Grandmaster Repertoire 18 - The Sicilian Sveshnikov - Mjukpärm

Sveshnikov är en av de mest aktiva och dynamiska varianterna i Sicilianskt, och har använts framgångsrikt av schackspelare på alla nivåer från klubbspelare till världsmästare. I Grandmaster Repertoire 18 - The Sicilian Sveshnikov har öppningsspecialisten Vassilios Kontronias lagt sitt djärva system under mikroskopet och tillhandahåller en repertoar av världsklass för svart. Vassilios Kontronias är en niofaldig grekisk mästare och stöttespelare för det grekiska landslaget, både som spelare och tränare. Han är fruktad för sina djupgående förberdelser. Från förordet: Sometimes it is people that inspire us: good people, bad people, strange people and mediocre people. My specialty has been meeting strange people. People with weaknesses; people with great intrinsic merits; people who love life; people who suddenly leave without warning; people who can be loved at one moment and hated the next. One day I was thinking about the people I’ve met – specifically, the really strange ones. The more I thought about them, the more I realized that they were like the Sveshnikov Sicilian: free,uncompromising, boldly displaying their strengths, and unashamed of their weaknesses. People who turned their weaknesses into strengths, by making me love them and get lost in them. I suddenly decided that I wanted to write about these people. I wanted to analyse them deeply, to understand them, to master their mentality. I wanted to know why they came, why they left, why they captured so strikingly my whole existence. I am not a writer of novels, but I think I can understand certain things about this world when I try to. For me chess has life inside it, and chess openings represent living creatures. Some are dull, other have strong colours; some live on the earth, others deep in the sea, and others high in the sky. The Sveshnikov definitely belongs to a chameleon category. It can be dull and colourful, logical and irrational, systematic and unpredictable at the same time. Its transformations border on the miraculous, and all this happens from a starting point of a fixed structure, of apparent clarity. But the more you dig in, the more you realize that a small spark is all that is needed to put you on a pathway without return. Thus, instead of writing a novel, I ended up writing an opening book about a child of Siberia. The Sveshnikov Sicilian was heavily analysed in the cities of Chelyabinsk and Novosibirsk, by chess pioneers who turned it into a formidable and respected weapon. Nowadays many players are so afraid of meeting it that they resort to sidelines against the Sicilian; even Anand abandoned the Open Sicilian after a single Sveshnikov encounter in his world title match against Gelfand. I sincerely hope that Evgeny Sveshnikov will forgive me for shedding too much light on the fascinating and mysterious nature of his invention, but I believe his set-up is one that chess players deserve to get acquainted with. It is sound, adventurous, dynamic and brilliant. Vassilios Kotronias Athens, July 2014