Game of the Week #677: Praggnanandhaa - R. Rapport, Tashkent 2025

by Merijn van Delft
6/27/2025 – In the new episode of his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft presents a real brilliancy: Richard Rapport's win against Praggnanandhaa at the UzChess Cup in Tashkent. Kasparov saw the game and was impressed. | 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 #677

Richard Rapport is not having a fantastic tournament in Uzbekistan at the moment, but he did play the coolest game of the tournament, which is our Game of the Week.

With Black against Praggnanandhaa he confidently played the King's Indian and created a true masterpiece. Both players were in fact well prepared and the entire line does need a high level of accuracy by both. Black's key sacrifice in fact reminded Kasparov of a few of his own classic King's Indian battles.

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

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.