Blunder (17)

A new blunder by Alexei Shirov. This time with the white pieces against Andreikin (Plovdiv 2010). In the position below he played 29.Rd1??

After 29.- Qa4 he had to resign.

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Missed Chance (3)

Position from Shirov - Dominguez-Perez (Wijk aan Zee 2010). White in time trouble missed an easy win and accepted the draw.

Now 31.b4! would have been the winner because the black queen is not able to protect d8 and a8. After 31.- Qc7 32.Qa8+ Bf8 33.Rf1! (33.Rd8 Qf4) the bishop is lost.

Unfortunately Shirov did not find it (click video below to watch).

Blunder (7)

In the diagram position from Bezold - Shirov (Bundesliga 2009) Black blundered with his last move 15.- Nf6-d7??


Now White wins a piece with 16.d5 and Black resigned (for example 16.- Bxg5 17.dxc6 Nxc6 18.Nxg5 Qxg5 19.Rxd7 +-).

Missed chance

In the diagram you see a position that arose in Gelfand - Shirov (Bazna 2009) with White to move. Gelfand missed a forced win here; he just needed to sacrifice four (!) pawns ...

It could have gone this way: 1.f5!! exf5 (1.- gxf5 2.h5 +-) 2.e6 Bxe6 (2.- fxe6 3.Kxg6 +-) 3.h5 gxh5 4.g6 fxg6 5.Kxe6 White has won a piece now for four pawns. According to GM Rogozenco on chessbase.com "both opponents saw this idea, but they both thought it's a draw because a8 is the 'wrong' coloured corner".

The bishop is indeed the wrong one but the black king will not get into the corner, since after 5.- Kd8 6.Kd5 Kc8 6.Kc6 (see diagram 2) he cannot make progress!

The white a-pawn finally queens with check and mate. Black is missing one move because he has to play g5 first before he can play f4. A very funny variation that could have brought Gelfand some glory - if he just had played it.

For the record, the game ended draw after 1.a4.

Loose pieces

Die nachfolgende Stellung ist relativ unspektakulär. Schwarz hat einfach einen Mehrbauern in Ivanchuk-Shirov (Sofia 2009). Interessant ist jedoch, wie Shirov die Sache auflöst. Er spielte hier einfach 22.- d4! Ivanchuk nahm den Bauern, obwohl der vergiftet ist. 23.Sxd4? Db6! 24.Tfd1 Td5 (alle anderen Turmzüge, die eine Verdoppelung der Türme auf der d-Linie zur Folge haben, gehen auch).

Technisch gesehen scheitert die weiße Stellung an der "loose" stehenden Dame auf e3 (John Nunn: "Loose pieces drop off", "Ungedeckte Figuren fallen vom Brett"). Stünde der weiße Bauer auf f2 und nicht f3 (somit die Dame gedeckt), wäre Sxd4 korrekt gewesen.

Nach 24.- Td5 gab Ivanchuk auf, da der Springer verloren geht. Es bleibt ein Rätsel, was er sich bei dieser Partie gedacht hat.