Gelfand demolishes Tivi’s Nimzo

Earlier this week I wrote about the Spanish team championship. Later my eye fell on the game Gelfand-Tiviakov, in which Black was demolished. A perfect example of how to play positions with ‘compensation for the sacrificed pawn’, where you have more active pieces than your opponent.

Gelfand-Tiviakov
San Sebastian, 2006

The game saw the not so well-known theoretical pawn sacrifice 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e3 c5 5.Nge2 cxd4 6.exd4 0-0 7.a3 Be7 8.d5 exd5 9.cxd5 Re8 10.d6 Bf8 11.g3 Re6 12.Bf4 Nh5 13.Be3 Rxd6. After 14.Qb3 Nc6 15.Bg2 Nf6 16.0-0 Re6

White now played an extremely normal move that seems to be new: 17.Rad1. After 17…d6 18.Nd4 Nxd4 19.Bxd4 Black opted for 19…Ne8 but the White position seems to play by itself. In this line the ball is obviously in Black’s court!

>> replay the game with annotations