CHESS RETIREMENT UPDATE!!

ladies and gentlemen a couple of weeks ago i finished an over-the-board chess tournament and declared that i was retiring from over-the-board chess well really i was retiring from most competitive events including title tuesday and i stated my reasons in that video and many of you have left very supportive comments i've enjoyed reading through them and actually even some very strong grand masters have reached out to me personally to kind of just commend me on being so open about some of the struggles that a person a competitive chess player can go through and so on and so forth what i did not expect after retiring from all things competitive is for what you're about to see in this video and the only way i can really draw any sort of attention to that is i'm going to show you five games that i've played in my online adventures and just regular three minute blitz but before i do that i want to show you this since coming back from my tournament i was 26 50. i am now 28 18 or 28 11 or 28 18 28 11 i guess is my current rating i have gained 160 points almost 170 points i am winning games at a 61 rate in that time period that is crazy i don't understand the reason you could argue is because i'm more relaxed it's because i'm thinking about things a little bit less you could argue it's just a good run and i'm going to go down to 26.50 but whatever the reason might be in today's video i wanted to take you through five games uh i feel a lot more relaxed i feel like i'm just playing moves and good things are happening and i i just kind of wanted to share this video with you to show you some really fun games some good chess and some good vibes and yeah this entire streak of mine began against this individual uh this this fm from uh from australia uh and my rating then was not 2811. it's just when you load the games in uh you get your most recent rating uh this game began with uh well i played a very i played a very interesting opening i was trying to play an ortho schnapp gambit my opponent took my ortho schnapp gambit and played whatever the heck that is i don't know if it's a mouse lip maybe they intended to play b6 instead but they played b5 and then i decided you know i i respected it i thought it was a mouse slip so let's give them the pawn back they took it back in a rather exotic way okay opening doesn't really make a whole lot of difference it's three minute blitz it's kind of meaningless i develop my bishop to c4 good move because i cannot really get hit with these two pawns now i play d3 trying to develop my other bishop but i obviously move my knight he plays d5 and then here i play this move queen b3 with the intention of um of not losing my bishop of course uh while hitting the queen and and and getting the queens off the board and getting my bishop to safety remember i was still about 26 60 back then all right uh so my rating was quite low my confidence wasn't super high uh and we got a relatively boring position out of the opening it looked something like this now it's just an equal position i mean we have no queens uh we've uh we've traded just like a pawn or two otherwise uh and uh yeah i mean now you know it's just really about who's gonna have the more active pieces and whose pieces are gonna coordinate against what you can argue white is better because black has two pawns in the center of the board and so i will create a target against one of them i'll either put my rook on c1 or d1 uh and then i'm just gonna have something to play for he doesn't really have any way to attack my pawns uh so c4 is what my opponent chooses i go back and now the d5 pawn will likely become a long-term target i play the move a3 so his bishop can't move it's a bit of a slow move it's nothing special uh and yeah now now we can kind of already begin to see the makings of uh various attacks on the d5 pawn again when your pawns are sort of standing in the center like that if i can get to them first i'm going to be attacking them very quickly so knight b6 i bring my dark squared bishop back to attack the knight and he plays rook b8 so now if i take on here and then here i'm gonna lose the pawn on b2 first though he should take this uh and then he should take this so it's actually a good move it tactically defends the pawn over here now here i play an important move we're about to go to battle right so right before we go to battle i want to make sure everything that's weak is defended and i'm improving my position and for that reason i play this move f4 this is a very very very important and very useful pawn move because now my center outpost is very strong i continue to have the same amount of pressure and maybe i can even double my rooks on the d-file like maybe i have an idea to go rook d2 rook d1 or rook f2 rook d2 and that also in turn could potentially defend my pawn on b2 that is my weakest link he plays the move g6 and i play bishop d4 just an overall improving move uh it's kind of a feel-good move and then suddenly here i'm like wait a minute not only do i have a strong central bastion he doesn't really have any moves i've sort of negated his play i've locked the center the queen side is just like he can't do anything right it's an impregnable queen side because a4 is completely covered so what if i just go for an attack and then it hit me why don't you just play a five suddenly my f pawn same side attacking chess is bolstered by multiple pieces here i got the bishops i got the rook right we're in good shape here we're trying to push through uh he takes on f5 i take with the rook i just look at like i'm in the driver's seat