Attack with LarryC : Pastings from Hastings

Pastings from Hastings

Opening: D90, A00: Uncommon Opening, Grunfeld

Player(s): Williams, Anderson, Vakhidov, Fodor

The Hastings International Chess congress is one of the longest running tournaments in the world. Hastings hosts the Christmas edition and, more sporadically, the Summer edition. The uber-famous summer edition of Hasting, played in 1895, saw the participation of all the best players of the time. It can be thought as the first Super-Tournament ever held. Hastings used to be one of the strongest tournaments of the year for many years. One curious statistics shows that all the World Champions until Garry Kasparov have participated at least once in Hasting (excluding Bobby Fischer). In recent years, Hastings has lost its status of super-tournament, but it remains a strong and interesting event, played around the end of the year. As Larry notes, perhaps due the holidays spirit, players in Hastings tend to play in a lighter way, daring a bit more, and this leads to some nice piece of tactical and attacking games. In this week's show, GM Larry Christiansen offers us a short recap of the best games played this year in Hastings. Larry analyzes two whole games, in the usual amazing way to present his ideas.