My Favorite 1.d4 Miniatures #2 (Grunfeld Defense)

Welcome to the second installment of “My Favorite 1.d4 Miniatures” If you are just joining us be sure to checkout our first beautiful mini here.

So, when I first conceived this idea I thought it would be cake to find super interesting 1.d4 miniatures. Just fire up the database, sort for decisive games less than 25 moves and flip though the games... How many could there be? Oh.... at least 100,000!

It turns out that most “miniatures” are the result of some mundane tactical blow. Finding a Master level game where one side just got blown off the board is actually quite challenging. I guess that is why they are masters!

That being said, I found a real gem for you today. Back in 1972, Ulrich Nehmert dropped the “disco” ball on his development and King safety. Relatively unknown, Hungarian, IM Gyula Sax (GM in 1974) provided a model example of piece play, tearing Ulrich apart in the process.

Before showing the game, I would like to share a comment from Judit Polar regarding Sax:

“Gyula Sax was one of the greatest chess players of Hungary. He was the first GM who treated me as a fellow chess player when I was only 9 years old. He was ready to analyze positions with me, and shared ideas and by doing so he gave me a lot of self-confidence. Later I met him in many different occasions, we played against each other, and played in the national team together. He was also an Olympic gold medalist and a fantastically energetic attacking player!”

Let's see some of that fantastic energetic attacking now:

As always, thanks for checking out my blog! Be sure to add me as a friend to be notified of future blog entries!

Do you play a great 1.d4 miniature? If so, send me the PGN and maybe I'll include it in my article!