3 Best Games of the Week – 48

The first super tournament of the year has started in Wijk aan Zee and has brought us many interesting and fighting games and a few surprises as well. For this week’s article, we have selected all three games from this tournament and we hope that you will enjoy them as much as we did!

Game 1:

We will start with Levon Aronian’s spectacular win over Anish Giri. Aronian, with the white pieces, introduced a new idea at move 8 that seemed to work out very well for him in the end. However, he did not win out of the opening, of course. Black made a slightly inaccurate decision to give up the bishop pair in order to close the center and try to dominate it with his knights. But Aronian found a very interesting positional exchange sacrifice that annihilated black’s active knight and left him with very passive pieces.

Game 2:

One of the surprises of the tournament was Magnus Carlsen’s loss against Richard
Rapport in a rather equal position. He probably wasn’t happy with a draw and wanted to push for a win, but was severely punished. Rapport played a nice game and he always seemed to be in control, forcing the World Champion to find some precise moves in order to maintain the equality.

Game 3:

Last, we’d like to show you Wesley So’s win with the white pieces against Radoslaw Wojtaszek. We liked the way white manoeuvred his pieces and kept improving slowly, while putting pressure on his opponent. A slight inaccuracy from black’s side was enough to give So the edge and he finely converted it into a win.