Hikaru Nakamura FIGHTS The French!

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the fide grand prix today is the fourth game or fourth round out of the opening six rounds uh to determine who is going to be the group winner uh very short introduction for today uh the games were really really fun even the draws were exciting i think we had no boring games at all so uh we're just gonna we're gonna have a blast that's that's all i have to say uh get you started uh the right way for your for your work week uh so the first game i would like to show you is between hikaru nakamura and etienne backrow uh hikaru takes a trip to france quite literally because he plays into etienne's french defense now the interesting thing about this is and you're gonna see this twice in this video um when you know a guy just played an opening it's kind of like should you change your approach to play into his preparation right if you know what he's going to do should you play directly into it some of you might be getting deja vu at this point because this is literally the game that happened yesterday andre yesipienko versus etienne by crow this is a flex or a power move by hikaru he's sending a message he's saying etienne if you're going to play into this i will happily get to this position because the thing is when you begin the game with e4 uh it's uh you're not you're not always guaranteed a french defense you're also not guaranteed a classical french you're you may you're probably going to get a sicilian or an e5 but when you are guaranteed the same 10 moves that you just saw a guy play yesterday which is exactly what happened you're probably going to go for it because your homework that you have to study is a lot less obviously you have to study some of the other stuff but not as thoroughly as normal but yesterday etienne played short castle against uh yasipango today he plays the absolutely gangster g5 now if this is what he went home and prepared kudos to the man because g5 in this position of hundreds of games if not close to a thousand this has been played one time and it was played in paris in a rapid tournament between peter swiller and janja pomniche now you might you might know those names g5 is an ultra provocative move okay now there are head spinning complications i believe hikaru spent something like 25 to 30 minutes on his next move and he plays knight f3 now if you're wondering why you can't just take this pawn uh it's because you lose your grip on the center so bishop d4 bishop d4 something like this and you lose this pawn this pawn you lose the game you're much worse not a good opening uh not a good opening adventure so the the best move for white according to my like depth 30 stockfish which it needs a little bit more time is to take the knight first hikaru plays back to f3 which has never been played before um i believe peter actually in that game went for f5 uh but we have knight f3 we have d4 black's idea to throw off the coordination of white to force white to take this pawn and when the dust settles uh we have knight e5 a nice little tactical shot now here um if you take the knight uh there's queen h4 check that's the point that's the entire tactical point the best move for white after knight takes e5 is actually to play long castle it it aesthetically looks like a very nice move it really does i'm i'm actually quite curious why hikaru didn't go for this uh knight g6 here is a good move and after something like queen e4 looks like white's position is quite stable but perhaps there was something higher didn't like maybe he didn't like queen f6 i don't know i'd haven't maybe didn't like queen g5 check queen f4 to try to trade the queen i don't know haven't spoken to him as i always like to say i have i don't speak to these players i'm just i don't know what what he didn't like but he chooses to retreat the knight uh but now knight g6 hits his queen he backs up and now it's time for etienne to move his bishop somewhere should he go this way or this way uh at this point bishop e7 seems to be the way to go and uh black will castle short white will try to castle long by maybe like putting a bishop on d3 uh or the knight back to cover you can also play rook d rook d1 uh but etienne plays bishop a7 and for the life of me again for the life of me i cannot tell if this was a deliberate pr a deliberate provocation or if he just completely missed this next move because hikaru can take this pawn now i hate to make an assumption that bishop takes a6 was missed but this is a very obscure tactic and the thing is uh bishop e7 is this is not possible right because the rook takes so i don't think he missed it but why didn't he put the bishop here right i don't know maybe he didn't like knight d2 with tempo on the i don't know i have no idea but hikaru takes on a6 just a free pawn it's a free pawn but black does get some activity black gets the castle queen h4 and maybe in the long run actually having the rook active with the bishop moving is not the worst thing in the world uh in fact black's activity is quite a problem because white cannot castle at all so maybe that was the entire idea i don't know once again i have not had an opportunity to speak with either of these players hikaru clearly did not like the situation that was developing because he shuffled pieces back and forth and made an immediate draw now if this is a must-win situation for white and you are not the group leader of the grand prix you probably try to play on for a win because it's a very