During Chess.com’s coverage of the FIDE World Championship, Caruana said that he likes to go against the engine’s will in his opening preparation.
Today, it is almost impossible to find any significant advantage in serious openings. Instead, the main goal of top GMs is to take their opponent out of their preparation.
Caruana claims that he tries to look for moves that are not the engine’s top choices. The idea behind this strategy is that everyone checks to see what the engine suggests in critical positions of the openings; therefore, if you play the engine’s top choices, the likelihood of surprising a strong opponent is low.
However, if you play something like the 5th, 6th, etc. choice of the engine and analyze it deeply, the most likely scenario is that you will at least gain a time advantage and your opponent will make inaccuracies if the position is complex. This leads us to the Game of the Week…
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Game of the Week XVII: Mastrovasilis vs Fier
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Please note that Game of the Week will cover games played from Saturday to Saturday of each week, and any games played on Sunday will go to the next week. See you next Sunday!
Contributors:
GM Vasif Durarbayli
GM Ulvi Bajarani
Edited by Della Almind
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