‘SHIROV'S BEST GAMES ALEXEI SHIROV CADOGANCADOGAN CHESS BOOKS FIRE ON BOARD Le Ral he Position after 31...2e4!! in Kramnik-Shirov, Linares 1994CADOGAN CHESS SERIES Chief Advisor: Garry Kasparov Editor: Murray Chandler Russian Series Editor: Ken Neat Other fine Cadogan Chess books include: AVERBAKH Chess Middlegames: Essential Knowledge BRONSTEIN & FURSTENBERG ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice DAMSKY ‘The Heavy Pieces in Action GUFELD ‘An Opening Repertoire for the Attacking Player LALIC The Queen’s Indian Defence McDONALD Practical Endgame Play KASPAROV Garry Kasparov's Chess Challenge KRASENKOV Open Spanish PETURSSON King’s Indian Defence, Averbakh Variation ‘TAIMANOV ‘Taimanov's Selected Games ‘TIMMAN Studies and Games WATSON Play the French (new edition) For a complete catalogue of CADOGAN CHESS books (which includes the former Pergamon Chess and Maxwell Macmillan Chess list) please write to: Cadogan Books, 3rd Floor, 27-29 Berwick St, London W1V 3RF ‘Tel: (0171) 287 6555 Fax: (0171) 734 1733FIRE ON BOARD By Alexei Shirov Foreword By Jonathan Speelman a wean a UY a \ \ ame = 2a eee 7 a Petelin-Shirov, vano-Frankovsk 1988 White resigned (0-1) because of 2 Wxe3 abcd Bare ‘sbi wit cc3-+ 4 We2 Wixc2 mate) 3. 4 We2 Wie? mat wet e 2...De2+ 3 Exe? Walt 4dd2 Wxdl mate 0-1First published 1997 by Cadogan Books ple, 27-29 Berwick St, London WIV 3RE Copyright © 1997 Alexei Shirov. Translations from Russian (games 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 26, ¥ Ubilava on p.186, Dokhoyan on p.211, Magerramov on p.212, Balashov on p.213, Ruzhyale on p.214, Minasian on p.217, Vyzhmanavin on p.219) © 1997 Ken Neat. ‘Translations from German (games 34, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42, 45, 46, v. Nikolié on p.190, Kamsky on p.226) © 1997 Graham Hillyard. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a re- trieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior per- mission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data ACIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 185744 1508 Distributed in North America by Simon & Schuster, Paramount Publishing, 200 Old ‘Tappan Road, Old Tappan, New Jersey 07675, USA. All other sales enquiries should be directed to Cadogan Books ple, 27-29 Berwick St, London W1V 3RF ‘Typeset by ChessSetter Cover design by Brian Robins ‘Thanks are due to the following editors, translators, proof-readers and couriers for their assistance with the preparation of Fire on Board: Andrew Kinsman, John Nunn, Petra Nunn, Graham Hillyard, Ken Neat, Tim Wall, Mark Huba, Pat Aherne. Printed and bound in Great Britain by BPC Wheatons Ltd, ExeterContents Foreword by Jonathan Speelman Introduction 1 Growing Up (1979-1987) 2 Winning the World Cadet (1988) 3 Professional Chess Life (1989-1996) 4 The Botvinnik Variation 5 Selected Endgames Index of Opponents Index of Openings Index of Variations (Botvinnik System) Index of Endgames 10 12 19 184 211 233 234 235, 236Foreword In the early decades of this century the Old Masters frequently bemoaned the “impending Draw Death” of chess, as more and more games, impeccably played but stiflingly orthodox, ended with Black completely neutralising the small advan- tage of the first move. Many generations of chess players later ~ our turnover is much faster than the biological one, a dis- tinct new wave every decade, say ~ chess strategy has developed to an unimagin- able degree, and this dire prediction is still far from taking effect. Despite an exponential explosion in the sheer quantity of theoretical knowledge and a generally very high level of tech- nique, the best players continue to pro- duce totally original games, none more so than Alexei Shirov. Meticulous opening preparation and intense concentration at the board are common currency among the very top Grandmasters. Alexei, however, possesses a quite extraordinary imagina- tion which regularly alchemises positions, the like of which the rest of us only get to enjoy under the bluest of moons. It is therefore not only a pleasure but also a great compliment to be asked by Al- exci to write the foreword to his very first book of games. Nowadays, I often find it expedient to bury my own brand of “chess madness” under a technical exterior: the sympathetic link to an earlier, more cha- otic type of chess is very pleasing. Shirov has arranged Fire on Board into a long chronological section, followed by a theoretical chapter on that most terrify- ingof systems, the Botvinnik variation of the Anti-Meran Gambit, followed by a further section containing various end- games. The chronological part starts with games when Shirov was as young as eleven in 1983. It was intended to end in 1994, when the book was supposed to be handed in But with Shirov, a huge chap markedly taller than me and chaotic not only at the chess board, things are seldom totally straightforward. So it is that, as he