Sjakkfantomet

GM Sulskis (2559) was born on the 26th of November 1972 in Lithuania. He lives in Lithuania's second biggest city Kaunas. The 36 years old is for many years the second best chess player in Lithuania, only behind GM Eduardas Rozentalis. He has participated in 8 consecutive Chess Olympiad's for his national team with the score of 58.5 % over 59 games. His best effort was 7/10 in 1998 when he became the 5th best player at the 2nd board. He won the Lithuanian Championship several times with his first national title all back in 1994. Sulskis has participated in 3 of FIDE's World Chess "Knock Out" Championships. In 1997 in Groningen he was knocked out in the first round, but in both 2001 in Moscow, and in 2004 in Tripoli he came to the second round after beating GM Graf in 2001 and GM Macieja in 2004.

Sulskis best effort so far is his tournament win in Goodricke Open in Calcutta 2002 where he emerged on top of a huge field with 19 GMs among the participants. In the year 2007 he got the chance to work with World Star Vassily Ivanchuk for a short period of time which served as good inspiration. Since January 2008 he has been stable over 2550, but his Elo-peak is still from the summer of 2003 when he had 2593.

Sulskis is a devoted e4-player and he plays the opening aggressive and really tries to push it from an early stage on. As black he chooses classical openings where he at least gets one foot into the center. Versus 1.e4 his main weapons are the Kings Pawn Opening or the Caro Kann and versus 1.d4 he opts for the Nimzo-, Queens Indian or the Queens Gambit Declined. His playing style can be described as aggressive and concrete and from time to time he plays quite attractive chess.

Here is a nice attack from Sulskis. In a Caro Kann he got everything he could dream of from the opening phase and black still has'nt developed his K-side. The black King is also uncomfortable, but how do you continue with white?