In this opening Black opts for active piece play and is not afraid to fight for the initiative from an early stage. One of the many good features of this opening is that Black is often the side which controls the pace of the game. €29.90
Dealing with a pervasive issue
For decades, the problem regarding ‘grandmaster draws’ has been a frequent talking point among chess fans and organizers. Unlike other sports, chess allows for players to agree to a draw, be it explicitly or implicitly by entering a forced line that leads to a threefold repetition or quickly exchanging down into a completely equal endgame. Many workarounds have been proposed, but at the end of the day, chess fans have become aware of how fighting a player actually is i.e. how willing he or she is to step away from the safe routes that tend to lead to a peaceful outcome.
Tal, Petrosian, Spassky and Korchnoi: A Chess Multibiography with 207 Games, McFarland 2020
Tigran Petrosian (born on 17 June 1929 in Tbilisi), Viktor Korchnoi (born on 23 March 1931 in Leningrad), Mikhail Tal (born on 9 November 1936 in Riga) and Boris Spassky (born on 30 January 1937 in Leningrad) are among the most important chess players of the 20th century. Three of them were world champions, while Viktor Korchnoi came close twice. The four were born between 1929 and 1937; they were rivals, friends, enemies and companions and had a decisive influence on chess in the second half of the century.
In his fascinating multi-biography, Andrew Soltis tells the story of these four top players, their development, their rise to the top, their setbacks and crises, their rivalry and friendship from 1929 until 1972, when Spassky lost the World Championship title in Reykjavik and, for the first time since 1948, the world champion was not a Soviet player.