8 Unbelievable Endgames By Magnus Carlsen

ladies and gentlemen to become one of the greatest chess players of all time all elements of your game the opening the middle game the end game tactics strategy have to be complete and for magnus carlsen the end game is often times the difference between a win a loss or a draw frequently when the game is in its fourth fifth even sixth hour when it's at 50 moves 60 moves 70 moves even sometimes up to 100 moves and players have given up on the position or their endurance is fading magnus is fighting on for every half a point for every 0.1 to 0.5 of an advantage and trying to find answers in positions where even engines might not see them and in this video i have selected eight of potentially hundreds of games over the course of his career that i think stand out i've included some games that he's played online some most of the games that he's played offline high stakes or just for fun and i'm going to take you through them time stamps on the video player here we go our first example he's playing against timur rajab of the years 2013 and he's actually not yet uh a world champion he's number one in the world magnus carlson but he's playing at the candidates and playing one of the best players in the world this is the current position it's move 28. objectively speaking this position is equal but throughout this video you're going to learn certain terms that you need to keep in mind for the end game in particular and certain concepts that overlap obviously the pieces are super important the structure of the pawns is super important so here magnus with the black pieces has these four pawns versus these four pawns magnus is slightly more overextended than his opponent of course rojava does have the split cna uh which is a bit of a liability but if you trade this b pawn for the a pawn like this this c pawn will become a passer then you start comparing the quality of the pieces particularly these two clearly in white's favor the knight can jump to the middle but more than anything else you got to start looking around for what's defended and what's not defended and black is pretty solid if you get this rook all the way over here that's very easy to protect and if you get this work all the way over here it attacks nothing so all end games are determined by the pawn play potential changes of the structure certain traits of rooks knights bishops or what what it might be and weaknesses weak squares or weak pieces so magnus immediately offers a trade of knight to make it ac ac in terms of the structure where his bishop actually might even be slightly better than t-morse because they both stare at a pawn but black is the aggressor right so magnus uh throughout this game seemed like he was getting mildly tortured like for the next like 10 moves i mean rajab is just bringing his king they they freeze up the structure over here on the king side watch the structure gets frozen as the piece of shuffle right there frozen structure those pawns aren't going anywhere um in fact magnus with the light squared bishop might not even like the fact that all his pawns are on light squares because this bishop could sneak around and get to them but he's cognizant of that fact and it looks like only rajaba can be really playing this position for a win as he's making magnus's pawn slightly move forward and then the critical move comes around mu 47 48 right here when magnus offers a trade of rooks on b7 now timur can continue to dance around um but he must have not liked something for example he's like if i uh like just play rook 288 maybe in the future magnus will somehow put some pressure on this pawn i don't really i don't know so let me just trade these rooks okay let me get down to this position still knight bishop 6 knight bishop 6 relatively close position so what does magnus do well he brings his king to the middle slides the bishop out of the way of the knight so we cannot have that trade any longer but this bishop permanently supports this and pressures this knight goes back to b3 let's centralize our king and let's utilize a flank pawn advance to take away squares from your king and potentially your knight and potentially to even poke at your knight later on down the line just we're just we're just instigating a little bit bishop e2 all right we're shuffling a little bit oh this is my new idea do you want to trade bishop for night do you like that or not which i was like no actually i'm good i don't want to trade okay bishop comes back around this knight has been kicked out of b3 and the constant concern for white is is this trade good or bad for me like i don't know magnus is posing this practical problem to his opponent throughout this game as he now shuffles the pieces around one more time now the knight is in the middle and the king is here and c4 is under fire in fact it's under fire to the point the only way white can defend against it is to give a check and kick the king out of the middle and now rojaba could play knight to d4 but king d6 and white slowly could run out of moves and what i mean by that is if the knight goes back to b3 now magnus uses that a pawn like levy i don't understand what's going on well folks now we have the exact same position we had but c4 cannot be protected that's the problem c4 can't be protected now because i utilize my flank pawn advancement the subtlety and the triangulation you see black's king can move on three squares so in moving on three squares white is being lulled into a state where he's going to overextend the position so he's going to maybe play the knight to the middle and get caught and now he's overextended he can't go back to where he was and that's it magnus is going to convert this game so rajab himself plays a4 and