ex- plains in the introduction, a great deal of work was lost when his notebook com- puter was stolen in January 1995, Thus this is not really his first book but a some- what larger ordinal (no doubt connected by the robbery to an extremely vulgar fraction), But his grievous loss has to some extent been our gain; for the book now contains games right through to the Olympiad in Erevan last September. Every chess player has his own favour- ite players, games and styles. On a profes- sional level, I am often most impressed by dry strategic games, in which one very strong player manages to keep control against an equally strong opponent. But these require a perhaps excessively deli- cate palate. And along with the general reader, I find most enjoyable those games in which there is a maximum of violence. ‘These the reader will find in abun- dance. As early as the very first game in the book, we discover eleven-year-old Al- exei bashing away with three of his at- tacking pieces en prise. As Misha Tal said: «they can only take one at time”. And of course as a Russian born in Latvia, Alexei was not only greatly influenced by that magician, but even got to analyse with him in his mid-teens. Indeed, in his com- binational ferocity, one could see Shirov as one of Tal’s direct lineal descendants: except that he has a quirkiness, a liking for king walks in the middlegame, for ex- ample, which owes much more to a player like David Bronstein or Bent Larsen. One ‘can see both these characteristics, the fe- rocity and the eccentricity in one of the most marvellous games in the collection, the slugfest against Eingorn in Stock- holm 1989 (game 16): in which Shirov, with his (white) king on d3 as early as move 19, paradoxically exposes it further8 Fire on Board by sacrificing the e-pawn to prosecute his attack against the enemy king. One of Shirov’s strongest characteris- tics is his liking for strange material bal- ances. One can see this, for example in his lovely win against Joel Lautier (game 20) in which queen and two bishops trounce queen and two rooks; the splendid double piece sacrifice against Judit Polgar, albeit as the result of opening analysis (game 79); or his win against Yudasin (game 57); which finishes with a rook, knight and two connected passed pawns on the sev- enth routing a queen, rook and bishop. Shirov has also been generous enough to give some draws and even some losses. It’s ironic that one of these (against. Vas- sily Ivanchuk at Wijk aan Zee 1996, which is in the chapter on the Anti-Meran) con- tains one of the best moves of the book: Ivanchuk’s extraordinary 21 Qg7! T may have given the impression that Fire on Board contains unremitting vio- lence from cover to cover. This of course is quite untrue. In the introduction, Shirov makes it clear that he considers himself to be, above all, a calculator. This skill is particularly useful in the endgame in which the simplified material often gives rise to long forced lines. And while techni- cal games are heavily outnumbered, they do arise outside the endgame chapter at the end of the book: particularly in the more recent games, for example the pow- erful double rook ending against Michael Adams (game 76); or the positional win against Jan Timman (game 65). Though as Alexei himself writes: “It is not every day that I win a positional game like this”. Fire on Board is an extraordinarily rich book, And I can only hope that the reader will got as much pleasure out of it as me. There was just one slight disappoint- ment; and really it only illustrates the im- mense quantity of games at Shirov's disposal. Here is a game from the Moscow Olympiad which his opponent, Bogdan Lalié, showed me at the time. True, Shi- roy didn’t win this game. But you need an incredible oeuvre to overlook it in your collection of best games! Lalié - Shirov Moscow Olympiad 1994 Leh e5 2.3 &b4 3 db &e7 4 dd d6 5 04 26 6 Dxe7 Wre’ 7 £3 exd4 8 Wxdd De6 9 We3 0-0 10 He2 Dh5 11 gd Wha+ 12 kd1 DG 13 De Keb 14 hed Od7 15 Le? ab 16 bd2 eh 17 b3 Hfe8 18 Bagl £6 19 del HaG 20 bd] Hb6 21 gb a4 22 gxf6 g6 23 Sg Wrg5 24 O05 Ei 24... Wxf5 25 exf5 &xf5 26 Bg5 f7 27 HExf5 axb3 28 Zh5 gxh5 29 axb3 Hxb3 30 We2 sexf6 31 Wxh7 Za3 32 Wh6+ de7 aaa WD are men wz 33,Wg7+ td8 34 Bel Dad 35 WIG+ te8 36 Hg8 Bxg8 37 We6+ &b8 38 Wxe8+ ‘aT 39 WaT &b6 40 hd Deb 41 f4 Eh3 42 Axh5 Exh 43 SedForeword 444, GF 43...Da5 44 We3 Qab3 45 WLS Add 46 60 the3 sha6 61 WIS b6 62 Wa8+ bs 63 We? Bhs 47 £5 BB 48 WI2 D6 4916 Ded We c4 64 Wes 4-16 50 &h5 Oxcd 51 £7 c6 52 Wht Ded 53 Wh6 Hxf7 54 Gxf7 Oxf7 55 WI Deb 56 Wxd6 Ded3 57 WeT c5 58 d2 Ac6 59 We7 Ades Jonathan SpelmanIntroduction ‘The idea of writing a chess book occurred to me a long time ago, but it had always seemed very difficult to realize it. So in December 1993 when Andrew Kinsmai ‘who was then the commissioning chess edi- tor at Cadogan Books, asked me whether I was planning to write a book, I started thinking