GabrielGale wrote on 05/22/11 at 23:46:33:
I thought I should reply since I was the originator of the thread.
@Charles Allen, Paddy - I don't have access to a game replayer at work. I am not sufficiently competent to play blindfold an entire game. In the past before the flash player, I found it frustrating being unable to follow the games and fragments of games on ChessPub. I am not advocating putting every game in ChessPub forum as replayable. However, KG is a rare enough beast at 2600-2700 level that I thought it warrant such special treatment. Hence my decision to put Shirov's game as replayable.
But as someone else says, you don't have to come to the party if you do not feel up to it.
@Paddy, why the necessity to post game as well as pgn? Surely you can copy pgn from the Flash player?
2) I am unashamedly a fan of Shirov's style and play and games.
3) I haven't got to the stage of learning how to play the KG as white. Still trying to figure out which response to KG as Black to play. Therefore would have liked some explanation of the game from resident experts. If not such explanation forthcoming, I guess I will just have to check it against Micawber's excellent KG files. (My thanks, Micawber!)
I did write those articles for New in Chess, but they are always behaving very strangely, so I decided not to go forth with the one on the ...h6 lines (which was 95% finished)
Basically 3...h6 is a way to aim for a classical setup with a strongpoint on e5 (...d6, ...Bg7, ...Ne7-g6, ...Nc6, ..Qe7 etc.) without allowing the Kieseritzky. Compared to the Fischer (3...d6) Black can sometimes get ...d5 in without losing tempo.
White's setup in this game was recommended by Estrin/Glazkov in the 1988 russian version of their KG book (I am writing from memory now so perhaps there are earlier sources) except they gave the immediate 8.Be3. The finesse 8.Rg1! was discovered first by D.Nightingale (and later by me).
After this Black needs to be very careful. In the Shirov game Black does not even win the piece so 9...Nc6 must be queried. 9...gxf3 is the way to go when White's better development and centre is sufficient compensation for the knight.
Fedorov played this variation a few times but never had to reveal his preparation after 7.gxf4, because the opponents always deviated earlier.
Regards
Michael
PS. How can you copy pgn from a flash if you cannot view the flash.