Famous Chess Game: Kasparov vs Topalov 1999 (Kasparov's Immortal)

hey everyone this is kevin from the chess website comm and today we're going to be going over a game between Kasparov and Topalov and many players have said that this is the greatest chess game ever played now we'll let y'all a debate between you know if y'all think this is the greatest game ever played but it is Kasparov a mortal game and pretty much all the top GM's famous players have their own immortal game and it it's just that it makes them considered immortal in the chess world so Garrick is fouled many consider the greatest chess player to ever play the game if this is his immortal game then I will have to say this is probably one of the best games ever played so with that said Garrick is both playing the white pieces and Topal of playing the black pieces starts out with pani for pond d6 pawn d4 Knight f6 Knight c3 pawn to g6 and so blob really decided that he wanted to play the perk defense and so that's what black is going to be playing here if you haven't watched the video on the perk defense and you want to get a foundation of how the perk defense really plays out and kind of the themes before you watch this video definitely feel free to go watch that but if not we'll go ahead and continue white played Bishop to e3 Bishop to g7 fee and King's Bishop Queen to d2 Knight you can already see from white that he's already developed his Knights here to c3 and his Bishop here to e3 and once he moved his Queen to d2 his very apparent that he was looking to castle on the Queen side a lot of times if you're white and you develop your light square bishop and your knight here to possibly f3 a lot of times that will signal that you're going to castle on the King side but from here he's already made way to castle on the Queen side so that's more than likely what Kasparov had been had in the back of his mind as far as where he wanted to Castle black decided to play pawn to c6 and white played pawn to f3 nemesis in a very aggressive line from white here and it's probably one of the newer lines which we've seen at top-level play in 1999 this hasn't been analyzed too much around this time that it was played so right away we can see that Gary Kasparov had spent a lot of time on this opening and you really knew what he was doing he was trying to put another defender on this pawn here on e4 and at the same time he was really looking to castle on the queenside play continued with pawn to b5 and this is very important play right here from black he does two things with this move the first thing is he advances upon to gain space on the Queen side starting to you know push his pawns down the board of the Queen's at the same time it prevents a very strong move from white why I'd really like to bring his Bishop to c4 it's very powerful Square it's a great square for the light square bishop and because of this play from black on b5 it really prevents this light square Bishop coming to c4 and attacking this square here on f7 so this move does multiple things and you're going to see this a lot in this game there's a lot of fantastic moves that have kind of dual roles and this is one of those dual roll moves right here this pawn here on b5 not only advances a pawn to gain space on the Queen side but it also keeps this light square Bishop and you can see later on this game this light square bishop is pretty much pinned down to this f1 Square and is really going to be the last piece that white develops and this mainly due to this pawn here on d5 play continues from here with white bringing his Knight to e2 he realizes that he's not going to be able to bring his light square Bishop right away so instead he decides that it's okay to block off the light square bishop with his knight here on e 2 since it's really not a good square that he wants to bring his light square bishop to from here black's going to bring his Knight to d7 and why it's going to play Bishop to h6 and why does he do this well anytime you feel can do your Bishop to the king side is black did with his Bishop on g7 this dark square bishop here is a very important piece not only for this long dark diagonal but the same time defending this King here if the King decides to castle on the King side now once white plays this black pretty much knows that he's not going to be castling on the King side and so instead of that he decides to go ahead and trade off bishops and instead try to get a little sinner dark square play in this center so right away he knows with this queen here on h6 he's not going to be castle on the Queen side so he decides to really focus on the dark squares in the center knowing that he's probably going to be castling on the Queen side play continues with black bringing his Bishop to b7 continuing his development of his minor pieces and White's going to play pawn to a3 and this is a very important move because it's a prophylactic move kind of waiting to see what black does white eventually wants to castle on the Queen side but this is a very important move if white wore to first castle on the Queen side black could come in with his pawn to b4 and disrupt really what White's plans are white would be forced to move this night before he castles and that's not really what he wants to do so instead as most top-level GM's do they always find the right times to play a prophylactic move and this is exactly that time where you is a three kind of a waiting move to see what black doesn't at the same time preventing black from coming in and playing b4 right after this canceling on the queenside so from here black plays pawn to e5 again in the perk defense or any hyper modern defense once you really develop your minor pieces you're really trying to attack the center can be center with your minor pieces