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MACA Book Review
ChessBase Magazine 130 ChessBase Magazine 130
by: Rainer Knaak, editor

Price: $26.95
ISBN:
Format: CD/DVD
Publisher: ChessBase

Reviewed by: Chess Horizons Editor Mark Donlan
Recommendation: Highly Recommended

The main stories in CBM 130 are the Men’s European Championship and the fourth FIDE Grand Prix tournament in Nalchik. The natural place to begin on this DVD is with the introductory videos by GMs Karsten Müller and Dorian Rogozenco. 

Müller introduces the various training content and looks at the decisive game from Nalchik. He also touches upon Rainer Knaak’s opening trap column and two opening articles of note: Kuzmin’s repertoire suggestion against the Caro-Kann and Postny’s surprise weapon against the Scotch. 

In his first video, Rogozenco reviews the tournament highlights of recent months, including a win by the new European champion Evgeny Tomashesvky, Jobava’s victory over Volokitin, and Kotronias win against Grigoriants. He also mentions the Women’s European Championship and the Women’s FIDE Grand Prix in Istanbul. In his second video, Rogozenco demonstrates the decisive moments from the game between Aronian and Ivanchuk. He also discusses the finish of the Bundesliga season and the Russian team championship. From the latter event, Rogozenco singles out a win by Fabiano Caruana, who had a terrific result of five points from six games. 

Other highlights of this issue include Anand’s analysis of his first round game against Teimour Radjabov in Linares. He annotates his victory in the Sicilian Sveshnikov Variation move by move in audio format and explains the ideas behind Radjabov’s new move 18...f5. He also closely examines the endgame with queen, rook and knight against queen, rook and bishop. 

Other regular features include the columns Strategy, Move by Move, Endgames, Tactics, Opening Traps, Fritztrainer, and ICCF Tele-chess, which includes more than 1,000 games. There are also twelve opening surveys, including Marin on the Dutch Defense [A86] and Ruy Lopez [C93], Stohl on the Benko Gambit [A57], Grivas on the Queen’s Gambit [D38], Krasenkow on the Grünfeld Defence [D98-99], and many more. Plus the new products sections features previews from Alexei Shirov, Andrew Martin and Lubomir Ftacnik.

 

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