Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Greek Gift Almost Frustrated
This post is a collaboration with Mr Andrew Crosby who is an expert in chess gambits.
Andrew usually plays them in his games with great success. In addition, he is an active member of our virtual Chess.com club taking part in our online tournaments and matches..
The WR Chess Masters took place in Dusseldorf (Germany) on 15-26th February.
The venue was the prestigious Hyatt Regency Hotel, which overlooks the river Rhine.
The city of Dusseldorf has hosted many important chess events in the past. In 1908, Emanuel Lasker defended his World Champion title against Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch in this city. Also, the very first German Chess Championship took place in Dusseldorf in 1861.
Ten top players participated in a simple round-robin for a fund price of 130,000 Euros. The tournament was a mix of veteran and young players. Along with Aronian, Nepomniachtchi, Giri, So and Duda, five good acomplished teenagers formed the pool: Abdusattorov, Esipenko, Gukesh, Praggnanandha, and the local wunderkind Vincent Keymer.
The time control was 2 hours for the first 40 moves, then 1 hour for the next 20 moves and finally 15 minutes for the rest of the game plus a 30-second increment per move from move 61.
Abdusattorov came from achieving a remarkable performance in the previous Tata Steel Masters tournament in January. There he took the lead for most of the competition, only stumbling in the last round.
In round 2, Abdusattorov outplayed Andrei Esipenko with a crushing attack that featured a Greek Gift sacrifice.
After the game Esipenko confessed that he mixed up his lines and intended 13…Rc8. This is a further example of not recalling one’s home preparation accurately that leads to failure.
Maybe you play chess but are unable to attend a local club. If that is your case, then join our virtual Chess.com club. On our site, we regularly play online tournaments and team matches. More than 1220 members enjoy that chance and new players join every week. We have new tournaments scheduled for the coming months waiting for players! Join now! Additionally, we have a puzzle section and we have recently started to practice the variant of ‘Vote Chess’. Although not very popular, ‘Vote Chess’ is an effective educational tool for learning together.