more seriously about it. In March 1994 I accepted his official proposal and promised to complete this work by the end of 1994. Easier said than done! I had of course realized that other chessplayers slowed down their chess activities while they were writing a book, but this was a real problem for me, as my chess calendar was always so full of tournaments. Besides, on the 27th of November my daughter was born, so I had to adapt to a new lifestyle. ‘To add to the problems, my notebook was stolen in January 1995 so, with no backup, a good deal of my work was lost forever. Slowly, step by step, [had to restart my work on the book, First I collected some of my relatively old annotations from vari- ous magazines and tried to make compli- mentary comments and corrections to them (these are marked in the text with the initials AS, which should be taken to mean ‘addition’) as Kasparov did in his The Test of Time. But then I noticed that some of the most important games had only been annotated in Informator-style, which in no sense made my task any eas- ier. Other games that I wanted very much to include had not been annotated at all, 50 T had to make completely new notes, and of course I also wanted to include games from my most recent tournaments. Fortunately, in the second half of 1995 I started working with the ChessBase for Windows program and my work became much easier, When annotating the games I have at- ‘tempted to explain their principal strate- gic themes, but my favourite subject has always been tactical complexity. The search for the truth in sharp and concrete games with a lot of tactics has always fas- cinated me, although my busy schedule didn’t permit me to go deep inside every game in the book. Therefore they are an- notated differently — some have relatively brief explanations, others very extensive analysis. Sometimes I have checked vari- ations with Frited in an attempt to make my analysis as precise as possible. How- ever, I have found it useless to point out which moves were suggested by Fritz, be- ‘cause when a grandmaster works with a chessplaying program, he has to extract its variation tree from a lot of rubbish and ultimately his work becomes highly indi- vidual anyway. I believe that in the end I have found a reasonable combination of the human and electronic brains and that ‘the computer has not influenced my an- notations in the wrong way. But that is re- ally for the reader to judge for himself Now I would like to say a few words about my chess style. When I was just a boy, I was fascinated by Mikhail Tal’s games and Alexander Koblents’s books, both of which were full of tactics. These two maestros have had a great influence on the Latvian school of chess, of which probably Alexander Shabalov and myself are the ‘purest’ products since we both show a lot of creativity in our games. However, I have always tried to be not Just a tactician - working with a posi- tional player such as Bagirov and study- ing hard has helped me to develop my own strategic understanding, though chess is nowadays so concrete that pure strategy practically doesn’t exist for me. I Just try to know typical middlegame ideas that might always be useful, and I am quite confident in my endgame ability, even against the world’s leading endgame experts, such as Karpov and Salov. I more often gain than lose points at that stage ofIntroduction 1 the game (taking into account the posi- tions that have arisen at the start of the ending, of course!). In fact I believe that the endgame is my strongest area, per- haps because I am a player with a very concrete style. In my selection of games for this book Thave chosen first of all the most memo- rable, and only then the best games. I think that the games which hold the most pleasant memories are the ones that best demonstrate my approach to chess, and I hope that the reader will also enjoy them. Ifyou want to become involved in a world of unusual ideas, sacrifices, sharp moves and sometimes strange errors, then I be- lieve that this is the book for you. Alexei Shirov ‘Tarragona, October 19961 Growing Up (1979-1987) Iwas born into a Russian family on 4 July 1972 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. At that time Latvia was still a Soviet Republic, 50 Russian-speaking children grew up not really having to speak Latvian, which was in any case badly taught in school. The fact that I never learned Latvian properly might easily have affected my public rela- tions in the country but fortunately it never caused me any problems with Lat- vian chessplayers. Anyway, now that I live in, am a citizen of and represent Spain, I can send that problem to the past. When I was between four and five my elder brother tried to teach me the rules of chess. I learned, tried to play and then forgot the rules completely. It was hard to predict that one day I would become a professional player. Some time afterwards Tlearned