often times that's all magnus needs and now magnus completely changes look he is triangulating right now now he goes to c5 you say levy nothing's changed oh yes it has oh yes it has there is now a fresh weakness on a4 which magnus made you question the defense of your position and here timur sacrifices the pawn the c pawn completely and magnus plays king c7 you see if magnus took this a5 falls and then maybe a4 falls but magnus is like no no no we're gonna do this on my terms you're gonna take on b6 i'm not letting you get away this this weakness is staying here you're never getting my a pawn and watch he takes he plays king a6 moving into the line of sight by the way of this bishop knight a3 king b7 and if you analyze this with an engine it's constantly going to yell draw draw a draw these guys have no idea what they're doing they're wasting their time but magnus slowly but surely slowly but surely transfers his pieces in at the right moment even letting this pawn stand just completely stand playing knight d3 hits the king hits the pawn of course if bishop takes d3 this pawn is gonna get through so the white's knight is completely paralyzed king goes back to d4 and a few moves later but should be five paralysis and that apon is surviving you still can't take it timor decides to sacrifice and try to get the knight over to win some pawns that is a way to try to defend the position but he's not fast enough one pun falls but the other pawns are now held together by that bishop which made it all the way around and on move 89 by gluing it all together timur's job of resigned magnus carlsen went on to win and he won these candidates then he went on to win the world championship let's go to example two second example his opponent none other than grand master hikaru nakamura and you will see their usernames so this is spaced out this is not spaced out because that's not his legal name but that's magnus's uh online name this is the speech championship in 2018 the finals and if you look at this position you might quickly say levy hicaro's got a bishop magnus does not what the hell is going on this is from their first segment five minute two second bonus so at this point around in the game the players both are under a minute or right about a minute on the clock but every time they make a move the game two seconds so there's no dirty flagging now magnus has been down a piece for the majority of this game he does have two pawns for it he has six pawns versus four but uh this is falling and then the pawn will sacrifice itself and black will promote i mean there is no way you're gonna hold this position so magnus despite being material down trades rooks trades knights offers a trait of knights to get queen and bishop versus queen hikaru instead is like let's trade queens homie let's trade queens because i got a night in a bishop magnus is like i got him right where i want him because here's the thing i have two pawns magnus in a split second has evaluated that this endgame is actually going to be really difficult for black to win really oh sorry i hit my microphone i don't know if that actually changed anything but so hikaru does take on g5 because that's the way to go knight c6 now knight c6 takes away the bishop retreat and delays the knight from getting back like you can go knight d4 here but then i'm gonna play b4 and taking this is a little bit suspicious just a little bit i mean you gotta really be able to calculate the fact that bringing the bishop stops every pawn and then my king running to the middle doesn't give me any any practical problems i mean a4a5 a6 very quickly comes in you know king f7 a5 king e6 a6 like it's it's close it is a close race and tough to calculate all this in time trouble so knight c6 king f7 here come the pawns here come the pawns bishop f2 hikaru is doing everything correctly everything he's brought the bishop around the pawn is going to sacrifice the king is coming to the defense so how on earth b5 how on earth can magnus possibly save this position i mean all he's doing is pushing bonds well king goes back to c8 king b3 knight d4 check now he doesn't take you see he could take or he could not take but he's gotta he can't take that's the truth is like if he does this his pawns are never gonna get through now he's magnus so obviously he plays king to c4 king to b7 and hikaru has a really difficult situation here um because if he takes on c6 like he's threatening to take on c6 then it's all good right that's why he did it but if he took on c6 in this position this is a totally different situation because now you're too slow and i have three pawns versus a lone king and a king now is coming so you know magnus is just posing more and more practical problems king to b7 knight v8 check king a6 b7 okay king a7 a6 now black has one move one move in this position he caller plays g5 because he doesn't see that white has any threat white does have a threat knight to f7 you see levi i don't understand just bishop comes back and uh i'm gonna push my pawn my bishop is gonna cover well this is the idea to take and then to give this check the king has to go back to b8 it can't take the pawn because the pawn promotes and now we come here and knight to d7 is unstoppable and there is no piece that can protect the king on b8 and hikaru resigned now you might sit there and say levy this is this is what is this this is terrible i mean this got so lucky it's blizz game it doesn't matter no he's playing one of the he's playing i mean he carving magnus carlson are the two best speed chess players in the world a guy has an extra bishop and magnus manages to pose 25 moves of practical calculation problems in a situation no other person has any business drawing let alone winning now of course