Game of the Week #681: B. Jobava vs B. Bakhrillaev, Aix-en-Provence 2025

by Merijn van Delft
7/26/2025 – Baadur Jobava is famous for his creativity, his tactical prowess and his attacking skills. In the new episode of his Game of the Week show, Merijn van Delft presents a game in which Jobava demonstrated all of that. | 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 #681

In the second round of the very strong tournament in Aix-en-Provence, the legendary Baadur Jobava played a lovely game against the young talented FM Bakhrom Bakhrillaev from Uzbekistan.

The game started as a Ponziani opening turned into a Philidor with colours reversed. Black is even slightly better in the beginning, but the position is very complex with all pieces still on the board. Please enjoy the string of creative moves that Jobava produced next in our Game of the Week.

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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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.