FIDE GRAND PRIX WINNER IS...

ladies and gentlemen it's time for the final grand prix recap today we will crown a winner of the event in berlin either hikaru nakamura or levon or i don't know why i said his first name like that and then said i don't know that was that was strange i'm also trying to actually keep my voice down a little bit because if you remember i have a puppy now and he's right there i set up a second camera it's on my desk he's sleeping so uh we're gonna try to record a recap and maybe put up a dog cam so this is gonna be quite a unique recap but uh you know two working dog parents i suppose so we're gonna i'm gonna figure this thing out and then at the end i'm also going to let you all know about the standings and how they work because grand prix standings are very weird like people think that the winner here is going to qualify to the candidates there's actually three grand priests so these guys are competing for either 13 points or 10 points in the overall standings everybody gets a certain amount of points that's a live camera so we're gonna see if he wakes up in the middle of this let's jump into the action hopefully the camera is not too distracting first game of rapid chess hikaru's got the white pieces and he opens up with e4 and he goes into levon's rue lopez now again this is a 25-minute game so they have two 25-minute games uh if necessary they're going to play some blitz i'm not putting time stamps on the video player if you notice because i don't want to spoil anything so hikaru opens up with this and uh if you were following yesterday's game you know they actually reached this very position so levon plays castles because levon is looking to play d5 he's looking to play the marshall hikaru is not interested at all in playing the marshall uh and frankly for a good reason because uh the ensuing positions are basically known to be completely okay for black um and levon plays bishop b7 d3 now yesterday the game went d6 a3 queen d7 knight d8996 you remember that obviously right benji they remember that okay he's asleep um but in this game levon plays the second most popular move in the position oh he woke up uh second most popular move in the position which is not d6 he plays the move d5 so he's actually still trying to play the marshall which is fascinating so what basically had to happen is that aranian went back to his hotel room and was like you know what if he plays this against me in the rapid i'm going to play d5 anyway this bastard's not going to get away with it and hikoru must have shown up like he might play d5 against me anyway because the thing is if you're going to go into this line you have to be ready for d6 and d5 so he sharpened his tools now takes takes um this position has been reached many times before including by levon with white against ding liran who was one of the best practitioners of the rue lopez from the black side uh when uh when you know when he when he's playing they played this position about five times already so level's got plenty experience with white and with black how do you beat a guy who knows the position with white one black like what are you supposed to do no i mean like seriously like what are you supposed to do right like i mean you just gotta play chess so again the point is that this is possible but after knight e5 uh rookie five c6 is not actually a good move now just so you understand it's only good when the bishop is here why would you block in your bishop the difference here is that black will probably just play like knight f6 at some point even now knight f6 for example if you just play naturally i play bishop d6 i'm gonna get my queen out at some point you just this is not let me just tell you right now these bishops this is not pleasant stuff all right we don't that's not what you want in a game of chess so hikaru obviously doesn't take on e5 he plays the move a4 which levon himself has played before i'm trying to i'm trying to put you in the mindset of these players like a4 hikaru plays it but levon's also played this knight d4 now a4 is a move there's also um there's also other possibilities here uh and uh knight knight d4 uh black tries to kind of simplify the position opening up the light squad bishop and here it's actually beneficial for white not to trade knights but give away the bishop on b3 why because when the dust settles you trade bishop for night this pawn is still weak and for that reason in this position dingley wren has played f6 multiple times dingley wren played this against aranyan all those times that they got to this position and here aren't played different moves um and you know he played like knight h4 he played knight a5 queen c8 is usually how this goes knight a5 queen c8 and then you either play knight h4 queen e2 c3 levon literally played all of this but in this game levon doesn't play f6 with black levon plays knight before so he it's not that he's making an improvement he's just sending the game in a completely different direction i'm trying to put you in in the head space of both these guys right knight before just gives up the pawn black is like go ahead i've been trying to play this marshall for the entire damn game take my pawn your car was like all right look at pawns upon right i have to take the pawn at some point queen d5 played now uh that's a very good move because threatening made in one is generally a good thing uh hikaru shockingly uh sees the threat and plays f3 crazy um and you can also play knight f3 here so we're following a game uh maxime vasheila grav versus wesley so i believe mvl played knight f3 in this game but i i can't remember exactly there are a few games black plays bishop d6 um oh i'm sorry f3 bishop d6 and we see everything he's trying to do right so now what hikaru is trying to do is hold it together he's trying