hikaru had the blunder in all these end games that you're going to watch today a person had to mess up but that's what that's what the point of this video is about this guy has a wizard-like touch to certain positions to just make them incredibly difficult i understand you can put these positions in the stockfish and go oh he messed up he's so bad i mean what what a stupid video you try you know many pieces you would hang in this end game you'd hang out you would find a way to hang a rook in this position there are no rooks on the board that's how skilled you are let's go to example number three okay this game i actually covered live this is 2019 we're in grenke in the in the chess festival fantastic tournament by the way and magnus's opponent is francisco vallejo ponce who's um number one player from spain maybe not currently i think maybe david anton guiharo is number one but i mean valejo's incredible player um and this game is not like super exciting uh so we're gonna fast forward to around the middle game like move 25 when the balance of this position um is completely equal it's been completely equal for a long time magnus has the black pieces uh white is slightly white looks like they're more active with this bishop and this knight but black has some activity as well this pawn on d4 you know the bishop the opposite colored bishops notice the opposite colored bishops not the same situation as in the rajab of game and so magnus just just watch i'm not even gonna say anything just watch brings his king bishop here sets up like an infiltration of the rook which would pry apart the defense of the king in the night so the knight goes there and then the king comes forward magnus understands that while one of his rooks is extremely passive and he can't even kick the knight out because the knight would jump into c6 his defensive skills are there the position's balanced he might have a mildly unpleasant situation right here on the queen side as kind of one enemy piece controls the movement of four because this bishop doesn't really have any movement this knight constantly threatening to jump in and hit everybody it looks like white is actually a little bit happier here he plays g3 so magnus can't really come forward with any pieces so what what's the man gonna do he's the goat what's he gonna do pawn takes c3 first he takes he tries to make some trades takes takes and he swaps off one of the but now he finds the only moment he has had to activate this rook the only moment because now he can't he can't lose this pawn right so what does white do he plays f4 check that's a really nice move actually because black has a very unpleasant decision to make does he take on poisson or does he just back up if you play king h6 it's a very very bad decision because this bishop reactivates you now have to play very passively you lose b7 everything falls apart um so you take on poisson takes on poisson but now it looks like vallejo has activated his bishop and this pawn is really tough to defend so magnus has no intention of defending it full-on activity fight fire with fire not actually i don't know maybe any firefighters in the comment section now it's a tough decision do you take on h4 or do you take with the knight or do you take with the bishop the engine gives bishop but that's a very strange move to make to just wander off and allow your own king to just completely come under fire with f2 over here you want to play something like a rookie 2 you might end up in some trouble so he decides to go back to c4 to prevent the rook from coming to d2 and potentially doing serious damage along the second rank with the bishop in this moment magnus decides to trade and slides right out of there to b8 so he's completely giving up the queen side he's completely giving it up go ahead and take it you got to take it or you got to what are you going to do about g3 vayejo decides to defend and the second he has a moment he immediately makes white question everything that he's doing now we have a trade goes back material's still equal by the way i mean all this momentum it's still equal material but now rook d2 check king h3 rook d3 and we have a little bit of a transformation both queen side pawns fall leaving the players with just rooks knight bishop and a pawn each and this move comes f4 now we have a problem because if you take you lose your rook to fork if you don't take what's going to happen to your uh what's going to happen well vallejo finds a very interesting move here he plays bishop 28 attacking the knight which leads to the rook being attacked and now a transformation of a position very soon coming f takes g3 and some moves later instead of trading rooks because of course you you need that pawn on the board we have a we have a big transformation after rook before we have knight e6 rogue g4 and um here here it comes bishop takes g2 knight f4 check so if you play king h2 you walk into this if you play king here you just lose the bishop for free so vallejo goes for this end game king bishop knight vs king rook bishop now this is six pieces on the board so something called a table base here gives a full evaluation i believe of a draw it says that it would take black about 75 moves to win this position which is not allowed because there's a 50 move rule no trades and no um no advancements of pawns there are no pawns well this wouldn't be a magnus carlsen game if we didn't see how he did it so he plays bishop back to b8 now this position is littered with so many different variations and possibilities we're just gonna watch how magnus does it any one of white's moves now is a problem and rook h8 is constantly rook h2 is constantly being threatened so the knight blocks the rook's path the bishop slides forward the