The Alterman Gambit Guide - Black Gambits 1
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The Alterntan Gantbit Guide Black Gambits 1 By Boris Alterman Quality Chess www.q uali tychess. co. uk First English edition 20 11 by Quality Chess UK Ltd Copyright © 20 1 1 Boris Alterman and Quality Chess The Alterman Gambit Guide - Black Gambits 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher. ISBN 978- 1-906552-54-1 All sales or enquiries should be directed to Quality Chess UK Ltd, 20 Balvie Road, Milngavie, Glasgow G62 7TA, United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 141 333 9588 e-mail: [email protected] website: www.qualitychess.co.uk Distributed in US and Canada by SCB Distributors, Gardena, California, US www.scbdistributors.com Distributed in Rest of the World by Quality Chess UK Ltd through Sunrise Handicrafts, Smyczkowa 4/98, 20-844 Lublin, Poland Typeset: Jacob Aagaard Proofreading: Colin McNab Editing: Andrew Greet Cover design: Adamson Design Printed in Estonia by Tallinna Raamatutriikikoja LLC Contents Acknowledgments, Bibliography & Key to symbols used 4 Foreword by the Author 5 1 The Benko Gambit 7 2 The Blumenfeld Gambit 141 3 The Vaganian Gambit 197 4 1.d4 tt:Jf6 - Sidelines 277 5 The English Defense Gambit 311 Game Index 355 Variation Index 357 Acknowledgments I would like to offer my respect and thanks to the people without whom this book would never have existed. The book is in memory of my first chess coach, Soviet Master Vitaly Appolonovich Marchenko, who nurtured my chess talent. Thank you to: Honored coach of Ukraine, Alexander Naumovich Vaisman, for being not only my chess coach for many years but also my friend, adviser and patron. My close friends: Zohar Olpiner, Shmuel Fridman, Moty Bank, Aviv Friedman, Shay Bushinsky, Watson Tay, Antonio Palma and Harvey Mandell for providing extremely useful comments and help with the project. My student Kelvin Wee for his invaluable help. My classmate Oleg Aliferov for supporting the project. My mother Dora, sister Inna, my wife Luba and my children Ariela, Lior-Israel and Ben-Osher for their love, devotion, encouragement and amazing support throughout my chess career. Special thanks to Jacob, John and Andrew of Quality Chess for their startling help. Bibliography Aagaard & N tirlis: Grandmaster Repertoire 10- The Tarrasch Defence, Quality Chess 2011 Alterman: The Alterman Gambit Guide- White Gambits, Quality Chess 2010 Avrukh: Grandmaster Repertoire 2 -J.d4 Volume Two, Quality Chess 2010 Bronstein: The Sorcerer'sApprentice, Cadogan 1997 Georgiev: Squeezing the Gambits, Chess Stars 201 0 Nimzowitsch: My System, Quality Chess 2007 Pinski: TheBenko Gambit, Quality Chess 2005 ChessPublishing. com Chess Today Key to symbolsused + ... • White is slightly better unclear i Black is slightly better a weak move ± White is better ?? a blunder + Black is better a good move +- White has a decisive advantage !! an excellent move -+ Black has a decisive advantage !? a move worth considering equality ?! a move of doubtful value iii with compensation # mate ? with counterplay Introduction My relationship with the 64 squares began at an early stage in life. I firstlearned to play checkers at the age of three, and when I became quite good at it, my father decided to teach me a more complicated game. Chess was the most natural choice. The first lessons were very rough for me, but I eventually picked up the most important principles of the game. At the age of ten I was going to join a football team until surgery on my appendix pur an end to that idea. With no better option, I joined the "Avangard" chess club in my home town of Voroshilovgrad (which is called Lugansk nowadays) one of the largest towns in the east of Ukraine. Students in my group had to memorize the most brilliant tactical examples from t� games of Morphy, Anderssen and other great players, and then show them in class to our coach, Master of Sport Vitaly Appolonovich Marchenko. This was a useful start to my life in chess, as to become successful we must develop our tactical skills. As the old saying has it: "Chess is 99% tactics!" You may come up with a deep strategic idea, bur your opponent will punish you if you make just one tactical slip. Our coach taught us to play aggressively and energetically, and not to fear sacrificingmaterial for an attack. His lessons were so instructive and interesting that I did not want to miss a single session, even when I was sick with fever. It will be no surprise that as a young player I loved to play gambit systems. A few years later, when I was quite a strong player, I started to play solid but rather passive lines as White. I