I am indebted to Peter for bringing Chris Ross’s new book ‘Blind Faith’ to my attention. It may be purchased at https://steelcitypress.co.uk/product/blind-faith-ebook/
In particular, I would like to draw your attention to game 40. In this game, Chris demonstrates improvements that Dmitry Andrekhin could have made against Sergey Karjakin in the 2014 candidates. He plays almost blemish-less chess, “secures a huge advantage” as early as move 19, shows “superior piece positioning” throughout, and “exploited his positional understanding”. He justifiably awards himself four exclamations marks in the first 31 moves.
By contrast, his opponent puts his pieces on “unattractive” squares, makes “ugly moves”, is lured into creating “easy weaknesses”, does not “consider the consequences of his pawn structure”, played with “desperation”, was “bemused” and by move 19, although it was “too harsh to begin questioning all of White’s moves, … had now obtained a very poor position”. He was “verging on the stage of being positionally lost” at move 19, “indeed, positionally lost” by move 21, “should resign, as there is nothing salvageable” at move 43 and as for his draw offer, there is “no good reason to accept the draw, especially so when Black had played so well”! A level of restraint is shown by only awarding his opponent’s first 18 moves with three question marks.
Ironically, I considered this one of my better games against Chris. When I blundered in time trouble in a dead drawn rook and pawns ending I took some solace from the fact that I had executed an opening novelty well and (Fritz assured me) had kept the game more or less level for the first 47 moves.
I guess it’s always nice to be published!?