Pushing the g-pawn early in the game has become so common that when GM Jon Speelman watches Shakhriyar Mamedyarov play, he feels tempted to bet with himself when ‘the bayonet’ will be deployed. This week’s thematic column features a couple of classics (by Paul Keres and Alexei Shirov), an example from Mamedyarov’s practice and a remarkable win by Richard Pert from the British Championship. | Photo: Niki Riga
Do you know the Hippopotamus Defence. It is a series of irregular chess opening systems in which Black moves a number of pawns to the sixth rank, and keeps his pieces on the seventh rank. Many experts considered it basically losing, but it has maintained a solid fifty percent for Black, even at the highest level of competition. In the British Chess Magazine Raymond Keene reviews the book The Hippopotamus Defence by Italian IM Alessio de Santis on the subject. | Picture Samuele Giglio, Unsplash
Armenia lead after seven of the 11 rounds while six teams are half a point behind. Magnus Carlsen has 5.5/6 but his Norwegian team mates have underperformed.
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In honor of the 44th Chess Olympiad, we at Chess.com asked the question: If you could put every country's best five players ever on the same team, how good would those teams be? Now there are many arguments, and not just in chess, about how good players of the past really are. But for this article, we.