to hold the whole position he's together he's trying to protect f3 he's trying to protect d4 trying to protect e5 etc etc etc rookie a levon here can also play c5 and that leads to a very sharp position after knight d7 bishop g3 attacking the rook and attacking the knight uh knight bc5 bishop e1 knight f8 i mean it's just insane com engine is is on one here all right engines rolling props if you know what i'm talking about rookie 8 takes takes bishop d2 so hikaru is trying to target the knight um and uh he's also got the open a file and white's position is looking quite promising a computer here actually wants black to play bishop c8 which just looks i mean utterly ridiculous but but the point is that it's actually kind of hard for white to make a move like try to find a move for example let's say you play rookie 2 bishop f5 and now black is creating some concrete problems right the bishop is getting reactivated and white is going to have to give up two bishops for two nights which is one bishop is okay but two is you know this is what we call martial compensation in these positions uh we don't call it that i'm just what the chess term is so um yeah marshall compensation and black is doing very well but level plays knight c6 and this is where the problems begin because knight before knight before the c6 is just not it's not in the style it's not in the flavor of the position you don't want to play knight c6 because what this allows is hikaru gets to take the initiative immediately and let me tell you something when hikoro has an opportunity to take the initiative he doesn't miss he just doesn't miss now you might be wondering does knight d7 trap the rook no because rook takes check and then i get out uh bishop f4 holding it together holding it together king h8 you know what's funny the best stockfish move is night before just go back and be like i that never happened i don't know what the hell's go i don't i don't know so king h8 and now now it's time for white to start making progress how do you make progress by taking a step back that's actually very impressive bishop h2 is an extremely impressive move it now protects the bishop so the knight is able to move and again when you are in a position where you are up upon but your opponent has laser beam pieces if you tame those pieces at the end of the day what happens you're up a pawn so you're just gonna you're gonna win right so that's what he car was trying to get at now we have take stakes queens queens and and bishop is hit so what's gonna happen levon takes hikaru takes queens still see each other rook takes we have a little standoff here takes takes queen d4 and hikaru gives back the pawn but with basically a long-term promise of torturing his opponent now he plays queen c5 it's forcing a queen trade so it's very this is like a very advanced concept like beginners here do not play queen d4 actually some of you might because obviously some players are like if i trade my queen i can't lose it i'm a genius but it's far more human to think of just very aggressive infiltrating moves queen d4 is the only move to try to get an advantage just like bishop f4 was the only move to get an advantage just like bishop h2 was the only move to get an advantage hikaru is playing super super accurately and it's gonna come down to a knight versus bishop game with the different activity of the rooks um we have queen g5 queen c5 takes takes bishop goes to d5 now white is slightly better why more active rook with very tangible threats right this rook on f8 is trash we also have total symmetry of pawns we have bc and we have fgh okay so we have five pawns each that are completely the same but white's knight is very very nicely placed so even though you can play c6 what hikaru is going to do now is come up with long-term strategy to just create problems and if black just plays passively with moves like you can't even ruxia just loses c6 actually so that doesn't even work but what white is also going to do is after taking white still has to win this next phase of the game so you have five on four okay congrats you have five on four but let's not forget that sometimes one on zero if you trade and three on three could be a draw because rook and games are like that sometimes you get your rook locked behind your own pawn right and then that's it that's it you just there there's there's no more progress to be made so um knight c6 rook d8 and now g4 now g4 looks like a mistake because you get your rook glued on the fir on the second right your your king glued like this now this is this is not always what we want because now your king can't get active right so how is hikaru gonna like play now well he's just gonna play h4 and the thing is what is black gonna do like let's say black plays king f8 you're gonna move your pawn up and just try to win this pawn and make king side progress so h4h5 takes takes that's exactly what he does now you can play rook takes h4 and hikaru does give him back the h4 pawn it looks like but now king g2 and now the king is getting off the back rank so he's given up the pawn it's a bit of an inaccuracy um it probably would have been better a little bit back here uh to maintain flexibility so just to play like b4 and then have the option to walk without committing pawns um but again it's a rapid game we're gonna have maybe slight inaccuracies and while he does give this up it allows levon to get back into the game but like i said there's still long-term nuisances here and the nuisances exist in the in the sense that black should just play rook d5 rook f5 like bounce back and forth and try to not do anything levon is still trying to liquidate so he gives up h for f but that two on one that two on one is still there it's still there and you can play this forever now how do you try to play this try to kick