Chess giants #4: Fire of London System! Attack of the Alliestein! TCEC Season 17.

GM Matthew Sadler and WIM Natasha Regan follow the Top Chess Engine Championship (TCEC) as Season 17 unfolds. 10 superhuman-strength chess engines (6 traditional engines - such as Stockfish - and 4 neural net engines - such as Leela Zero) battle for qualification to the 100-game Superfinal match.
In this game, Alliestein and Fire fight out the London system. The TCEC book specifies a King's Indian setup and both machines follow established theory until move 15 when Fire grabs a hot central pawn, giving up its dark-squared bishop. Allie engineers a queenside break to loosen Black's remaining central dark square control and then mobilises its London System dark-squared bishop against Black's kingside. 2 unexpected bishop retreats throw Black's forces into confusion and lead to an ending the exchange up which Alliestein converts easily.
You can follow the TCEC at https://tcec-chess.com/ Databases of games played in all previous seasons are to be found here: https://www.tcec-chess.com/archive.html
Matthew and Natasha's new book "Game Changer" came out on 20th January 2019 and won the prestigious ECF Book of the Year prize for 2019! The Game Changer chess book is available in print and digital versions from these links:
http://newinchess.com/game-changer (Paperback English edition)
https://forwardchess.com/product/game-changer (Digital)
https://www.chessable.com/game-changer-alphazeros-groundbreaking-chess-strategies-and-the-promise-of-ai-/course/19061/ (Digital)
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9056918184 (Paperback and Kindle)
https://www.amazon.de/Zeitenwende-Schach-AlphaZeros-Bahnbrechende-Verheissungen/dp/9056918850 (Hardback German edition)

Matthew Sadler is a Grandmaster and 2-times British Chess Champion, ranked 41st in the world and 2nd in the UK on the December 2019 FIDE Rating List. He is the author of 7 chess books, 3 of which - The Queen's Gambit Declined and Chess for Life (also co-authored with Natasha Regan) and of course Game Changer! - won the prestigious English Chess Federation Book of the Year Prize.

Natasha Regan is a Women's International Master from England who achieved a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. She has represented England internationally at both Chess and Go.

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