, #3, …, #9, #10. If you add up those ranks, you get 1+2+3+…+9+10=55. Instead, the Tal Memorial included #12 and #13, and did not include #1 or #6. So for that tournament, when you add up the ranks, you get 2+3+4+…+10+12+13=73. Dividing 55 by 73 gives 0.75, and by my simple formula, that tells us the tournament was "75% of ideal".

We can do this for all the tournaments in history, and unsurprisingly we find AVRO 1938 on the top of the list, and Las Palmas 1996 at #2 on the list. You may find a few surprises lower down. And it turns out that the recent Tal Memorial shows up as the seventh-most-elite tournament of all time, and the most elite tournament in more than ten years.

	Tournament	%ideal	players	"Non-ideal" participant(s)	"Ideal" player(s) missing
#1	AVRO, 1938	100%	8	(none)	(none)
#2	Las Palmas, 1996	95%	6	#7 V.Topalov	#6 G.Kamsky
#3	Linares, 1998	85%	7	#10 P.Svidler	#5 A.Karpov
#4	Zurich Candidates 1953	83%	15	#16 M.Euwe #25 Y.Averbakh	#2 M.Botvinnik #15 A.Tolush
#5	Reggio Emilia, 1991	80%	10	#11 A.Beliavsky #12 A.Khalifman #15 L.Polugaevsky	#6 N.Short #8 E.Bareev #10 A.Jussupow
#6	St. Petersburg 1895	77%	4	#5 H.Pillsbury	#2 S.Tarrasch
#7	Tal Memorial, 2009	75%	10	#12 V.Ivanchuk #13 R.Ponomariov	#1 V.Topalov #6 V.Gashimov
#8	Linares, 1999	75%	8	#17 P.Leko	#5 A.Shirov
#9	Dortmund, 2001	64%	6	#7 M.Adams #12 V.Topalov	#1 G.Kasparov #6 V.Ivanchuk
#10	Budapest Candidates 1950	61%	10	#11 L.Szabo #19 A.Lilienthal #20 S.Flohr	#1 M.Botvinnik #6 R.Fine #8 S.Reshevsky
#11	Corus A, 2008	60%	14	#15 M.Adams #22 J.Polgar #27 P.Eljanov #36 L.van Wely	#4 A.Morozevich #5 P.Svidler #7 A.Shirov #14 S.Karjakin
#12	Bilbao, 2008	60%	6	#7 T.Radjabov #12 L.Aronian	#2 V.Kramnik #3 A.Morozevich

This is certainly an interesting list, and indicates the historical significance of the 2009 Tal Memorial. You will notice that out of all events that lacked the top-ranked player in the world, it qualifies as the most "elite" tournament ever, since it brought together 10 of the next 12 players below #1 Veselin Topalov, with no participants worse than #13 in the world.

Normally you might think it would be one of the first five FIDE World Championship Candidates Final tournaments (1950 through 1962) that would qualify for the odd distinction as the "most-elite" tournament that also lacked the top-ranked player in the world. In fact, while the 1950 Budapest tournament did indeed attempt to bring together the next ten players after top-rated Mikhail Botvinnik, you can see from the above table that more top-ten-players were omitted than in the recent Tal Memorial, and Budapest also included two participants well below #13 in the world, so on both counts the Tal Memorial seems to have been more elite. And my historical ratings did not consider World Champion Botvinnik to be the top-rated player in the world at the time of the 1953, 1956, 1959, or 1962 Candidates Finals, so in fact each of those tournament did include the top-ranked player in the world (S.Reshevsky in 1953, V.Smyslov in 1956, M.Tal in 1959, and T.Petrosian in 1962) according to Chessmetrics.