the rook all right now we have the rook and the perfect square guarding everything we're going to take b5 at the right moment first we're going to walk the king over and right here is the critical moment of the game lebon can keep an eye on the pawn or he can go back and let the pawn get captured and push the f pawn so it's going to be two on one f pawn is going to be the difference he didn't go sideways because i imagine that he thought that rook c6 or maybe i don't know maybe he thought king d4 to protect check hear check and again it's rapid so you do all this quickly he thought of this and said no this is lost this is just losing because i lose my pawn on b5 it's not lost it's actually a draw after f5 so if white takes this pawn is too active and the king is too far so even though you get rook b8 it seems like this is a draw but it's only a draw if you play king e7 and don't let the rook touch the f-file if rook b5 you go back and now you have this dance and if i sidestep this way i get closer it's it's so so nuanced because it's all about the activity of the pieces right and then the one tempo at a time so levon goes backwards he doesn't see that rook b5 rook d1 check and now hikaru is in cruise control he's winning right so it's two pawns versus one uh benji is twitching this adorable uh and king e6 rook d3 but hikaru makes a mistake and allows the pawn to get active anyway notice how hikaru's pawns haven't made any progress yet right but lavon's pawn has uh oh you can't get the king there because rook check so we have rook b8 king f5 okay finally his pawns have made progress but f3 king e3 and it's a draw again hikaru has blundered it's a draw it's a draw actually for an insane reason king e5 according to the engine is a draw and if king here i play um i play rook b3 that's just i mean it's so savage rook b3 and the point is that now you're too far so if you push i take with check i get back here and the king is back in time the thing is if the king gets isolated and no man's land in a rook end game there's checks so the rook is going to get away from that point i told you i just told you about this rook in front of the pawn right has nowhere to go unless it's check unless it's checked unless it's czech but too close to the pawn levon has the slimmest of margins to save this game king e3 he has to go rook b3 or he has to go king e5 he plays the drawing move he plays one of the other drawing moves but the problem is now the king is a little bit closer and levon has a decision does he go for these pawns or does he go support his friend right does he go support his his homie on f3 doesn't let him die he goes the wrong way he goes the wrong way but he has one last chance king c2 lavon has to either move his rook out of the way and take his eye off the b-pawn or he has to play f2 and try to queen rook a3 draws and f2 loses and he plays f2 rook a3 is a draw even though it's i mean it's so difficult it's a draw because the following sequence of moves king g3 helping the pawn b6 rook a2 check so rook stays active rook a1 and it looks like you've solved everything but i come back i have rook a6 and i'm threatening the pawn from the side and white has to choose who is going to be supported by the rook that's the problem that's why this is a draw almost unfindable i mean i mean just borderline unfindable uh in fact you have to like get to this position you have to allow the queen and yeah uh he plays f2 though lefon plays f2 rook f8 rook takes b5 rook f2 and actually here i think he lost on time but this is a losing king in pawn end game so i talked about this sometimes it's a draw when it's upon difference of one but in this case it's a loss because the defending side is cut off that's called a cut off the king just can't get close hashtag chaos sonnen if the king is here it's a draw it's it's actually a relatively straightforward draw but the further the king the harder to draw and you have to cut the king off and i think level lost on time but this is just winning you just slowly move up and then you have to uh to get out with your king at some point and so he carries up one to nothing so now levon comes back and levon has to win this game so this is a this is a must-win game uh if levon wins this game they play a faster time control and benji still sleeps so what is levon going to do to beat hikaru by the way e45 master class no one's playing anything different bishop c4 so he played that yesterday to try to win he's playing it again today bishop c5 now here there are two main lines c3 d4 and c3 knight f6 d3 joko pianissimo level and castles which on its own is not a bad move at all it's obviously not a bad move and you know now he will play c3 or d3 right now he plays rookie one now this combination of castles and rookie one is almost never played at top level the highest ever rated player to play this in an over the board game is live on right now this is officially the highest rated game ever to get to this position because rookie one isn't is not a very flexible move and also you're just not committing anything to the middle of the board it's just this is suboptimal in fact i already wonder if black can play knight g4 like when i was looking at this i'm like can't black just play knight g4 i mean rookie two and i i guess it's i don't know i guess it's like not very good for black but here's a stockfish line f5 and apparently black is better i'm not even joking stockfish literally thinks black is better because because because of this you just get the whole center you're like almost winning here with d5 uh knight takes f2 also um yeah i mean it's just nuts and if white tries to play too passively takes takes knight d4 and all of a sudden like what are these pieces doing this is not the way your pieces are supposed to be coordinated so stockfish was