rook h5 rook f1 rook f7 i mean rook h7 like how does he stop my attack really i don't see a way it's actually one of my biggest weaknesses as a player he plays bishop d7 rook h5 i blundered a fork yeah i actually no joke forgot that he can fork me suddenly i'm like oh my god i'm gonna lose what an idiot and then i'm like wait a minute wait what if i take here and then when he takes my rook i don't take back with my knight what if i threaten mate rookie his mate and even though he is temporarily up four points of material there is nothing he can do about it now if he takes my pawn it looks like he gets out but here there is an absolutely savage move i again ignore his hanging bishop and i mummify his king with the bishop to g6 savage absolutely savage move his king is stuck the king is stuck here in the in the in the corner with my rook and two bishops he plays this i take he gives me a check i move and he tries to run but one final move bishop f6 and the rook and the bishops do the job they seal the escape and my opponent can no longer get out and i remember when i won this game i just it just felt good to win a game like this it was a savage way to win a game like you don't even have to deliver mate you just have to threaten it and he resigns it's crazy because i actually hung bishop g4 but as it turns out bishop g4 is a terrible move bishop e6 here was the best move just giving up this pawn i guess and trying to defend with his knight like bringing his knight back i mean and preventing e6 so i actually set a genius blunder trap well that's that's that's what we'll call it now this next game uh this was my highest accuracy game in the last like 50 games i played uh this one also had two brilliant moves i was super proud of this game so this game began you know i i just played like a random opening i play a lot of random things in blitz because i like to experiment with different positions um it was like a a reverse london but i sort of played a catalan setup with this bishop on g2 queen b3 queen b6 and i played the move c5 inviting an exchange of queens he played the move a6 before rook c8 so white is always better here because i have more space this pawn on b7 is very bad i can always go knight d2 knight b3 knight a5 i'm gonna put my bishop on f4 and that patrols those squares um i just have to be a little bit careful because there is knight h5 and there are is also h6 and g5 and he did play h6 so i played h4 and then he sort of took his eye off my my bishop and then here comes that maneuver i told you about knight d2 knight b3 and then knight a5 i i galloped over to a5 i should have been a bit more accurate here i should have taken and then probably played knight a5 because that actually freezes his rook or as stockfish showed i have b5 which is very nice and if he takes i have rook a8 which is quite brutal and if he takes with the c pawn i have knight b5 with the same idea but i played knight a5 we got this position and i mean i just thought that i had a very comfortable position like he has no play my knight on a5 is very nice and one thing about when you have a massive space advantage and a lot of pawns you have a massive space advantage against a bunch of pawns sacrifices are always there you're always looking at ways to sack win a couple pawns if not all three and then just advance with your pawns because two pawns together are really brutal to stop so you're gonna notice throughout this game i'm kind of like slowly improving my position and there's stuff brewing he look look what he did he walked his king over to a castled position what he didn't realize is that i've got stuff brewing there and the second he played a lazy move brilliant move number one kaboom the whole time over here by the way i've shut down his play he can't go here here i played f3 so he can't bring in his knight so he has no play kaboom detonation now the king has to come out i win a second pawn and i win the exchange so now i'm up a point of material but it's much worse than that because now here comes the avalanche of pawns not just one b-pawn i have another b pawn i have a second b pawn in reserve when that pawn gets traded so he plays king b7 i have a few ways to win here i kind of didn't want to like leave it just to the a file so what i did after king b7 is i just slowly improve my position rook a5 and rook a1 and you just see how quickly the position plays itself once the pawns fall right so i'm threatening rook a7 he goes here i take rook a7 and this set uh a very nasty idea up so i wanted to make sure his king was suffocating right his king has no legal moves totally isolated king but how do i get to the king well first i threaten this mate right and when he stops that mate i threatened another mate what am i talking about why threaten this mate i threaten that when he makes a move rook b6 and he takes and he gets mated with the pawns both pawns have a defense the back row is completely covered by my rook i mean this is one of the this is probably one of the more savage mates i've delivered and i was very happy when the cap score said i played this game at around 96 you can't really complain right well we all have we know we know those parents you know we know those parents are 96 where did the other four percent go shut up you should have taken the test just kidding don't disrespect your parents sometimes they deserve it but you know what they're your parents at the end of the day as my my grandmother used to say you don't get to pick your parents or your siblings or your favorite chess youtubers we all know it's me now next two games i have for you