Alireza Firouzja's Caro-Kann Games

hi everyone stephan here in this video i'm going to show you five karakan games by probably the best karakan player in the world currently ali reza firusja also probably one of the best players in the world he is currently number two over 2800 so whenever you study an opening and you want to play it seriously in tournament games i think the best way to learn it is to look at games by players who actually play the opening and you learn from their ideas their opening novelties their opening preparation for the karakan alireza ferrugi is currently by far the best resource and i've been looking at his games for a long time he is the only player at the top top top level who plays the karakan regularly which makes me very happy i mean it's my favorite opening and if the world number two plays it regularly then that justifies my choice uh he is the best karakan player now if you wanted to study the karaoke 20 or 30 years ago you would look at anatoly karpov for example there are other players but what i'm trying to say is you should always model your play in a certain opening according to to the best player today i'm going to show you five games all of them were very interesting extremely instructive and they chose them not because of tactical motifs or beautiful finishes even though one of his most famous games is among the five i chose but because they were interesting for the karo khan player so if you play the karo khan or if you play e4 and face the karo khan this should be useful if you don't play either of those then well the games are instructive either way so let's start the first game uh he he faced sergey karjakin in the fide online nations cup uh e4 of course and we have the karo khan and in this position karjakin shows the advanced variation now alireza does a few things against the advance and this is probably the variation i've been looking at most in his games because this is the variation i'm struggling with most myself okay he plays bishop f5 almost always or always okay knight f3 e6 so very normal bishop e2 karjakin is playing the the short and in this position knight d7 is the most popular move most people play knight d7 well theresa chose knight e7 and you're going to see this in one more game and this is actually a very interesting choice uh it's not clear why 97 is played until you see it and if you don't know this pattern if you don't know the idea then you're not going to understand the move in this position you can castle which is the main move which karjakin did not do in when we're not in one other game i'm going to show you what firojia firuja does against castling uh karjakin played knight bd2 and now the immediate c5 and the idea is you want your e knight on c6 it is possible to to break the position open with c4 here but it wouldn't be as good because the knight still defends d5 so dc is the most popular the most popular move and karjakin chose that knight ec6 and the idea is of course this knight came to c6 the other knight is going to come to d7 and then there's going to be double pressure on the e5 pawn which has to be defended and also pressure on c5 which did not have to be captured immediately this is just a better choice because b4 isn't possible knight before okay uh kariatin played knight b3 preventing bishop c5 and here is the other interesting point which i cannot highlight enough this can be seen in some variations in some lines of the advanced variation and it's almost always a good idea and the idea is to exchange your bishop on f5 if you if you know the advanced variation at all then you know that the immediate bishop d3 isn't good because black just exchanges and plays e6 why is that well in this pawn structure uh because there's a pawn on e5 black has a hard time defending h7 conversely his king side is almost always weak it's never weak if the light square bishops are are traded off so what firuja is trying to do here is trade off white's main attacker this is obviously black's good bishop this is his bad bishop so trading these two off is a good idea because there is no problem on h7 whenever there is a pawn on e5 h7 is hard to defend obviously getting the knight to f8 would be time to time consuming okay now in this position uh knight ft4 has been played once uh and then bishop e2 queen e2 knight d4 94 bishop c5 knight b3 simply castles knight c5 runs into queen a5 and this is a very safe position for black because there is no attack it's very hard to attack with the dark squared bishop but more importantly black has this very nice pawn structure with the weaknesses to target c3 of course c2 of course and also e5 uh in in this game karjakin simply castled okay now you don't want to take the knight on f3 even though if it's forced you would rather do that than go back i think you want to trade off the bishop okay uh knight d7 continuing with the plan and you can see