Peter Svidler - Judit Polgar in the Najdorf Opocensky

Peter Svidler was born June 17, 1976 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg again). He won the Russian Championship five times from 1994 to 2008. In 1994, he became a grandmaster. Svidler was the Chess960 World Champion three times in 2003, 2004, and 2005.

Judit Polgar was born about five weeks after Svidler and became a grandmaster three years earlier than he did. The game shown is their meeting at Dos Hermanas 1999. They finished at the bottom along with Viswanathan Anand scoring 3.5/9. Anand, the present World Champion had no wins. Svidler won a single game. Polgar won two games. One was against Anand (shown last week) and one against Svidler (this game). Both games won by Polgar were Sicilian adventures. Polgar played the white side against Anand and used 6.Be3. Svidler was the player of the white pieces here, and chose 6.Be2. With 6...e6, Black could play Scheveningen style. 6...e5 keeps the variation a Najdorf and is the Opocensky line. Some writers call it either the Classical Variation or the Karpov Variation.