king now comes back okay so king comes forward the second you back up i'm coming forward you can't really move so easily we slide over here i give you a check king goes to e1 bishop e3 i'm suffocating you where are your moves king d1 all right king g5 were you going are you going bishop b4 okay now i'm trying to try and bring my king bishop f3 now this looks like black is making a lot of progress it really does looks like he's making a lot of progress so first he cuts you off horizontally sorry vertically so the defense that you've been employing of shuffling your king isn't gonna work so easily i gotta get your king out the way you win this position is you make that king feel really really sad on the back rank and white runs out of defensive moves so bishop to e4 now king c4 here comes the king king f1 rook here where's white going if you go back to where you were which looks very natural i don't know maybe you suffer something do you run away from your knight and then let this check happen king h1 king to h1 is the only defense because this check is a stalemate trap vajo has to find a sacrifice of both his pieces and putting his king voluntarily to the corner which is not so easy to do and move 66 of this game probably six hours into it you place king to e1 how is magnus gonna make progress you obviously don't wanna play this how does that make sense now the king is just gonna go out this way or potentially into the line of fire again i don't know you're just going to repeat moves so he does that king d2 check i don't understand bishop e3 so what everything is defended or is it or is it knight c1 check king 2a3 92 check here and the killer the rook all the way back the silent move on a surface there's not even a threat but white has no moves if you move the knight then this comes so that's game over if you move the bishop this comes i just slide all the way back i've paralyzed your king i pried the king apart from the other pieces and unlike the other position where the king is lost in the corner here you're in the corner of my bishop which is the way you have to win this you have to get the king in the corner of the bishop so it could be czech and that's how magnus did it let's go to example four now we are in riyadh and magnus is playing vladimir putin very strong grand master from russia in the world rapid championship um this is the 12th round and it's been a pretty boring game thus far plus it's you know it's a late end game of a rapid game they probably don't have a huge amount of time of course evaluation zero zero zero queen bishop queen knight in fact queen and knight is an even more scary combination so you could argue farasev has the advantage here plus he's got both pawns doubled and completely stopping these pawns but more importantly they're on dark squares so this bishop has no role in the game so how do you play this position um the real problem from fedexev is that he's playing magnus carlsen if he was playing me for example he might be a little bit more aggressive here but he knows that he needs to contain the beast so magnus throws out a pawn now with pawns in end games you need to be very careful if you play the f pawn forward that is a massive mistake say levy what what's the difference well you have a light squad bishop you're a lot weaker on the dark squares so if white can create a blockade on dark squares did i say you're weaker on dark squares i think i said that what's gonna happen is white is gonna play queen e3 let's say you play king of seven and then put a knight on e5 and you're gonna die no one can fight that knight and then the queen will run over here and the king will completely hide on h2 all three things in common about e5 a7 h2 dark squares because the light square bishop can't participate so magnus understands that his structure needs to be a dark square structure to the point that as this game progresses and the players shuffle their pieces not trading and they could trade queens they could trade queens but they're not they're not doing it they're trying to figure out what's going on um look what magnus does this is fedesev's mistake number one is he allowed this now it's still equal it's still very equal because both sides have a very weak king like if fedex comes into c8 for example he probably could draw this game he could probably just go for a perpetual check but he's got the knight they got load time let's see what happens king to f7 wait i thought we weren't trading queens of course if you're a human but he's magnus carlson so king to e7 knight c2 a little shuffling you know you know how it is f4 wait why did fittessev do that well ferisaev played the move f4 because if he just plays knight c2 magnus activates his king and again the mistake fedeser have made putting all his pawns on light squares that's the mistake he can't abandon those pawns like if his knight ventures over here and his king ventures too far forward no one's gonna be able to guard g2 h3 then he's gonna lose so he's kind of a little bit more passive but he's probably thinking he's fine because there's no way for magnus to get in his king can't eat his own bishop and even if he could that would be a really stupid decision right so he decides to play a four and magnus trades on his own terms he's like you take me and i'm still constantly threatening bishop f1 so knight f3 bishop d5 now i have a new threat at some point i could take this knight like this i could take this knight and uh now i'm winning so i have a constant threat of now trading with you on my terms because your knight is guarding my entrance way to into your position right so knight d4 check and the bishop goes back to b7 king f5 and federsev was like let me get rid of one more of my weaknesses magnus is like