Did Magnus Eliminate Hikaru?

ladies and gentlemen it is time for the final day of the new in chess classic your mans is back after the second covet vaccine side effects i had a day uh but today i'm back to normal just did six hours of commentary and i'm here to make this recap let's do this thing it's magnus carlsen and hikaru nakamura playing for the final match but we've also got shakuryama medyarov and levandranyan who provided us a barn burner i put time stamps on the video players for the games magnus is up one nothing in my miz are tied half half which means that the winner of the rapid portion wins the whole thing but they might play blitz in armageddon we're going to kick things off with this game levon begins with e4 e5 and we have a rue lopez with a6 bishop a4 and now black has a choice of what to play in this position and goes for knight f6 and here white plays d3 now normally white castles here and plays for c3 and d4 but this is a more trendy line with d3 now we have b5 bishop here and bishop c5 this is actually uh b5 and bishop c5 against c3 and d4 is known as the archangels archangel which sounds like a very cool name but here black's entire idea is to kind of bait white into this pin and now drop the bishop back and sort of argue that this doesn't make any sense this bishop needs to be on c1 it doesn't really need to be out here and uh well this just leads to a very imbalanced position we have pawn to a4 rook to b8 moving off the way of this pin castles d6 knight d2 and castles by black and here black begins active operation so shock plays knight a5 attacking the bishop on b3 the bishop moves out of the way shock takes some space rookie won queen c7 that's the thing about the rue lopez it's a giant maneuvering affair like 14 moves have been played by both players and uh nothing's been traded it's just a ton of maneuvering here so um we have b4 aggressive move takes takes knight comes back to c6 and the rook is pinned and thus far it's a very complex battle you know and here you know chakriar when left to do his own thing is going to play moves like knight to h5 very provocative move trying to trade pieces and get his knight to f4 which is exactly the way he plays that's why we love him knight to e3 played by levon looking for light squad real estate in the center of the board and queen f6 the idea of queen f6 is preparing an f-file attack and here levon you know he does what all super gms do when they don't know what to do which is play what let's play the move h4 except in this case i truly legitimately from the bottom of my heart have no idea what he was trying to accomplish um and first shock took this pawn with the idea to deflect the queen away from all of these squares uh levon did not take he tried to kick the knight out and then shaq just weighed bishop e6 very nice move because after takes he took with the f pawn he sacrificed his knight and now we see the entire justification of his setup and he picked up two more pawns and then a third pawn and we have a position here where white has two pawns and black has seven seven to two when's the last time you've seen a guy have two little pawns and these the other guys got seven and levon's just in trouble and the way shock converts this is he simplifies down and puts his knight in the middle queen b7 92 ultimately he wins back the night levon has to get into a subpar end game where levon uh picks up a couple of pawns along the way but he's still three pawns down shock can win this in a variety of ways he can play rook f rook f4 rook f3 trying to attack stuff centralize the knight win it slowly but from here on out shock predicts the next 17 moves of the game i'm not even kidding he plays rook f1 sacrificing the rook to fork and win this at this point he anticipates that he will move the pawn to a2 which is exactly what he does the knight is now immobile the only way that white is going to play here is to bring the king and win the a pawn so he proceeds to do that shock at this point doesn't move any pawns instead he runs the king this way because he knows that white cannot make any progress except this he then runs the king to f4 king takes a2 and now and only now does he play g5 and this is actually not hard for him to calculate because white can't move anything white plays king b3 g4 king c4 g3 you've got to bring the knight back now i'm going to bring my king to get your knight out and i'll just push we have to sack your knight king to d5 and pawn to a4 pawn to a5 king takes pawn if king comes back then king comes back nothing really here you can go in my pawn but i'll win both of your pawns king d6 a4 levon resigned i'm not kidding when shock predicted that's the only reason you play rook f1 is because you see this entire fourth sequence all the way out into the end when's the last time you calculated 17 moves in a row when's the last time you calculated one move in a row all right be honest with yourself beautiful conversion from shock who starts the match with the win and ladies and gentlemen i'm not gonna lie to you shaq proceeded to win the next game that he had black as well they drew the second game and he ended up winning two and a half half which meant that of six decisive games out of seven