the harmony in first just position everything is just working together perfectly okay knight one played instead of knight d4 bishop takes queen takes and now simply knight takes c5 e5 is of course still a weakness and any f4 would mean that queen b6 and bishop c5 ideas become way more dangerous so f4 really isn't advisable also while there's still a pawn on e5 uh white's c1 bishop doesn't have as much scope in this position it it can go to e3 or to d2 none of these are really good squares for the moment the queen defends g5 and the bishop on f4 wouldn't be doing much knight c5 bishop c5 knight d3 attacks the bishop the bishop simply drops back queen to g4 okay now comes the third interesting point in the game and this is something you can see in felicia's games all the time which weaker players are afraid of and which doesn't come without a lot of knowledge and a lot of experience i think and that's not being afraid of of threats which which aren't really that dangerous so queen g4 seems nice attacks g7 fiduciary simply plays king of f8 and and this is extraordinary and you may think okay white is going to be attacking black for the rest of the game well well that's not true queen h5 king g8 fine making the king a bit better and giving him possibilities like g6 and and other stuff bishop e3 rook c8 simply developing rook 81 queen a5 is this a queen side counter attack a3 queen a4 the queen is now controlling the king side and the queen side c3 a5 a5 may not be the most precise move but it actually puts the brakes on on white's queen side expansion and if the queen moves and black gets to play a4 that this then this means that these two pawns will basically be locking down the three pawns white has on the queen side which is of course positionally very beneficial for black okay bishop g5 h6 doesn't mind the trade because the knight is coming to f5 knight t7 b7 97 h3 knight f5 okay rook f1 and even though he moved his king away didn't castle his king is actually very safe his knight on f5 is very good i wouldn't say it's better than the knight on d3 because the knight on d3 is is good has the f4 square but most importantly he has a better pawn structure he has weaknesses to target karjakin really does not okay rook c4 played rook is coming into play g3 queen c6 maybe preparing a4 maybe preparing b5 a simple minority attack queen f3 h5 gaining space on both sides of the board knight f4 fine g6 defending the h5 pawn giving his king the the g7 square if need be he doesn't have to do it rook d2 b5 very simple and you can see that he just keeps gaining space keeps gaining small advantages but all of these decisions that led to the small advantages took a lot of courage and had to be calculated because b5 and his next move g5 they're both very weak weakening moves and they're both very risky moves if if there's a punish at white's disposal then black could be in trouble after a move like g5 but there isn't okay queen g2 king f8 okay getting away from the g file king h2 k7 and this is incredible now do you remember when karjakin played queen g4 it seemed like white is going to be the one attacking well things have changed look at the rook look at the queen look at the knight these two pawns are very menacing what are white strokes doing already has managed to completely outplay karjakin on all three sides of the board by making constant small threats firstly positional threats on the queen side now a king side attack okay queen h1 played it's very hard to suggest moves for white rook d8 now switches once again rookie one rookie four and the pieces are just creeping closer together of course now if the knight moves you can take on on e5 queen to g2 queen c4 king g1 rook g8 druk just came back and the position is about to open up queen h1 karjakin is just waiting and now g6 okay queen g2 knight h4 the point of rogue g6 was to simply defend the rook making knight h4 a move because now if that's taken the queen is lost while drock was in g8 knight h4 wouldn't work because it takes takes and then queen takes rook queen h1 played g4 played you cannot take the knight because i just win with a couple of discovered checks uh instead uh yeah actually he did take the knight you should probably take the pawn i don't know gh4 was played gh3 check king f1 and simply h2 this happened in in five moves he he just won the game and what can you do here here karjakin resigned if you if you take the pawn then rock h4 and and you lose the queen so this position everything is already very dominant for black rook g8 just goes back and then rook g6 preparing knight h4 king f1 pins the knights so you can take on e5 it's very hard to suggest moves this this was just a crushing victory firstly very interesting ideas in the opening and then very bold play not fearing the consequences possible consequences of his of his advances just i thought this was a very instructive game i hope