very fun games from the other side i wanted to show you games that i won with white and black this was a game i played against uh strong and m i don't know who this is uh i don't know maybe they'll even watch this video and be like oh i'm in a gotham video um like generally if it's an american and it's an m it's probably like some teenager it's like between the age of like 11 and 15. there was probably their alt account you know they're probably like 23 2400 over the board um this opening was very funny so it started with an e6 b6 i have a course on this by the way gotham chess.com uh my opponent played bishop g5 and rather than pinning myself i decided here to play the move f6 this is a very confrontational move the point of this move is to still get to play f5 i just didn't want to uh i didn't want to pin myself i didn't want to play knight f6 uh is f6 the best move no absolutely not but i wanted this position this is the position that i wanted so e6 b6 against d4 c4 setups black tries to capture the e4 square and that's exactly what i've done many times by trading off that bishop for that knight and then planting the knight on e4 and very simple play afterwards the pawn on f5 is very nice it does a very good job controlling the square and also that pawn on f5 after i cancel will allow me to rook lift okay it'll allow me to bring my rook out it's much better than having the pawn on f7 very passive so from this position you'll just see how easily the game plays itself so my opponent plays b4 taking some space i castle he plays e3 looking to develop the lightsword bishop i bring my knight to the middle the bishop moves out of danger and now i play the move d6 the point of d6 is that i have another knight galloping it that's really what that is also prepares against various things like d5 because it allows me to clog the center and not allow this bishop to have such a prominent role in the game opponent plays bishop d3 knight d7 and castles now i mentioned a while ago this position can oftentimes just play itself uh because of this advanced f pawn and in here i can play you know g5 g4 is one of the most aggressive ways to play it's not not very good especially if white can strike back uh and then you know immediately start poking holes in your attack uh but i decided here to play the move rook f6 rook f6 my opponent can play d5 and attack here uh i didn't think that was anything special because first of all i can just move my rook and second of all i can just block right and i thought that was pretty reasonable um so my opponent played 91 right away the point of 91 is to play f3 my opponent is trying to get my knight out of the middle to kick it out then to continue forward with his attack the problem is i win the race rook h6 if he now dares to play the move f3 i'm bringing my queen and this is exactly what i told you this is why i love e6 b6 because many times the position plays itself and my opponent still plays f3 i was like what what about this i'm threatening a mate queen h2 is made in one now you can take my knight okay you can take my knight but then your king is gonna get hunted out now at this point it's too late to go back if you play h3 i'm gonna go back with my knight i'm still gonna sacrifice on h3 and i'm still gonna open up your king so you can play moves like queenie two i'm actually maybe i won't even sack maybe i won't even maybe i'll go here setting up just the free winning of a pawn and then if you do this it's just boom boom boom oh my goodness imagine just getting a ladder mated like this queen h2 rook h2 that's crazy i just did it with two pieces right so what does my opponent do he calls my bluff he takes my knight i check here and now find the best move for black you would think when you're in the middle of an attack like this you're like oh i gotta you know i gotta i gotta check it's gotta be a check how can it not be a check no it doesn't have to be a check at all sometimes the best move is just getting back a little bit more material and creating practical difficulties so i took the pawn i now have two pawns for the piece and i opened the f file and one other thing that i did when i did this and i opened up the f file i took away two squares so now my opponent cannot shield himself with the knight anymore and when the bishop moves the monster continues to attack i bring my rook i gotta give everybody a turn right the king runs now this can be taken and the king is responsible for defending two different things so i bring my queen all the way back to h5 and there's no way to protect the king if you go king d2 i take and you lose this if you play knight f3 as my opponent did in the game trying to give back a little bit of material i grabbed that and it's anything but over bishop takes f3 i don't win the queen but i win everything else because he would have played rook f3 queen f3 he would have had to defend his queen i would have gone here he would have done he actually i do win the queen because if this then mate and queen d2 wow it took 21 moves but this game was an absolute demolition and this is honestly the way i've been feeling in some of these games recently i'm just i was just just melting my opponents the next game was uh was part of a four game match i played against the very strong canadian i am this guy is one of the highest rated ims in the world i think like i'm actually going to look him up uh i think he's like 2500 feet a like maybe he's lost some rating but this dude is super strong he's 24 82. he's 24 82 and you know he he was like 25 10. okay i don't know how many gm norms he has uh but he's very