and then later on you want to counter attack or attack and gain center control with your pawn so that's exactly what to blob is doing here he has all his minor pieces developed and now he's starting to attack and try to stake claim to the center as we talked about from here why it's going to castle on the Queen side that's what he wanted to in the first place but again he wanted to play his a3 first and blacks gonna from now play Queen to e7 now after you develop your minor pieces you do want to get your Queen involved if you don't have a specific place to get your Queen involved you always want to develop it to the middle of the board so that wherever you may need your queen she can hop over you know very quickly if you you know put your Queen to one side the board and she's needed on the other side of the board a lot of times a very good player will block off the Queen and you're pretty much left playing on one side of the board without your most powerful Pete Soto blob knows this and he brings its Queen to e7 can hop over the board where the Queen needs to and at the same time getting ready to blob wants to to castle on the Queen side connect his rooks and his development will be complete now from here White's going to play keen to be won again another prophylactic move white doesn't want to start to attack on one side and then just have black you know castle to the other side or start to move to the other side so it's kind of a waiting move playing King to b11 it's allowing him to get a little bit more safety for his king but the same time kind of waiting to see what blacks going to do and black decided to bring his pawn to a6 and this is done for a few reasons and one of the reasons eventually black would like to push his pawn from c6 to c5 right now his LightSquared bishop is not in the game he eventually would like to get into the game he doesn't need to right now but later on it is on this long diagonal and he would like to use it since it is a powerful piece but as soon as he moves pawn to c5 then his b5 pawn will be hanging so this a six move is kind of a you know move getting ready for the future down the road not immediately but again you always want to be thinking down the road so total opposites and he knows eventually wants to play c5 and so because of this he needs to play a six to support this pawn here on b5 play continues in white now brings his knight to see one and if you analyze it back from this position this is a very strong move if white really looks at this and sees what he wants to do he really wants to get his Knights involved his knight here on C three is well-placed but he'd really like to get his knight here on e two to the best score on the board now if you look at it where is the best score on the board we can already tell that blacks probably not going to castle on the Kings side we have our Queen to the White has the Queen here on h6 really keeping black from castling on the King side and so white knows this and since black is going to be castling on the Queen side more than likely then white knows he wants to start moving his minor pieces in his major pieces towards the Queen side with that said the best place the best square for this night here on e2 is actually going to be a five so what's the easiest and the best way to get this Knight to a5 first to see one and then here to be three and then to a fob so that's kind of what Kasparov was thinking in the back of his head so again if you have a plan go ahead and start to move towards that so his first play is night to see one now from here blacks going to continue with his development he castles on the Queen side so he now has both of his works connected and he has the rest of his pieces developed so black in this case is finished in development and now it is White's turn and white now brings his Knight to b3 again he really wants to I this square here on a5 s we talked about it's a fantastic square for his night to be attacking the entire Queen side of black now black hair decided to capture on d4 for y'all who don't know Topalov is a very aggressive player I've studied quite a lot of his games because I have a very aggressive style like him and so took blob now that he has developed all his pieces exactly how he wants them he's going to start to counter-attack he knows that you know instinctively White has the advantage just because they have that extra tempo in the game and so he wants to start to try to attack and try to play for the win as he always does now from here white took with d4 now a lot of players would say why not take with his knight on d4 especially since after you know we take with this rook black decided to bring his pawn to c5 again what we talked about before playing his pawn to c5 opening up this long diagonal for this Bishop here on d7 but if we take with our night or if white takes with his knight on d4 black does not have to right away play his pawn to c5 he can kind of wait and again white really wants to bring his Knight to a5 so if he wants to bring his Knight to a5 then capturing with his his night here on d4 is probably not the best strategy instead because far off ops for his rook takes on d4 and after the pawn attacks here on d4 he brings his rook back to d1 so that's very small as far as why he did that but I do want to let you know because you may have been looking at him but man why did is far up not take with his night on b3 he really wants to bring his knight to 85 and if top blob did not play this pawn to on c5 he didn't want to lose tempos bringing his knight back to b3 and then to a5 from here black played Knight to e6 getting ready if he ever wanted to to bring his pawn to d5 his pawn here on d6 isn't doing too much and it's kind of hanging behind he eventually wants to centralize