you didn't see it before okay the next one is probably one of his most famous games uh if not his most famous game i i don't know i think it's definitely his most famous karo khan game this was played in the norwich chess against aryan tari we have the exchange variation bishop d3 and he plays knight f6 uh knight c6 is the most common move and the knight c6 bishop f4 uh and and so on c3 bishop g4 okay this is sort of normal queen b3 queen c7 uh doesn't want to run into 95 eventually after knight d2 knight f3 h3 chasing the bishop away and it is possible to play bishop h5 but he simply plays bishop to d7 and this idea is well known blocking in your bishop with e6 instead of leaving it outside of the pawn chain but it gives you a lot of security and after knight f3 knight c6 castles e6 the bishop may seem bad but he has other plans okay so this is a slightly strange exchange karo khan but what he did from here is is extraordinary i would say it's an absolute novelty okay rookie one bishop d6 bishop g5 and now simply castles bishop takes knight is is not good if bishop takes knight then pawn takes any queen c2 you just have king h8 and then look at the bishops look at look at rook g8 and maybe even knight d4 ideas so after castle snide bd2 played and now knight h5 not only to prevent the doubling of the pawns but this knight is coming to f4 and in conjunction with black spawns this is going to be a deadly attack which may seem absurd for the moment and usually you would like to play a6 b5 and rook b8 and maybe prepare e5 he found a new idea i never saw this before i before i saw this game okay queen d1 indirectly attacking the knight f6 chases the bishop away bishop e3 and knight f4 if you want to give up your dark squared bishop that's fine uh you don't want to give up your light squared bishop definitely not okay so bishop f1 and now how do you continue the attack on g5 and white has to start looking for counter play i mean if you don't do anything i'm just going to improve my pieces uh i could even play h4 and h5 and then g4 i could play king h8 and rook g8 and rook f8 i could play rook f7 rook f8 i could break with e5 uh there are a ton of ideas this game ended in about 10 moves okay c4 makes sense you want to start getting counter play king h8 roxy one rook g8 very normal bishop f4 okay so tari exchanges bishop takes f4 b4 continues queen side play queen d6 b5 fine 97 he doesn't want to give up a knight c5 chases the queen to c7 doesn't really change anything the queen is still on a great diagonal and now g3 so tari thought he was winning a piece but okay i i don't know what to say about this this may be the most beautiful sequence in the karaoke i've seen in a while he plays g4 so if you take the bishop take the bishop then queen takes and i'm threatening to take the knight and threatening to take here we check so let's say king to h1 and then just gf3 and other pieces are coming into play as well this is that lost so after g4 tari took on g4 okay rook takes g4 now the bishop cannot be taken he played bishop h3 rook g7 doesn't want to give up a rook king h1 now threatening to take the bishop now e5 attacks the bishop on h3 so if you take on f4 i take on h3 so tari took on d7 queen takes d7 now if you take the bishop in this position then it's just checkmate because the queen transferred to the light square diagonal so takes and and here and after king g1 queen g2 sutari played knight h2 queen h3 anyway now if you take the bishop quincy to his mate so rook g1 rook to g8 another look comes into play now if you take the bishop you lose the queen queen e2 so now he is not losing the queen e4 this is just just beautiful so okay take the bishop let's see what happens rook g2 and how do you defend mate if you if you take the rook then i just play rook take g2 then i just play queen takes g2 and checkmate if you don't do anything i take on h2 with mate so after e4 completely ignoring this bishop for six moves rook c3 played knight f5 and other pieces coming into play in this position if you take the bishop then rook takes g1 is made so now that the rook has moved to c3 you are not defending the g1 rook anymore so after knight f5 knight e4 played d4 queen e4 and now the final blow bishop takes g3 if fg3 then rook g3 and if rook g3 then knight g3 check and you have to take and now this is going to be made you have no way of defending both squares there is just no way so bishop takes g3 rook g2 played rookie seven played attacking the queen threatening a mate on e1 because if for example uh queen d5 rookie one rook g1 queen h2 okay queen b1 played and now rook g2 e8 was the final move of the game again the same threat you cannot move the rook on g2 you cannot take the bishop because i win your queen you cannot do anything but this wasn't the instructive part the tactical sequence in the end was great but how he came to that is just extraordinary so this position is a relatively normal exchange karaoke and f6 knight f4 and then g5 this is an amazing idea this if you play the karaoke you have to know this if you play the exchange against the karo khan you you have to know this as well okay uh next game is mbl versus firuja in the tata steel this year again we have the advance variation and i chose this game even though it already didn't win it it was still extremely interesting so we have the same variation bishop e2 and knight e7 and as you saw in the in the first game against karjakin karjakin played knight bd2 here uh mvl castled and now c5 and this is a relatively forced sequence white sort of has to play c4 if he doesn't play c4 then the knight is coming to c6 and everything is great so c4 okay knight bc6 and d takes c5 and in this position uh you can play d4 d4 is the main move leads to a lot of complications the second most popular which has been played about 40 times it's a relatively new idea is dc4 and he chose that now a queen trade would favor black because c5 is about to fall i have the d5 for my knight e5 is a permanent weakness you cannot play b4 uh bishop b5 after you take doesn't do much so no queen trade instead bishop takes c4 and now knight g6 this was for me a new idea uh you are leaving control of the d5 square simply putting double double pressure on e5 preventing knight h4 so you don't lose your bishop bishop e3 defending c5 simply bishops bishop to e7 it doesn't matter you can win your pawn later bishop b5 castles okay bishop c6 no pressure on e5 anymore bc6 they thought well what's the point you're a pawn down your bishop on f5 is sort of awkward could c6 be weak after something like queen a4 what if white trade screens now well actually it's not easy for white to keep the pawn one of these pawns is going to fall and black is at least equal knight a3 queen b8 putting pressure on b2 declining the queen trade preparing group d8 knight c4 looking at the d6 square this started to seem very dangerous in my eyes strategically if the knight is going to be sitting on d6 how can black be equal well bishop e4 knight d6 bishop d5 who is better here and why what's the knight doing on d6 the bishop has a very clear purpose i don't want to give it up on f3 to take on e5 but if i can win another pawn then maybe i'm going to do it so after something like b3 although i don't think this is a good idea because for the moment you lose you don't lose the c6 pawn but it can d6 can be defended it's still something to bear in mind maybe 97 knight of 695 and again who is better and why but after b3 again a surprising move which again makes a ton of sense f6 undermining the structure weakening e6 and getting rid of white's biggest weakness seemed very counterintuitive to me but actually after ef6 bishop f6 you firstly gain a tempo on the rook and now you get to play queen before and again if you saw the first game against karjakin then then this is starting to look very similar the queen is on the queen side looking at the king side the bishops are dangerous the rooks are coming into play and again this night even though it may seem aesthetically pleasing what's it doing i mean what's the concrete purpose of the knight on d6 so karyakin oh excuse me mvl agrees plays knight c4 uh blocking in the queen uh you don't want to give up your great bishop of course bishop to e7 putting pressure on c5 maybe threatening bishop to f3 bishop takes f3 knight 1 stopping bishop f3 rook 88 threatening bishop g2 or bishop takes c4 even worse no actually bishop c4 rook c4 no bishop city for rook c4 rook d1 yeah the queen is not protected because because of knight one so queen e2 defending against that queen b8 and again the bishops look great he wasn't interested in winning the pawn he could have won the pawn knight d3 mbl's pieces do look nice but okay look at five f3 defending knight h4 and again the same pattern he isn't afraid to start attacks which mean that he weakens his position in this case moving the knight isn't an irreparable weakness because it can go back it's not moving a pawn but it still seems like a very double-edged move here f2 defends g2 preemptively king h8 we know what's coming maybe f4 knight g6 uh i don't think rook g8 was sound in this position i think you have to well start bringing your pieces back the knight has sort of served its purpose knight c5 95 95 queen before and this game alireza didn't win as i said it ended in a draw but the way he fought and the way he just played the pawn down throughout the game declined to take it back and he was the one attacking despite why it's beautiful knight on d6 was very instructive for me okay queen c2 played king g8 in some cases preventing knight f7 uh rook d1 bishop f6 knight c4 and now a forced almost force sequence bishop c4 bc4 rook d1 queen d1 b7 threatening to take on c5 and queen b3 queen in one check rook f1 takes takes takes and here