very strong and he beat me a couple of games in this match this was by far my favorite game of the match uh it was a kind of a i played this time i played my modern course i played my g6 course and it was a kind of a very imbalanced complicated opening where i pushed my kingside pawns trying to trap his bishop uh and then i took a lot of space here with e5 as well um he played very passively and allowed me to get this kind of very interesting bind with f4 so i'm very overextended i've really sacrificed my development uh but i'm sort of restricting his pieces a lot so knight f6 bishop b5 this is his way of trying to fight back here uh and i noticed that i have this move e4 kind of relinquishing my support of my pawn but now forcing his knight to undevelop the problem is when you overextend when you're like way past the center line you haven't castled you don't have a lot of development out your pawn your your position runs the risk of getting very weak so i had to take and then here i had to come up with a plan so my first uh order of business what is this bishop doing right are you gonna take me or not he's not gonna take me all right fine then i'm gonna castle and then maybe i'm gonna kick the bishop out with b5 so knight e2 right knight e7 now you can no longer take and i'm gonna rotate my knight this way he can't really castle i thought because knight f5 knight e3 nobody can actually defend that pawn um so he played the move g4 g4 indicates to me he is not castling kingside ever okay so i brought my knight to the middle and he played bishop g1 which is one of the most it's one of the ugliest and strangest bishop moves i've ever seen in my life like why is the bishop there but his position is defending itself it's not that simple you know and i want to play b5 i want to play c5 so i kick him out and i finish my development now believe it or not the evaluation of this position is equal as space advantageous as this looks for black white is not worse apparently i mean white has several approaches here to just equalizing and actually maybe even trying to play for an advantage most of it has to do with my pawn and e4 so my opponent plays the move queen c2 attacking my pawn and suddenly i'm like wait a minute this is so stupid like am i actually just gonna lose this pawn and then lose the game i'm getting really mad like really so i decide c5 so if he takes on e4 i trap his bishop right so second time in this game i'm using flank pawns to potentially trap a bishop notice early on in the game i played the move f4 i forced one bishop all the way back and now i'm about to force a second bishop all the way back so he trades the bishop but that gives me good center defense and this is around the time i'm like wait a minute i don't think that was a very good decision he long castles all right now this looks like a free pawn i thought it wasn't uh but it is apparently i can just go in with my queen i decided to go in with my queen first and now really the the the idea here for me is can i wreck his queen side right he's indicated to me where he's castled what is the way to wreck his king queenside uh pawn's in front of his king right they're hooks so now b4 b4 strikes both he plays knight b3 attacking my queen i don't want to simplify just yet so i slide my queen over and i prevent the move c4 he takes on c5 i'm thinking here i'm like if i take back if i take this which what which of these three captures gives me the best attacking chances certainly not this one that just keeps my tension ba that gives me the best attacking chances because i can take with check and i can also try to make a queen so he goes here attacking my queen danger levels i take the pawn with check he goes here and i hang out now queen a4 was in the most accurate move but i thought it was good to bait his rook here because i thought i could bring my queen back toward the middle and that's exactly what i did and his position is kind of barely hanging on like look at everybody responsible for defending that knight on b3 he has four pieces defending that and eight points of material not playing and in every good position like this there is one domino that will fall and then the whole position will collapse and i played this move knight back to d7 that move threatens to infiltrate with yet another piece to the d3 or b3 or a4 squares but it does something else knight d7 is the best move because it activates three pieces at once knight d7 is actually a glorious move this move threatens to take the knight removing a guard activating my rook and bringing in three points more of material this move single-handedly brought in 11 points of material and that is the domino that will tip the scale he plays king c1 i'm like not so fast he runs this way i'm like not so fast i'm taking one of your knights now he's got to move the knight right knight but look at this now i go to the back rank have you ever seen something like this two rooks running wild together on an enemy's first rank in the middle of the game now believe it or not that wasn't the best move actually rook b2 is the best move i didn't see rook b2 the point is that i'm threatening checkmate if he takes queen d3 but keep queen d3 in mind because it happens a couple moves later i play queen d3 and he resigns because checkmate is coming with queen b1 um yeah this is one of the more savage positions i think i've ever had in my life like again this whole video is just me playing really fun chess and that brings me to the final game of the day i haven't actually had a chance to play as so many grand masters in in this run um i've