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welcome back folks to the new in chess classic part of the champions chess tour it's day number five which means that after three days of the preliminary round the first day of the quarterfinal after today we've got four grand masters who are going to go home or should i say stay home going into today there's only one matchup that doesn't have a leader every other matchup does he car was up one nothing aronian is up one nothing and chakri armamidyara bis mamidyarov is up one nothing magnus carlos and timora job of are all tied i'm going to have time stamps on the video player as always i will take you through all of the games the most exciting ones and this first game is probably going to be the craziest game of chess you've ever seen but before we jump into it i just realized that my scoreboard is not on the screen and quite frankly i don't feel like re-recording so give me a moment as i load up the scoreboard and there it is okay fantastic so here we go we're going to kick things off in the matchup between the quang liam and hikaru nakamura and we have liftoff d4 knight f6 c4 oh excuse me knight f3 d5 c4 e6 queen's gambit declined there should be some queen's gamut decline a lot of ways for white to play this position uh normally the bishop comes out to f4 g5 liam puts it on g5 hikaru asks the bishop what it's doing and liam takes now you also don't have to take going back to h4 is perfectly option perfectly normal option i'm leaving words out of my sentences e3 castles now normally black will play moves like bishop d3 queen c2 short castle etc etc but liam needs to win because uh that's the way it works in this format you need to play for a win he plays work c1 c6 and like a good super grand master who needs something to do in a position what does liam play ladies and gentlemen you got it pawn to h4 this is the way modern day chess works your opponent is cancelled you have not yet castled you start launching the king side pawns now hikara here plays a very important move according to theory and that move is g6 if he doesn't play that move for example if he just plays knight d7 then liam will probably play g4 as well and there's actually some positions where you can even just go g5 sacrificing a pawn to open up the h file and and white is just simply much better here if not outright winning so hikaru plays g6 and on h5 plays g5 now you say well he's pushing pawns in front of his king absolutely i don't disagree with you but it's actually not so bad bishop d3 knight d7 there should be one he wants to go queen d3 and deliver mate so hikaru backs up liam takes and here probably hikora should have taken with the e pawn and and anticipated queen d3 f5 which is severely weakening on the surface it looks like you're pushing all these pawns in front of your position but you shut down the most important threat but rather than doing that he took this way and that's a big decision it keeps everything symmetrical but of course now i have this open rook anytime i move my knight and liam played queen d3 now here hikaro again has a moment to play this move f5 but rather than committing his pawn two squares he decided to play rookie eight allowing the check but it's actually not so bad because king 2f8 not not the worst thing in the world and then you just kick the queen out with the knight but now liam went the other way and he starts punishing hikaru for weakening certain squares in his position so now hikaru has rookie 7. now what does rookie 7 do it stops the fork but it blocks the queen's vision of a certain thing and liam thought for four of his remaining 12 minutes here and played the move knight takes g5 ladies and gentlemen buckle up we get pawn takes g5 h6 attacking the bishop you obviously cannot let the bishop get taken so bishop goes to f6 queen comes in king f8 only move bishop is the only thing protecting these two squares now liam plays an absolutely gangster move liam plays the move rook to h5 that's a boss move now maybe liam could have played knight c7 attacking the rook and then on rook b8 played the same idea and disallowed queen a5 entirely and this position is actually really really good and maybe on knight c7 hikaru would have had to do something else like sacrifices rook in the corner for the night because he just doesn't have enough time well liam decided to go rook h5 right away with the threat of taking threatening mate and you can't take back because queen h8 hikaru plays queen i5 czech hitting the the knight and and the and the king and now rather than coming back liam just chucks the knight and he does this uh oh now there's may threatened black can stop this mate two ways moving the king over or moving the rook back and making a love for the king if you try to run with the king there is an absolutely gangster move here rook g8 check knight to f8 queen g7 sacrificing the queen and you cannot prevent pawn takes knight making a new queen destroying everything you've ever worked for and all of your hopes and dreams ouch so hikaru plays rookie eight we have bishop g6 threatening checkmate you cannot take it because pawn takes rook takes you can't stop mate on g8 or sacrificing mate on g7 so hikaru runs queen takes f7 the king runs again to d6 and now here liam played a really cool move he played the move e4 with the intention to go e5 and you cannot take me because of this but liam also could have played queen takes rook after which we would have gotten bishop takes rook pawn to h7 queen takes b2 pawn to h8 queen takes c3 king to e2 this is what we could have gotten two queens and a bishop and black's only moved not to lose here would have