they agreed to a draw this is obviously an equal rooken game on their level but again the opening ideas were for me very instructive eye-opening plays dc4 and then plays knight g6 and then just bishop e7 if he's not afraid to to be some material down temporarily it doesn't matter he he knows where his pieces should go and he is able to compensate for the material loss with activity okay let's get on to the next game this game was played in the european team championship just a few days ago uh his opponent was marcus rager i i believe he's german although i could be wrong so don't take my my word for it so this is going to sound weird but marcus rager is compared to ferruja a weak player he is 26 68 at the time of the game firuja was close to 2800 and the hundred point point difference at their level is just huge and the way he dealt with a player rated close to 2700 is frightening okay we have the two knights in this one and bishop g4 which i've studied every single one of first bishop g4 games because that's my main repertoire against the two knights h3 we have the main line bishop takes queen takes e6 and bishop to e2 now in this position several moves are considered optimal knight f6 knight d7 g6 even bishop c5 what furuja did is very very rare and very very risky and that's d4 this obviously forces the knight back to b1 but it releases the central tension in a very unhealthy way and the flexibility is gone in in black's position you're basically committing to playing e5 eventually which which means that both c3 and f4 uh are going to be way more consequential okay the knight was back to be to be one and now simply an id7 h4 h5 wants to prevent an expansion d3 and again knight g6 queen h3 was played which prepares f4 in some positions gets the queen away in any case and also defends and defends the h4 pawn for the moment but alireza just plays on the other side of the board now just a5 f4 was played and now e5 this when i was looking at i was watching the game live uh i just thought okay i would never play like this what's the idea and i was i had the board next to me i was analyzing the positions i just thought that this cannot be good this has to be too risky okay he's not playing me he's not playing a video master or a normal grandmaster or a very weak player like me he's playing someone close to 2700 so of course after e5 f e5 95 why just castles okay so how how are you going to play this position the bishop is maybe coming to g5 uh h5 seems loose what happens when the knight comes to f3 are you going to defend your knight what's going on knight bd7 knight d2 bishop d6 a4 preventing any further expansion knight f6 okay he has the g4 square f7 is sufficiently defended uh where is his king going to go that was still unclear to me but it seemed okay knight f3 the pawn is hanging on on d4 for the moment but that's solved with knight eg4 if you take on d4 then bishop h2 wins the knight so bishop g5 queen d7 still same threat knight d4 bishop h2 knight d2 may be looking at the c4 square trying to put pressure on the d6 bishop maybe trying to reinforce something on f7 or an f6 knight h7 declines the trade and leaves the option for white to take on on g4 and this surprised me a lot i thought if you if you allow bishop g4 without the other knight being able to recapture you don't really have anything but watch what happened knight c4 knight takes g5 okay you you can take on d6 but he took getting the king to h1 and bishop c7 and in this position raget did take on g4 and i was really surprised because you cannot take with the pawn which you would like to do because your rook is hanging so you have to take with the queen and it's clear that if queen takes queen black should have a great attack so for example something like this and rook h5 and castle screenside rook h8 even taking on g5 uh maybe g3 to start things off and if white plays g3 then rook h3 so that's that's clear but after queen takes g4 uh white doesn't have to do that and and where is black's attack why just played rook f3 which made a ton of sense and now a move i okay okay it's a good move it's sort of obvious in this position but since you are biased by previous play and previous ideas at least weaker players are and since it's not easy to completely switch plans to something totally different this came as a huge surprise to me he castled and i just thought okay okay you're not losing your opponent g4 because queen takes pawn takes rook g3 is defended but white can just play e5 and now you may just lose your pawn okay okay e8 queen takes g4 h6g for look g3 and now b5 okay the knight has to move knight d2 rookie 5 rook g4 and rookie 2. and in this position i started white played knight f3 and then c5 was played and here i started thinking okay well maybe this does make a lot of sense black seems to be just much much better here the material is equal white shouldn't really take on