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Coffee Break Chess © 1999 by Alexander Baburin
Dear Chess Friends!I guess that everyone likes long coffee breaks, but not all have time to read a long newsletter, so I will try to be more laconic. In this issue I'd like to provide some information about myself and to advertise the books I wrote recently. Who Is This Guy, Anyway?!I suspect that as my readership grows, there are more and more people who might be asking this question. Thus, I feel that it's essential to answer it. I was born in Gorky (now - Nizhniy Novgorod), Russia on 19th of February 1967. It is an old city on Volga, about 450 km east of Moscow. It's very close to Moscow - in Russian terms! :) It's a big (about 2 million people) industrial centre, with lots of military industry and therefore it was closed for foreigners until recently. The old city is very nice and I enjoy coming back to it. I started to play chess when I was 8 or so - my father taught me and shortly after that a woman came to our school and started a chess club. She remained my coach for many years, even though I quickly outgrew her as a player. Later her husband - IM Chernikov, influenced my chess development. I still stay in touch with both of them. Both my parents are workers, so I come from a proletarian family. My parents (particularly my mother) greatly (but quietly) supported my passion for chess. In Russia I travelled a lot to various chess tournaments and here is some of my early travelling experience: In practically every place where I went, there were so-called Lenin's places and all young players had to visit them (my Russian readers will understand me well). I got fed up with it after my fourth visit to that big nice house near the city of Kazan, where young Lenin greatly suffered in his exile, having only one servant. Later I decided that if I was to continue visiting Lenin's places, I should take a slightly different circle - Zurich, Paris and London! :) Fortunately, this became possible to do in the 90s. I became a Soviet Master when I was 20 and got a IM title at age of 23. Then in my first GM-tournament in 1991 in Budapest I easily made a GM-norm and thought that the rest would just follow. Little did I know - GM-norms just escaped me! I became one of the highest rated IMs in the world (with a 2550-rating) and was also becoming one of the most frustrated. Things changed in 1995, when I made a performance norm (2600+ result) in Groningen. In 1996 I got another norm in Copenhagen and in the same year I was awarded the GM title in Yerevan. As I was 29 then, it hardly looks impressive nowadays, when you are expected to be a GM by the age of 12! :) Yet, as I never had ambitions (illusions?!) that I was born to be the next world champion, I take it easy. My best tournament result (so far) was in the Isle of Man Open in 1997, when I scored 8 out of 9, showing a 2827-performance and finishing 2 points ahead of the second place. My highest rating has been 2600 (a year ago), my current rating is 2586. The most famous player I ever beat was Korchnoi (Copenhagen 1996). My style of play ranges somewhere between 'very solid' and 'extremely boring'. :) Since 1993 I've been living in Dublin. It's not easy to be a chess professional in Ireland (is it easy anywhere?!), as chess is still not well-established here. But I like the country - people are nice and the grass is always green. Though I wish it would not rain that often! I am highly adoptive and probably can live anywhere - I quite agree with Socrates, who said that he was from the Earth, rather than from any particular place. I often go to Russia, where I have many friends and where my parents live. I am married to Elena with two children - Ivan (9) and Anastasia (4). This is probably enough (too much?) information for a start. Later I will cover some aspects of my career and professional life. You can find additional information at Mark Orr's Web site: http://www.cns.ed.ac.uk/tica/home.html Mark is Ireland's first IM. His site contains a lot of information about Irish players and has some useful links. In the unlikely event that you want to see what I look like, go to http://www.cns.ed.ac.uk/tica/teams/pictures/yerevan96.html. Will This Issue Be The LAST One YOU Receive ?It all depends on you - to receive the subsequent issues of CBC you must subscribe to it on the Web. The idea is simple - there is a Mailing List on the Web, where people can subscribe or unsubscribe themselves. I sent one message to that list and all people on the list receive it. This leaves me with more time to concentrate on the contents of the newsletter. So, please read the following instructions and subscribe to the list, if you have not done it already. It really takes only seconds!
If your E-mail reader does not support HTML and you cannot see the link above, please join the list by sending an empty E-mail to AlexBaburin_on_Chess-subscribe@onelist.com You should receive a confirmation shortly. To unsubscribe from the list and stop receiving CBC just send
an empty E-mail to: Of course, you can find CBC on the Web, but it's better to get it in your mailbox, as this way you will not miss any! Also, those readers who can't see the diagrams properly now, soon will be able to enjoy CBC fully, as in the near future I will attach pdf files for viewing with Adobe Acrobat Reader. Please note that I will not be able to forward you any issues, which you might miss. Weekly Digest & Some LinksRecently I received No. 1 of 'New in Chess'. Two materials drew my attention there - the interview with world's youngest GM Ruslan Ponomariov by Sarah Hurst and the article about the late Efim Geller by GM Genna Sosonko. NiC is one of my favourite magazines, because there is always something entertaining in it. Here is a link to its Web page: http://www.newinchess.com/ Want to learn more about Ponomariov? Check it at http://chess-sector.odessa.ua/ Then I received 'Inside Chess' No. 4, where I found a very detailed analysis of the fantastic Kasparov-Topalov (Linares 1999) game. Also, the match Adams-Seirawan is covered there. I like the way Yasser annotates in general, but it's particularly interesting to see his notes to his own games. Here is a link to Inside Chess on the Web: http://www.insidechess.com/ Nowadays more and more GMs create their own Web pages. English GM Jonathan Levitt did so recently - his site can be found at http://www.jlevitt.dircon.co.uk/index.htm Some readers ask me about recommended chess books. While I will try to cover this topic later, in the meantime I'd like to direct you to the page of John Elburg, who regularly reviews chess books: http://www.chessmail.com/books/index.htm My New BookAs some of you may know, my book 'Winning Pawn Structures' is just out. As I am also a book dealer, I have some copies of this book for sale. For more information please refer to the attached file called 'WPS-info'. Annotated GameHere I would like to show one game from 'Winning Pawn Structures'. Please note that this version varies from the one in the book. I tried to present this game as a mini lesson, so if you want to take some challenge, please refer to the attached Chess Base file first or printout the game and cover the moves with a list of paper. Then try to answer the questions I pose here. Or simply look at the game and enjoy great play by GM Yusupov! Artur Yusupov - Eric LobronGermany Ch, Nussloch 1996
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