been pawn to b6 threatening a check and not just a check but also an x-ray of two queens have you ever seen something so ludicrous cause i haven't let's back up rather than that liam played e4 kicaro plays bishop takes e5 check now we have bishop takes only move because if you take with the knight queen c7 is made in one uh oh so bishop e5 and now rook takes e5 because you can't take with the king or the rook you can't take with either you take with the king you're gonna get mated i mean i might take this and then just promote a queen sukhikaro plays queen b2 attacking the rook now rook back to e3 hikaru plays rookie seven he also could have forked the rooks but that doesn't guarantee him anything because i just pin you so rookie 7 h7 i'm now threatening to queen hikaru could take here but i'm just going to queen no matter what and for example if you check me kingy two intakes i mate you so hikaru goes queen a one check i told you this game was absolutely insane king e2 queen b2 king f1 they repeat and liam plays rookie one which is losing but let me show you why queen takes rook check e5 queen h6 and liam is about to make a second queen and make a discover check and here hikaru had to play rookie six allowing a promotion and b6 very calm move same idea bishop a6 check and for example king to g1 queen takes rook and here black is winning even though white has two queens because black has an overwhelming amount of material but instead hikaru blitzed out rook takes pawn which sends the game back to equality but then hikaru blundered again and in the hunt for his king liam was able to activate his rook by checking the king and attacking the queen and hikaru's playing with two pieces without two pieces it's been 40 moves in the game and hikaro is playing without two pieces bishop f5 queen comes back to f8 trying to trade queens check king to f7 check rook c3 rook lift trying to bring the uh the rook to f3 he car replaced e4 now check check king d8 and here it's so close liam has rook c8 and if rookie ate queen d7 maiden one but king c8 and and the king is safe have you ever seen something like this completely insane but liam plays queen d5 just maintaining this pressure queen g7 and now the blunder heard around the world queen c4 threatening queen c7 but hikaru has knight b6 attacking the queen attacking the bishop and the king cannot be checked every square is protected and after this all of hikaru's pieces made it out and on this move rook c8 liam resigned nine minutes for the first game of the video completely insane game and hikaru scores again now he carries up one nothing overall and one nothing today so liam now needs to get two and a half out of three in the remaining three games in our other first round matchup we had farouza trying to claw back against shah and he did it by playing a london system shock was like listen buddy you know whatever you can do i can do better i'm i'm the you know i'm the seasoned veteran i've been number two in the world before young blood let's see what you got c4 e6 queen b3 and chakri our mommy jarov blunders his pawn on b7 i'm just kidding that's prep queen takes pawn bishop e4 and he sacrifices a pawn to get a lead in development with the move bishop to b4 check alireza blocks with the knight we have knight d7 this bishop is not under fire because of this we have e3 now he plays rook c8 attacking the bishop and the ship comes back to d5 holding it all together in the center so i'll leave resus upon but he's lacking in development a3 kicks out the bishop and now rook to c1 goes for the pawn but here mamijarov plays a modified bomb cloud king to e7 and he's ready to start bringing in the rooks down the side of the board alireza here has a very difficult decision because if he just plays lazy move like bishop e2 and tries to castle knight e4 and he's just paralyzed rook c2 c3 i'm going to shove this pawn down your throat this is not going to work so lyreza plays king d1 which is a broken bond cloud you know you want to take a hit but it was just way too potent you start getting oh my goodness when you start calling all your relatives you know i think you're thinking you're going to die or something not speaking from experience but my friends tell me knight to b6 knight e5 knight a4 all of a sudden shakuri or mamidyarov is on the way he is on the way he's gonna take b2 rook c2 and chakriar looked at the young blood and said ali reza that doesn't guard the pawn at all knight takes b2 rook takes and c3 and the mid is making it look easy i mean whenever ali reza goes up against any of these top grand masters i'm looking at it like okay this guy you know maybe he's not the favorite but i'm looking at him to you know make a statement he like this kid has arrived make no mistake not today c takes d2 he didn't take the rook because i mean he could have taken the rook but i'm assuming ali reza went for some trick to get out with the knight now we have f3 rook c1 check rook a1 trying to kick out the final line of defense from the rook and uh well i mean rook c8 and rook c1 and this king is busted that king is surrounded and that king is about to get destroyed and chakriarmadyarov beats ali raza farouja in 22 moves with the black pieces in a london what now shaq himself is up again the other two matchups feature draws so we got 0.5 0.5 and 0.5 0.5 in the matchup between so and aronian so those two started peacefully these two started with the favorites winning and let's not forget that if the winner of mamidyara versus farouza takes on the winner of hikaru versus lewang liam now for the second game of the day the second round we go to carlson rajab this is a big game okay uh