to play draughts and began to beat my friends regularly. My brother then made another attempt with chess and Tsuddenly realized that it was more fun when the pieces could move differently. Draughts was soon abandoned and in March 1979 my chess ‘career’ started. First my brother and then my father (a player with a Latvian rating of around 2000) grew tired of playing with me and in May 1979 T was taken to the chess school. There I received tuition from Lat- vian woman master Viya Rozhlapa, who was quite good at teaching children to play. (She is still encouraging new talent and every year I examine the best of them in a clock simultaneous.) T cannot say that I made incredibly rapid progress at this time, but in my opinion the most important thing was that chess had captured my imagination and my childhood in chess was no less fas- cinating than that of any other child. My other hobby at that time was reading about all the countries of the world and when, for example, I heard on the radio news that Karpov was playing in Mar del Plata, my sense of fantasy was evoked. I dare say that in those early years my prime motivation to improve my chess was to have the opportunity to travel all over the world rather than just to achieve success in tournament Tam unable to offer any reasonable games that I played between 1979 and 1982, but the following game, played in October 1983, is probably a deserving one to start this book with, Game 1 Shirov - Zhuravlev Riga 1983 ‘These annotations were made during the preparation of this book. This was the first game of a mini-train- ing match organized by Alexander Kob- lents. The late trainer was famous for his work with Mikhail Tal leading up to the latter’s World Championship title victory. But very few people appreciated how much of his life he devoted to helping ‘young players to develop. I should men- tion that Koblents’s books were my fa- vourite chess books in those years. ‘My opponent in this game, Valery Zhur- avley, is an experienced international master who was Latvian Champion sev- eral times and played for Latvia in the 1994 Olympiad in Moscow. He made one grandmaster norm in the 1970s but had very few opportunities to score another. His rating is currently around 2460. 1 e4 6 2 a4 a5 8 Ded dxet 4 Oxed Da7 Zhuravlev obviously believed that the easiest way to play against a boy is to keep things simple, but in fact this strat- egy just gives me fewer chances to go wrong. In the second game ZhuravlevShirov - Zhuravlev, Riga 1983 13 played a more complicated opening and you could say that I lost without a fight. 5 AFB. Dee 6 &d3 Dxet 7 axes 586 8 2d3 Anand played 8 &g5 against Vaganian (Riga 1995) and won convincingly after 8.267 9 £xf6 gxt6 (9...8x16 looks more natural but the bishop c8 is still not active enough) 10 We2 ete. The idea of 8 &g5 fol- lowed by exchanging a bishop for a knight looks very logical from a strategic point of view. 8 5 9 00 Nowadays I would probably prefer 9 dxc5 Axc5 10 &g5, with a mind to cas- tling queenside. as exd4 10 Oxda eT Why play so passively? It looks more natural to play 10....d8c5 11 &b3 &b6 or 11 £08 &b6. ll af 00 12 Bet 12 cd was interesting. 2 ‘whe Obviously the knight has been taboo fora long time (12...WWxd4 13 &xh7+), but 12.45 deserved consideration. 13 e5 a7 14 es. Being 11 years old I liked, of course, to play directly against the enemy king. In this position it is also quite logical. Mw fds 15 Zh3 56?! Texpected 15...h6, after which I intended 16 8g3. However, it does not appear that White stands better after 16....8e8 since Black has good counterplay in the centre and there is no danger of a quick mate 16 WES 17 abs It’s clear that nothing good would come from 17 &xf6 &xf6 18 Wxt6 Wxd4. Still, at this point I had not forescen the forth- ‘coming variations. eB Ww ow ®d7 18, ada We7 zx Lee wie al , | a7 19 Exh7 The logical continuation, else Black can play 19.05, 19 ww 5 20 Sxget? How could I resist sacrificing a second piece in a row? Nowadays I would prob- ably prefer 20 Wh3 £6 (20...exd4 loses to 21 Eh8+ dg7 22 Whé+ $f6 23 Hel De5 24 Be Dxd3 25 Wh4+ 215 26 gd+ be 27 Wg3+ winning) 21 £e3 D8 22 Bh6 with a slight advantage. 20 ae Zhuravlev obviously doesn’t believe White's attack, otherwise he would have chosen 20...fxg6 21 ExeT and not now 21...exd4 22 Wd5 + 18 23 Wadd txe7 24 WgT+ heb (24..2d6 25 Bdl+ web 26 We3+ sb6 27 Wa5+ dc6 28 Ddd+; and 24.07 25 Hel+ dG 26 Wxf7 Wc? 27 ‘We7+ c7 28 Dd4 both win for White) 25 Dd4+ Sd5 26 Hal! and White’s attack seems decisive, but 21...Wd6! 22 Exe8+ (there is nothing better) 22...Bxe8 23 £e3 e4 24 We2 with only an edge for White. But now it seems that all White's pieces are hanging. The natural 21 W3? fails to 21...f¥g6 22 &xe5 Wd7!, threatening 23,..Wd1+, when Black turns the tables. I must admit that I did not see this during the game, but fate saved me from this variation. White does have a move, how- ever, and it works!