The Delayed Zagreb
Fabiano Caruana seems to particularly enjoy participating in Grand Chess Tour events. After convincingly winning the 2023 series, he won the Superbet Classic in Romania and is now the clear leader at the SuperUnited Tournament in Zagreb (Caruana did not participate in this year’s inaugural tournament in Warsaw).
The former World Championship challenger collected 3 wins and 3 draws on the first two days of action in Croatia, and impressively ended his strong run in the rapid section of the event with 3 consecutive wins. Caruana thus extended his lead to 3 points before entering the final two days of play, when 18 rounds of blitz will decide the winner of the tour’s third event.
In this video course, experts including Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Karsten Müller and Oliver Reeh, examine the games of Boris Spassky. Let them show you which openings Spassky chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were and much more.
On Friday, Caruana grabbed wins over Gukesh, Anish Giri and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. In his game against Giri, the tournament leader even got to play a novelty on the seventh move. Out of a Sicilian Defence, Caruana surprised his opponent with 7.g3, and during a post-game interview with podcast co-host Cristian Chirila, decided to christen the variation as the “Delayed Zagreb”.
Caruana ended the 9 rounds of rapid with 15 points (wins are worth 2 points in the rapid). Standing second and third are the two remaining US representatives, Wesley So and Levon Aronian respectively. So remains undefeated with 12 points, while Aronian has already lost twice in Zagreb, but has compensated for his losses by scoring 4 wins — going into the blitz, Aronian has 11 points to his name.

Wesley So showed great tactical skills to beat Ivan Saric with the black pieces in round 8 | Photo: Lennart Ootes

Levon Aronian beat the 2024 World Championship challenger on Friday | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Caruana 1 - 0 Giri
The Ruy Lopez is one of the oldest openings which continues to enjoy high popularity from club level to the absolute world top. In this video series, American super GM Fabiano Caruana, talking to IM Oliver Reeh, presents a complete repertoire for White.

Fabiano Caruana | Photo: Lennart Ootes
Final standings - Rapid (win = 2 pts, draw = 1 pt)
All games
Replay and check the LiveBook here |
Please, wait...
- Start an analysis engine:
- Try maximizing the board:
- Use the four cursor keys to replay the game. Make moves to analyse yourself.
- Press Ctrl-B to rotate the board.
- Drag the split bars between window panes.
- Download&Clip PGN/GIF/FEN/QR Codes. Share the game.
- Games viewed here will automatically be stored in your cloud clipboard (if you are logged in). Use the cloud clipboard also in ChessBase.
- Create an account to access the games cloud.
Links