World Juniors Rd.08: YASQS - Yet Another Shuvalova Queen Sacrifice!

Shuvalova and queen sacrifices!

Polina Shuvalova is clearly a much stronger player than what her rating suggests. She is rated 2412, but she already won the gold medal in the under-18 girls world youth championship ten days ago, and now at the World Juniors 2019, she seems to be all set to pick up another title. And what is impressive is the way she garners her wins. Dominant play with excellent understanding of the opening, always trying to think about opponent's plans and stopping them, and ruthless ability to finish off a game. The last one clearly points to her tactical vision. Her queen sacrifice from the World Youth against Anna Afonasieva will go down in many tactics manual.

Shuvalova vs Afonasieva, World Youth 2019 Round 7

After the World Youth when Shuvalova won the gold, we asked her, "Is the gold medal more special or this combination?" With a smile on her face she said, "I have to say it's the combination!" And one would imagine that to create something like this would take many years. But Shuvalova, is in a hurry to create brilliancies! She sacrificed her queen once again, this time in the eighth round of the World Junior Championships 2019. Here's how it went:

Shuvalova vs Assaubayeva, round 8

In this position Polina began with Bxc5! The bishop has to be taken and after Qxe5+ Black has to play Ng7. (Qg7 is met with Rd8+)

Of course, a queen sacrifice! Qxc5! Assaubayeva went back ...Rb8, but that led to a lost endgame. Instead if she had taken the queen, it would have led to a picturesque mate.

Miguel Ruiz on how to react when surprised in the opening

Praggnanandhaa usually sticks to his main openings. But in the eighth round, he decided to try something new in the Sicilian. Pragg didn't face any issues in the first few moves as he got a relatively fine position out of the opening. However, the real problems began somewhere in the middlegame where the lack of experience of handling such positions clearly began to show.

Miguel Ruiz vs Praggnanandhaa

Ruiz's handling of the position was quite good. He developed his pieces normally and ensured that he didn't fall for any tactics that were prepared at home by Pragg. The critical mistake came on move 19.

Pragg should have played ...Rf7 instead of c5. The point is not so easy to understand when the position is new to you. White's main idea in the position is to play g4 and sacrifice a pawn. After Nxg4 Rg1, if you hadn't played c5 then you would have the option of Qe3+. In the game c5 was played and after g4 White's attack was just too quick.

Gazik vs Costachi

Annotations by Angela Frank Jain:

Annotations by WIM Angela Frank Jain

Round 8 results in open

Standings after round 8 in open

Round 8 results in girls

Standings after round 8 in girls

With three rounds to go, who do you think will win in the open and girls section?

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