imbalanced game however in this case the risk might outweigh the reward like it might just be too risky so hikaru shuffles here makes a draw at yen happily obliges actually if anybody doesn't have to make a draw in this position it could be black like black can play queen back to g7 try to line up some nasty bishops a lot of open space here and for the cost of a pawn it's actually an incredibly fascinating game but uh surprisingly you know the players just call it a day right here um hikaru uh maintains uh undefeated record three draws one win two and a half and of four top of his division awaiting the game between grishok uh and yesipienko which we will jump to immediately here we have a nimso indian bishop before and gurishuk plays my favorite approach he plays e3 and a3 trying to get this bishop and white here will put the bishop on d3 try to play for a four pawn attack uh and then try to blow black off the board here with the bishop sometimes the queen the knight the rook except grishook doesn't put the knight on e2 and leaves this door open instead he transposes so he plays the knight to f3 and it's actually up to yesipenko now to play this next move he doesn't have to play d5 but he does and we're back into ultra mainline territory uh but uh had greyshook played knight f3 and d5 hadn't appeared like this had appeared we're not really in mainline territory anymore black can play in a totally different approach uh but we have a position that's been reached thousands of times now very very mainline style position uh in the nimso but but uh grisha here plays h3 and and and bishop b2 and bishop e2 so from a position that's been reached about 5000 times now we have a position that's been reached maybe seven times which goes to show you that this is obviously not the critical approach by white white is kind of slow playing this he's moving his bishops out of the middle and what he wants to do in the long run uh is he wants to do something with the pawns so he wants to maybe uh maybe build them up like in a perfect world let's just perfect world uh this is just like completely winning for white right i mean white cannot just plant the pawns forward and activate his bishop and that's terrible situation so black needs to actively fight against uh the you know the white pieces you can't just let him get away with everything so here rook d1 uh now you see rook c8 and again d5 is not possible but grishik also doesn't want to play something like de maybe because that that that damages his own structure instead he does something very interesting he takes on c5 and then plays c4 and now the balance of pawns of ace versus ace this is better for white why number one white has bishops black has bishop and in all openings of the position white will be advantageously positioned also when your pawns are extended too far forward the corresponding squares are weak white has a setup where he controls all four squares so if his knight can end up on d5 oh white is winning the only problem is how the hell are you gonna do that right and if you try to play e4 supporting that you give away d4 to black so we're gonna have a bit of a positional jostling here uh players trade a pair of rooks grecia tries to begin a maneuvering process infiltrates with his queen trying to maybe get some sort of commitment from black we have rookie six and grey shook in this position after the game said that he started calculating so many obscure lines that uh he thinks that um he deserves a psychiatric test as well as a pcr test which is kind of funny uh and uh it's kind of a critical moment in the game like how to how to make forward progress um machine here begins suggesting f3 and like just some kind of obscure moves to try to maybe play for e4 knight e3 and and knight to d5 so for example h6 maybe e4 uh knight e3 knight d5 potentially uh but also it's even volunteering to take the knight and then maybe play for e4 so yeah i mean the there there's a lot of opportunity here uh grisha chooses to play uh without moving his pawn to f3 just yet it actually takes him until move 30 to do so uh but by this point black sort of figured out his position so because of the constant threat of active infiltration grishak is not really able to create anything with his bishop pair and the players end up just making a draw on the 40th move uh after queen d1 so there was a moment in this game where grieschuk had the better structure and he probably had to approach the position right in this moment in a little bit of a better fashion rather than taking and playing bishop f1 he probably had to like i said play for f3 uh and um just the sample variation is like knight takes g4 you can take on d7 but you can also play age takes and just have a bit of an imbalanced position with pressure here but i guess he just slightly mishandled it and they make a draw so hikaru stays up top in group a uh next game i have for you is the game between vidit and levon uh this one is something we call a neo catalan so white does not play d4 but white could play d4 but not so fast because black actually decides to take the pawn on c4 right away check knight d7 and this position is super super theoretical uh queen b3 and queen c2 are the main approaches to step preemptively out of the way of b5 and to my knowledge this position has been reached still hundreds of times but this position with bishop f4 queen i7 has never been reached so vidit introduces this approach of a pawn sacrifice just giving black a pawn but delaying black's development