Lessons with Yasser

Yasser Seirawan is giving me free chess lessons, but they are not exclusive. Once again, he is the host in the broadcast booth for the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. I have been enjoying Seirawan's commentary during Grand Master tournaments since the early '00s. Many event were broadcast on the Playchess server before the introduction of broadcast technologies that offer live video of the playing room combined with the analysis board.

This morning (it is afternoon in the Netherlands), while drinking my morning coffee, Seirawan spent a few minutes on a position that arose in Wei -- Nepomniachtchi. He said that he would need several hours looking at the position, followed by analysis with a strong computer in order to understand what is going on.


Wei, Yi -- Nepomniachtchi, Ian B96
Tata Steel Masters, Wijk aan Zee 2017

1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 h6 8.Bh4 Qb6 9.a3 Nbd7 10.Be2 e5 11.Nf5 g6 12.Bf2 Nc5 13.b4 gxf5

White to move

White obviously must capture the knight on c5, but as it is pinned, the capture can be deferred a few moves. What should White do in the meantime.

Seirawan showed a few quick variations, some very bad for White.

His advice:

Spend time with this position analyzing without a computer. Only check your analysis with the computer after a lot of time exploring the position without assistance,

Several moves were played while I created this post. The game is going on. It behooves the serious chess student to black out the game in progress and study this position. There are many other games in progress. Can I ignore this one?