b5 because rook c2 but the more i started looking for plans for white i just couldn't find them and it seems that black is winning here those were my thoughts at the time and later when i analyzed with the engine yes but he's just winning here which seems incredible i mean he just castled got i'm sure he saw this beforehand and just got a winning end game so switching plans is of course something that all strong players do but looking at his games especially in the karaoke the karakan is an opening which i'm not going to say it's inflexible but usually when you find the plan you sort of stick with it because changing plans doesn't come easy you have to change the pawn structure too much and he does that in the karaoke which karpov never did if you look at karpov's game in the karakan he just did the thing he wanted to do he either succeeded and won the game or he didn't and something else happened or he switched plans once he failed fire just seems to be just switching plans whatever is best at the moment he just does it he's not afraid to change plans and to risk a lot which that's why he's one of the best okay rooksy one ba4 takes the pawn king g1 rook b8 and you can see that white's position is just falling apart king f1 rookie 6 i mean this is how the game ended it's just nothing special happened he just has much better pieces some extra material and his technique was of course perfect there is basically nothing white can do just pushes on makes all of his pieces better this is how the game ended i mean it's it's three pawns up again i wanted to show you the instructive part which i mean his games are very instructive okay the the final game i want to show you uh is also from the european team championship also played a few days ago this is against victor erdos who is rated only 2600 compared to ferocious rating that's that's slow again we have the two knights again bishop g4 and again we reach this position now here uh erdos played d4 which is one of the most common moves and usually i take on e4 because if knight e4 then you could get away with queen d4 it's it's a very risky capture but i usually win my games after queen d4 white gets a lot of development and a lot of tempi but okay if you russia played knight f6 you're never afraid of e5 because you get a good french defense so if e597 you're gonna play c5 and you have a french but your bishop has been traded off and most importantly your bishop has been traded off for the knights that either jumps into f4 from uh from e2 or jumps into g5 from from c3 so one of white's key attacking pieces in the french has been traded off and that this is just a nice french defense so e5 is not a threat and black has a threat of his own now now you you want to take on e4 and in this case white is forced to take with the knight because the queen is hanging then queen takes d4 so ed5 cd5 bishop d3 knight c6 putting pressure on d4 92 defending preparing c3 h6 preventing bishop g5 c3 bishop d6 all very normal and again we have this khalsbot pawn structure which we get in the exchange karo khan which we get in the queens can be declined and black's plans involve pushing the queenside pawns and in this game he did exactly that so if you showed this position to any decent player and asked him what's black supposed to do anybody would say okay i want to play rook b8 and b5 maybe queen c7 castle through kfc 8 and just push my pawns we can see three play knight a5 knight c4 get the positional bind on the queen side in the meantime white is going to try to attack your king and if he doesn't then there are no other decent plans white has to attack the king side okay bishop c2 rook c8 g4 fine that that's very normal he has to do that king d7 king d7 okay you've played roxy 8 so you're not castling queenside also you want to push b5 uh if you cast on king side then g4 is g5 is coming so king d7 i mean this is a very cold blooded move which may be objectively best but i'm sure many people wouldn't play it i'm sure you would rather try to find the waiting move instead of committing your king to d7 g5 anyway ag5 bishop g5 king c7 he moved his rook he cannot castle queen side he's going to get his king to b8 anyway it's basically short castles on the queen side with rook on c8 and king b8 castle's king b8 rook dg1 and now you think okay so what's the plan uh maybe you want to put pressure on h3 how do you do that well it's hard to play rook h5 because of bishop f6 you cannot play rook h7 because of bishop h7 like i mean what do you do you cannot put pressure on on h3 maybe you would like to trade off the dark squared bishop but the knight is on e2 so bishop f4 is really never happening maybe you would like to move your queen away to give your knight knight h5 but then you lose the pawn on f6 maybe night uh maybe knight a5 knight c4 maybe if the bishop moves some knight before ideas maybe just wait with king a8 because