Game of the Week #686: Caruana - Firouzja, Sinquefield Cup 2025

by Merijn van Delft
8/27/2025 – In his latest Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft analyses an instructive game from the Sinquefield Cup: Fabiano Caruana's impressive positional victory over Alireza Firouzja. | 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 #686

Last week we saw Praggnanandhaa Rameshbabu's instructive win against Gukesh Dommaraju, from the first round of the Sinquefield Cup. Meanwhile, Fabiano Caruana finish the tournament tied for first place after nine rounds of classical chess - so let's study one of his wins as well.

In the third round, Caruana played with white against Alireza Firouzja, and this is our Game of the Week. Caruana did not get much from the opening, but while these positions look deceptively easy, it is, on the other hand, very easy to choose the wrong plan. Caruana ended up winning a positional model game.

Warm-up question: What would you play here as White?

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.