okay cool bishop c8 i'm gonna make you constantly hesitant constantly you come give me check i might run over there and get those pawns before you have an opportunity to get in here and even if you do you're not attacking anything the good thing about a bishop it can serve two jobs at the same time from the corner of the board knight back to d2 bishop b7 bishop d5 you're slowly running out of moves right at some point i'm gonna make a king i'm gonna make a run with my king that's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna put my king on my bishop on the right square and then i'm gonna run with my king now do you go back what are you doing you gonna go back take my pawn go ahead take my pawn okay hi who's going to protect your queenside pawns oh nobody okay well that's great now i have two on one and ferisev here has to find the right defensive schematic against black's plan black's plan is as follows move the king push both pawns white needs a knight on b1 and a king on c1 that is virtually impossible to figure out probably with no time on the clock the only way to draw this king e3 and cocoon defense like this that is the only way to draw because you stop a3 and the trade never works because you have an h pawn but ferisaev naturally out of inertia just slides his king forward i mean sorry right over to the next square instead of diagonally back and now it's losing now this end game is losing because of exactly this reason that knight b1 does not come with the defense of the knight knight e4 king d5 and magnus uses his final remaining queen side pawn to break through and the finish to this game is really something beautiful because it really looks like black has been completely thwarted and as long as you sack this pawn it's going to be stalemate this position with knight on c2 bishop c2 will be stalemate as long as there's no pawn right gotta be it's gotta be here come oh perfect but you're playing magnus you're playing magnus you're playing magnus he's not going to stalemate you he's going to run you out of moves knight c2 now i take and if king d2 king b2 bye bye it's very valiant of this knight to fight on to the bitter end on move 87 but it's game over and that's how magnus won this end game let's go to example five this game happened like six days ago or something like that magnus versus ali reza ferruga norway chess 2021 this is a classical game long time control game it's been a pretty calm rule opus and oli reza here activated his knight from the corner of the board and magnus said oh he didn't actually say that they were sitting in a quiet room but he trades and the craziest thing is then he traded all the rooks now that is kind of surprising because it's bishop and six versus bishop and six but it's anything but over it's anything but over why what have you learned so far about from this video have you learned anything what are you watching like 25 minutes of this video you haven't learned anything structure weaknesses bishop complexes right light squared bishop versus light square bishop with six pawns apiece these things are going to be a big liability and the outside pass pawn pressure the pressure over here to potentially trade the right way magnus is going to start putting some pressure so first he plays f4 which is an important move then he brings his king and then he plays b4 so the king can't go to c5 okay nothing complicated i mean you have play against the light squad bishop and potentially you want to get over here like the easiest way to win this is to do this okay and white wins right because you you get to a6 in a nutshell i mean actually in this particular case maybe black is a little bit quick with counter play and you can get your bishop stuck because this king gets here fast enough but that in a nutshell is the problem for black and for white you'll defend this and make sure that you don't lose this pawn right so let's go back bishop d5 is a nice centralizing move in fact one would argue that black's bishop is significantly better than white's bishop and one would actually argue correctly but the problem is that this is such a liability there's no easy way to defend it alireza plays the move h6 because to ali reza a perfect structure would revolve around g5 so for example king e3 this is not good for magnus now his two pawns are on light squares just like those two pawns he's never getting h4 and a really bad trait for black would be to end up in a position like hypothetically if you got this this versus this so if this happened like g3 h6 and this this would be awful for black this is lost because you now have a two on one to create an outside pass pawn this outside pass pawn will win white the game so outside pass pawn is a concept that you need to be familiar with both these guys are familiar with it which is why magnus just throws his pawn to g5 and immediately gets the outside pass pawn situation but you see the difference here black is gonna play g6 at some point the second that white plays h4 black is going to play g6 don't believe me look g6 he had to do it because if he didn't if he just did this now i'm gonna get the outside pass pawn but the way oliver hasn't played g6 this is never gonna happen h5 just results in a bishop and you're never gonna get through a pawn with another pawn or maybe you will i don't know watch the game bishop g4 the right is to go to c8 alireza tries to trade bishops now a bishop trade would be incorrect because actually now black is winning like is winning you heard me right because wherever the king moves the king is the black king is going to run so if the king goes to f3 you slide out of the way you push your pawn you win both these pawns if the king goes over here i don't know maybe king d5 is still winning