The Fide World Cup is one of the most prestigious Chess Tournaments in the World! The winner of this tournament will go on to play in the Chess Candidates, the winner of which will Challenge the World Champion!
Whilst it gathers some of the best in the World, like Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru, and many other big names, there are dozens of brilliant and underrated players who need to be in the spotlight. So let’s dive right in!
Game One
Having a grand total of 3 Brilliant moves and 6 Great moves, between GM Adham Fawzey from Egypt and GM Luis Paulo Supi from Brazil, this game is mesmerising. With the first Brilliant move happening at move 25, it involves sacrificing a knight that traps the Queen!
Notice how the Eval bar is 0. These players are so Brilliant that a Brilliant move doesn’t even push the eval up.
Even though infiltration is important for your pieces, it’s also important for your pieces not to be overextended. Many of us make this mistake by capturing the poisoned pawn on B2 or B7, which leads to our Queen being overextended and them gaining a ton of development.
This second Brilliant move is a reminder to all of us that sometimes, sacrificing a piece to invest in a passed pawn is sometimes a good idea. Later on, the opponent had to offer the knight, in order to not lose the game, to this powerful pawn.
Game Two
In the second game between GM Javokhir Sindarov from Uzbekistan and GM Markus Ragger from Austria, there were a total of 7 Great Moves and 1 Brilliant Sacrifice! This game is Brilliant since it shows us how GMs play a position, down an exchange, and Win!
In this position, what may look like a stupid blunder of a rook to you is actually a Brilliant Sacrifice! That is because after he takes the rook, with a discovered attack to the Queen, the King is now bombarded with several pieces at once.
He must play super accurately, in order to avoid being mated. But, even if he plays all the best moves (which happened), he will still lose 3 pawns, which is critical because the Queens have to be traded, in order to not be checkmated.
The 3 pawn advantage overwhelmed GM Markus (Playing Black) in the end. This proves that, when you’re down material, either through sacrifice or blunder, you must try to locate areas of counterplay, where you can win back material, or create a huge threat like White did.
Conclusion
Ultimately, I believe that more people need to know these players. Chess news in many places only covers popular players, which means that these brilliant, deserving GMs are left out. So, to honour these players, I would like to ask, which one of the games do you prefer?
