Game of the Week #668: E. Amar - B. Jacobson, Grenke Open 2025

by Merijn van Delft
4/24/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft analyses a game, in which Black found a recipe against White's Rossolimo-Variation, and then showed why a pair of knights can be a powerful duo. | 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 #668

The world's elite played in the Freestyle section of the Grenke Chess Festival, with Magnus Carlsen scoring a perfect 9 out of 9. For our game of the week we looked at the Classical section, where Aswath S and Brandon Jacobson both scored a fantastic 8 out of 9.

Aswath won their direct encounter, but Jacobson scored 100% in his remaining games. In the final round, Jacobson used a very impressive strategy with Black, which is difficult to beat once it has been set in motion.

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

E. Amar - B. Jacobson, Grenke Open 2025
Position after 17.Nf3

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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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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Game of the Week #667: Lu Shanglei vs Eltaj Safarli, Reykjavik Open 2025

4/19/2025 – In his latest Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft analyses an encounter played at the Reykjavik Open between Lu Shanglei and Eltaj Safarli. Lu conducted the game in beautiful positional fashion, and once White gained the upper hand, the tactics all started to work in his favour. | 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>.
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Game of the Week #666: B. Khotenashvili vs T. Injac, European Women's Championship 2025

4/10/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft takes a look at the European Women's Championship as it nears the finish line. With two rounds to go, Teodora Injac from Serbia is leading with 8.0/9. In round 8, she won an important and exciting game against Bela Khotenashvili. | 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>.
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Video

60m English The Elephant Gambit

The Elephant Gambit (1.e4.e5 2.Nf3 d5!?) has never really been given the attention it deserves. It is a very useful surprise weapon. Let us list the advantages of playing this particular opening: 1) Shock value 2) It is very aggressive. Black can take over the initiative early. 3) Many tricky lines 4) Unorthodox. Black is basically taking the game to the opponent as early as move two. Not many openings do that! It's a perfect opening for young players and club players to adopt. Let Andrew Martin select a repertoire for you on this 60 mins, which, if used with discretion, will rack up the points. I am sure that you will enjoy this unusual tour of the Elephant Gambit.
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