The King's Indian According to Tigran Petrosian

by Igor Yanvarjov

Overview

Welcome to Tiger's Den!

Tigran Petrosian, the ninth world chess champion, was one of the deepest thinkers the chess world has ever seen. His handling of complex strategic positions was legendary. Now, for the first time, Russian international master Igor Yanvarjov has put together a superb collection of virtually all the known games played by Petrosian – with both colors – in the King's Indian Defense and other closely related Indian structures.

The author's objective was, first of all, to reveal the richness of Petrosian's chess world and to follow the strategic development of the King's Indian Defense through the prism of Petrosian's creative work. He does this with the presentation of almost 300 deeply annotated, complete games.

Contents include: Preface by Levon Aronian; Foreword by Igor Zaitsev; The Classical Variation; The Samisch System ; The Fianchetto Variation; The Benoni; Other Systems; Portrait of a Chess Player; Lessons from Petrosian; The Problem of the Exchange; “Furman's Bishop”; “Pawns are the soul of chess”; Playing by Analogy; Maneuvering Battle; Experiments; Realist or Romantic?; The King's Indian with Colors – and Flanks – Reversed; Appendix; Index of Tabiyas; ECO/Opening/Tabiya Indexes.

This splendid collection of annotated games will not only have enormous appeal to King's Indian aficionados, but to all chessplayers who wish to expand their understanding of the strategic concepts underpinning the royal game as a whole.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781941270578
Publisher:	Russell Enterprises, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/17/2019
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 9.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

International Master Igor Yanvarjov is a professional chess coach. He has been a coach at the Moscow Chess Club “Spartak,” and has been on the coaching staff of a number of chess schools, including those of Petrosian, Geller, Karpov and Garry Kasparov. Grandmasters he has worked with include Lembit Oll, Rustem Dautov, Yury Piskov, among others. He currently teaches chess at the Anatoly Karpov Chess School in Moscow.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: The Classical Variation
Let's begin our overview with the “classics,” the most popular and logical setup in this opening.
Here, as in many other variations, Petrosian readily used rare and unpopular systems. Thus, over a number of years he defended Flohr's old continuation d4-d5, finding more and more opportunities for White. One of the most successful of his finds was the system with 8.Bg5, known today as the Petrosian System. With Black, he was also not a slave of fashion, giving preference to the traditional method of defense: 7...Nbd7.
DIAGRAM
When this position just started to appear in tournaments, it was considered almost a must to continue with 10.Nd2 (see games A1-1, 2, 3) or 10.Ne1 with the idea of promptly exchanging the knight on c5. In his game against Alexey Suetin (A1-4) Tigran Petrosian turned a new page in the theory of this variation, proving that the harmless-looking bishop move on g5 is not so harmless. However, his relationship with the King's Indian Defense was rocky at first...

(1) A1.1 Petrosian – Geller
17th USSR Championship
Moscow 1949

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.c4 Bg7 4.Nc3 0-0 5.e4 d6 6.Be2 e5 7.d5 Nbd7 8.0-0 Nc5 9.Nd2 a5 10.Qc2
DIAGRAM
All the moves were made according to the theory circa 1949. Geller's next move was a novelty, which he had prepared for this game specifically.
10...Bh6!?
Using the knight's temporary stop on d2 to force the exchange of the dark-square bishops. Today, such an interpretation of King's Indian Defense has already become standard and even basic, but in those days its evaluation was controversial. For example, the well-known theorist Peter Romanovsky, thinking that the g7-bishop had to defend the king, annotated this idea as rather dubious, and the game's commentator, master Victor Goglidze, called it “original, but wrong.”
11.Nb3 Bxc1 12.Nxc5
A positional error, very uncommon for Petrosian. However, being young at the time, he probably had not yet mastered all the subtleties of his trademark opening.
12...Bh6 13.Nd3 Nd7
The King's Indian bishop, after miraculously escaping death, soon starts to retaliate for the disrespect.
14.a3 f5 15.b4 Nf6 16.Nb2
The subpar exchange starts to bear fruit. White is denied the natural opportunity to reinforce the e4-square with a pawn, for example, 16.f3 Be3+ 17.Kh1 f4 and then ...Nh5, ...Qh4 with a typical checkmate idea on the dark squares. It seems that 16.Bf3 was still better, as d3 was the perfect square for the knight...

Table of Contents

Preface Levon Aronian 4

Foreword Igor Zaitsev 5

From the Author 9

Part I Tabiyas 12

Chapter 1 Classical Variation 15

Chapter 2 The Sämisch System 61

Chapter 3 The Fianchetto Variation 126

Chapter 4 The Benoni 201

Chapter 5 Other Systems 264

Part II Elements of Success 297

Chapter 6 Portrait of a Chess Player 297

Chapter 7 Lessons from Petrosian 321

Chapter 8 The Problem of the Exchange 335

Chapter 9 "Furman's Bishop" 343

Chapter 10 "Pawns are the soul of chess" 348

Chapter 11 Playing by Analogy 351

Chapter 12 Maneuvering Battle 356

Part III Experiments 363

Chapter 13 Realist or Romantic? 363

Chapter 14 The King's Indian with Colors - and Flanks - Reversed 379

In Lieu of a Postscript 406

Appendix

Index of Opponents 407

Bibliography 410

Index of Tabiyas 412

ECO/Opening/Tabiya Index 420