all six were won with the black pieces in this match i don't know the last time that's happened chess historian statisticians please feel free to try to find that but congratulations to mr mamidyarov who wins the third place uh i'm gonna expand this a little bit and we'll adjust our scoreboard accordingly uh beautiful play from shock who was a game away from making it to the finals ultimately losing in an armageddon format so congratulations to mommy yarov uh and uh now we will move to the final match the first game of the match between hikaru and magnus carlson hikaru plays the move d4 magnus carlson responds with knight f6 e6 and now white has the choice to allow the nimso or not allow the nimso chooses to allow the nimso and plays queen c2 one of the main lines the other main line being e3 but here nowadays they're playing knight f3 f3 g3 etc he plays queen c2 magnus plays d5 we have a trade and bishop comes out to g5 pinning the knight bishop comes back and now black can play in a lot of ways but magnus gets confrontational he plays c5 idea being that once you take it looks like i can just drop back and take but rather than doing that in many cases black either plays g5 first and knight to e4 or what magnus does in this game bishop to e6 just to stabilize the center i promise they know what they're doing hikaru develops in the center develops his knight knight d7 and magnus wants to take with the knight and then play g5 in knight e4 and here hikaro plays a move that's been played one time ever in 50 games knight to d4 hikaru didn't do this by accident because after bishop takes c5 he blitzed out the move bishop to d3 after this trade in the center keep queen b6 he blitzed out the move queen d2 indirectly defending this pawn because if you take there is bishop h7 check discover check and you lose the queen magnus played knight e4 looking to immediately punish and solve his problems because white hasn't castled yet so you attack the queen the problem is that ironically now rather than playing this and saying oh i have two bishops i'm so good at chess you actually take with the bishop and you go for a position where you have opposite colored bishops but you have a pr very well accounted for and defended deep on all right it's like sending the rich person off into a sus neighborhood right but that person's got like little intel surveillance on them maybe they're wearing a wire i don't know if this is chess or some mafia movie but pawn on d5 is well accounted for castles magnus rotates the queen hickory plays pawn to d6 knight e5 and bishop to g3 now we have played 19 moves at this point hikaru had more time on the clock than he started with at the beginning of the game you get 15 minutes every time you make a move you get 10 seconds bonus he had 16 and a half minutes he had prepared this he knew what he was supposed to do here he plays knight to b5 trying to go to c7 and he does that in fact he plays knight to c7 and just a couple of moves improves the position of his queen as well magnus has to play rook f8 now hikaru plays rook d1 centralizing his rook at this point magnus doesn't have a lot of moves magnus is much worse and there are two ways to play a worse position suffer and defend create counter play those are the two ways the magnus goes for counter play plays h5 trying to play h4 bishop h3 et cetera doesn't karo doesn't try to play h3h4 plays queen c5 pressure this way pressure on a7 magnus plays rook d7 blocking the pawn from moving up now here hikaru could have played a very nice move he could have played rook d5 which is actually what i thought his idea was during the time of the commentary rook d5 is a very nice move bishop g4 you play rook g5 h3 kick out the bishop but hikaru chose to attack with the pawns on the queen side with b4 and this allowed magnus to strike pawn to e3 which on the surface looks just like he blundered upon like he forgot pawns can take other pawns but his idea was to do something called a clearance sacrifice which is when you move upon forward to gain the square where that pawn used to stand now that bishop guards the knight and the bishop pressures the king and at this moment magnus could have justified this entire thing with the absolutely ridiculous computer line pawn to b6 sacrificing everything on the queen side and creating queen side counter play by ripping it all open the computer is trying to argue that here sometime somehow black is not just completely lost and has some chances but magnus carlsen is not a computer contrary to popular belief and rather than sacrificing the entire house he played the waiting move king to h7 and that move gave hikaru the time to play b5 and bring the knight back this knight rotation back to e7 is so important because once hikaru lands that knight e7 move it slows down black in his tracks magnus at this point down to about 40 seconds on the clock because of all the time that he spent in the opening plays the move queen g4 and all hikaru had to do here was play bishop f4 that disconnects the queen from the protection of the bishop and for example here if you play a move like f5 you will lose the knight if you take the bishop i take and i fork you and that's bad and if anybody's confused why this