A first half of 2012 in pictures

As it is left only two days in first half of year 2012 I decided to publish a set of pictures related to chess, mostly from tournaments where I played, but some pictures is not chess related, and some are related to forthcoming events.
A pictures will be published in random order and some of them are not taken be me (it will be marked).

All you need to know about same colour bishop endgames

White to move

Today's football match between Spain and Portugal seems really boring in a first half and I thought that publishing a solution for bishop endgames can be as much interesting to do.
In position number one, a question was can white win this position.
An answer is negative, as white can not oppose black bishop from d7.
1. Bc8, Bg2
2. Bg4, Bb7
Now, white can try a same technique as with a b(g) pawn
3. Bf3 
...but that doesn´t help him, because black has enoguh

An endgame exercise

White on move

These days I am in a very good mood for bishop endgames.
That is why I decided to share with readers some more analyses which I made from simple positions from endgame books.
This is one of my favourite examples. Not so long time ago I published analyses of a very similar bishop endgame under the title Problem solving techniques .
This time I played a little with the position and I switched everything for one line  right.
A question is can white win this position.
I shall publish a solution in one of my next posts, but I need to give reader some hints about position.

Instructive endgames

Imagination in chess 514

It is very hard to imagine a serious chess player who didn´t at least partly read fantastic book Imagination in chess by Pata Gaprindashvili. 
My next example is from that book (number 514). Basically, this book is more about combinations but there is some examples from my favourite part of chess game, endgame.
In this example it is black who tries to win this position.
White defence idea is to put bishop on diagonal h1-a8 and than take on f4 and g3 before black pawn on b4 promotes.
Right now, black needs help from his king.

Solution for combinations (2/5)

Zachrisson-Bejtovic

I never showed solution for 2 out of 5 combinations which I published for about one month ago.
One of these positions is from Swedish league from late 2010 against one amateur player (which, as a matter of fact had a pretty nice results that year).
By playing very original game very soon I got very serious advantage but I missed some good continuations and my opponent fought very well.
A game was decided in mutual time trouble.
I had few promising continuations but a most annoying thing was white knight on b5 which came into the play from being misplaced on a3 for whole game.

Tournaments in July

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If you look at the FIDE calendar you can notice that number of tournaments rapidly increase during a summer months.
There are objective reasons behind this.
There are a lot amateurs who wants to play more during their free time which forces organisers to organise their tournaments during summer.
Of course, a professional players tries to take advantage of this and plays as much as possible.

Games from Jahorina, Part two

Diagram 1

This is a second part of my games from Jahorina.
As I said , I was somehow optimistic about my chances despite bad result in first five games (my play was quite good).
My opponent in round six was very strong Serbian GM Robert Markus with high Elo of 2628 points.
I played one of my best games in 2012, and according to many spectators this game was a best game of whole league.
This game was very similar to some other games which I played in 2012 and this time I was very cautious about playing f4-f4.

Games from Jahorina, Part one

Diagram 1

Reportage from Bosnian team championship will be separated in few parts. I would like to present my games which will be done in two parts and one separate report will be about championship, some interesting positions, jokes and so on.
First of all I need to say something about rules. Every team is playing with six players and with maximum of two foreign players. It means that on the third board you can meet almost all best Bosnian players ( a few Grandmasters and International masters were playing in the best teams on lower or higher boards). Basically, on the third board I had GM tournament with average rating of around 2400.

Jahorina 2012

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This article is not about Winter Olympic Games in Sarajevo 1984, but about Bosnian team championship in chess.
A big detailed rapport will follow later and for this introduction I will publish some photos and write some interesting facts.
A very first time in their history, SK Siroki Brijeg became champion of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and SK Bosna (four time European Champion) finished on second place.
It was a very close battle for third place, and Slavija Ist. Sarajevo clinched it by 0,5 game-point in front of my club S.K. Napredak Sarajevo.
Championship was played on Olympic mountain Jahorina, very near to Sarajevo.
As I said, I´ll publish some photos for now, before I write a big reportage with more chess things in it.