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Game of the Week: Beating the Petroff

by Merijn van Delft

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11/28/2018 – Ideas and strategies in Grandmaster games can be quite instructive. IM Merijn van Delft presents games like these every Wednesday at 20:00 CET (19:00 UT, 2 pm EDT). On this week's show: Magnus Carlsen's attempt in London to beat Caruana's Petroff. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders. To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows.

The Reliable Petroff

The Reliable Petroff

The Petroff (or Russian) Defence which is characterised by the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 has been popular at the highest levels for many years and enjoys the reputation of being an extremely solid defence.

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Week 48

Carlsen couldn't break Caruana's Petroff Defence in the classical games, but in the German Bundesliga last weekend Ganguly played a great game beating Fridman's Petroff, which we will study tonight.

As a warm-up question: How would you have played in the notorious final position of the 12th match game?

Caruana vs Carlsen, Game 12

Position after 31...Ra8

White to move

This week's show

The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders.

To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows

This show is in two parts — click or tap "part 2" to switch
Merijn is live at 20:00 CET (18:00 UT, 2 pm EDT)

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Merijn van Delft 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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