The Vienna Defense Line in Scheerer - Kopylov Revisited

Last week ChessBase celebrated its 25th anniversary by offering a 25% discount on its products for one day. I've used ChessBase from its earliest days, but have been getting by with version 9 for several years. Rather than risk waiting another 25 years for 50% off, I decided to go ahead and pick up version 11.

I'm glad I did.

One nice feature in 11 is something the CB folks call "novelty annotation." In earlier versions, CB would identify a new move, a novelty, in an observed game by checking the game against a reference database installed on your computer's hard drive. Now CB 11 checks a huge online database and inserts the appropriate line(s) in the game on your screen. And it does this very quickly, usually in a matter of seconds.

I tried this feature on the Scheerer-Kopylov game I posted recently, a line in the Vienna Defense that Scheerer had included through White's 19th move in his book. ChessBase came back extending Scheerer's line several moves, and providing a White win which split from Scheerer on move 22.

So here's another look at the Scheerer-Kopylov game with the new line from Leisebein-Jacobs, getting a jump on the attack down the h-file with 22.Rh3.

Scheerer's BDGs Come Up Short

It's refreshing to see an author actually play an opening he writes about--especially when the opening is the Blackmar-Diemer. In the just completed Luebeck club tournament, Christoph Scheerer, author of the recently published the Blackmar-Diemer gambit, a modern guide to a fascinating chess opening, tried for a BDG in two games. In one game Black evaded the BDG by going into a Hübsch Gambit; in the other Black declined with the Vienna Defense.

Unfortunately, White lost both games and finished with 4 points. His opponents, Michael Kopylov and Vladimir Epishin, along with Henrik Danielsen finished on top with 6 of 9, with the title going to Kopylov on tie-breaks. The game with Kopylov, a Vienna Defense, goes 18 moves deep in a line in Scheerer's book.

(Use the pull-down menu to see the second game.)

"Don't think this is enough"

Thanks to Matt Lasley for alerting me to this game from the Jan-Mar 2011 issue of The Chess Correspondent, the newsletter of the Correspondence Chess League of America (CCLA).  The game was published as a best game contest winner for the Master-Expert category, and was probably played in 2010. The players' ratings are from the current CCLA rating list. The game slips into a BDG where Black tries a queenside attack beginning with 9...a6. White, a veteran BDG player, has other plans.