Inside the Master Mind: Winning with the Sicilian Grand-Prix
In my second article, part of the series “Inside the Master Mind: The Best Games of a Chess Coach”, I would like to show you one of my best recent games. This game has been played in the 7th round of one of the most prestigious Open tournaments in Bulgaria – Georgy Tringov Memorial. In this moment I had gained 4.5 points out of 6 games and my only chance to join the battle for the first places and to achieve a good performance was to win. My opponent in this game was one of the strongest Bulgarian players for this time – IM Grigor Grigorov (ELO Rating 2463). Although in this particular game the lot assigned for me to play with white pieces, which is an additional advantage, I expected this game to be really hard and tiring, because of the fact that IM Grigorov is very tough and hopeful player and besides that that was one of the most crucial games in this tournament. Before the game, I had stumbled across a very interesting and dynamic idea in the Sicilian, known as Grand – Prix variation. This modern system, which is initiated by white pieces, is not very common among the high rated players, because black is considered to have enough solid ways to neutralize white’s attack on the king’s side as well as on the other side and create a severe counterplay in the center and on the queen’s side. For that reason this variation is very common among the players, who play at championship level. I consider Gran – Prix as being not enough strong for a regular use of high-ranked players as a part of their opening repertoire, but it reveals a perfect possibility for an opening surprise in some games. This particular game with Grigorov began very interestingly, as we have lined up one of the main lines of this particular variation. While the initial moves were correctly played by both sides, an interesting position occurred, which at first seemed to be very static and completely innocuous, but in fact the deep evaluation of the present situation, involving deep calculation of the future variations and clear perspective for fast development of white pieces showed that this position was far more sophisticated and dynamic rather than it appeared at first sight.
Here is the game:
