Vladimir Kramnik’s Catalan is The Devil

“Former” World Champion Vladimir Champion impressed just about everyone at the recent Tal Memorial Super Tournament with an amazing +4 with no loses and a 2901 performance rating. Ok Ok, Topalov and Anand were both absent from this event, but +4 in an all +2700 crowd is great no matter who those 2700+ players happen to be.

Kramnik’s Catalan is just unbelievable, it makes you want to just play something that avoids it altogether with black. Thankfully, I’ve been a Slav player for awhile so I don’t have to deal with Catalan headaches, but Nimzo and QGD players are not so lucky. America’s newest GM, Jesse Kraai, also plays the Catalan and has done a bunch of great lectures on www.chesslecture.com. I highly recommend this opening for someone looking to build a white repertoire who likes technical, slightly better endings. I’ve also found you can get some really quick knockout blows if black has no clue what hes doing (Kraai-Sarkar comes to mind).

I recently recommended the “Kraai” rep to my buddy John Elmore. The “Kraai” rep is Catalan, Exchange Slav, and Exchange King’s Indian. It is really good from a practical point of view, since it limits the amount of theory you have to learn. Against strong players they usually have lots of trouble generating winning chances, and against lower rateds you can just grind them down. But this repertoire should only be used by people who really enjoy these technical positions, I know Kraai does.

On another note, GM Alexei Shirov had his first good result in recent memory, with +1 which netted him clear 2nd place. Lately his play has been “Fire on Turd”, so it’s nice to see him getting back into the mix of things. I’ve always enjoyed watching Shirov play, but his ultra aggressive style often gets taken apart by the very top players.