remember that they've had five draws thus far so probably whoever wins one is gonna just win it right magnus begins with d4 and we have e6 knight c3 and bishop b4 the nimso indian great opening queen c2 one of the main lines now black can play c5 d5 knight c6 one of my favorite lines castles etc d5 chosen bishop attacked take and here black has a lot of moves but but but rajaba plays my favorite he plays pawn to c5 which is an amazing move and the idea of this move is that when they take you you play d4 you attack the queen and in many lines the queen comes to g3 and attacks g7 and actually in many lines black plays knight c6 for example and allows the queen to take on g7 this this this and there's some crazy line the queen will come back here black will play a5 and e5 and just be down two pawns but have a big space advantage more open lines for the pieces which is one of the reasons i like to play this line i would never play it against magnus carlsen because i figure he just knows something i don't so magnus doesn't even go queen g3 magnus just drops back to c2 and the whole point is that black gets the big center black says all right you take a pawn and the two bishops but i'm gonna take the big center e3 knight c6 and b4 now i'm fairly certain that everything rajaba did thus far makes perfect sense okay everything he's done rookie eight i believe centralizing the rook is very good not taking you know allowing magnus the opportunity to take and absolutely destroy himself like i understand magnus carlsen is playing with the white pieces so we have a tendency to just take all the the right moves for granted um but like bla like black's position is so dangerous for white here i i don't think you all realize like how dangerous it is like again if if just one pawn capture black is winning because you just can't block this check bishop e2 d3 and the game is over i hit both i'm guarding it and you're pinned so you can't take like this line is super sharp not when they play it when they play it they know everything so if you know your opponent wants to trade in the center ladies and gentlemen what would you do like if you know well then they're gonna you're just gonna play e4 right just close down the center now black does get a little bit of activity here black can play a move like a5 and of course taking is idiotic because you give yourself doubled sets of isolated pawns which is exotic b5 and now the knight moves out of the center a4 holding it all together and here i think the theoretical move is knight g6 rotating the knight around or bishop to g4 might be better but rejava plays queen c7 bishop a3 magnus just says you're not going to get this pawn and rajamov makes the mistake of going for the pawn which might sound crazy because it looks like that pawn is just it's just dead well magnus carlsen here shows what he knows about the position on a slightly deeper level than rajab he just pushes it and timor has to take because if not i take you so he takes and now just the very cold-blooded move c5 i've given you a pawn but at what cost you've shut down your queen and knight activity and now when we have a trade here i will have dub i will have double connected past pawns which is awful for black so obviously he doesn't do that but now this pawn lands here and this is just a constant reminder of the fact that your position sucks like magnus carlsen does not need to move those pawns ever again and they will just exist they're like what's up you can't do anything about us nothing because none of your pieces can get here and none of your pieces can get here and nobody can even get to asics and for the remaining portion of the game magnus just played very natural moves he just castled brought his knight back you say how's that natural because he wants to put it on d3 it's a re-route to pressure the center and guard everything bishop a60 says that's fine that's fine we can trade because if all the pieces come off the board i'm still the dude two pawns away from queening f3 even though ben feingold says not to play this magnus carlsen is slightly stronger so i take his opinion knight to f4 rook d1 brew k8 bishop c1 just trying to get this knight like magnus just doesn't need to play anything soon man knight h5 okay let me kick you out centralize here he plays bishop g5 and magnus is very skilled at at something well at everything but at something in particular and it's finding the right plan at the right moment he brought back his bishop which served its duty in guarding this pawn rotated it around and traded it for the night and now since he's got this side locked down the center is locked down where has he not accomplished something in the position yet on the king side how will he do that f4 he's got superiority on this side of the board and so he trades opening up the lines he takes the free pawn that rajab had to chuck h4 rajab tries to make a little bit of counter play queen d1 trade your opponent's most powerful attacking piece trade your opponents most powerful attacking piece he's trying to trade the queen but don't just belligerently go for it because oopsy daisies you know that's what we would all do we would go gotham says to trade queens when you're winning gotham i i hung a four cause of you no don't blame me for your blunders rook d7 gets out of the way first and now rajab does get a pawn for his troubles but knight takes g6 and it's over if queen takes we have a trade and i will pac-man all of your pawns one will survive but not to tell the tale and um we have a queen trade and it was in this position that's more job of resign and it's crazy because magnus carlsen sometimes makes it look so simple like