Game of the Week #695: Cheng vs Giri, European Club Cup 2025

by Merijn van Delft
11/3/2025 – The European Club Cup is always an interesting event, featuring all levels running from strong amateurs to absolute elite players. Both Germany's Vincent Keymer and Dutch Anish Giri used the opportunity to further rise in the world rankings, currently being 4th and 5th respectively. Giri started playing more aggressively recently, playing great Najdorf games against 1.e4. In our Game of the Week against Bobby Cheng he showed how you can attack with Black against the Catalan. | 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 #695

The European Club Cup is always an interesting event, featuring all levels running from strong amateurs to absolute elite players. Both Germany's Vincent Keymer and Dutch Anish Giri used the opportunity to further rise in the world rankings, currently being 4th and 5th respectively. Giri started playing more aggressively recently, playing great Najdorf games against 1.e4. In our Game of the Week against Bobby Cheng he showed how you can attack with Black against the Catalan.

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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<< World Cup: Four players bounce back on demand, Wang upsets Mendonca
World Seniors: Mikhalevski, Reprintsev, Arakhamia-Grant and Strutinskai grab gold medals >>
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 #694: Niemann vs Caruana, US Championship 2025

10/25/2025 – There is a lot of top level chess going on this week, including the US championship and the European Club Cup, but everything was overshadowed by the shocking death of Daniel Naroditsky at the age of 29. His story and his legacy should be told and shared by the people who knew him best, that's why this video is on another topic. At this point Caruana is leading the US championship and he is playing very creative and dynamic chess. We will discuss his impressive win against Niemann. | 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 #693: Van Wely - Kovalenko, European Team Championship 2025

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 <a href="https://account.chessbase.com/en/create-account" target="_blank">register a Premium account here</a>.

Video

60m English A practical repertoire against the scotch

For a long time the Scotch opening was considered harmless and rarely played. This changed in 1990 when Garry Kasparov successfully employed the Scotch opening in his World Championship match against Anatoly Karpov. But that was 25 years ago. Now, there is no need to panic if you want to play 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 and need a line against the Scotch. On this 60 Minutes renowned and successful coach Adrian Mikhalchishin gives simple practical tips how to neutralize and counter the Scotch.