and white is going to try to create an initiative on the new weaknesses in the black position however somehow levon knew everything i was looking at the time spent on the game like vidit plays this approach where he just straight up saxophone but is like i have an attack i have more development than you and levon is just his task now is to give the pawn back and consolidate so he plays queen b6 and it's just fascinating to me that these guys have prep everywhere look vivid plays knight e5 i mean again he's won a pawn back he's about to win a second pawn back takes takes bishop b7 uh queen into e4 looks like terrifying white's got the queen bishop other bishop pawn rook everybody pressuring short castle in a moment lavon very confidently just trades bishops castles his knight is hanging uh he obviously couldn't move it because the rook is under attack and everything clears off and vidit actually does get a pleasant looking position because he has queen side pressure here on the anc pawn so vinid's prep is really good like vidit comes to the table super super well prepared uh but the thing is in all these positions you you might not get advantage but you might get a slightly more pleasant game and it's up to levon to sort of figure this out he tries to come in actively on the queen side looking for a queen trade uh vidit plays rook a3 it might have been better for vidit to actually go for an end game like this like vidit could consider doing this and just walking his king over that actually is an option here and uh computer loves this for white it loves the concept of king f1 for example like let's just say black also tries to bring the king uh king e2 here rook d7 rook c7 or rook d7 rook b7 very active play by white and just tough to break through here for black so this might have been vivid's kind of one moment in the game you know you use your prep you have that moment but as we see in this top level sometimes if you don't seize that opportunity and your opponent is able to consolidate pieces get cleared off the board and well even at the damaged structure here if you count the pawns uh they're equal so black has the active rook look at that he sacks the the pawn on c4 in order to infiltrate on this rank and uh even though the pawns are bad the king protects them all so three on three is just a draw maybe not in your games but in their games absolutely uh and uh the players make a draw so yeah vidit in this game went for a very very forcing piece of preparation lavon kept his cool uh and and found a moment to equalize the second that he got it basically missing one chance to trade some stuff and play king f1 and i would i would be willing to bet vidi didn't do this for a reason i don't know bishop f6 potentially i don't know but uh maybe he didn't like something here he thought this pawn might be a bit of a liability but this is actually very good for white because you're fast you're just very fast here rook b1 king d2 king c3 you're actually just winning because you're gonna win both pawns so i don't know again don't get a chance to speak to the players vidit misses uh a slight chance to get an advantage there maybe uh but nothing you know too uh too crazy now this game uh in group b between uh rapport who has come to fight every game invitation who's been oh i put voitasha because russia why did i wait wait what wait i also put the picture of fedesev oh my god that's just absolutely not wait a minute okay all right some live editing here i mixed up my players what the heck give me a sec folks i've i've never done this in the middle of a recap i'm gonna what i accidentally made this guy for the save did i i completely messed that up okay vitasik and poland well i can't imagine what i did in the other uh on the other game sometimes i sit here and i try to prepare the games ahead of time and uh i guess i just made a mistake wow oopsies all right well this is absolutely report vitashak feresev did not play against two people um so we have a we have whatever the hell this is this is a london queen's gamble there's a guy who doesn't know what whether he wants thai food or pizza so he orders both i'm talking about myself uh not really i'm not i'm not uh i don't eat that much so the funniest thing is by move five we have a game that's almost never occurred just almost never because no one plays like this it's just a very strange move order to develop you know you're your your bishop before your knights but okay whatever um we have uh we have um i'm still so amazed i just i i have no idea what i put for fedex i hope i didn't put two ferasevs and and we get a game uh of just an imbalanced uh pawn structure so the players develop now that move c5 right uh if if you've been wondering why b7 hasn't been taken it's because rook b8 and rook b2 a little bit unpleasant also knight b6 can lock the queen in after it gets over there uh we get a game that looks like this so positionally speaking folks what's going on here uh black has what we call an isolated pawn it's a pawn that uh doesn't have any neighbors no c and e uh isolated pawns are good when you have activity around them so you use the open space the open lines around the pawn and maybe you try to trade it off or use it as a hook or as a kind of defensive mechanism to plant one of your pieces more actively and the guy playing against the isolated pawn wants to trade all the pieces and attack it that's what he wants so what we're going to see and blockade it so what we're going to see now is a guy offering