like trying to you know trying to hate on this but the thing is if that comes prepped you're not going to play into the trappy aggressive stuff you're going to play solid so d6 the problem is the way hikaru plays this it's slightly uh it's it's slightly inaccurate it gives black everything he wants like for example here i think computer wanted even was considering bishop g4 uh to or like to try to prevent black from uh from expansion oh white from expansion i'm sorry um so hikaru you know he gets out of the way d4 comes uh and uh yeah i mean well white is getting everything he's preventing bishop g4 he has the whole center um and his position is definitely slightly worse as early as bishop e3 h6 white already is like plus one according to the machine uh computer just just thinks that white has a very very nice center advantage and black hasn't gotten much to show for it so yeah um now time for hikaru to defend the position or levon is going to win and we're going to have a we're going to have fast time control so bishop b3 we already know this maneuver to get the bishop out of the way of the knight and the pawn and also d5 in the long run uh pawn tension in the center is very prevalent knight d2 bishop d7 uh and now levon plays an incredible move queen b1 and that's the top stockfish move the fact that that's a top stockfish move just shows you how obscenely complicated these positions are you have two ideas supporting the center and also queen side expansion in the future so queen e7 a3 and queen comes to help now hikaru moves his queen to f8 because it doesn't really have any purpose anywhere else if it's going to hang out back here it's not participating if it hangs out on e7 it could be a target so he puts his queen away and plays b5 now levon has to either break in this uh on the side with a4 c4 or continue to improve and actually hikaru is the one that begins taking over the initiative like for example rook ac one a bit of a lazy move allows this and this is typical like roux stuff rue lopez like knight a5 c5 obviously we didn't have that here but we have the expansion anyway um it would have been better for levon to probably go after the b5 pawn right away with something like a4 like he has to go for a4 now um and there's still many many complications obviously everything is pressuring everything is pressuring very tough position but he plays rook c1 sort of lackadaisically and hikaru just like last game you give him one moment it will strike so fast you strike so fast and like this guy by the way um but he's like 650 and you know these guys are like 2800 so c5 and all of a sudden it's like what does white do because for example let's say white plays d5 c4 now this bishop is in jail so that's not very good so b3 to prevent c4 but now knight just goes back what do you do so he plays d5 knight e7 c4 and b4 look at this avalanche of pawns right so now levon's like i got to do something i mean we've traded no pieces we played 20 moves i got to do something c4 b4 takes takes takes takes takes takes okay so cb got traded for black ac got traded for white and dark square bishops who's better great question it's zero zero zero it's completely completely complicated position as doggy is flipping over on his on his butt at the back that's i mean it's just adorable it's amazing stuff um yeah he hasn't been able to jump up on the couch just yet but he jumps off of it so he just has to do the reverse um now what does black want uh black wants to trade these pawns and completely make it symmetrical so like in a in an absolutely perfect world uh you just get this it's just an asap draw the problem is that if you play a5 i'm obviously gonna go here give you two middle fingers okay not one you know i mean it when it's two right in your face it's gonna be very bad to see on camera so he can't play a5 just yet so instead he plays rook b8 and he attacks this pawn lavon plays queen a3 and hikaru begins the transfer of pieces to the queen side because again what does black want black wants a position that looks like this so levon now has to do something about creating winning chances and sometimes to create winning chances you have to transform the position by a series of trades to remove your opponent's most nagging pieces and leave the remainder of the pieces on the board to your advantage i said a lot of words there did you follow no outstanding what what else can i expect from the audience doesn't really matter it's what hikoro did last game when he traded some pawns bishop and then queen and then got that better end game so queen a5 takes takes he takes the queen first king f1 still has the queen side imbalance and now begins the peace transfer over there obviously at this point black can really consider the move a5 but then there's rookie one oh not not that uh rook a1 and then you're pinned a little bit annoying uh so hikaru begins transferring the pieces that way too and doesn't want to continue the transfer because he's too slow like knight e7 is just too slow white solidifies rook a1 he gets his knight here one of these knights maybe it's a c4 and he's just better so hikaru i just finds just i mean just the perfect move he plays f5 he loses a pawn with tempo because knight e7 and now white's pawns are split and they're both liabilities so he he plays the best defensive move at the right moment levon solidifies takes takes now knight f4 so now this pawn is now going to be a liability for this knight on f6 so if white ever begins the full transfer of the knights this way this pawn will stay a liability takes takes king e2 and levon continues to uh continues to try to apply some pressure by bringing the king and defending the e4 pawn right so that's the idea rook b8 rook b1 knight f6 um at this point i think the best move and the only winning chance was was