they don't know what to do well what he did here is something i'm sure i wouldn't do in in one of my games and i've had positions like this quite often and in the karaoke it's very hard to come up with plans in some structures of the karaoke and this in my opinion is one of them so what did he do here he played p5 so just went for a minority attack with his kingdom b8 just completely ignoring everything else that's going on because it's objectively the best plan it does weaken a ton of squares what about queen d3 bishop d3 what about a4 what's going on but he just it's just the best move a3 a5 wants to play b4 queen d3 attacking the b5 pawn queen b6 no matter f6 is not attacked anymore but okay f6 takes rook g7 just defense queen b7 defending b5 and f7 rook h2 g1 b4 it doesn't matter white cannot play rook g8 you don't want to take on h3 of course because then rook g8 is possible he just continues with the minority attack when have you seen the minority attack with the king on b8 and the queen in b7 i never saw it so again i was looking at this game live and i was taking notes i mean this is for a counter-con player this has to be extremely instructive unless you're as good as he is okay a4 blocks the blocks the attack now you don't have knight a5 knight c4 bishop f8 vegas rook rook h7 uh true in bishop h6 check fine king d1 of course you don't want your king on b1 because of bc king d1 and now f5 undefending the rook so erdos is the one that has to trade so rook takes rook takes rook g3 defending h3 rook c8 switching plans again nothing's going on on the king side anymore white is not breaking through knight f4 isn't even a possibility so why not continue kingi one white starts running away it's funny that already played king d7 king c7 king b8 and now erdog is playing king b1 king c1 king d1 king d1 bc3 anyway bc3 knight e7 the knight is coming into g6 maybe okay king f1 keeps running away king a7 this i'm i failed to understand but the point is that i think if the queen moves then queen b5 is not check and also if c4 comes in some positions bishop e4 isn't check so okay those are my ideas because obviously there's a downside as well after c4 if white is able to play c4 then knight c3 and knight b5 comes with check but okay rook g1 i'm guessing he wanted to play king g2 and then connect his rook with the bishop on b1 queen a6 offers a queen trade and again this is a transposition into an endgame in which white is just lost i mean maybe the engine evaluation isn't that harsh but it's much easier for black to play and look at these pawns all of these are weak white has four weaknesses black has none because the a5 pawn can be defended by the king okay white took anyway take stakes bishop d3 king a7 bishop b5 and now what happened was extremely instructive knight g8 knight of six knight e4 double attacking one weakness of course c4 is prevented rook d1 knight c3 can be taken knight c3 looks c3 of course after knight c3 you don't have roxy one because bishop c1 rook c3 porn up thank you very much four isolated pawns and aldeza has two pawn islands this is overwhelming the fact that it's opposite color bishops doesn't mean anything even if you trade rooks i think black could win bishop b8 attacks the pawn look c7 defense and now what's important is that he keeps the defense of the h6 square so that white doesn't get to play h6 so after bishop b5 you cannot take on on d4 just yet because h6 comes and then you lose or you draw king of six just preparing king g5 to take the pawn with the king king d3 defense d4 king g5 rk8 an exchange of pawns and king g4 and from here on it's just trivial uh again white has too many weaknesses black has one pawn island now and the a4 pawn is absolutely not the problem here's how the game ended white's tried but it really wasn't possible this is a nice trick uh if you well if you take the rook i take your look and then it is a draw but he can throw in rook 83 check and white resign here obviously king moves i take your rook for free again an incredible game uh there are more of his character games and i've studied all of them i think i've been through every single one of his karo khan games if you play the karo khan look at all of them i chose five that i thought were really instructive and i chose five of probably my favorite ones look at more of his games if you don't play the kala khan maybe start playing it because of firuja i hope you got something from the video thank you very much for watching let me know what you think and stay tuned for more chess bye

Channel: Hanging Pawns

Views: 221,015

Keywords: alireza firouzja, alireza firouzja chess, alireza firouzja caro-kann, caro-kann, alireza firouzja chess games, alireza firouzja vs karjakin, alireza firouzja vs tari, alireza firouzja's caro kann games, chess

Id: QC8sQj7QhjE

Length: 45min 57sec (2757 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 25 2021