is not checkmate there's a rook protecting and this would have been game over probably i mean maybe bishop g6 and then somehow you will just kick out the queen but hikaru played bishop to e5 and that allowed magnus one final trick and that move is rook that moved his knight to g5 baiting hikaru into rook f4 knight h3 check fork but that's the best move because after king to h1 black is lost knight takes f4 is met with check and then you pick up the knight and now you're just winning i mean black just can't defend this position against the you know the pass pawn and everything you just can't defend this position kikaru fell for that and instead went back to f4 and here it's -5 for black because of the move heard around the world rook takes d6 seemingly taking the impossible pawn why because if rook takes d6 of course you are just made it but if bishop takes d6 knight h3 king h1 and since you made this possible by moving the bishop out of the way bishop takes g2 rook g2 and queen to c4 and magnus would have been completely winning but he missed it instead of playing rook takes d6 he played this first and now if you play rook takes d6 i take with check you see what was missed it's a move order thing because he didn't have a lot of time so now he just does this instead and total pandemonium breaks loose the position still apparently like zero zero zero according to the computer maybe you have a stronger one queen to e6 takes takes and here magnus plays rook a because if you take the queen there's backrank made so kikaro here plays king g1 rook a1 and brings this back rook goes back to d8 and the only winning move for white to stop this plan dead in its tracks tr trash h3 why because if the queen tries to come forward this pawn is lost and the bishop is hanging so magnus went back to g5 but that allowed hikaru the chance to push the pawn now you cannot move the rook because i promote queen e3 and now in beautiful style check only move check only move back rank check sacrificing the queen to make a new queen and mate so the king has to go up another very simple queen takes rook and if you take me i will deliver check here check here check here and i will win your queen via x-ray so magnus instead of that plays bishop takes g2 and hikaru runs the king to safety and wins ladies and gentlemen it is match on because hikaru nakamura has struck first today beautiful preparation that was one of the smoothest games that i think hikaru played against magnus with the exception of course of this absolutely ludicrous rook takes d6 but that is the problem when you play magnus carlsen or kikaru it's never over trust me i've played hikaru many times every time you think you got one of these bastards in a corner you're like that's it this is it they come at you with some spinning triple backflip into a front flip into an elbow into i mean they just knock you out from the dumbest i mean it's just it's crazy i'm talking to lexi olynyk with the ezekiel choke when you full mount my mma folks you all understand what i'm talking about game number two magnus carlson looking to strike bank he goes for e4 e5 and he goes for an italian joko pianissimo with c3 d3 nice and calm and they had this game yesterday all of these moves they had yesterday including up until this moment yesterday magnus played a4 that was that 90 move queen end game today instead he goes b4 and then b5 and his point is that this is just a free pawn however with the very calm move knight back to f6 black says homie you took my pawn but what about half of your pieces and it's actually funny this is kind of i don't know i don't know if this is a very magnesian kind of game because on the one hand he's up a pawn but on the other hand none of his pieces are out and magnus is all about harmony like he he's all about i mean having the pieces out and like coordination and i don't know if his style is very much taking a pawn and then kind of like proving your opponent's play incorrect but it's very hard for him to develop here so first he has to play knight d2 to defend his bishop from this pin now kikaru plays bishop d6 kicking out the rook and then he plays rookie eight it's amazing that this very simple offer of a rook exchange which we'll see happens in just a move um trades off yet another one of white's only active pieces and black just has this pressure and then magnus played bishop c2 to get his knight out of the way of the bishop and hikaru pounces with the move knight to d5 attacking the pawn on c3 and this move knight to e4 defends that except for the fact that it doesn't defend it at all here hikaru could have also played f5 which is another idea knight takes d6 and then taken attacking the queen and then taking back and that leads to wild complications after for example queen here attacking the knight knight e2 check then you take you can hang this but etc etc there's a whole bunch of crazy lines but hikaru found a sequence of moves that forces a draw knight takes c3 knight takes c3 bishop takes f3 pawn takes f3 and i know you're gonna say well i saw queen d2 the whole idea is that you cannot take here because of this and if pawn takes f3 queen h3 f4 bishop c5 with the threat of check because this is pinned and this is just a