it king d3 no it wasn't king d3 because then b4 was hanging right there there was some moment here i can't remember where it was where there was like one very brief moment maybe it was maybe it was this i don't know where stockfish was trying to say that the ensuing endgame was going to be better for white like it wanted this or something like it wanted levon to go for this uh and try to go for the d6 pawn while trying to defend e4 but levon played rook b1 and uh hikaru got his counter play so everything that he has envisioned all the critical moments of this game he's just defending very well levon has to make one final push into the black position uh and i think this might have been the moment i think here he had to take a step backwards and play the e2 and the reason is now that black's knight is paralyzed to defending the d6 pawn he can't go back to f6 because you lose this right and you defend everything and what happens now is that the king gets to d3 and this is always protected this was it move 39 levon had to like if you look at the trajectory of his moves king f3 knight c4 is going forward right right so he obviously will play h4 after 98 because you just you're going forward but sometimes in chess you have to pump the brakes and you have to not go forward you have to improve your position ever so slightly before you go forward i struggle with this all the time a slight improving move just asking what is my opponent going to do they can't really do much obviously it's not just that simple but he plays h4 and now hikaru sees that the knight is coming to c6 and i mentioned this a while ago when the knight goes too far suddenly the knight comes back and g4 is counter play it's just pure counter play is coming so if you play knight c6 which looks like the game plan you have no way to protect this pawn for example you can play rookie one but then oops it looked like that pawn was untouchable but oops now black is winning and we have takes takes knight c6 and actually almost all of that happens knight d4 hikaru plays g4 check takes and levon just says i'm going forward with the king if i'm gonna lose this match i'm gonna go out on my sword i am not repeating moves and knocking myself out of the grand prix i'm going to play this for a win rook d4 king f6 hikaru takes another pawn it's now two rooks two rogues but three to two black is up pawns so it's probably looking like icaru might just get a perpetual check levon's like no thank you i told you i am going out the way i want and the way i want is going to lead to my king getting forced to the very very back rank and hikaru sets up the board for the next game that's going to be played with that chess set by bringing his rook back to its home square and it's a ladder mate that cannot be prevented it cannot be prevented if you give a check it's made in two and that's it rook h8 setting up for the very next game i don't know when the next game is going to be probably in several weeks and lavon has lost hikaru is the champion of the first leg of the fide grand prix in berlin exceptional didn't play a classical chess game in 800 days uh and nobody knew what was gonna happen absolutely nobody knew how he was going to perform um and he won it and uh he mentioned in the interview afterward that uh now he's just a lot more happy he's a lot less stressed about his games and um it allows him to handle bad positions easier you know it allows him to his his entire life and career isn't about all this competitive chess anymore so when he has a slightly worse position he just tries to play the board doesn't play anything big picture to be honest i i mean i even have something to learn from that right because as you see in many of my own tournament games sometimes i'm really struggling i'm like in my own head a lot and what this means for the standings of the grand prix uh is hikaru gets 13 points if you win a grand prix cycle like this you get 13 points if you get second place you get 10 points it's all on their website if you're like knocked out in the semis you get seven points there are now two more grand priests belgrade and berlin again i think hikaru is playing in berlin in the third leg so it doesn't mean he's guaranteed a candidate spot yet but if he does well enough in the second leg doesn't have to win it but maybe the sammy's maybe second place in his group that score in total will qualify him to the candidates or not so lavon and hicaro are in the best position right now i don't think he's playing in belgrade but uh that's that's massive i mean it's absolutely huge and we're going to see as the grand prix unfolds i'm obviously going to be making recaps of all of them so big congratulations to hikaro also congratulations and i guess condolences to aranyan for for uh making but also uh losing in the final uh and uh that concludes the recaps folks i hope you enjoyed um i i don't think i have uh anything left to say to you i've very much enjoyed making the the coverage of these games and your comments and you were all super hyped to see this dude so much love i will see you back tomorrow with regularly scheduled gotham programming i've got a lot of cool ideas in the works including a new series uh which i won't leak just yet till next time get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 379,013

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, fide grand prix, grand prix, grand prix 2022, grand prix chess, grand prix chess 2022, fide grand prix 2022, fide grand prix 2022 chess, fide chess grand prix, grand prix ches, grand prix 2022 chess, grand prix fide, 2022 grand prix, 2022 grand prix chess, chess grand prix, chess grand prix 2022, chess grand prix fide, fide chess, fide chess 2022

Id: nsTO-Tw3j_E

Length: 27min 21sec (1641 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 17 2022