Game of the Week #674: H. Nakamura - Gukesh, Norway Chess 2025

by Merijn van Delft
6/6/2025 – In the latest episode of his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft presents the encounter between Hikaru Nakamura and World Champion Gukesh from the Norway Chess Tournament. Nakamura achieved a convincing victory through strong play. | 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 #674

Norway Chess continues to be extremely exciting, with the world's best players competing. The 10-second increment still leads to unusual situations, with several well-played games being spoiled in an unfortunate way.

However, our Game of the Week is an exception: Nakamura controlled the game from start to finish and beat the World Champion.

Gukesh is a fascinating, mysterious player who combines brilliant play with unexpected mistakes.

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

H. Nakamura - Gukesh, Norway Chess 2025
Position after 20.Nxg6+

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 #673: A. Erigaisi - Gukesh, Norway Chess 2025

5/29/2025 – In the latest episode of his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft analyses a game played by two of India's top grandmasters at the Norway Chess Tournament: Arjun Erigaisi vs. Gukesh. Erigaisi demonstrated both his class and creativity. | 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>.

See also

Game of the Week #672: M. Dobrikov - V. Keymer, German Championship, Munich 2025

5/22/2025 – Vincent Keymer began the German Championships in style, scoring 6.5 points from his first seven games. His game in round 1 already indicated that he was in great shape. In his new Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft takes a closer look. | 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 A solid scandinavian surprise

On this 60 mins video we are going to concentrate on a simple, very solid idea in the main line Scandinavian, which even Magnus Carlsen has used to win games. Black focusses on making his life easy in the opening and forces White to work very hard to get advantage – but it is doubtful if White can get an advantage. Club players are always on the lookout for effective, time-saving solutions and here we have just that. Accompany FIDE Senior Trainer and IM Andrew Martin on this 60 mins video. You can learn a new opening system in 60 mins and start to play it with confidence on the very same day!
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