Monday’s position was taken from the game Aronian – Anand (Wijk aan Zee 2013), in which Vishy played the brilliant 16… Nde5!!. The main threat is Qxd4+ followed by a smothered mate. You’ll learn more by working out the variations yourself rather than reading anything I tell you!

Congratulations to Mike Healey who immediately recognised the position, which I took from Irrational Chess (Cyrus Lakdawala): my review of this book will be published shortly.

Here’s the game, with the winner’s annotations taken from MegaBase 2023. (If you’re serious about improving your chess I’d strongly recommend you to invest in ChessBase plus MegaBase or BigBase.) Click on any move for a pop-up window.

Just in case you haven’t seen it before, here’s the Rotlewi – Rubinstein game Anand mentioned in his notes.