Gelfand game from Gibraltar 2017

Game of the Day

The Positional Pawn Sacrifice

The following game was played at the recently concluded TradeWise Gibraltar Chess Festival in the 6th round between former World Champion Challenger Boris Gelfand and the talented young International Master Nitzan Steinberg from Israel.

The game is in many ways typical of the modern style of playing the Catalan Opening: White sacrifices a pawn in order to create positional pressure, trying to prevent Black from achieving a ‘normal’ development. Hardly a perfect game by either player, but this only serves to demonstrates the enormous practical chances that such a style of play can give way to.

This game is also one of my favourite games from the Gibraltar tournament.  I hope you enjoy it also. I use the RPB-plugin here, so you need only click your mouse on any move and a pop-up window will appear, which you can resize or place to the side of the screen.

GM Gelfand,B – IM Steinberg,N Gibraltar 20-01-2017