Screenshot by achja
Titled Arena Philidor bishop sacrifice
Watching live I saw a well-known theme but an incorrect oneThe Titled Arena from last weekend was incredibly exciting. For some time a 15 year old (IM @chess-art-us) and a 16 year old (GM @Ediz_Gurel) were leading the pack but in the end it was GM Andrew Tang and the 16 year old GM Ediz Gurel who were going for first place. Even in the last minute things were not clear. Both competitors ended at the same amount of points (167) but Ediz Gurel took 1st place.
One thing that caught my eye was a Philidor defense game that was played. Years ago I used to analyze chess games every week with an old NM (In his prime days 2300+ rated, and yes, Holland did have NM titles once upon a time) and he showed me the details of bishop sacrifices in the Philidor defense. And that is the reason I'm particularly interested in the various Philidor defense sacrifices, including the one after black plays h7h6? (instead of Be7), a line where I'd like to write about in the future.
In this Titled Arena game GM Ediz Gurel went for an incorrect bishop sacrifice, maybe because the resulting positions can be very sharp and it can be easy to confuse lines. Let's look at that game, first with my comments with some help from Lichess Stockfish :
The same game with Lichess Stockfish analysis :
