Maxime Vachier Lagrave - The 7th Highest Rated Player in History

GM Maxime Vachier Lagrave, also known as MVL is one of the best chess players from France, with a monster peak rating of 2819! He earned the prestigious GM title at the age of 14, after which he won the French championships 3 times. He achieved a peak ranking of World #2 in August of 2016, an elite position! 

He is also the former World Blitz Chess Champion, and it goes to show his insane strength! 

With a great opening repertoire under his belt and some mind-blowing attacking play, MVL has played quite a few memorable games in his career! 

In this game, Maxime goes all in with the black pieces to take down an extremely formidable opponent, Anish Giri! 

Some key takeaways from this action-packed game are well-timed sacrifices, the importance of utilizing all your pieces to coordinate a strong attack! Implementing these changes, or improving these skills will definitely level up your game and make you a stronger chess player! 

   

There are some other highlights throughout MVL's chess career, and here are a few crazy moves in the form of puzzles! 

This is a game played back in 2011, in Tata Steel, where MVL(Black) against the strong Ian Nepomniachtchi finds an incredible way to end the game! Can you find it?

 

Here's another game played by MVL in a bullet game against Jeffrey Xiong, finding a nice sacrifice! Can you find the winning move? 

Answers:

1) 1. Rg7 Kxg7 2.Rf7 then Qh7

2) 1...Qxf3+ 2. gxf3 Bh3#

 

Be on the lookout for the next part of the series! 

 

As always, 

GoldenPhoenix987