In any event, one could legitimately argue that it is a serious omission for an "elite" tournament to be lacking the very top player in the world. It is true that my simple formula would penalize a tournament as much for including the #19 player instead of the #9 player, as it would for including the #11 player instead of the #1 player, and that probably isn't quite right. Instead of a pattern like 1+2+3+…+9+10, we could use the reciprocal of the world rank, and thus it would be 1.00+0.50+0.33+0.25…+0.11+0.10 instead. This rewards the events more that have full participation from the top handful from the rating list, and at the other end it doesn't care as much whether you have #20 or #30. This modification brings Las Palmas 1996 even closer to the "ideal" AVRO 1938. By this final measure, here are the 12 most "elite" tournaments of all time:

See the complete table on: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5956

Clearly it would be very hard to argue with the choice of AVRO, 1938 as the strongest, most elite tournament of all time, the perfect blend of top-ten participation and elite selectivity. After that tournament, it's not as clear; it really depends on whether you think a "strong" tournament means it has a host of top-ten players, or if you mean it is an extremely elite event. It is difficult for one tournament to accomplish provide both. Either way, the above data should hopefully be a good resource for the next time you want to argue about what was the strongest tournament of all time!

Copyright Chessmetrics

Euwe, Smyslov, Keres, Botvinnik and Reshevsky at the AVRO 1938 tournament

Cross tables of the twelve top tournaments

See the complete tables on: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=5956

Calendário de Eventos enxadrísticos - Dezembro 2009

Retirado do site Clubedexadrez.com.br.

Calendário de dezembro

Atualizado em 05/12 às 15h09 (horário de verão) - prossegue hoje, com a sexta rodada, a Final do Campeonato Brasileiro Absoluto em Americana e termina em Mendes o Festival Sulamericano da Juventude - jornal "O Estado de São Paulo" está sob censura há 128 dias - ótimo domingo a todos!

1 a 3: Torneio Condomínio Colonial Residence - fechado, jogadores locais e de Conceição do Rio Verde/MG - em andamento

2 a 11: Final do Campeonato Brasileiro - premiação: R$10.000,00 ($3.000,00 ao campeão) - Americana - SP - em andamento, resultados do sábado: quarta rodada - MF Carlos Alberto Barreto Filho 0 x 1 GM Giovanni Vescovi, GM Alexandr Fier 0,5 x 0,5 MI Everaldo Matsuura, Máximo Iack Macedo 1 x 0 MF Roberto Junio Molina, GM André Diamant 1 x 0 MI Jorge Humberto Bittencourt, GM Rafael Leitão 0,5 x 0,5 GM Gilberto Milos Júnior e MI Krikor Sevag Mekhitarian 1 x 0 MF Yago Santiago; quinta rodada - Santiago (1,5) 0,5 x 0,5 (1) Barreto Filho, Milos(3) 0,5 x 0,5 Mekhitarian(vice-líder com 3,5), Bittencourt(1,5) 0,5 x 0,5 Leitão(3), Molina(2,5) 1 x 0 Diamant(2,5), Matsuura(2,5) 1 x 0 Macedo(2,5) e Vescovi(líder com 4,5) 0,5 x 0,5 Fier(2,5). Neste domingo, sexta rodada às 15h30 com Barreto Filho x Fier, Macedo x Vescovi, Diamant x Matsuura, Leitão x Molina, Mekhitarian x Bittencourt e Santiago x Milos

2 a 11: 6º Festival Sulamericano da Juventude - sub 18 a sub 8 - Mendes - RJ - em andamento

3 a 6: Aberto de Fim de Ano Tabuleiro Cultural - São Paulo - em andamento, 12 jogadores. Edmundo Aoyama lidera com 5 em 6. Na sétima e antepenúltima rodada, puxou ( e como puxou...) Expedito Santana, 11º com 1,5

4 a 6: Campeonato Municipal Absoluto - Carazinho - RS - em andamento

5 e 6: Etapa de Resende do Circuito dos Regionais do Interior Fluminense - classificatório para os campeonatos Carioca ou do Interior, conforme a filiação - premiação: R$1.000,00 ($400,00 ao campeão) - em andamento

5 e 6: 6ª Etapa Classificatoria do Campeonato Absoluto Alto Paranaíba e Triangulo Mineiro de Xadrez Pensado 2009 - valendo 15 vagas para a Semifinal - premiação: R$300,00 (R$100,00 para o Campeão) - Araxá - em andamento

5: Aberto 25º Aniversário do Clube de Xadrez Peão na Sétima - premiação: R$1.000,00 ($300,00 ao campeão) - Capão da Canoa - RS - encerrado

5: Competição enxadrística dos Jogos Estudantis da Rede Pública da Bahia/Etapa Barreiras - categorias A (nascidos entre 92 e 94) e B ( entre 95 e 97) - encerrado

5: Torneio Copercampos - 4 emparceiramentos distintos: Absoluto, Até 16 Anos, Até 12 Anos e Até 8 Anos - Campos Novos - PR - encerrado

6: Etapa do Circuito Paulista Dinâmico/8ª do Circuito Centro-Oeste Paulista, denominada Mikhail Nekhemievich Tal - premiação: R$630,00 ($200,00 ao campeão) - Bauru - em andamento

6: Etapa classificatória dos campeonatos paranaenses Absoluto e Feminino - Toledo - em andamento

7 a 19: 2º IRT Tabuleiro Cultural - fechado, 12 jogadores - São Paulo

7 a 19: 2º IRT HiperChess - fechado, 12 jogadores - São Paulo

11 a 20: IRT Cidade dos Azulejos - fechado, 10 jogadores - São Luis

12 e 13: Final do Campeonato Goiano Absoluto - Quartas-de-final e Semifinal - Goiânia

12 e 13: Campeonato Carioca

12 e 13: 2º Aberto Três Rios - premiação: R$1.300,00 ($500,00 ao campeão) - RJ

13: Torneio Mensal de Xadrez do SESC Interlagos - inscrições gratuitas e antecipadas pelo e-mail xadrez@interlagos.sescsp.org.br até o dia 12/12 as 13 horas - São Paulo

13: Final do 2º Grand-Prix Sesc Interlagos - disputam o Troféu Sesc Interlagos os 6 melhores pontuadores do ano: Cassius Silva, Italo Vale, Valdinei Fialho, Armen Proudian, Vinicius Saito e Fernando Lacerda - São Paulo

13: 3º Torneio de Confraternização - Carapicuíba - SP

16 a 20: Torneio Fide 35 Anos da Fundação da Associação Leopoldinense de Xadrez/Alex - premiação: R$2.000,00 ($800,00 ao campeão) - Rio de Janeiro

12: Torneio de Confraternização do Clube de Xadrez Mogi das Cruzes - premiação: R$700,00 ($200,00 ao campeão) - SP

16 a 31: Torneio 35 Anos da Fundação da Associação Leopoldinense de Xadrez/Alex - Rio de Janeiro

18 a 20: 2º Aberto Balneário do Sol - Bonito - MS

19 e 20: Final do Campeonato Goiano Absoluto - match final de 4 partidas - Goiânia

19 e 20: 4º Memorial Hercílio Ermel/Homenagem ao GM Jaime Sunye Neto/Campeonato Paranaense Aberto de Rápidas - premiação: R$3.000,00 ($1.000,00 ao campeão) - Londrina

19 e 20: Campeonato Fluminense do Interior

19: 4º Memorial Hercílio Ermel/Homenagem ao GM Jaime Sunye Neto/Campeonato Paranaense Aberto Relâmpago - Londrina

19: 37º Torneio Papai Noel GXBG - lata de panetone, de bom tamanho e procedência, e garrafa de espumante (sim, espumante, pois champagne só se for francesa e produzida na região da Champagne) ao campeão - São Paulo

19: Torneio AABB Rio - Finish - Rio de Janeiro

20: Etapa final fechada do Circuito Solidário GXBG/Casa Amarela de Santo Amaro - SP 28 a 31: Magistral de Natal Praça Seca Xadrez Clube - RJ

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competição inaugural de 2010:


5 a 10: IRT Final do Campeonato Mineiro Absoluto 2009 - 12 finalistas - premiação: R$600,00 ($200,00 ao campeão) - Belo Horizonte

Your judgement, please - Pt. 29

Retirado do site Chessbase.com.

A knight on a weakened central square...
04.12.2009 – ... usually means a strong positional trump, however, sometimes this alone is not enough to win the game. Here Black was facing the question whether closing the queenside with 20...b3 21.a3 (diagram) would be beneficial for him. What do you think? A) this enhances Black's spacial superiority, but doesn't yield him anything concrete; B) a powerful continuation, considerably increasing his positional advantage; C) not good, White has one worry less and will be able to successfully defend himself in the centre and on the kingside.
The solution is here, but first ponder over it with a larger version of the diagram.

Position after 20...b3 21.a3