this pawn here on d6 and bring it to d5 in this 99 b6 will be a strong defender of this pawn if he ever does bring it to d5 now from here white had to make a decision Amy's decided to bring his pawn to g3 now a lot of players including myself would want to quickly finish development and bring their Bishop to e2 and that seems like a logical move but because Bob was looking down the road and he said you know what let's bring my pawn to g3 because I want to develop my Bishop to h3 and really way this long lights were diagonal and put a lot of pressure on this black King so although it's going to take him two moves to finish his development his light square bishop is going to be on the exact square that he wants it to and that's this square here on h3 where it can you know take this long diagonal and attack the Queen side of black here so after g3 here blacks gonna play King to b8 getting his King out of the way once the bishop come to h3 and white first is going to bring his Knight to a5 now again this is the plan that can spar off one of the entire game and so now he brings that plan to fruition and black is going to bring his Bishop back to a8 this long diagonal Bishop for black to pull up does not want to get rid of it right away and why it's okay with that he has a knight here very nicely placed on e5 it's going to put a lot of pressure on black the rest the game it's going to be really hard for black to get rid of that Knight anytime soon so from here White's going to continue with his development with Bishop to h3 this is the exact square that conspire wanted his Bishop here on h3 putting a lot of pressure on this long light square it this long light diagonal at the same time he has now finished his development so it did take him a little longer to finish his development he's connected his rooks but at the same time his game plan is going exactly how he wants it black from here played pawn to d5 and instead of taking right away Kasparov decided to bring his Queen to f4 and this is what really separates you know normal players from you know masters to GM's GM's are always looking for the in-between move so a lot of players would already see this pawn to d5 and say you know how can I recapture and start to calculate and top players are always looking for what's the in-between moving in between move here was Queen to f4 he can take a look at this capturing later on but right away he wants to bring his Queen to the action and check the king now the King only has one loops you can see you can't come to c7 c8 because the Queen and Bishop they can't come to b7 because they're not here his only move is King to a7 so already you can see why it's really starting to put King the black King into a tight corner here now white chose to disregard this pawn here on d5 right away and instead centralized his ropes as you can see White's pieces are really in good positioning it's too centralized rooks he has his bishop in his LightSquared as his Queen as like to her Bishop bearing down on this Queen side and his Knights are very well placed attacking the King side hurts the King on the Queen side so from here black decided to continue to push up his pawn here to d4 starting to put some pressure and white decided to bring his Knight to d5 and this is an amazing move because white eventually is going to be sacrificing a pawn so that he can open up a huge attack against black black decided to take with his night here on d5 and white recaptured with his pawn on d5 at the same time attacking the Queen here on e7 black now brought his queen to d6 again it was being attacked so he did need to move it and white decided to capture and sacrifice his rook here on d4 and this is probably the move of the game after Topalov took back as you can already see cuz spa really wanted to sacrifice this just so anytime he wanted to his queen could come into d4 and check the king and again all the moves that king has black king has are very limited so he knows that even though he gave up a rook he really has a lot of strong attacks but from here Kasparov found an amazing move and he found a rook to e7 now this is a fantastic move because the black Queen cannot take here on his 7 if he does then we have a mating opportunity we can bring her white can bring his queen to d4 after the King goes back to b8 the Queen can come to b6 it doesn't matter if the black bishop comes to be 7 or the Queen comes to b7 doesn't really matter the knight here can come to c6 after the king goes back to a8 it's going to be checkmate if instead instead of the bishop the Queen comes here then it's going to be even a checker a quicker checkmate with Knight to c6 so as you can see right away our rook here on e7 there's nothing that the King here on a 7 can do besides move to b6 now if we go back a few moves after the rook comes here to d4 sacrificing the rook here conspire I've actually said that the best move for black would have been to bring his King to be 6 because parvum self said there's no good way for white to continue here but top lob in the game took over an hour to find well not really fine but to calculate out that taking on d4 would be the best situation obviously he saw that white did have a lot of fighting options but over an hour of thinking taupe a lob one of the best players in the game decided that you know what I'm going to take this sacrifice and I think I can fight my way back being up so much in material so that's exactly what his father wanted to do and he brought his rook to e7 and then after the king came to b6 like we talked about before the Queen took on d4 and that's exactly why this rook sacrifice on d4 was important because it got the pawn from C 5 out of the way so that we can check and from here black decided to take the night here on a five it