draw you say how is it a draw knight e4 is the only move to protect against that threat and black would sacrifice and by this completely insane virtue of repetition they would repeat you cannot go here because of mate and hikaru saw that and said hey four's draw with black is good i'ma win the next game with white here we go let's go to the blitz but magda's played quindi too and he's just he's just worse here like this is just not right because his structure is damaged he's lacking in development and black has no problems but hikaru chose to repeat moves anyway ikaru didn't have to do that he could have for example played bishop back to h5 but he decided that he was going to draw this game and try to win the next game with white now we will come to see whether or not that was the correct decision uh but uh it's a big decision it's a big decision to make ultimately it's very easy to look at the computer evaluation so it's minus one um but uh well we will come to see if it was the right decision but that was a very interesting game knight c3 the whole chop chop chop chop again first two games chicaro no problem seems to be in good shape now we go to game number two in game number two sorry three not game number two game number three this time hikora comes out with d4 but magnus goes for a queen's gambit declined with the move a6 okay uh and a6 is designed to counterbalance uh this kind of pressure on the c pawn and then you want to play counterbalance as the wrong word but it's it's intended to pressure the c pawn from a slightly different angle but hikaru just trades and gets this position they trade dark squared bishops on d6 and now they just develop their pieces bishop g4 queen pops out to b3 attacks the b7 pawn magnus gambits it uh if you take it there's a chance you get your queen trapped and then we trade on e2 so he trades on e2 castles rook c1 and a few moves later we got castles by hikaru this was an interesting moment as well hikaro offering a queen trade voluntarily damaging his structure but he's going to put rooks on b1 and c1 and that's kind of the point magnus chose not to do that and instead we have this and now pawn to g6 the idea of pawn to g6 is that you will go knight e6 knight g7 in many cases bringing the knight to f5 and maybe f5 in the future as well to counteract the bishop on d3 we have knight f4 rookie 8 played by magnus bishop c2 c6 so for solid moves and at this point basically the players have gotten to a position which looks completely in the balance now what do you do from here hikaru's gotta either win the game or draw it he cannot lose so what will he play and after some thought hikaru decided that this was the game he was going to make his mark so he played f4 which is a big decision massive structural weakness on the e4 square but after knight to g7 he just plays f5 idea being that after knight takes f5 you will go here the queen will move and then you will damage magnus's structure irreparably this is very very bad for black then you will try to go for this pawn or bring your queen all the way around it's the beauty of a queen it can take three stops and get across the board or sometimes do it in one but you can't teleport through pawns welcome to gotham chess recaps and for that reason magnus played g5 and hikaru attacked the queen and here played a move that we completely did not expect and that move is pawn to h4 which is a pretty boss move the idea of this move is that if magnus were to take now we will bring the queen back and immediately win that pawn or just win it outright with rook f4 and just belligerently attack but magnus carlsen is very tricky and he played this move g4 that shuts down the play and allows the knight to activate via h5 so he got hikaru played queen c3 knight h5 and here the computer gives a line e4 which is a crazy sacrificial idea intended to meet pawn takes e4 with the opening of the diagonal that's obviously something i can generalize for all of you to understand sacrificing a pawn with the intention of opening a certain diagonal and f7 will be very very nicely kind of pressured or black plays knight takes e4 and then after this trade you have this very nice move here try to find it for white um it's a very nice move it looks like it doesn't do anything white has only one move in this position that wins feel free to pause uh that move is pawn to f6 and basically you just lock black down like black has no way back with the knight uh rook f5 rook g5 queen e3 queen g5 is on the way it's amazing what one pawn move just kills completely kills black's position rook f5 trapping the knight and then just going for the king uh but it's magnus carlsen we're talking about um so i don't know if he would have allowed this i'm sure that on e4 he would have taken with the pawn uh but hikaru chose queenie one and now magnus shrugged and he just sacrificed his rook and this is a concept known as relative value rooks are not worth as much as knights rook is not worth as much as a knight in a pond but a rook for the knight and the pawn in this position leaves white with almost no active pieces and black has four and the relative value of black's knights counter playing against this bishop is ki just cannot be understated these