exchanges and blockading the isolated pawn so mythashak has a bit of an annoying task in front of him here uh he goes knight e6 he's looking to remove the blockade he ends up trading looks like white has an advantage absolutely white has an advantage white is better totally 100 white is kind of succeeding here maybe he's gonna try to pressure like this black on the other hand is trying to do what people with an isolated pawn do he's trying to be active around the pawn uh report here repeats moves but not actually because the pawn moved up uh and then offers his opponent a queen trade voluntarily damaging his structure to open up the a file so an interesting approach here uh g4 takes a little bit of space improving on both sides of the board without over committing h5 here not very scary uh you can take you can push probably you can also just play f3 it's a very slow improvement on two sides of the board knight e4 is what i talked about using that pawn as kind of a lever uh so that if bishop e4 d e4 that's nothing there's nothing special there right so uh rook d1 and we have a trade knight goes back to d6 and uh yeah i mean vitashak is doing a great job he's using that pawn as an asset for himself rather than a liability um a little bit later in this game report sacks upon and actually if you count the numbers here uh he's a pawn up i'm sorry he's a pawn up like that shook is just a pawn up but white is better white is better because he's just got way more activity i mean the rook is a menace this rook is a menace and these pawns suck and this rook is just a dif it's a defender it's not it's not aggressive it's not everything is very well protected and what ends up happening in this game is rapport wins back both pawns so he wins the d-pawn and he wins the b-pawn in a moment you're going to watch that b-pawn collapse but vitashak is smart and and this is this is the level of the game that he's playing he's a strong 2700 he goes from he goes from a pawn up to a pawn down but forcing a drawn rook and game it's just a drawn rook end game so very nice technique good defensive technique drawn rook end game because no pawn is going to make it through this pawn is always a liability uh and and just so you understand like i'm not playing rook c6 because there's this so i i just have to be careful not to make a silly mistake and lose this pawn and give white winning chances black just stays active pawn is blockaded the white king can't get close hashtag chael sonnen right can't let him get close i've made that joke before but yes i'm a big mma fan and now that rook f4 is not possible because the king is there you win the pawn so good hold by vitashik uh can't complain uh and the uh fifth game that i have for you on the um before the decisive games is hare krishna versus shirov now this was a long game it was a rue lopez so you know it's gonna be a long one uh and it was a wild rue lopez so it was a game that featured shootoff coming for this bishop and then attacking the center so both sides here uh you know sheriff look at this nice little crown in the center of the board hare krishna here backs up sniping at the center with the pawn the knight potentially the rook should have did a very nice job here of kind of putting his bishops behind the pawns making sure everything was nice and solid but shirov needs to kind of get out and be aggressive and you're going to see him do that in a moment um his queen goes for a little little jog out here in in a sec and actually uh pantala got exactly what he wanted this was the incorrect approach to this position and hare krishna at the sacrifice of a pawn here could have swarmed black he could have played knight h4 giving this pawn away and going for knight to f5 queen to g4 rook to d7 and all the pieces swarmed because this bishop cannot play a defensive role for black knight h4 was the critical decision here to go for a big attack i'm not saying it's winning but like i said in that levon vidic game sometimes that's all it takes instead of that he gobbled and the game took a much different nature right you see white focusing on the queen side rook d1 is a very flashy move if you take then queen takes queen that doesn't happen we get a bit more of an end game and uh yeah hari krishna still continues to apply pressure right he's got the a pawn on the outside e5 is looking a little bit delicate uh shirov here trades and tries to play an end game where he's a he's a clean pawn down right rookie four right now again probably this is the way to go so just get the three on one so like for example rook a4 here get the three on one on this side of the board and try to win it hari instead uh goes for the c5 pawn but after bishop b6 and bishop f2 this is not the right configuration to play this position for a win and the game goes on for 30 more moves from this kind of situation so hare krishna either had to attack a little bit earlier or get that and i'm not saying those were easy i'm just telling you that chess is like that in a 79 move game 76 move game two moments for white to potentially take advantage uh this is the right setup that you gotta go for and you try to attack this pawn before it gets too active and you have a three-on-one situation on this side of the board that doesn't happen instead we get like a equal pawn situation and one on the other side white is unable to get this pawn rolling ao cops i'll be out in a minute all right getting arrested because i'm just too damn good at these recaps uh king d3 and we have you