but you would just go over here and win these pawns anyway so um h5 levy you just said you can't break through a pawn with a pawn yeah well i like i said i mean all the in many of these videos it's equal until it's not bishop goes to f3 now if you take on g5 boom boom boom or boom boom slide out a pawn promotes so alireza plays back to c8 and for a brief moment magnus is now down upon he's down two to three but because his king is more active and active in the right way he's still creating practical problems it's insane it's kind of insane his king just goes it just goes to c7 because he's defending against the advancement from the black position f4 he's not going to c7 he comes back because black is going to run out of moves black is defending on something known as the short side so he's glued over here he's going to run out of moves either his king has to lose the pawn or his bishop moves and allows bishop to be seven so he decides to lose this pawn the engine gives some crazy line where you can actually allow bishop b7 and you can go to f1 and defend this pawn from the other side but i mean you know king g6 now we have the same position but now magnus is completely equal of material by using short side defense and he's able to infiltrate i think somewhere around here alireza might have messed up but i think it's already i i think his defense was that he had to go like this is he had to keep the f pawn and defend from the other side if i'm not mistaken because the way this ends up is the a6 pawn is one and uh this is simply losing and a few moves later magnus got got his uh advantageous exchange and you would wonder why didn't magnus just push here he has to utilize maneuvering he has to get the bishop out of position if it goes to a6 for example now it's frozen and this is something known as zugswang one player just has to surrender the right of way to the other so what he does is he makes the bishop move and now makes it move again because he wants to get to the center diagonal and the game is over because the pawn will just go that's how we beat alareza this is a fun game that i decided to include uh it's from a game that magnus played online in like a random banter blitz thing uh and uh it be his opponent is rated 2 400 blitz and begins the game with a really funny uh ga like a move order so magnus plays queen e5 check which is like a silly variation of the scandinavian defense and his opponent goes here offering a queen trade so magnus trades and says why is this guy offering a queen trade doesn't he know that i'm supposed to be the greatest endgame player of all time there's a clip on youtube of this then he obviously just says that he's kidding but he's not so let's see how he wins an end game with relatively symmetrical queen trade position but just an imbalance of d for e being traded yes we're actually going to look at the full game not in excruciating detail but first things first he offers an immediate exchange bishop for knight pawn loss in the middle for pawn loss on g2 this transformation would actually result like something like this this would actually result in white having a decent position um but that's what magnus is after he's after that imbalance right plus he's also playing a blizz game talking to the chat castle's long that's his first decision and now he creates well his opponent doesn't let him get out of the way here uh continues to be symmetrical okay let's instigate with our pawns let's be a little bit aggressive with our pawns kick this bishop back here and go get the bishop paired okay now we are in a bit of a fusion of an end game with a middle game but bishop c6 and now another pretty fascinating decision to trade the bishop pair for opposite colored bishops this position is better for black because black has more space and black has more activity this bishop the quality is better than the bishop on c5 which attacks nothing magnus has already concocted a structure here to counteract this bishop and now this knight a flank pawn push will be utilized to attack the structure of white when an opponent doesn't want to engage how do you beat them well first you have to name magnus carlsen right so knight f5 rogue g1 h5 black is combining a dark squared blockade against the dark squared bishop with a flank pawn advancement in fact magnus advances with flank pawns on both sides because he controls the middle and now he controls the king's side on the queen side f3 is a very solid move h4 now g4 is the way magnus makes you pay he unpassants you and now he controls the file right so he's won a little bit of control already probably white things that are going to play rook h1 but he comes in now if you play the move rook h1 what magnus is going to do he might not even take on h1 but he can he can then he can take your knight and your pawn but what he can do is when you play rook h1 he's gonna add a layer of defense and now he'll trade off and this rook is not going anywhere which is gonna be a really big problem right so g4 is a counter play measure but there you go you've now in your attempts to cocoon and play defensively have given yourself an irreparable weakness so now we have a rook trade and this now black to his credit does get rook h7 but you have to combine strategic play and tactical play and end games right so the counter play here the calculation here comes the counter play but magnus is so fast watch just kidding he plays a really solid defensive move here but he could have actually played takes and just given this up completely knight g5 to get the e4 pawn this is clean magnus is just calmly winning here but there's something even more brutal which is this move ouch and that's how he could have defended the pawn indirectly which is really difficult