My Best Games with Black (PC-DVD) - Alexei Shirov
Running time: 6 h 45 m
If you want to win with Black, you must decide which is the best strategy to achieve your aim. Should you take risks and go for the win right from move one, or should you patiently set about achieving equality and then wait for mistakes by White? Which opening should you choose and what is the role played by opening preparation?
What can you do when you have to win with Black ? for example when a match can only be saved by a win with Black in the very last game – a situation which has become all the more familiar because of the ever-rising number of knock-out tournaments?
Alexei Shirov tries to answer these questions by referring to his own games as Black. In doing so, he describes how his own attitude to this problem has changed over his career, right up to his successesin the 2007 World Cup in Khanty-Mansiysk where he reached the final. Video running time: 6 h 45 m.
Alexei Shirov was born and raised in Riga the home town of tactical genius and former world champion Mikhail Tal and his style is reminiscent of the 'Magician of Riga'. In the early 90s, a meteoric rise took the young Latvian into the world's top 10 and at the age of 22 he had an Elo rating of nearly 2750 . Shirov has been one of the world's leading players ever since, delighting chess fans with his boundless creativity and fighting spirit. Shirov's world title ambitions were curtailed when despite defeating Vladimir Kramnik in a Candidates Final, a match could not be organised with Garry Kasparov who played Vladimir Kramnik instead, Shirov continued to enjoy success in tournaments and he reached the final of the 2007 World Cup and was an impressive winner of the 5th Mtel Masters Super Tournament in May 2009.
System requirements: Pentium-Processor at 300 Mhz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows XP, Windows Vista, DVD drive, mouse, soundcard
