Game of the Week #674: H. Nakamura - Gukesh, Norway Chess 2025

by Merijn van Delft
6/6/2025 – In the latest episode of his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft presents the encounter between Hikaru Nakamura and World Champion Gukesh from the Norway Chess Tournament. Nakamura achieved a convincing victory through strong play. | Merijn's show is available on-demand with a ChessBase Premium Account. You can register a Premium account here.
In this Fritztrainer: “Attack like a Super GM” with Gukesh we touch upon all aspects of his play, with special emphasis on how you can become a better attacking player.

Game of the Week #674

Norway Chess continues to be extremely exciting, with the world's best players competing. The 10-second increment still leads to unusual situations, with several well-played games being spoiled in an unfortunate way.

However, our Game of the Week is an exception: Nakamura controlled the game from start to finish and beat the World Champion.

Gukesh is a fascinating, mysterious player who combines brilliant play with unexpected mistakes.

Warm-up question: What would you play here with Black?

This week's show

In this opening Black opts for active piece play and is not afraid to fight for the initiative from an early stage. One of the many good features of this opening is that Black is often the side which controls the pace of the game.

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Merijn van Delft is an International Master from the Netherlands who lived in Hamburg for many years and is currently based in Amsterdam. After scoring a GM norm in 2017 he is eager for more. His ChessBase show on Wednesday evenings has been running for over ten years now.