Game of the Week: Motylev, Yilmaz

Alexander Motylev is a strong, experienced grandmaster, but he certainly wasn’t one of the favorites at the European Individual Championship. He managed to get on a fantastic hot streak and pile up a spectacular score of 9/11, a whole point ahead of the field. He was ruthless with White, winning all five of those games. Motylev’s score with Black was more modest (though three of his draws were with 2700-plus players), but we are going to feature one of his two Black wins today. The Dutch Defense has gone in and out of respectability. The latest uptick has been in the Leningrad Variation, largely due to the efforts of Hikaru Nakamura. The latest adherent is long-time Grunfeld maven Petr Svidler, who has used the Dutch in critically important games in the 2014 Candidates Tournament. There are few established main lines in the Dutch, allowing a lot of room for creativity and new possibilities. Motylev later used the super mainstream Slav to maintain his tournament lead, but when he was looking to pile up points in round three, he chose the Dutch against 22-year-old Turkish grandmaster Mustafa Yilmaz.