beaten a few i i've lost to a few as well uh this is against the grand master from serbia i don't know who this is there's a handful of grandmasters from serbia um and this was a trumpowski one of my favorite openings d4 dynamite literally playing all my courses so just master class on how to play my courses and i play this setup of a stone wall like the stonewall opening for white is uh is this pawn structure but the problem is the dark squared bishop which i've now completely removed and also my opponent doesn't get the e4 square so the reason i like to play this kind of stonewall structure is i have good control over these two squares and if i have good control over those squares uh i'm able to create an attack much faster with moves like knight e5 now he tries to trade my bishop he tries and then he tries to trade my queen a few moves later uh but you'll notice i'm starting an attack so first i slid my king to h1 out of this diagonal and to potentially bring a rook to the g file uh he tries to trade my queen and my knight here so uh he tries to play knight d7 first and then he plays bishop d6 but here comes my attack notice how easily this position is playing itself my king hides in the corner uh the rook is going to the g file my knights are covering all these important squares he takes my knight and now i get connect four so with this move i restrict his movement i get connect four and i open up the f file as well so that's that's just kind of a circulation killer of a move he plays h5 now i play knight h4 the idea of knight h4 is to play queen e2 or g6 so for example if he plays g6 right now i'm gonna take take take he's gonna get obliterated so the idea of this is to prevent g6 and also try to prepare my own attacking ideas now he tries to trade queens you have such a big attack you don't want to trade the queens that is a horrible decision so i attack his pawn and i force him to move that pawn now i attack that pawn right i'm looking to sacrifice so he has to defend with his king um i really don't like where his queen is so i ask it where it wh like what are its intentions right so now if the queen goes here it gets trapped which is very unfortunate so he has to go back now this position is plus two for white if i just very slowly build up my attack okay but i'm not really a slow guy like mentally maybe a little bit but you know i i want things to happen now and i want to make brilliancies and i want to make youtube videos so what do i do rook f6 you gotta play it it's not the best move it's just it's such an aesthetic move because now you're threatening sacrifices and when he takes you get connect five i mean come on who doesn't love a connect five pawn chain just brutalizing the black position right king h7 position here is equal i play rook g1 threatening to sacrifice on g6 he plays rook g8 now i play rook g5 threatening maiden one rook h5 is mate he has to defend like this and this position is equal okay like my attacking chances are actually outweighed by stockfish's uh ability to defend itself but actually now that stockfish is thinking it thinks that after knight f3 there's there's actually quite a good way there's some good ways that white can uh create some attack on black which is interesting oh now it thinks that white is completely winning oh it just turns out i'm a genius rook f6 is definitely the best move then um wow they should give me credit for this brilliant move rook f6 in that case uh yeah i mean anytime you have a king like this and two pawns that can anchor in a rook sacrifice for like a bishop or a knight it's almost always going to be good if the king is left alone and in this game the king was left alone i made an inaccuracy though before bringing my knight back i played queen d2 it was better for me to play knight f3 first and then commit my queen later i decided to do this setting a trap that if he takes my rook he gets brutally checkmated on the edge of the board with queen g3 um he could do this but then he probably gets mated all the same i mean just look at this like what what what are you doing here go home you're drunk so queen d2 he took my pawn and i played knight f3 now and and here i thought i was just totally winning i thought i was gonna play e4 and there's a very kind of interesting idea after e4 which is double check he has to take and then checkmate uh now in the game he made a mistake he did have a way of defending himself here which is why knight f3 was uh better than playing queen d2 right away uh but he played check and now i just go back i block with my rook i kick out his queen and suddenly here comes the devastating attack on the king e4 check king back to h7 knight g5 check king back to h8 knight f7 check and the connect 5 reigns supreme and the attack proved to be devastating and fatal for the black pieces folks of course i've lost games as well all right i've lost games like i played a game against soupy strong brazilian grandmaster he just destroyed me it like wasn't close um i'm still experiencing nerves i still get very nervous in interesting and complicated positions against 28 2900 rated players but it seems like i'm a bit more relaxed and it seems like even though the over-the-board chess dream is currently over we'll see if it ever resumes in the future my chest has been actually pretty good so hope you enjoyed the video and i'll see you in the next one get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 320,136

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

Id: boZGaOgOsqg

Length: 27min 45sec (1665 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 28 2022