know a little bit of action over here players end up trading this game all the way down to king versus king as that king goes to hunt down the rook the black pawn makes it all the way down and this is a very very standard uh draw uh yeah i mean you know like i said like you've seen throughout these recaps that's just sort of what happens games don't always make it all the way to their conclusion uh well don't i mean like the advantage doesn't get proven in a game but games do make it down uh to uh to a conclusion at some point now i'm terrified of what we're about to discover um but uh i hope i hope feder is somewhere here ah there he is okay so i just basically gave two ferasevs for some reason so apparent versus uh feliciave was an interesting one but a bit of a tragic affair so we got kind of a sideline of the sicilian white white doesn't go for an open sicilian so fidesef plays e5 which is an ultra committal move forcing the nature of uh of the game it's going to be a very close maneuvering game as you're about to see the players prevent each other from getting any sort of advantage in terms of pawns uh knight d7 is a jostling type of move looking to trade the bishops white's like no no i'm good i don't want to trade any pieces with you now my knight is on d5 and black tries to trade the knight off right away white does that light square bishop looking quite nice uh trying to build up for a potential d4 black plays king h8 to get out of the way and advance with f5 white is trying to take space on the queen side so in close positions a lot of pawn battling right b5 is a locked lock decision knight goes back to the eight now i am willing to bet that at some point we we get to play the move f5 oh wow how the hell did i know that f5 there it is and my mana biden for some reason just really likes to play h5 if h4h5 if you go through his games he plays h4h5 like in every game and you know basically i kind of think his idea here is to do this and win right because the king is cut off so hghg it's mate like bishop h4 it's mate i'm assuming that was his idea that is why he played h5 so if it say if trades off his light squad bishop he's like well you're not gonna mate me if i trade off your diagonal attacker uh queen d7 and here apartheid went nuts like off the deep end crazy my man played king d1 now king d1 i i don't i don't know what the point of this move is like i i don't know i i guess he wanted some king c2 and maybe a rookie one and i don't know i don't know what the point of kingdom is it almost looks like an over-the-board mouse slip and fedo saves like chop chop chop chop infiltration like i don't take take take take queen g4 i'm attacking g2 how are you going to defend it a python at this point is like well i could go king c2 but then if he takes this is hanging so that doesn't quite work so now i'm going to go back with my queen so that if he takes i go here and now i use the g-file against him fedex is like okay and what if the second you move your queen i attack it so that if you take your knight's not guarded anymore queen e3 enough to save like what about my knight like i got a pawn you didn't take so i'm gonna go knight c5 knight t3 that's exactly what happens well knight f4 knight d3 that knight ends up on d3 guys what is happening with this white king king d1 king c1 king seat teresa was just playing moves and i i i don't know i don't know knight f5 and here for the safe's like my rook is worth as much as that night i mean that night is really powerful now i have threats on this king is the king gonna move again no we decide to attack the queen okay queen queen uh doesn't even have to move because double check and infiltration in the night we'll come back to d3 or c2 in a moment uh and um yeah i almost feel bad for showing the entirety of this game i mean this is just brutal like i i i i i don't know i don't know folks um yeah there's no back rank mate by the way nice coverage and um yeah i mean for the sake of wins well i i don't know i i i don't know i mean a pardon had a very normal position and within five moves it was minus ten i i don't know what happened i don't know what happened really i i don't know okay next game i'm getting sad uh le dope versus wesley so this is a mammoth match-up in group d one of these two guys is gonna win group d harvey krishna and shirov are extremely good players but these guys are cut above they're 27 60 27 70. wesley so former almost 2800 rated player like these guys are a little bit above so this is a huge game who's gonna win this one well it's only fitting that these guys uh play into a line that was played in the world championship so they are using world championship prep and jordan van forest played this against uh karjakin in that steel that game had knight a3 jordan put his bishop on v8 uh so in this game we get a slightly different approach uh we're also now following the game alexienko vs carlson from world championship of blitz in varsava poland knight e7 knight g6 and a big maneuvering battle the first trait of which occurs on move 15 ed knight d4 takes takes and d5 okay what the heck is going on uh black has given up the bishop pair so we have one bishop versus two but black is basically saying at some point you'll have to give this up because my knights are too strong this is a very common outpost square f4 f5 where did we just see the f5 score were you paying attention hare krishna sheriff e4 e5 games particularly rue lopez f4 f5 is a million dollar square that's the stuff you learn in