Game of the Week #693: Van Wely - Kovalenko, European Team Championship 2025

by Merijn van Delft
10/15/2025 – The European Team Championship was exciting from start to finish and in the end the well deserved winner was Ukraine. Their top scorer Igor Kovalenko has a very impressive life story, having served at the front lines of the war for 2.5 years and now returning to top level chess. Our Game of the Week is his positional masterpiece from the important seventh round encounter against the Netherlands, in which he outplayed Loek van Wely with a very creative manoeuvre. | 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 #693

The European Team Championship was exciting from start to finish and in the end the well deserved winner was Ukraine. Their top scorer Igor Kovalenko has a very impressive life story, having served at the front lines of the war for 2.5 years and now returning to top level chess. Our Game of the Week is his positional masterpiece from the important seventh round encounter against the Netherlands, in which he outplayed Loek van Wely with a very creative manoeuvre.

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

This week's show

Besides covering all the critical lines after 1.d4 & 2.c4, popular systems such as the Trompovsky, London/Jobava System, Torre Attack, Colle System and Veresov are dealt with as well.

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<< Robert Ris: The menacing Colle & Zukertort System for the Club Player!
Creative and successful: Richard Rapport >>
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 #692: Kourkoulos vs Schitco, European Team Championship 2025

10/9/2025 – The European Team Championship has started and we are spoiled every day with exciting matches between countries. Germany is number one seed with their dream team Vincent Keymer/Rasmus Svane/Matthias Bluebaum/Dmitrij Kollars/Frederik Svane, but the team of coach Jan Gustafsson is having a bumpy start in the tournament. Our Game of the Week is the masterpiece Stamatis Kourkoulos-Arditis (Greece) created against Ivan Schitco (Moldova) in the first round. | 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 #691: Rapport - Huschenbeth, Bundesliga 2025

10/2/2025 – The German Bundesliga season has started last weekend and as usual many world class players take part. These days there are several teams with incredibly strong line-ups, but Baden-Baden has had one for decades. For instance, Vincent Keymer is currently number 10 in the world and number 7 at Baden-Baden. Our Game of the Week is the instructive positional win by Richard Rapport with White against German top grandmaster Niclas Huschenbeth. | 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.