Alexei Shirov: My Best Games in the Grunfeld

The Grunfeld Indian is an active and dynamic reply to 1.d4 which can lead to complex and extremely sharp positions. So it’s no wonder that GM Alexei Shirov has included this opening – which at its début in tournament practice was called ”hypermodern” – into his repertoire. At the candidates’ final against Vladimir Kramnik in Cazorla in 1998, he exclusively – and successfully – employed this Gruenfeld with Black; the victory over Kramnik gave him the right to play a World Championship match versus Kasparov. In the first part of the DVD, Shirov extensively analyses his five Black games from the Kramnik match, sharing deep insights into high level opening preparation and match strategy. In the second part, Shirov reveals, among other things, how in his opposite-coloured bishop endgame against Topalov in Linares in 1998 he found the amazing and unique move for which this game is famous. And this is not the only flash of inspiration the Super Grandmaster will present in his video. Running time: 5:25 hours

Alexei Shirov was born in Riga just like world champion Mihail Tal, and also his playing style reminds many chess fans of the young Tal. In the early 90's, at the young age of 22, Shirov already had an Elo rating of nearly 2750 and belonged to the absolute elite. Since then Shirov has been one of the best players in the world, delighting all chess fans with his original and amazing ideas on the board.

System requirements: Pentium-Processor at 300 Mhz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP/Vista/Windows7, Windows Media Player 9.0, DVD drive