The Modernized Berlin Wall Defense

Descripción

This book’s journey began on the first day of January 2018 when one of my New Year resolutions was to

write a chess book. The journey has been very long, but certainly fun, and has in many ways made me

understand myself better, both as a person and as a chess player!

 

If it has taken a long time, you also have to know the distance the book has covered! It has travelled

14,130 km, as the first page was written when I was about to complete my Master’s degree at Webster

University in St Louis in the USA, and now, as I write my preface, I am a full-time chess trainer,

currently living in Bengaluru, India.

 

So how did I fall in love with this beautiful Berlin Defense? In mid-2003, when I was preparing for the

World U-10 Championship, I found that my Philidor Defense wasn’t good enough to be played in a

tournament of such stature, and my coach at the time, IM Raja Ravi Sekhar, suggested the Berlin to me

as it was at the peak of its popularity after the 2001 World Championship match between Kasparov and

Kramnik.

 

The Berlin was a good fit for me then, as it didn’t have extensive theory (unlike now!) and the lines given

in ECO were simple and easy to remember, which made me very happy, as I never really enjoyed

memorizing moves in the opening.

Sample pages