Welcome to this year’s first GOTM! This was a tricky one to choose as so many tournaments are being played currently. I was also not very up to date as had not been online for ten days or so over Christmas. However I found the following very interesting.

Before we move on to the game I’ll just mention a few of the tournaments ongoing. In Italy the Reggio Emilia round robin is very strong and sees an in-form Hikaru Nakamura on 5/6 ahead of Alexander Morozevich on 3.5, Vassily Ivanchuk and Anish Giri on 3/6, Fabiano Caruana 2.5/6 and lastly Nikita Vitiugov on 1.

Meanwhile over in Spain the San Sebastian tournament is back with a very strong field and a twist. The organisers have chosen the top section to be a knockout of 64 players with those knocked out playing in an Open. However the interesting bit is that the two game matches are played simultaneously; one game with White and one with Black against the same opponent at the same time. At the time of writing Mamedyarov is the highest rated casualty, losing his round four match to the top Peruvian GM Granda Zuniga.

Back in England we have the Hastings Congress. Top seed Wang Yue’s rating has fallen in the past year from a huge high of 2756 but his 2694 rating is still impressive. He’s leading on 5.5/6 ahead of a strong Indian contingent on 5/6. With all this chess being played it’s hard to focus on annotating games and packing for New Zealand!

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