was kind of forced there's no realtor square for black to go to and white decided to continue to push with this pawn to b4 now again there's not many other moves that white black can do here so he brings his King to a four now luckily Kasparov thought this game out because if you just look at this board right away yes the king is in a lot of trouble for black but as you can see black is up quite a bit of material in this game but conspire being a great player that he is he saw all the lines in the game and he realized that he had a lot of not only mating chances but the same time he had a lot of attacking lines where he could make up that material later on in the game because of the vulnerability of the black king so from here why decided to bring his queen to c3 and she can see Kasparov is threatening made here he can bring his Queen to b3 so black has to do something easiest thing for black to do here is take on d5 it's kind of forced there's no other way for black really to get out of this and from here why decided to bring his rook to a7 at the same time rook here on a7 is threatening mate here after it takes on a6 that would be checkmate so black is forced to bring his Bishop to b7 to attack and defend this pawn here on a6 and from here white can take with his rook here on b7 now again why it is still threatening the square here on C on b3 with checkmate so black decides to bring his queen to c4 and from here white takes on f6 so right away we can are to see the whites taken off this night and this Bishop off the board so although just a few moves go it look like black goes up a ton of material now we see it blacks only up just a few points and material from here black decided to take this pawn here on e3 and now the queen is going to come into the action with queen cakes on a6 now after the King takes on b4 White has a brilliant move here and he plays pawn to c3 sacrificing this pawn at the same time basically saying you know what I'm going to leave my king vulnerable because I'm gonna make your King come to c3 and I'm just going to attack an attack an attack and I'm sure he thought about this move for a long time and thought about all the variations of what he could come up with as you'll see it came to fruition II keep in mind that the black Queen cannot take on c3 because from here Kasparov could just take with this Queen and then when the king came to the a file the route could swing over and the only move to stop it would be to bring Queen over and it's checkmate from there so Chris Bob knew this and he knew that you know breeze pawn to c3 would force the King to come to c3 and take now he could obviously come to a different square like c5 but again he would be out in the open and he would lose even quicker than he did so tow blob decided to take on c3 and conspire I've played Queen to a-1 at the same time as you can see he's setting this up so he can take this rook here on h8 if he wants to after this King moves but King comes down to d2 and Queen comes to B to D 1 and then the bishop comes to f1 this is a fantastic move because the Queen cannot take this fish upon f1 if it does then the Queen comes the c2 and after the King moves then then the rook here on e7 that's good game Queen can obviously check it but it's going to be checkmate so this is the fantastic move that cos para found his Bishop here on h3 that was attacking the king now the king is down here on d1 and now he's going to get his Bishop involved here and attack this Queen so Topalov came down and played rook to d2 and because 5 played rook to d7 basically saying you're not going to be taking my queen because I'm pinning your rook down to your king and so tope bluff was forced to take the rook here on d7 and that leaves the Queen here on c4 for the taking and after that's taken then Kasbah takes the rook on h8 as we talked about before and from here Topol off can pretty much resigned the game he's down quite a bit in material and White has a queen he can pretty much just run over the board the game did go a few moves further on but then once Topal I've realized that he's playing Kasparov and cos Park has a queen he went ahead and resigned in this situation so I really enjoyed studying this game reading a lot of different people's commentary on a lot of the different moves and I learned quite a bit so hopefully y'all learned quite a bit as well and these are two of the greatest chess minds that have ever played so I do feel like a lot of their moves you can learn from because there's so much meaning in every move that they make so hopefully you guys enjoyed this video hopefully you guys enjoyed my commentary if you haven't already please subscribe and I will see you guys in the next video thanks for watching

Channel: thechesswebsite

Views: 2,017,561

Rating: 4.7948408 out of 5

Keywords: chess, kasparov, topalov, kasparov immortal

Id: wPm9k6ul9EI

Length: 24min 39sec (1479 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 24 2010

Reddit Comments

[u/scottbell772]

This is probably my favorite chess game ever. It's a super obvious choice, but most great chess games involve a master playing a lesser player, and that lesser player falling for a trap. This one involves 2 masters playing each other, and one setting multiple traps, but the other not falling for it. But still giving him a line that allows him to eventually win the game. Of course, computer analysis reveals that declining the gambit and playing 24...Kb6 was the better move. So, you could argue that 24...cxd4 was the trap that Topalov fell for, but my god if it's not a complicated one.

[u/goltrpoat]

Random bit of trivia: Topalov has said that it's one of his favorite games.

Very strong players tend to be ridiculously objective people, when it comes to chess at least.