Game of the Week #671: M. Vachier-Lagrave vs Gukesh, Superbet Classic Tournament, Bucharest 2025

by Merijn van Delft
5/16/2025 – In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft shows how Maxime Vachier-Lagrave won a fine game against World Champion Gukesh at the Superbet Classic Tournament in Bucharest. | 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 #671

Last week we saw the masterpiece Firouzja-MVL from the first round of the Superbet Chess Classic. Just when you think that's a logical result, because the new generation tends to take over, MVL bounces back with a crushing victory over Gukesh, which is our current Game of the Week.

The world champion is having a disastrous tournament and was in last place after seven rounds. The choice of opening, the good old Scotch, must have come as a suprise, and trouble started early on.

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

M. Vachier-Lagrave - Gukesh, Bucharest 2025
Position after 9...d6

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 #670: A. Firouzja - M. Vachier-Lagrave, Bucharest 2025

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 <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 #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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Video

60m How to fight Queen's Pawn Openigns

After 1.d4 d5 many players with White avoid the great amount of theory in the Slav, Semi-Slav, QGA and Orthodox Queen's Gambit and do not therefore play 2.c4. This is not very ambitious, but the painful experience of many chess players has been that the Colle System, the Trompowsky Attack, the Torre Attack and the London System are nevertheless extremely dangerous. Black has to be prepared for each of these openings and IM Valeri Lilov offers you some help with his six instructive videos, in which he demonstrates for each single opening a relevant plan for Black. In addition to the openings mentioned, the Bulgarian trainer also delves into the Catalan, the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit and the Richter-Veresov Opening.
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