Crush Amateur Mistakes like GM Pridorozhni (Masters Crushing Amateurs Series)

Introducing the Masters Crushing Amateurs Series

This is the first installment of my Masters Crushing Amateurs Series where we are covering masters who frequently play in open online tournaments like the Daily Superblitz, Hourly Bullet, etc. and as a result pile up many victories against amateur competition.

At the outset it should be understood that there is no slight on the master's honor by being included in this series. Quite the contrary, there is great instructive value in studying high-contrast games where there is a mismatch in skill level, as shown by the popularity of master speedrun videos. Which demonstrates how a strong master punishes instructive blunders and mistakes made at the amateur level. For example, Paul Morphy was heads and shoulders above his competition and by punishing their mistakes taught us the principles of the open game. By studying the games of masters against amateurs we hope to learn how to punish the mistakes we commonly see at our own amateur level.

GM Aleksei Pridorozhni (Ultras13)

Aleksei Pridorozhni is a strong Russian grandmaster who won the Russian Rapid Chess Championship of 2019 and competed in the FIDE World Cups in the 2000s. He's also a leading tournament winner on lichess, with a top-100 ranking in online blitz (2800), and is strong enough to win the Monthly SuperBlitz and SuperBlitz Shield Arenas multiple times against other strong grandmasters. Pridorozhni is well worth studying in his own right, apart from how he punishes amateur blunders. He employs an interesting repertoire with White filled attacking sidelines like the King's Gambit, Bishop's Gambit and aggressive closed systems in the Sicilian and Scandinavian.

We are fortunate that he plays a high volume of open tournaments online where a chunk of his games are against amateur-level competition. Studying his games, one gets the impression of a Tiger, tail twitching expectantly, and ready to pounce at the slightest mistake. Let's learn how he punishes amateur mistakes which should be highly instructive for our own games.

The Study - Crush Amateur Mistakes like GM Pridorozhni

This study includes many of Pridorozhni's 564 victories with the White pieces over sub-2000 opponents in speed chess games. The study presents the full games. As you play thru the games you should be internalizing Pridorozhni's crushing plans, strategies and tactics in a guess-the-move style of learning.

Here is the study:

LichessTools

To get the most out of this study you should add the LichessTools browser extension. LichessTools allows you to play through all the games/variations in an interactive lesson chapter (rather than just the single main line). So if you decline to add LiChess Tools then you are only playing 10% of the study. Available here:

https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/langlhlcknngldkeliapahbhbcmlcbcj

Cheers,

Dsoul20