Game of the Week #670: A. Firouzja - M. Vachier-Lagrave, Bucharest 2025

by Merijn van Delft
5/9/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft analyses a game from the Superbet tournament in Bucharest: Alireza Firouzja's masterclass in attacking against Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. | 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 #670

The Superbet Chess Classic in Romania has started with a very strong field including world champion Gukesh, Caruana and Abdusattorov. It's a shame that Erigaisi is often missing from these elite events for some reason.

The most impressive game of the first round was undoubtedly Firouzja's win over MVL, which is our Game of the Week.

Avoiding the Sicilian main lines with a d3 King's Indian attack was a most interesting choice and the whole game a true masterpiece.

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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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 #669: A. Erigaisi - M. Warmerdam, Bundesliga 2024/2025

4/30/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft presents a game of Arjun Erigaisi, in which the Indian Grandmaster once again proves his talent for attacking chess. | 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 #668: E. Amar - B. Jacobson, Grenke Open 2025

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 <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.