rooks are not really participating in the game and magnus avoids a trait of queens and just slowly improves his position he centralizes his queen he then kicks out hikaru's rook he then brings in his knight rook d1 and here magnus played a move which was so egregious i completely do not understand it i don't understand it at all and yet it's the top engine move and it's king to f8 again some moves i just don't explain to you because i don't know listen i explain things to you that i understand that i have taught to people in the past that i can educate the beginners and intermediate players on i never lie to you guys okay except for when i tell you i'm a good chess player king to f8 i don't know what the hell that move is and yet it's the top engine move it's the top engine move and then magnus brings the next knight to e4 and here sometimes the best move in chess to go forward is to go back queen f6 and these knights make it impossible to protect h4 and even though hikaru wins d5 h4 is taken and the king's home is invaded and it was in this position that hikaru resigned and that draws attention to two things that draws attention to the repetition in the game prior and it draws attention to was playing aggressively in this position the right decision to make especially in a position that strategically is very much just balanced to do this and push the pawns in front of the king and open things up hikaru said afterwards in the interview with me and anna uh when we did the live broadcast that he actually had missed the move g4 he didn't he just i mean he played h4 and he's criticized himself very harshly said g4 was just not a good move uh sorry sorry uh h4 was not a good move in view of g4 arriving on the board um and he said that from there the game spiraled out of control and here was his last chance to play e4 but magnus carlsen wins with the black pieces that is a huge win and now ladies and gentlemen ikaro has to win and hikaro has to win with black that's what he has to do so when you have to win with black what do you do you play the sicilian defense when you have to not lose with white and you are faced with the sicilian defense what do you do you buy the gotham gambit's repertoire at www.gotham.com link is in the description and you play the delayed wing gambit right but magnus plays c3 the allopin sicilian which is just very solid hikaru goes g6 we have a trait in the center with d5 and now magnus plays e5 this is very standard stuff apologies my allergies are bothering me i'm gonna have to rub my nose and hopefully that's the last time i do it bishop g7 knight f3 and knight h6 this is actually very standard hikaru's not disrespecting magnus by putting his knight on h6 sometimes when i'm tilted in blitz i'll play knight a6 knight b8 a few times but this is not disrespect if you go here you lose the knight in one move so knight h6 we have a check block castles castles h3 h3 is intended to prevent bishop g4 it's actually funny these positions are really tough to play for intermediate players because they're not good at just structure and especially when pawns don't defend other pawns if this bishop comes here and this knight comes here d4 is lost so magnus needs to play this move f6 and takes and at this moment hikaru has a big decision to make since he's playing this game for a win he probably should play rook f6 but that's a tough move to make because magnus can even do something as ugly as trade off both bishops for both knights and just go here and the truth is this position's a nightmare to play for black like it's just not easy to play this you have no more moves i rub my nose again just have no moves knight c3 f4 just have no moves like you need pawn play so hikaru goes for a symmetrical structure and then he plays the move g5 so how do you deal with this it's like dealing with a belligerent drunk guy at a bar sure you could throw him out but then the guy's gonna stand around in the street do you call the cops like what do you do i'm not speaking from experience i've never thrown someone out of a bar or been thrown out of a bar myself but you got a belligerent guy and he needs to take your head off right queen d6 bishop a4 very nice trick threatening knight takes queen takes bishop b3 hikara moves out of the way and brings the knight back to e7 queen e2 and knight back to g8 and from here on out hikaru needs to make this plan work he has to create an attack against magnus and magnus meanwhile plays queen b5 and the funny thing about queen b5 is he just wants a queen trade like he just wants a queen trade and now he plays bishop d2 to move his knight and then get this so hikaru plays b6 and a5 preventing that from happening and also intending bishop to a6 which just basically traps the queen so now magnus has to slide out of the way of that correctly doing so rook c8 rook c1 rook c6 intending to double in a position of symmetrical structure it's very tough and when i mean symmetrical structure i mean three three one one two two pawn structure is basically the same the players were shuffling here and hikaru had to trade a rook but for the most part was just avoiding trades like the plague i mean it was like magnus said covet and shikaru somehow knew about it and