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

by Merijn van Delft
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.
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 #705

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.

Warming-up question: What would you play here with White?

This week's show

Besides covering all the critical lines after 1.d4 & 2.c4, popular systems such as the Trompovsky, London/Jobava System, Torre Attack, Colle System and Veresov are dealt with as well.

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<< A practical case
World Champion Gukesh plays in Prague Chess Festival >>
Topics: The Game of the Week, Training and improvement
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.
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See also

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 <a href="https://account.chessbase.com/en/create-account" target="_blank">register a Premium account here</a>.

See also

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 <a href="https://account.chessbase.com/en/create-account" target="_blank">register a Premium account here</a>.

Video

60m The Two Knights

This entry into the 60 minutes series concentrates on the Modern variation of the Italian game where White opens the centre early : 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 d4 exd4 5 e5!. This line can be reached by various move orders, most frequently from the Scotch 3 d4 exd4 4 Bc4. It's a sharp variation and Grandmasters such as Evgeny Sveshnikov have used it frequently,with very good results. It's a perfect line for club players to adopt which is relatively easy to learn and which contains many traps. All the main responses are covered here, including 5...d5, 5...Ng4 and 5...Ne4 and the conclusion is that is is difficult for Black to equalize in a straightforward way. Problems are being posed, which over the board might prove tough to solve.