was extremely lucky to be able to join the famous Borvinnik-Kasparov chess school when it started in 1986. Mter the very first session Kasparov wrote in my homework: "Improve your White opening repertoire; play aggressively." This valuable judgment from a great player helped me a lot to improve my chess. Later, while reading the great books of Grandmaster Richard Reti, I found the following expression which every chess player and instructor should note: "A knowledge of tactics is the foundation of positional play. This is a rule which has stood its test in chess history and one which we cannot impress forcibly enough upon the young chess player. A beginner should avoid the Queen's Gambit and French Defense and play open games instead! While he may not win as many games at first, he will in the long run be amply compensated by acquiring a thorough knowledge of the game." When I started to give lessons I realized that there were few books which could help players to progress from Beginner to Intermediate and Advanced level. You could try studying the great books of Mark Dvoretsky, however these books target mostly Master-level players (2200 and up). Most of the books I looked at started with "How to" then continued "Win in chess", "Trap your opponent", "Beat the Sicilian" (or Ruy Lopez, French or whatever). However, these books never explained the basics of opening principles, which are critical for moving from Beginner/ Intermediate level to Advanced. As I gained more coaching experience I saw that, at the Beginner and Intermediate level, playing the opening correctly brings many dividends. Many of the games at that level are decided because one of the players (or both!) does not follow the basic opening principles, committing sins such as neglecting the center, making too many moves with the same piece, moving the 6 The Alterman Gambit Guide queen too early in the opening, leaving the king in the center, trying to win material instead of developing, and so on. This gave me the idea of developing a course of lectures on the Internet Chess Club called "Gambit Guide". After editing and combining a lot of material, the course has been transformed into this series of books, which I hope will help the readers become more familiar with the most important opening and positional principles, teach about tactics and typical combinations in the opening, as well as explain how to evaluate a position and how to study the principles of attack. About the Black Gambits project The Alterman Gambit Guide was originally conceived as a two-part work. After the White Gambits book was published, I felt like I had achieved what I set out to, by producing an introductory guide to several exciting gambits, which would also serve as an instructional manual for tactical motifs and fundamental principles of both opening play and chess in general. Theplan had always been to produce a similar guide based on black gambits, but along the way the project evolved in a number of ways. After thinking about how best to approach the work and discussing it with Jacob and John at Quality Chess, we decided for the second volume to put more emphasis on theoretical soundness, covering a smaller number of gambits in more detail than was typical for the first book, in order to provide the basis for a lasting repertoire while still offering plenty of tactical training and general guidance for improving players. I started by covering 1.d4 and 1.c4, which was only intended to make up half of a single book on black gambits. However, when I submitted this work to the publisher it became clear that there would be far too much material for a single volume, and so the decision was made to divide the Black Gambits work into two parts. When playing with the black pieces, one has to be a bit more careful about offering gambits in the opening, as you cannot get away with as much when playing a tempo down from the starting position. The systems covered in these pages are highly regarded and have proven to be reliable even at the highest levels. As mentioned previously, the Black Gambits project emphasizes theoretical soundness, and in many places I have worked hard to findimprovements over existing theory. At the same time, you can still find the same level of explanations and guidance as in the first volume. I believe that the Alterman Gambit Guide has evolved into a better version of what it was previously, and I hope that after reading it, the same thing will be true of the reader. Boris Alterman Rishon Le Zion, September 2011 Chapter 1 The Benko Galllbit 8 The Alterman Gambit Guide The Benko Gambit was one of my favorite openings as a junior.