Rapport Plays Move Of The Year

The European Club Cup has been packed with fighting chess, surprising upsets, and tense matches.

After four rounds, only team Alkaloid (fielding 2700s Dmitry Andreikin, Pavel Eljanov, Dmitry Jakovenko, Yu Yangyi, and Yury Kryvoruchko) and Medyni Vsadnik (with 2700s Peter Svidler, Lenier Dominguez Perez, and Nikita Vitiugov) have perfect scores.

The leading team Alkaloid faced off against Cheddleton (featuring two popular Chess.com commentators, Simon Williams and Fiona Steil Antoni). |Photos Lennart Ootes.

Round two already featured many interesting games, but we will restrict ourselves to a single beauty. Sergey Karjakin's second Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (VSK Sveto Nikolaj Srpski) seems to be benefiting hugely from world championship preparations as he won his first three games (before losing his fourth), and defeated Vladislav Artemiev with a sacrifice of a piece for two pawns.

VSK Sveto Nikolaj Srpski (2700s Shakhriyar Mamedyarov and Richard Rapport) continued its good fortune into round three where it defeated OR Padova (2700s Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Levon Aronian, Boris Gelfand, and Peter Leko).

You'll be hard pressed to find a more creative top-three! |Photos Lennart Ootes.

Mamedyarov delivered a key win over Vachier-Lagrave, but the game of the match featured one of the most stunning moves of the year. Rapport essayed his teammate's (Alexander Morozevich) erstwhile pet Chigorin Defence to the Queen's Gambit and worked up a powerful attack against Levon Aronian when he struck with the incredible 27...Rh1+!!, a move that GM Robert Hess labeled a move-of-the-year candidate.

The move was but one part of an excellent attack that brought victory.

What do you think? Is this the move of the year thus far? Tell us in the comments!

In a different round-three match, another beautiful move hit the board as Teimour Radjabov landed a shot against Aleksander Indjic. Can you find it?

VSK Sveto Nikolaj Srpski continued to produce interesting chess in the fourth round, but the good fortune ended against Mednyi Svadnik when Svidler defeated Mamedyarov and Vitiugov wove a lovely mating net versus Morozevich.

Just behind the leaders are Ashdod (2700s Vassily Ivanchuk, and Francisco Vallejo Pons) and Syberia (2700s Vladimir Kramnik, Anish Giri, Alexander Grischuk, Evgeny Tomashevsky, and Li Chao). All is still to play for in the next half of the European Club Cup!

The European Club Cup for women will be covered in a separate news post.