Game of the Week #657: Praggnanandhaa vs A. Sarana, Tata Steel 2025

by Merijn van Delft
2/7/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show Merijn van Delft takes a look at a game by Praggnanandhaa, the winner of the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee. Praggnanandhaa played against Alexey Sarana and crowned a skilful attack with a nice sacrifice. | 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 #657

For a long time it looked like Gukesh was going to win the Tata Steel Masters, but along the way Praggnanandhaa gained momentum and caught up with the World Champion. A blitz playoff was needed to decide on the winner, and after Pragg lost the first blitz game, he then won two in a row to win the event.

As our Game of the Week we have selected Pragg's twelfth round win against Sarana, which started with very subtle opening play and finished with fireworks.

Warm-up question: What would you play here with 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.