A highly entertaining talk by IM Lorin D’Costa was given to club members and visitors on Tuesday night – for over 2 hours! – illustrated with some fantastic attacking games by GMs Magnus Carlsen and Judit Polgar!
The games were used to present various themes:
- Carlsen, Magnus vs Blomqvist, Eric (2001: C79) illustrated how a very youthful Magnus pounced on an early Ruy Lopez opening deviation by a young Erik (who was himself later to become a Swedish Grand Master) opening up the position and attacking before black castled;
- Carlsen, Magnus vs Domatov, Sergey (2004: A04) where Magnus again energetically responded to an early weak opening move by his opponent, a Russian Grand Master and former World Junior Chess Champion;
- Pantsulaia, Levan vs Polgar, Judit (2011: A13) where, after a premature queen move by her opponent in the opening, Judit sacrificed a rook establishing an immensly powerful central bishop preventing white from castling and enabling her to then launch a crushing attack;
- Hracek, Zbynek vs Polgar, Judit (2000: B48) after optimistic play by the Czech GM, Judit energetically countered with sharp play fisrt with a pawn sacrifice opening up one long diagonal then opening up another long diagonal for an overwhelming attack on white’s king!
Lorin interspersed his analysis of the games with some entertaining war stories and with generlous amounts of advice, such as to remember LPDO (Loose Pieces Drop Off – accredited by Lorin in the talk to Paul Motwani – whereas in a recent blog Paul credits it to John Nunn – but who cares!?).
After extensive replies to many questions from the audience an appreciative vote of thanks was given by President Raj Bhopal:
