Natalia Pogonina beats the world

Chessdom commentator Natalia Pogonina won her match vs the World. It took place from December 24, 2009 to March 28, 2010. During these three months a few thousand chess players from over 100 countries have been competing against one of top female grandmaster. Among those who have revealed their identities were two IMs, two FMs, numerous NMs and CMs, as well as many strong correspondence players. Each side had one day per move. The World was offered a chance to discuss the course of the game at a special forum (not available to Natalia), come up with the best decision and vote. The move that received the most votes was automatically made. It’s important to mention that vote chess is perfectly suited for learning chess since more experienced players have a chance to teach and instruct their less experienced teammates along the way.

After scoring an impressive strategic win in 55 moves, Natalia Pogonina was kind enough to share her impressions of the game with Chessdom. Natalia commented the opening, “The Opocensky variation of the Najdorf (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cd 4.Nd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Be2) is a nice choice when you aim at outmaneuvering your opponents, playing a quiet positional game and accumulating small advantages one after one, trying to make use of even the slightest inaccuracies. There are always a few people willing to share computer lines with everyone else, no matter whether they want it or not. For this reason I didn’t want to get involved into sharp double-edged positions where precise calculation is required.”

Here follows the game analysis by Tryfon Gavriel, for more information and comments by Natalia visit her official website

Game analysis by Tryfon Gavriel (aka kingscrusher on Youtube and Twitter)