This position comes from a recent game, one played during the latest Moscow Blitz Championship, an open-air event, between GM Alexey Korotylev (2597) and the Women’s World Chess Champion Grandmaster Alexandra Kosteniuk (2516).
In this miniature, Kosteniuk was presented with the following position at move 19.
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It’s Black to move and win. Do you see the combination? To the end?
To check your answer and listen to first-hand commentary from the winner, check out her video about the game here…
Let The Games Begin! While The Olympics are robbing me of sleep—and promise to do so for the next couple weeks—there’s been plenty of good chess to watch too. Most notably, the 2nd Grand Prix in Sochi, Russia, where Levon Aronian currently leads the pack after eleven rounds.
Monday saw the start of a more local affair, The New England Masters. Things are heating up now with a few upsets in the early rounds. The final game to complete last night, however, was clearly the biggest. Victor Kaminski of Canada (2212) is having a great run playing with the big boys. Here’s how he did it against Josh Friedel (2524) in their technical battle:
Braden Bournival had a rough second round, but he looks to be back in form judging from the well-calculated sequence at the end of this game. You have to figure he’d worked it all out from at least move 31, when he leaves the Re1 unprotected. Impressive!
The Mitropa Cup team tournament concluded today, and the following position from Italian WGM Olga Zimina’s game really caught my attention. Talk about a beautiful way to cap off a tournament! Wouldn’t we all like to have such a last round game? 
And this wasn’t some blitz event either. The time controls, according to the FIDE website, were “90 minutes for 40 moves, followed by 30 minutes to finish the game, with 30 seconds increment after each move starting from move 1.”
See if you can find her concluding combination.
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