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Game of the Week: A great Gruenfeld battle
12/25/2019 – This week IM Merijn van Delft looks back on an exciting and critical Grünfeld encounter from the FIDE Grand Prix in Jerusalem between Ian Nepomniachtchi and Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium account holders (but FREE for a limited time!). Merijn is available on demand this week starting at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET / 4 PM EST).
The Grünfeld is a highly dynamic opening in which Black's position often seems to hang together by a single thread; and yet, this apparently precarious equilibrium appears to be enough to make it entirely viable — up to the highest level.
Game of the Week #392
Last week I was not too impressed yet by the games of the FIDE Grand Prix in Jerusalem, but the Semi-final between Nepomniachtchi and MVL was an epic battle between two absolute elite players. Both of them are true experts on the Grünfeld, the opening that appeared in both games. Personally, I have been reading about the legendary Karpov-Kasparov matches in the past week, in which the Grünfeld also played a prominent role. We'll discuss how Nepomniachtchi managed to get the upper hand, which was key to winning the tournament.
The live show is free to watch, and available on-demand for ChessBase Premium accounts.
Warming-up question: What would you play here with White?
Merijn will explain in the show!
This week's show
My best games in the Grünfeld by Alexei Shirov
The Gruenfeld Defense is an active and dynamic reply to 1.d4 which can lead to complex and extremely sharp positions. So it’s no wonder that also Alexei Shirov included this opening into his repertoire. At the candidates’ final against Vladimir Kramnik in Cazorla in 1998, he exclusively – and successfully – trusted the Gruenfeld Indian with Black; the victory over Kramnik gave him the right to play a WCh match versus Kasparov.
To chat, please visit videos.chessbase.com/live or login via Playchess for Windows. Merijn is available on-demand at 19:00 UTC (20:00 CET / 4 PM EST).
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