MARK RUBERY CHESS
Yevgeny Vasiukov (1933-2018) was in his 70th year when he was paired against Loek Van Wely at the Aeroflot Open held in Moscow, yet the veteran Russian grandmaster showed little signs of age or rust and destroyed one of the top players in the world at the time.
Vasiukov used his pet-line against the Sicilian 4 Qxd4, a line that is more dangerous than it looks as well as having the bonus of avoiding the masses of theory that abound in the Sicilian.
Vasiukov,E (2524) - Van Wely,L (2697) [B53]
Aeroflot Open Moscow RUS (1)
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Qxd4 Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Bxc6 Bxc6 7.Nc3 Nf6 8.Bg5 e6 9.0-0-0 Be7 10.Rhe1 0-0 11.Kb1 Qa5 12.Qd2 Qa6 13.Nd4 Rfc8 14.f4 h6 15.h4!
(This positional piece sacrfice is the typical way of handling these positions as White endeavours to open lines against the king-also any move by the bishop leads to an easy game for Black eg. 15 Bh4 Nxe4!)... Qc4 (Van Wely chooses to postpone the capture of the piece as 15…hxg5 16 hxg5 Nd7 17 Rh1 and Black’s position will soon be overrun down the h-file. Necessary was 15…b5 with sharp play) 16.g4 Kf8 17.f5 hxg5 18.hxg5 Nd7 19.fxe6 Ne5 20.Rh1 fxe6 21.b3 Qb4 22.Rh8+ Kf7 23.Qf4+ Bf6 24.Rh7 Kg8 25.gxf6 Kxh7 (The Black king is defenceless and White can choose his route to victory) 26.Qg5 Rc7 27.Nxe6 Rac8 28.fxg7 Kg8 29.Rh1 Bxe4 30.Rh8+ Kf7 31.Nxc7 Qxc3 32.g8=Q+ 1-0
‘For the two weeks that Fischer was in Moscow in 1958 he played blitz from morning to night, and gave everyone an incredible battering. And then three people were invited, based on the results of the most recent “Vechernaya Moskva” blitz tournament, which was the unofficial Soviet Union blitz championship. They invited the three winners: Petrosian, who came third, Bronstein, who lost a match to me for first place, and myself. But David Ionovich, who had already played a World Championship match, said: sorry, but why should I play a kid? Tigran Vartanovich and I arrived. We played in the grandmasters’ room, and Petrosian won by a small margin, while I literally crushed Fischer’. (Evgeny Vasiukov)