Game of the Week #658: Gukesh vs A. Erigaisi, Tata Steel 2025

by Merijn van Delft
2/14/2025 – Despite all the current excitement about Freestyle Chess, Merijn van Delft takes a look at a classical game in his new Game of the Week show. He analyses the game Gukesh lost against Arjun Erigaisi in the final round of the Tata Steel Tournament in Wijk aan Zee - a game, in which Erigaisi showed his attacking skills. | 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 #658

While the Freestyle Tournament in Weissenhaus has an absolute world class line-up and is very interesting, and both forms of chess can co-exist nicely, this week's game of the week is still a classical game.

Once again we revisit the Tata Steel chess tournament in Wijk aan Zee, which had such a spectacular final. Gukesh, with the white pieces, did not want to settle for a boring draw, but went for something more complicated, which led to a tough battle with Erigaisi.

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

Gukesh - A. Erigaisi, Tata Steel Tournament Wijk aan Zee 2025
Position after 13...Bh3

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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