to see but you know he won a pawn he now stabilizes and he trades like this where his opponent has the two split pawns and his knight just has to find a way home so king d7 knight d4 takes takes i'm just stabilizing everything now to white's credit white was pretty resourceful here we're trying to look for counter play if you take on c4 this can become a little bit of a liability so magnus has to take on poisson twice in one game by the way now he's got king and five and a rogue versus king and four and a rook how's he gonna win it rookie eight there it is outside passer we're coming c4 a4 you've seen this already we don't even take back on b5 we don't even take back on b5 we don't even take the free pawn because it stops being guarded by the rook and the distance is closer to the king we don't take the pawn we go like this and now the rook has to go over here this is a very well known defensive situation where one side is completely glued to the pawn and the other king is gonna go have a picnic so after king to e5 mr olly chess resigned and will never make the mistake again of trading queens unlike the fifth move of the game against the goat of end games example number seven we are in niza in france uh it's the year 2010 so it's babyface magnus and uh we're gonna jump ahead to move 30. it was a relatively tame most of the games actually from this video are e45 games i mean it's super gms what are you gonna do right so we go to move 30. it's a double rook end game with six pawns each there is a fundamental imbalance of the structure in the middle where it's ed versus dc everything else is the same so how do you play an endgame like this important pawn advancements to take space right now aronian immediately tries to get rid of his own weakness here by playing the move c5 white can take on busan we see a lot of opus on magnus cultured individual frequence anarchy chess the problem with the way that you do this is you leave yourself two weaknesses so magnus using the open b file now threatening to get into b7 threatening to potentially get to b6 where he hits everything is just going to make aronian's life annoying rook c8 rook d3 you try to get aggressive with me do i want a rogue trade maybe not yet maybe not yet okay um i think i have to now rook a4 so he's going for a6 if i know that magnus carlsen is going for a6 i got to grab a pawn myself but magnus understands that all he needs is one pass pawn now he has this pass pawn and the rest of the board is e f g versus f g h and this random d pawn which doesn't really serve anybody any benefit it really wants to prefer to be with those four pawns because it has no other way of joining the attack right so we kick the rook out and we play a4 play f3 and now we bring our king up we have to make sure that the king is coming up right so rook a2 a5 rook a3 but what's gonna how is magnus actually going to win this position because the thing is he can't move his rook anywhere because this pawn is going to get taken so how on earth is he what's he going to do i don't understand okay congratulations you pushed your pawn all the way check does never work okay f4 what magnus is gonna do now is try to deflect the king so if the king ever tries to walk over here there's this trick if you take here game over and if you don't take i just promote so aronian's not gonna do that he's just gonna keep giving checks magnus says i am a king but i also have a king hello so if aronian does nothing okay let's just allow this king oop well we know that loses if the king walks over to b2 this is very unpleasant if the rook tries to hang out the king is now going to walk up and if the rook comes all the way down the king is going to walk up and at some point what's going to happen is if you start giving checks like this then i'm going to run my king sideways and potentially break you in like break down the middle somehow with one of these pawns uh because i can't really hide right now that's sort of the thing so i'm gonna walk my king over to you and make sure that you can't check me and then we're gonna try to figure it out with one of these pawns one of these maybe e5 will break through you say how does that change anything well my king is going to be able to hide a little bit more and i'm going to have a tactic here so for example here i have oops oops if king takes rookie 8 and if pawn takes the same trick because by sacrificing the pawn you've opened up the entire seventh rank that's magnus's idea so he plays king e2 aronian kind is like you know what i'm not too afraid i gotta pass pawn right here hello h5 oh all right h4 magnus is like i got you i wasn't actually going to your k to your rook i was faking for you to over commit and now i'm going to chase your h-pawn down aronian apparently had to give a check before playing h4 so that he controlled the second rank very tricky now i've caught you yes i'm paralyzed in the corner of the board but you need to guard my a pawn so you go over there and i'm gonna keep pushing and now i've locked your king in a box your king has no legal moves what's going to happen is your pawn and rook will also have no legal moves and now i played this what but what about this now i take on h2 your king still has no legal moves and now i bring my king and what's gonna happen you're gonna run out of squares i'm gonna go to d5 and are you gonna die of slow death and really brutal here the king gets to f8 magnus ends this game by trapping the h pawn and then walking the king the rest of the game up the board and giving him a little bunker over here and aronian resigned he resigned because rook to e7 and the game is over brutal and the final example this game is from the skilling open playoffs in 2020. uh magnus is playing against the