The magic of Shirov
Monday, June 15, 2009 MANILA, PHILIPPINES
Business World Online
“I am quite confident in my end game ability, even against the world’s leading end game experts, such as Karpov and Salov. I more often gain than lose points at that stage of the game (taking into account the positions that have arisen at the start of the ending, of course!). In fact I believe that the end game is my strongest area, perhaps because I am a player with a very concrete style.”
Who wrote that? Would you believe Alexei Shirov, the fireman who likes to light up the board with tactics?
Boris Gelfand wrote that Shirov is, in his opinion, perhaps the best defender in the chess world. Could he be talking of the same Alexei Shirov that we know, the attacking genius from Latvia?
Well, yes, all of the above describe the same person. As GM Jonathan Speelman points out, Shirov makes it clear that he considers himself to be, above all, a calculator. This skill is particularly useful in the end game in which the simplified material often gives rise to long forced lines. In the opening and in the middle game you can rely on your intuition when you decide to plunge into complications or not, but in the end game intuition won’t work — you need direct, long calculation.
Alexei Shirov was born on 4 July 1972 in Riga, the capital of Latvia. He made his first foray into the international chess circuit by competing in the 1988 World Cadet (16-under) Championship held in Timisoara, Romania. He had the extreme good fortune of being trained by the legendary Mihail Tal himself, who was at the same time preparing for the Soviet Championship.
Shirov has had his share of successes and failures. I believe that among his major achievements would be defeating Vladimir Kramnik in a candidates’ match in 1998 Cazorla with a score of 5.5-3.5, thereby qualifying to play Garry Kasparov in a world title match (which never pushed through).
Another one would be defeating GMs Alexander Onischuk, Mikhail Gurevich, Boris Gelfand, Evgeny Bareev and Alexander Grischuk to line himself for a world title shot vs Viswanathan Anand in 2000 (Shirov lost to Anand).
Here is the full story.
In chess, the best defense is often, very often, a good offense.
Shirov has won some fantastic endings with bishops of opposite colors.
Shirov just defeated Kamsky. Good job!
And he may repeat yesterday’s scenario against Ivanchuk today – a crazily creative middlegame (from both sides) leading to a rook endgame which might favor Shirov. Though I am not sure if it is actually winning (presently at move 48).