fbpx

Алексей Дмитриевич Широв at Corus 2010

Alexei Shirov is absolutely destroying GM after GM in the 2010 edition of the prestigious Corus Super Tournament. His  pace of 5 points in 5 rounds borders on ridiculous and has landed him an astronomical performance rating that can not be truly calcualted until he does not win a game. Once again I find myself wondering why the greatest attacking chess player of my generation was never in a World Championship Match. Oh yes… I recall now.  In 1998 Shirov was invited to play a match against Kramnik to determine the challenger for then World Champion Kasparov. Shirov won the match. However a dishonorable  Kasparov elected to play Kramnik instead and thus deprived Shirov of his rightfuly earned chance to play for the World Championship title. I strongly suggest that readers of this blog do some quick searches to read the comments from these players regarding this unfortunate incident. Below is my favorite game from Shirov at Corus 2010. Perhaps visitors can comment on the Tal styled sacrafice on move 26.

[Event “Corus”]
[Site “Wijk aan Zee NED”]
[Date “2010.01.19”]
[EventDate “2010.01.16”]
[Round “4”]
[Result “1-0”]
[White “A Shirov”]
[Black “J Smeets”]
[ECO “C42”]
[WhiteElo “2723”]
[BlackElo “2657”]
[PlyCount “74”]

1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Nxe5 d6 4. Nf3 Nxe4 5. d4 d5 6. Bd3 Nc6 7. O-O Be7
8. c4 Nb4 9. Be2 O-O 10. Nc3 Bf5 11. a3 Nxc3 12. bxc3 Nc6 13. Re1 Re8 14.
cxd5 Qxd5 15. Bf4 Rac8 16. h3 h6 17. Nd2 Na5 18. Nf1 Qb3 19. Qd2 Nc4 20.
Bxc4 Qxc4 21. Ne3 Qb5 22. c4 Qd7 23. c5 Bg6 24. Rac1 c6 25. Nc4 f6 26. Bxh6
gxh6 27. Qxh6 Bh7 28. Re3 Bf8 29. Rg3+ Kh8 30. Qxf6+ Bg7 31. Qg5 Bxd4 32.
Rd1 Rf8 33. Kh2 Rcd8 34. Ne5 Qc7 35. Rxd4 Rxd4 36. Ng6+ Kg7 37. Nxf8+ 1-0

Published by chessmusings

Chris Torres is a nationally renowned scholastic chess coach working in the San Francisco Bay Area. His classes have attracted players of strengths ranging from rank beginners to world champions. A chess professional since 1998, Chris is widely recognized as one of the main driving forces behind the explosion in popularity and sudden rise in quality of scholastic chess in California. Chris Torres served as the President of the Torres Chess and Music Academy from 2005-2020 and currently is recognized as a correspondence chess master with the United States Chess Federation. Since 1998 Chris Torres has taught 6 individual national champions as well as led multiple school teams to win national championship titles. In addition, Chris Torres has directed and taught at 10 different schools which have been California State Champions at chess. In 2011 and 2012, several former and current students of Chris Torres have been selected to represent the United States at the World Youth Chess Championships. Mr. Torres’ hobbies include playing classical guitar and getting his students to appear on the national top 100 chess rating lists.

Leave a Reply

%d bloggers like this: