Published 3/21/25
Hello everyone! Today I will talk about an interesting concept that happens at all skill levels which is resigning too early. Just yesterday, there was a game on one of the top boards of the European Individual Cup between Jobava and Grandelius. Grandelius thought he was completely losing and resigned the game. However, he had a nice saving resource and it turns out that the game was not over at all!
Although it looks like black is lost here, there is a nice saving resource:
Although it’s definitely not easy to see Rb7+ from the point when Jobava played Bxf7+ especially when Grandelius was playing with less than a minute left on the clock, I have no doubt that Grandelius would have been able to see the saving resource if the variation was played out and Rd8 was on the board.
It goes to show that in a complex position like the one that Jobava and Grandelius were in, it doesn’t hurt to play a few extra moves before resignation. And who knows… you might get lucky and have a saving resource like Rb7 🙂
Thanks for reading, and as always let me know in the comments if there is anything you want me to write about next time. Have a good day 🙂