Road to be the Best Chess Player in the World!-Chapter 464: Preparation Battle

"The Caro-Kann? Is this a serious tournament?" In the live broadcast, Medina couldn’t help but frown when she saw that Donchenko played this opening. "First is the Scotch on day one, and now this?" The corner of her mouth was twitching in speechlessness.

Even though the Caro-Kann was still a better and more complicated opening than the Scotch, this, in hindsight, was still a beginner-level opening. So, for Sheva to face two rookie openings in the first four rounds was quite astonishing, and if no one knew what tournament he was playing in, everyone would assume it was just a minor tournament in Jakarta or Hanoi.

This was as if the opponents blatantly stated to Sheva that they wanted to draw, so no need to overcomplicate things and exhaust himself.

"Oho~ I know that you will react that way, Sister!" Bagas grinned, pulling out a small notebook from his pocket. "However, you don’t have to worry about him, because Sheva has already predicted that Alexander Donchenko will play this opening today!"

"Oh?" One of Medina’s eyebrows crooked upward. "How so?" She asked, intrigued.

Besides his on-the-board ability, Sheva’s biggest strength was his unique insight when gathering the opponent’s intelligence. While sometimes, Sheva’s train of thought would be simple, that was something that not a lot of players could think of if not being pointed out, so this time, Medina was curious about what was the thing that Sheva found about his opponent.

"Well, you see, in the last four years, even though there are some that don’t follow the pattern, most of the games that Donchenko played against the 1.e4 opening always led to two variations. First, it would be the Sicilian, and second, it would be the Caro-Kann. In fact, he won quite a lot of games with the second one, always good at making things complicated from the simple opening and giving his opponent a massive headache."

"Really? Is that why he picks this opening?" Medina couldn’t help but ask.

"Well, yeah... But not really." Bagas smiled. "In fact, he is also proficient with the Sicilian Defense and some of the variations, like Najdorf or accelerated dragon. However, we know that Sheva always responds to the Sicilian one with the same line, the Alapin, and somehow, Donchenko is not quite good with that. Out of 4 games he played against that variation, he only managed to draw one game and lost the rest of them."

"Ah... So, that’s it..." Medina nodded in realization.

As for the fact that Sheva let himself get led into the opening that Donchenko wanted, Medina wasn’t worried about that. After all, based on the information that Bagas gave, it seemed that Sheva had also prepared to face the Caro-Kann, so he shouldn’t be pushed back too far. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

She knew full well that by figuring out what opening the opponent wanted to play, Sheva had already won half of the war.

On the board, Sheva wasn’t swayed by the opening choice that Donchenko made. If anything, he had already prepared one particular line for the advanced variation, taking the inspiration from Magnus’s game against Alireza Firouzja two years ago.

’Okay, if you really are the master of the Caro-Kann, let me see how you handle this!’

Just in the fourth move, Sheva had already pushed his C pawn two squares forward, challenging the black’s pyramid pawn instantly. This aggressive approach startled Donchenko for a moment, before the German GM had a little smirk on his face.

’Yeah, he sure will be happy.’ Sheva couldn’t help but snort inwardly. ’This is definitely the same line he would pull if he were in my shoes.’

After some extensive research, the boy realized that they were made from the same cloth, always aggressive, and liked to pull an unexpected move. Now that Sheva was the first one to do that, the German man in front of him would have his fighting spirit ignited, and soon, the game would succumb to chaos.

True enough, after the aggressive line that Sheva chose, the game turned quite violently. He gambitted that C pawn to force Donchenko to break his pawn chain, and the German GM also accepted it willingly, going for the route that Sheva had already prepared.

Sheva also kept challenging further, forcing his opponent to push the pawns on the queenside further, overextending the soldiers there and also weakening that side drastically. Honestly, it was quite strange how Donchenko always accepted what Sheva offered, even willingly jumping into the line that he prepared beforehand. If anything, this started to make the boy wary of something unexpected happening.

’It is either that he has a trap prepared already, or this is the exact same line that he has prepared before the game. Either way, this is not a good thing for me.’

This time, Sheva paused, starting to think carefully over what move he should make. This action startled both Bagas and Medina, who were in the broadcast room, as this was probably the first time that they saw Sheva getting stumped first before his opponent.

"Any thought on this, Sister Medina? Is there anything worth mentioning about this position?" The fat boy couldn’t help but ask.

"Well, it is not the position that makes Sheva wary, but the way that Alexander Donchenko plays," Medina answered with a solemn tone, grasping the problem quite easily. Not waiting for Bagas to ask further, she explained, "You might not notice, but Donchenko plays all of the moves in exactly the same interval, always between 45 seconds and 1 minute and 30 seconds. This is not him thinking, but remembering the moves. This means Sheva is already falling into Donchenko’s preparation, and that’s why Sheva starts to hesitate."

Well, the way Medina explained it made the problem look way bigger than the reality. Bagas also showed a slight hesitation, asking, "So, what do you think Sheva should do?"

To his surprise, Medina just snorted with a small smirk on her face. "What to do? He doesn’t need to do anything, just stick with his plan! If Sheva is confident with his preparation, then he will quickly realize that his hesitation is useless, and he will be back on track again!"