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Game of the Week #715: Timman vs Karpov

3/20/2026 – A few weeks ago Jan Timman passed away at the age of 74. In the Netherlands Timman has always been immensely popular, a true icon of chess. His positive nature and adventurous style has inspired many chess players and will continue to do so. At his peak he reached number two in the world rankings, behind Karpov, ahead of the young Kasparov. Today we will look at his fantastic attacking game against Karpov, with whom he had countless interesting encounters. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #714: David Navara vs Nodirbek Yakubboev

3/16/2026 – The Prague Chess Festival produced such a nice collection of fascinating games that we are returning to this tournament once more. Jorden van Foreest was well on his way to win the tournament, but crashed in the final rounds, leaving Nodirbek Abdusattorov as the convincing winner and the new number four in the world rankings. Today's Game of the Week is the wildly entertaining attacking game David Navara produced after Nodirbek Yakubboev grabbed a poisoned pawn. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #713: Van Foreest vs Keymer

3/4/2026 – Five weeks ago our Game of the Week was Jorden van Foreest with White against Vincent Keymer, from the Tata Steel Chess Tournament, and today our Game of the Week sees the exact same pairing, from the Prag International Chess Festival. The Dutchman is one fire and again managed to win, bringing him very close to the top 10 in the world rankings. One of his strengths is constantly coming up with new ideas in the opening, this time around against the notorious Berlin. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #712: Jiner Zhu vs Nemec

2/27/2026 – The Prague International Chess Festival has started and both in the Masters and in the Challengers group fantastic games are being played right from the start. In the first two rounds, a remarkable amount of sacrifices were played. It was difficult to select just one Game of the Week, but in the end it was the creative performance by IM Jachym Nemec against GM Jiner Zhu that was most unusual of all. Black lost the opening battle, but then started to find amazing recources. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #711: Gurel vs Van Foreest

2/22/2026 – Ten weeks ago we studied the positional masterpiece that Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus created against MVL with the help of the Exchange Variation of the Ruy Lopez. The other young Turkish star Ediz Gurel also played this opening twice in his match against Jorden van Foreest, making it a real Turkish speciality. The Dutchman was suffering in the 4th matchgame before reaching a draw, but in the 6th game he came better prepared and brilliantly showed where Black's chances are. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #710: Korobov vs Levin

2/20/2026 – The German Bundesliga always provides us with a beautiful collection of top level games. This weekend a very instructive game was played between top grandmaster Anton Korobov and the experienced grandmaster and trainer Felix Levin. A Petrov Defence turned into French Exchange variation and while the queens were quickly exchanged in this symmetrical structure, the game instructively shows that there is always still enough to play for. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #708: Erigaisi vs Abdusattorov

2/5/2026 – In recent years Nodirbek Abdusattorov was very close to winning the Tata Steel Chess Tournament in Wijk aan Zee, but now he finally managed to actually win it and very deservedly so. After his recent dropping out of the World's top ten, this crowns his comeback, now being number 5 in the World rankings with 2771. Our Game of the Week is the decisive last round game Erigaisi-Abdusattorov, which saw a highly interesting Evans Gambit, which could have easily gone differently. Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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Game of the Week #707: Van Foreest vs Keymer

1/30/2026 – With the final weekend of the Tata Steel Chess tournament still ahead of us, the tournament leader is Abdusattorov, followed by Sindarov, Van Foreest and Bluebaum. The latter has crossed the 2700 barrier for the first time and Van Foreest also set a new rating record. Our Game of the Week between Jorden van Foreest and Vincent Keymer is one of the most spectacular games of the tournament. Some opening inaccuracies by Black were punished in the most instructive manner.| Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Game of the Week #705: Both players could have won

1/9/2026 – We are starting 2026 with a wildly romantic game between Yair Parkhov and Lazaro Bruzon Batista from the Pan-American Intercollegiate Championship. Often our Game of the Week is a model game by one side, but this game both players could have won. The Sicilian Najdorf with the sharp old main line 6.Bg5 can easily get completely out of the control. There are many possible piece sacrifices and soon the all the variations become too difficult to calculate, even for grandmasters. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Game of the Week #704: van Foreest vs Rodshtein

12/31/2025 – This month we looked at the amazing performances of the young super talents Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus (14) and Faustino Oro (12). We also paid attention to the biggest rating jumps at 2700 level: Nodirbek Abdusattorov returned to the absolute top and Nihal Sarin firmly went over 2700. We'd like to finish the year with another popular player returning to the world elite: Jorden van Foreest did well in the Czech league, his game against Rodshtein was played in his trademark original style. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Game of the Week #703: Sarin vs Svane

12/24/2025 – In the past few weeks the Global Chess League was being played, but that is rapid and we prefer classical chess. So for this week's Game of the Week we decided to return to early December, when Nihal Sarin managed to win the President Cup in Uzbekistan with 7 out of 9, two full points ahead of the rest of the field. In the first round Nihal, who is now on 2716 thanks to his powerful performance, won an impressive and instructive positional game against Frederik Svane. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.

Game of the Week #702: Oro vs Schnaider

12/23/2025 – Last week we saw 14-year-old Yagiz Kaan Erdogmus beating MVL in a match and this week the big news is the second GM norm of 12-year-old Faustino Oro. His first round game against 14-year-old Ilan Schnaider was a very fascinating encounter in the Sicilian Najdorf and therefore our Game of the Week. This new generation of top players seems to have a different take on the game and it's very interesting to investigate how that differs from a more classical approach. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
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