The Ruy Lopez Chigorin Defense by GM Arun and GM Magesh

This week we shall take a look at the Ruy Lopez Chigorin defense. Personally I (Magesh) have played this variation as both white and black for quite some time. Not that I can call myself an expert in it, but we felt I have had quite a few interesting experiences in this variation that could be of reasonable use to our readers. As we had discussed a few weeks ago, the Spanish opening is a very unique opening in itself. The closed positions require good positional understanding, and also the possibility to play on both sides of the board keeps the game very dynamic.

We can start our proceedings with my game against Mikhail Golubev from the Paris Open 2004. The circumstances under which this game happened were quite interesting. When me and my good friend Sandipan Chanda had arrived in Paris for the tournament, unfortunately my name was not posted in the players list. I talked to the organizer about the issue and I was told that things were taken care off. Being a 2440 player I was not expecting a strong opposition in my first game and I was quite relaxed. To my surprise when I arrived for the game my name was still not there in the list and after some last minute confusion I was paired against Golubev. Playing for a GM norm I was definitely not happy to play against a 2530 GM without any prior preparation. Given this situation I was pretty happy with the quality of the game.

Golubev was not playing his best there and the exchange sacrifice was not a technically correct one, but the game was satisfying for me under the given circumstances. The next game was one of the most important games in my career as it lead me to win the Asian Junior Championship in 2003 and in the process earn my first Grand Master norm. I played against my colleague from the same city as mine (Madurai) GM Deepan Chakravarthy.

Placing all the pieces on the right squares plus some good defense fetched me a whole point there. The next game is when I played white. The reason we chose this game was because of the beautiful finish.

Fighting back from bad positions is an important trait in itself to fetch you some critical points. We hope our readers enjoyed these games and benefit from our personal experiences.