niche geary i featured games on this channel where anish does defeat magnus carlsen but uh unfortunately not in this game yoon ludwig hammer who's one of the strongest players of norway um was i think covering this game live in norwegian and said that this is one of the best games that magnus carlsen has ever played um which is that's that's that's pretty big praise now we're going to pick this up on move 10 because on move 10 already the biggest commitment of the position occurs with the move d4 now d4 opens up some really nasty tactical complications which magnus meets by completely giving away the pawn on e5 just take it goes here that's an important move because it attacks f2 and after bishop to e3 he takes and he's still not winning the pawn back on e5 but he does this he damages his own pawn structure and there's a pawn down so you're supposed to take toward the center he leaves his bishop out here he has an isolated three pawns this a5 pawn is doing god knows what but the craziest thing about this position is that after the trade of queens it is anything but simple because when the position transforms after rook to e2 which seems like it guards everything rather than just applying pressure with the rook or the bishop magnus says my bishop is good but you could have it here's the problem if you take with the rook then you allow me to hang around on the second rank and then for example rookie 2 there might be rook d8 it's not going to be easy for you to get rid of my rook and if you can't get rid of my rook how are you going to get rid of both of my pieces which stare at you and it gets even worse at a certain point i'm going to go here where does this bishop go either hangs out on the edge of the border goes back to f1 if you go back to f1 you might as well resign outside past pawn i'm going to go for a2 you don't let me have a2 i'm gonna go for c3 then i'll definitely get one of these pawns so rather than allowing magnus any activity anish decides my rook will patrol the whole rank but i will make a double pawn i don't really want to but in the future i could put a rook on d4 undouble my pawn and i'll be good to go magnus middle of the board rooks and bishops just brings his king he just brings his king just brings it directly to the middle of the board he then coordinates his bishop and his rook like this if you ever play the move b3 i just back up nice bishop buddy yeah you want to go c4 that's very cute bye you're going to lose this bishop and if you want to go here well this bishop will never move again and i'll put my king on e5 look at this position in fact a few moves later magnus did win king of the hill in the middle of an end game with rooks and bishops down a full pawn he wins king of the hill by just marching his king to e5 one of his rooks completely dominates the file one of his rooks dominates the center and pressures everything this bishop is standing nice and pretty but the question is how do you win an end game like this to win an endgame much like the last one you need to trade one pair of rooks often times the defensive side will struggle with less forces especially if they're under a lot of pressure so two rooks actually believe it or not is good for defense it's not always great to trade rooks if you're trying to um if you're trying i just talked myself into a corner if you're trying to win you want to trade one pair of rogues but not both cool cool king f2 rook d6 bishop c4 poking at your pawn what are you gonna do ah you've committed a pawn move well i'm gonna fly in with my rook check this is under fire why aren't you defending it well if you defend it i was gonna go here so well there's no point defending it anyway king g3 and now i just slide right back you can't guard this if you can't guard this how are you gonna guard this if you can't guard that i'm gonna promote with my a pawn it's so depressing it's just a depressing position so he takes on a2 now we want a bishop trade let me go get that second pawn and now it's more or less straightforward four moves four pawn captures that's how bad anish's position was made by magnus he took a2 he took b3 he took e4 he took e3 have you ever seen that it's like pac-man he just takes everything and now he's winning i mean he doesn't i could win this end game with black even i could because it's up two pawns take stakes rook b2 calm move you could go have all these pawns all of them take every single one boom boom boom my a-pawn's going outside passer and um rook b6 actually magnus just for good measure decided to defend although i'm pretty sure even a4 is just winning but he's like just like in the last game let me uh let me not let anish even take anything and there it is a3 a2 we have seen this before in the game against ollie chess but this game just out of inertia anish makes a couple more moves and magnus walks over and anish resigns this was a wild one the cost of material with the open board and then giving up your bishop because of a such a difficult practical decision that white has to make and he chosen correctly and that is how magnus carlsen defeated a niche gear in this game folks as always i want to thank you for making it this far on the video it was a long one 49 minutes of footage at the time of recording uh could be a 30 to 40 minute video please let me know if you want me to make any sort of future content about strongly strong players but magnus carlsen is a god of end games for a reason peace out i will see you in the next video get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

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Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: tJIHFuHrZp4

Length: 44min 17sec (2657 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 18 2021