American Chess Magazine N°40

American Chess Magazine #40: Midwest to Mediterranean. August 2024.

Dimitar Mardov – Chicago Boy’s Summer Escape :  15-year-old IM Dimitar Mardov completed an impressive European tour by convincingly winning a strong open tournament and remaining undefeated in 18 consecutive games.

NEW: This magazine includes a bonus issue of American Chess Puzzles, featuring 60 ‘mate in 2’ puzzles to challenge readers daily until the next issue.

Chicago’s Dimitar Mardov recently carried out a successful summer tour in Europe, where he competed in two consecutive strong Swiss open tournaments. He won the first one with an amazing performance of 7½/9, after defeating three seasoned grandmasters with the black pieces! Here Dimitar dissects two of these key wins, while also annotating an early round win against a younger but underrated opponent. After this huge success, Dimitar continued his undefeated streak with another notable result of 6/9 in the second tournament of his European summer tour, with introspective thoughts on his missed chances and the challenges that lay ahead.

In an exclusive interview for ACM, Dimitar pointed out that chess books remain a primary source for improving his game and that, apart from necessary family support, it also requires discipline and passion to advance as a player. Also, Dimitar shares the single best piece of chess advice he has been offered so far and gives his views on the differences between playing in U.S. tournaments and those in foreign lands, as well as pointing out discrepancies in strength of young players and their current ELOs.

In his regular column, GM Jacob Aagaard offers a new selection of carefully chosen examples – this time with a focus on “attacking the weakest square.” After going through these tests, you will certainly learn the so-called “Shankland rule” which will help you to direct your attention to detecting the weakest squares in any given position.

ACM multiple award-winning author, GM Sarunas Sulskis, dissects three magnificent games – Arjun Erigaisi’s victory over his Indian Olympic team colleague Pentala Harikrishna, Fabiano Caruana’s ruthless punishment of Ding Liren’s greed and an incredible demonstration of defensive skills by the Women’s World Champion Challenger Tan Zhongyi. Sulskis’ original style in terms of both narrative and analysis was once again honored with an award by Chess Journalists of America.

In their first World Senior Team Championship, the American Senior Ladies were able to maintain their team spirit at a high level and eventually win the silver medal, as amply reported by their leader WGM Anjelina Belakovskaia. By means of a vivid personal narrative, Anjelina also presents and annotates the most interesting games played by her team members. At the same time, USA 50+ Open Team won their fifth World Champion title and their board 3, GM Melik Khachiyan, demonstrates one of his key victories that helped to achieve their overall success.

University of Missouri Chess Team (MIZZOU) have had their most successful year yet, since they not only won the Pan-Am Intercollegiate, as we have previously reported, but also the President’s Cup (U.S. Collegiate Final Four). MIZZOU board 4, GM Luka Budisavljevic, presents an extensive overview of this pinnacle of U.S. collegiate chess and also reports on the World U20 Junior Championship, where he succeeded in winning his second consecutive bronze medal.

GM Rahul Peddi and WIM Tarini Goyal have prepared an opening review that covers the latest opening trends in a novel way – from the tricky Reti, via the Taimanov Sicilian and the Advance French, to the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the King’s Indian Defense.

GM Illia Nyzhnyk continues his work on tackling middlegames, this time explaining the process of identifying problems and choosing correct solutions. He also offers exercises for solving, to test the reader’s ability to successfully apply what has been learned.

ACM endgame expert, GM Alex Fishbein, this time delves into the secrets of pawn endings – highlighting the four key positions to be learned and remembered. In his trademark instructive style, Fishbein confirms why his permanent column in American Chess Magazine was appreciated by winning the annual award by Chess Journalists of America.

We haven’t forgotten to include entertaining reading matter for fans of chess history. Chuck Grau goes back to the 1930’s when an important set of chess pieces was recognized as part of a cultural competition between the Soviet Union and its Western rivals. On a different topic, our Senior Editor, Pete Tamburro, presents an original article on how difficult it was for American publishers to switch from descriptive notation to algebraic and why this battle lasted for almost 30 years!

FM Dylan McClain directs the spotlight on a unique chess variant featured in a recent top event and gives several examples to support his statement that it was a “charming idea.” In addition, he refers to a peculiar social media clash that eventually turned into a live show – exciting but also with some disappointments and no conclusions to a hot dispute.

Professor of psychology, Dr. Corey Butler, explains the relationship between chess and one of the most frequently used terms in the modern approach to the game – surprise! He reveals scientific explanations behind numerous processes initiated by a surprise, while also giving valuable practical advice on how best to react to it.

For those who enjoy statistics, our Features Editor, FM Grayson Rorrer, has prepared an extensive overview of the most significant tournaments played in the U.S. over the past couple of months, as well as from tournaments abroad where American players were successful. Grayson’s work is enriched by several games he has personally annotated. Also, we have prepared FIDE Rating lists of the top-10 and top-100 players worldwide as well as from the U.S. and compared data from June, so that changes can be easily noticed.

To conclude this issue, FM Carsten Hansen reviews ten newly released chess books, while our guest in “A Five Question Guide” is one of the most talented American players in the past decade, GM Awonder Liang.