so so so simple it it looks like he didn't even try that game i mean he just played a nimso he developed some pieces he had to make one important move which was e4 closing the center but the second rajab played the wrong plan on the queen side magnus was like i got you c6 takes and c5 and that's all it takes against magnus all it takes takes one small error and all of a sudden you're staring up at the lights and magnus carlsen wins and he strikes first in their mini match and has a one and a half to half advantage in the rest of the matchups we had draw so we had one and a half to half mamijar of one and a half to half and so and aronian all moved up to one one now we're in the final two rounds of the days the people who are down need to win so ferugia it's about damn time all right let me see this he's had six games actually he's had was it six six games against the chakra so far and uh he has three losses so let's break that streak we have c4 now and ali reza plays just a very confident kettle system c5 g3 takes takes chakra makes the first trade of the game imbalancing the structure d and b pawns are gone bishop g2 bishop b7 alireza has double fianchetto shock only has one fiance a3 knight c3 knight c6 knight b5 attacks the queen shock doesn't blunder his queen in astounding fashion and castles and really now the big question here for alireza is what is he going to do so he plays d3 rook d8 attacks that pawn immediately rook d1 and probably he wants the castle and find a way to expand on the side of the board but since shock has the development lead because all his pieces are out he's castled as rook has already come to the party ali reza needs to move to castle he immediately attacks alireza and when the knight comes back he does not wait shock doesn't just play a move like rook c8 lazily developing or h6 making no dude he finds a move that doesn't look possible b5 and this is a serious problem and on the surface it's just like bang bang bang i don't understand yeah bishop a6 oops and that pawn that you landed on d3 is just a target homie a4 guards the knight but weakens this squad i'm coming in this is this is bad this is not good this is the opposite of good so b5 is a problem and alireza chooses not to engage in just castles but b5 is a problem because very quickly it's gonna become a b4 pawn and if you take i'm gonna get past pawns on the queen side if you don't take which is what alireza chooses to do just for b8 knight p6 is possible but it's no longer a fork and ali reza plays h3 which is a waiting move trying to see what you know chakrillar's got on his mind and chakriar's got murder on his mind bishop a8 activating the rook down the b file maybe b3 is coming and then the queen is just gonna hit this knight rook d2 or this with knight b4 takes takes two pawns passing on the queen side this is not good for white black's got two bishops black is quickly opening up the lines for the bishops queen b3 queen c7 slides over covers everything rook is active queen laser beams the diagonal doesn't let the knight get active we have pawn to d4 but that weakens this square knight e4 shock is in there like swimwear rook a2 activate this bishop put some pressure a5 a4 on the way rook a1 shaq says you know which one of my pieces is the least active my bishop computer here gives some sacrifice like knight takes pawn takes and like bishop f3 bishop f3 queen g3 here and rook takes d4 which would have been a stunning tactic but uh chakra is not a computer he's a human so he just activates his bishop a little bit knight b2 and here chakra plays knight takes g3 because your opponent's pieces are clustered like a tetris piece on the other side of the board i mean like you've got to have something okay i mean we're talking about 23 points of material just standing on that side of the board not doing anything all right knight takes g3 knight to d3 and again ali raza could take but it's just a bit dangerous with all of this kind of avalanching so he chooses to ignore this and plays knight d3 but now the knight comes back to pressure the center rook a6 bishop f3 bishop f3 and this beautiful move bishop takes d4 and knight lands in the middle hits everything queen d1 queen c4 attacks the rook pressures this this is coming in this is coming in and not to mention that b pawn that chakra pushed a long time ago we have knight e5 queen c3 bishop h5 attacks this and potentially the most picturesque move of the entire game and kind of just the kind of just a microcosm of the entire match knight back to c6 this bishop is hanging this knight attacks this and this and the rook attacks this and these two attack that and that every single piece that alireza has is under fire he's going to lose something he played knight d7 the rook cut taken and rook a8 very simple move trying to trade rooks the bishop is still hanging and rook a1 is coming and ali reza resigned two and a half half from amityarov and ultimately that means that mommy jared's score is two to nothing in seven games of this matchup shock won four and drew three that was unexpected okay i don't care what you tell me that was unexpected for the other third round game i'm taking a look at hikora versus lewang liam but i'm actually going to go through this one a little bit quickly because while we did have a nimso in a line we just saw in the matchup of rajaba versus carlson although there we had a d5 right away there's a kind of a similar looking line we got a position where a lot of peace trades happen remember hikaru just needs a draw to make it right the most important moment of this game probably comes around move 20 which is right here we have an end game middle