Game of the Week #561: L. Mendonca - S. Brunello

by Merijn van Delft
3/31/2023 – In his “Game of the Week” show #561, Merijn van Delft focuses his attention on Leon Luke Mendonca, who recently scored a perfect 9 out of 9 in Slovenia. In one of his wins, against Sabino Brunello, the youngster successfully combined his positional approach with tactical alertness. | 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 #561

This week, our attention was drawn by Leon Luke Mendonca, who plays for HSK in the German Bundesliga. He managed to win the 27th HIT Open with the amazing perfect score of 9 out of 9. Admittedly, the tournament was not very strong, but it’s very difficult to keep playing your best game the entire tournament.

Mistakes were made, but in the end, Mendonca’s positional approach combined with tactical alertness did the trick. We will study his round-7 encounter versus Brunello.

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

 
L. Mendonca - S. Brunello, HIT Open 2023
Position after 9...Qh5

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.
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