Daniil Dubov's fantastic knowledge of chess classics!

catto000 (65)in The Chess Community • 4 years ago

We all know that talented Russian youngster Daniil Dubov is an excellent opening theoretician, but did you know he has some of the amazing opening ideas not from computer analysis but from study the classics.

Dubov has read all the books by Garry Kasparov, mainly the "My Great Predecessors" series more than ten times! At the opening ceremony of the Tal Memorial 2018 we pose him with some positions from Tal's games that are quite famous. Dubov breezes through them not only showing the best move but also what the improvement could have been.

His recommendation to all talented youngsters out there: Read the My Great Predecessors series by Garry Kasparov and learn the classics. It will be very useful in your chess career..

Daniil Dubov

An expert blitz player at an early age, Dubov won the U10 rapid chess championship of Russia in 2005, was runner-up in the same event in 2006, second in the European U10 rapid chess championship of 2006, second in the European U12 rapid chess championship in 2008 and champion of Moscow at the U18 lightning tournament in 2008. He also won the 2011 Moscow Rapid. His campaign in the rejigged Aeroflot Rapid Open (2013) was auspicious, scoring 6.5/9 in the main rapid, albeit losing the playoff for a place in the final to Abhijeet Gupta, while scoring 12.5/18 (=12th) in the blitz event picking up 70 blitz points. His best effort so far came in June 2013 when he placed 7th in the FIDE World Blitz Championship (2013) where he scored 18/30. He placed 2nd at the Norges Rafisklag Blitz 2013 behind Anish Giri and scored 8.5/11 in the European Rapid Championship held in Poland in December 2013. Soon afterwards he scored an excellent 16.5/22 at the European Blitz Championship, placing 4th behind Anton Korobov, Vladislav Ivanovich Tkachiev and Bartosz Socko.
Dubov was selected as the Organizer's Nominee for the FIDE Grand Prix 2019, a stage in qualification for the World Chess Championship 2020. Dubov was enrolled in the Moscow event, the first of four tournaments for the 2019 Grand Prix cycle. The Moscow tournament was a 16-player event, with Dubov being the lowest ranked participant. After an upset victory over the highest ranked player, Anish Giri, Dubov was eliminated from the Moscow Grand Prix tournament in the quarter-finals by American grandmaster Hikaru Nakamura.

In November, Dubov also competed in the FIDE Grand Prix event in Hamburg. Once again he was the lowest seeded player in the tournament, but after upset wins over Teimour Radjabov and Peter Svidler, he was in the semifinals facing Jan-Krzysztof Duda. The two matches in classical time format were drawn and the match proceeded to tie-breakers. Dubov won the first rapid game (25+10) and needed only a draw to advance to the finals. He then lost what seemed to be a completely drawn endgame in the second match to send the match to a second set of tie breakers (10+10). After drawing with the white pieces, Dubov was finally eliminated by Duda.

Recently Dubov won the Lindores Abbey Rapid Challenge on June 3rd, beating Ding Liren in semi-finals and Hikaru Nakamura in the final after the match went to "Armageddon" time control.