For this week’s edition of the 3 best games we chose three interesting games played by strong Grandmasters. The first one sees GM Dieter Nisipeanu with the black pieces winning against GM Arkadij Naiditsch with a novelty in the French Defense.
Richard Reti was one of the top players in 1910s and 1920s. In New York 1924 tournament he played 1.Nf3 d4 2.c4 (aka Reti Opening) to defeat the World Champion Jose Capablanca. That was Capablana’s first defeat in 8 years! Reti have set a record by playing 29 simultaneous games blindfolded. Reti is also a famous chess studies composer and a writer. In this article we will learn from some of the best Reti’s games.
Queen is by far the strongest chess piece. Losing a queen on any level typically means losing a game. But what if you have not one, but two queens? Does it mean that you are actually winning the game? You would think so, but ironically in some games having more than a single queen is not a guarantee of success. Today we will take a look at some examples from grandmaster chess, when one or both sides have more than a single queen on the board.
The first game we selected for this week’s edition of the 3 best games was played in the super-strong Norway Chess tournament and features an instructive win of the World Champion Magnus Carlsen over Ukrainian GM Pavel Eljanov.
Even though the game was for most of the time equal, Carlsen kept putting pressure on his opponent by exploiting the weakness of the light squares until black finally went wrong and lost the game.
This is our first selection for this section. Nakamura showed a very nice opening idea in the semi slav with 5.g3 and put a lot of pressure on black’s position early in the game.
The game is very instructive as it shows the value of development and the compensation for a pawn that white had during the whole game.
This is an incredible game by the young Chinese star. Although the sacrifices are all typical in the sharp Najdorf with 6.Bg5, it is still nice to see them played in an over the board game. Black simply chose the wrong variation to play against Wei Yi and lost in the most painful way.
For this week’s edition of 3 best games we have selected three games played in the recently finished Candidates Tournament won by the Russian GM Karjakin.
Nakamura was unlucky in the tournament of not getting a better result.
Our first game from this week’s selection was played in the recently finished Aeroflot Open, one of the strongest open tournaments in the world. GM Vladimir Potkin defeated the young Chinese promise We Yi in a critical anti Grunfeld variation. White plays with his king in the center and at first sight it looks risky, but on a closer look it seems that it’s black who has to worry about his own king.
For this week’s edition we have chosen three attacking games that have a nice tactical finish. The first one was played by the American Grandmaster Gata Kamsy in Cappelle la Grande. He used his favorite weapon when playing with white, the London System.
The first game that we chose for this week’s edition of the 3 best games is the win of the Chinese Grandmaster Lu Shanglei against the Bosnian legend Bojan Kurajica in the recently finished Cappelle la Grande Open. Having the white pieces, he got a nice edge out of the opening in the form of the development advantage. It’s interesting to watch how he keeps increasing the pressure to convert this small plus.