he was just social distancing from his pieces he was like bro i don't want any of that let's try to you know try to create some sort of attack with h5 g4 f5 and so on queen d1 knight to e7 but magnus was sharp man and here magnus here magnus came up with again the top computer line that's this just the annoying thing about playing magnus carlsen like no nobody except the super gm plays this plan here this this plan would never even begin to occur to me queen to be one and obviously when you look at that you go well he's just doing this nah man you know what his idea was idea was to put the queen behind the b-pawn to open up a new flank of attack and pressure from the queen side and that's what he does and obviously some expert player like some 2000s watch my videos they're like i would have played b4 yeah relax go take a long hard look in the mirror maybe smack yourself knight c3 rook c7 knight e2 magnus is just waiting he's like come come on come on let's go you got to play this for a win but you're not equipped because you just don't have enough and you're not going to beat me attacking me symmetrically so now hikaru plays h4 and magnus chips away he takes on e7 he gets rid of the bishop and he picks up b6 hikaru sacrifices the b pawn with the intention of playing f5 g4 bishop h5 and magnus says okay and bring the bring that i got the horses in the back and the words of philosopher lil nas x got the horses in the back f5 bishop b5 kicks the queen out queen mobilizes knight drops back hikaru's ready but the second hikaru is ready magnus just says who's guarding the pawn my guy and who's guarding this pawn and who's guarding knight e5 knight f7 if you play g4 i'm coming in with my knight i'm gonna take this i'm gonna take that at some point and uh yeah on the surface it looks like you can take but you just traded your only active piece knight to f6 defending this but now magnus can employ a very simple plan and that simple plan is me have pawn me push pawn pawn to a4 and hikaru doesn't have anything if hikaru plays g4 that just allows the knight to come forward and that's why magnus brought his knights back he actually noticed a couple moves ago he brought his knights back because no matter which pawn comes forward the other knight will move up so for example if f4 this knight comes to g4 or knight to f3 if this pawn comes to g4 knight to f4 and that's the beautiful thing about knights they can outmaneuver pawns anytime they move and so after a4 hikaru played a move i mean he just played a move but uh the players agreed to a draw here which is the sportsmanlike way of when a player is playing someone and that someone needs to play for a win and they get over aggressive you just make the draw it happens all the time at top level events and ultimately they drew the match today but on the overall score it is magnus winning the new in chess classic uh with the final score of one and a half half over hikaru nakamura in the rapid portion so the players agree to a draw um if at any moment two super gm's are in a situation where one needs to play for a win and that one just does something totally insane and plays really aggressively like hikaru did in this game oftentimes they will make a draw that's why you know magnus could play this position for a win but more often than not the players will just agree to a draw because it doesn't matter unless it's a rated game but that aside magnus carlsen is the winner and that concludes our coverage of the new in chess classic and magnus tweeted after this and said uh something along the lines of i just won my first tournament in a while or i just won a chess tournament again and that's because he hasn't won a chess tournament since he turned 30 years old and that was november 30th 2020. that's pretty rare and now the interesting question becomes how much of a confidence booster is this from magnus moving forward as he prepares for the world championship match i know that sounds crazy it's an online rapid tournament there was a lot of players missing because of the candidates but let's let's not forget in 2020 we didn't see these guys playing over the board chess and in november we have magnus vs nepo for the finals right the world championship match so how much are we going to see magnus playing in these events how much are we going to see napo playing in these events fabiano caruana didn't play the entire last year basically of online chess and he didn't win the candidates so is it to their benefit or not i don't know let me know what you think in the comments below and as always it's an honor it's a pleasure to make these recaps for you uh thank you so much for your continued support and probably an hour after i post this we will cross 900 000 subscribers which is absolutely incredible because i started making youtube videos 11 months ago so subscribe if you haven't already because we've got just 100k more and we're gonna be at a million and maybe within a few months we'll be the biggest channel on youtube so i love you all and i'll see you soon

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 453,867

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: FmeH0DvR69g

Length: 30min 41sec (1841 seconds)

Published: Sun May 02 2021