game end game where it's two rooks bishop knight versus two rooks bishop knight but hikaru has pawn weaknesses he's got islands he's got double pawns right and throughout this game liam just started applying pressure to those weaknesses and hikaru relied on the counter play on the b-file and the bishop diagonal to kind of offset that but obviously bishop g2 cannot happen because of the pin and as hikaru delayed the capture of any of these pieces and liam just slowly improved this position pushing pawns to repel the bishop you know b4 very important move and hikaru sacked this pawn on the a file to create some weaknesses but he was never able to do anything with those weaknesses like at all in fact liam just played a very clean game and got this down to this rook end game where he's just got two extra pawns now the way you're supposed to win a rook end game where you have extra pawns is trade the pawns in the right way okay that means create the weaknesses for the opponent in the right way at a certain point potentially sack one of the pawns for activity and invest in the pawn but as this game progressed it was becoming clear that liam was making mild progress and he's trying to trade a rook of course because rook and six vs rook and four is an easy win but two rooks allows hikaru counter play keep that in mind you're trying to defend you have to keep rooks on the board liam is slowly making his progress slowly but surely turning the screw right hikaru's bringing his king liam is advancing very slowly trying to attack trade rooks not too much is going on now we're slowly getting into the 50th move and right here comes a critical decision f5 he decides to trade pawns now maybe what he should have done is find a way to get this pawn to a6 put the rook behind it and trade this pawn maybe just bring in the king if possible while sacrificing one of these pawns for activity but he goes for f5 and what ends up happening is due to this trade liam has created weaknesses for himself while not creating any weaknesses for his opponent double day pawns are great but not when they can't be moved so you need to not allow your opponent any any play and hikaru is now able to just sit back and not do too much right rook b6 still a little bit of progress getting made but not the cleanest way to get a win in this position and hikaru just sits back doing nothing he's just like all right liam can't really find the way forward he's trying to push king e5 but now what is this king doing in the crossfire rook c8 and the rooks have linked up rook c5 is made in one okay rook c5 is made in one so we get this move but now there's check here and check here and takes and you've lost a pawn and if you go a7 i just go rook a5 and i'm guarding and there's just nothing you can move so liam goes for rook d5 but look at this beautiful have you ever seen something like this rook e4 check hikaru finds the moment to trade rooks because this rook cannot get behind the apon if this pawn was one square back he would get rook to a4 and just promote but because a long time ago he pushed this pawn he can't get that anymore and hikaru goes behind the pawn and now what's going to happen is one of these pawns will trade for the g pawn and it will get king and pawn versus king and rook and it will be a draw and we have exactly that as the end game simplifies hikaru gets to that end game but instant replay right here hikaru played f5 a shocking blunder liam could have played rook b6 check rook takes and now not king takes pawn takes but pawn takes f5 check suicide it's an in-between move king takes king takes h5 a5 h4 a6 and white promotes first and in shocking fashion liam could have won the game but he failed to see that as these two games that liam had with the white pieces spiraled out of his control i cannot imagine i cannot imagine what he was thinking because obviously it's extremely frustrating that first game was so close but hikaru manages to defend tenaciously take his chance when it gets there sacrifice the rook and it's just the draw rook h7 here here here and hikaru chooses to promote to a rook takes takes and survives and because now liam is mathematically eliminated because ultimately it's two to one and even if he wins the next game it's two to two so he would lose the mini match and hikaru wins by the score of two nothing for the other matchups not too much else occurred it was carlson getting a few more draws and ultimately knocking out rajab of two and a half one and a half and wesley so lost the third game to aronian and uh aronian moves on with the score of two to nothing and carlson moves on with the score of one and a half to half carlson will take on levon aronian hikara will take on shakuriya mamidyarov and that concludes the final day of the quarterfinals in the new in chess classic ladies and gentlemen as always it's been very fun making these recaps for you god bless you love you lots if you made it 30 minutes into the video and i'm gonna see you for the semi-finals peace out much love get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 460,536

Rating: 4.9620171 out of 5

Keywords: meltwater, meltwater chess, meltwater chess tour, new in chess, new in chess classic, new in chess tour, champions chess, champions chess tour, champions tour, champions tour chess, meltwater champions chess, meltwater champions chess tour, chess tour, champion chess tour, champions chess tour 2021, meltwater chess 2021, magnus carlsen, magnus carlsen chess, hikaru nakamura, gmhikaru, chess candidates, candidates chess 2021, chess candidates 2021

Id: hV7lojsjbtE

Length: 30min 25sec (1825 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021