the gotham recaps in between snorting water all over yourself while you laugh or snorting other things i can't say i recommend that but you know so queen f3 queen f6 bishop back to d1 are you really gonna tell me that this bishop pair is scaring anybody wesley is not so convinced wesley is not so convinced uh i really should go to jail queen h4 bishop d2 c6 the black position ultra solid boop boop boop boop maybe future sacrifices over here black's got a really annoying bind and sometimes in positions where there's a very annoying bind the guy who's in the very annoying bind in this case lido gonna struggle to kind of deal with further pressure and wesley applies it f5 now to my eyes e5 is you must play this move f5 you must play it because this bishop is officially locked out of the game however there is a crazy tactical shot here knight takes g2 and the point is that if you just play something like king g2 i have queen d4 hitting this and a fork oh oh oh there is this and you have to calculate it but queen g2 there is f4 and now the bishop is reactivated the rook is reactivated terrifying position f5 e5 though has to be played like you have to calculate all that and make sure it's okay because this is your alternative and the pieces are just way too active i mean to my eyes i'm not in the grand prix but when i see f5 this is my i play this in two seconds i mean maybe i lose after knight g2 but i played in two you know the craziest thing is e5 is plus one according to stockfish which is i wonder what uh lanier missed i wonder what he missed i don't i don't know again just like i don't know when somebody i don't know he decides to give wesley everything and he opts to trade queens and now there's a fork and i suppose his idea here was this right so that if you take the rook i go here but if you follow this variation after rook to f2 if you take on d3 i take the bishop right so line lanier went for this variation bishop takes g6 he didn't have to do this this is just a losing rook and pawn end game black just has too much activity and wesley brings the rooks down rook's on the second rank folks rooks on the second rank now white can do the same but one guy is faster than the other and the other thing is the other guy can run if the king can escape like he's trying to box in his king it's not gonna quite work uh if the king can run you just lose and uh yeah i mean wesley just creates checkmate threats and that's it white resigns down three puns shocking and almost effortless victory for wesley so a beautiful game by wesley honestly f5 was just an exceptional move and like i said when you're in an unpleasant situation and it seems like it's completely about to get out of control sometimes uh you struggle to deal with that change in the position and sometimes the reverse when you have a bind and you try to get aggressive you open yourself up to counter attack and apparently after revive like black's position is really good blackjack has to find a way to consolidate and get like a really good but yeah i mean e5 visually just looks so promising i really wonder what what lander didn't like right because knight takes you two you got to calculate all this stuff i don't know maybe just he didn't like it there's something he didn't like he went for this and wesley got everything and uh when everything cleared out he was just in a winning rook in pawneen game uh and he wins and wesley now leads group d uh with three points out of four and the last game that i would like to show you and thank you for making it 30 minutes into this recap i know these recent grand prix recaps have been uh long but uh hopefully you guys are enjoying this is a beautiful game daniel dubois versus vincent kimber remember how hikaru played e4 which he might not usually play if he doesn't know that his opponent is going to play a certain opening when you play vincent kaima with white you know you're going to get this he's kind of like me except taller far more talented at chess probably gets better grades in school so not quite i got a nice youtube channel though d4 d5 and we have an advanced uh variation now you remember in this tournament we've already seen knight d2 knight b3 uh liner versus hare krishna uh and um we also saw the exchange car account played against kymer not dissuaded whatsoever and plays into a mainline short variation now the following moves will look familiar to you bishop e3 queen b6 and all of this now again black does not take the pawn here because of knight to b5 knight b5 knight c7 the queen isn't trapped but there's too many threats you can always take on c5 threatening to trap the queen at any moment also threatening to play knight d4 it's a disaster position you can't actually take on b2 just yet you have to play knight c6 so castles queen b2 all of this all of these moves have been seen in the game srira krishna all of them bishop before but in that game rook b1 was the choice which is one of the moves in this game duba plays knight b5 which has been played before it has been played before defending the knight and threatening all sorts of stuff over here we have bishop a5 rook b1 queen c2 rook c1 queen b2 the reason i'm not uh slowing down is because all of these moves have been played probably about 30 40 times there was also a game caruana in his legendary winning streak sink field cup my video called the greatest chess winning streak of all time which you've all obviously seen versus mvl um knight a4 is a move that's been played 11 times and has a win rate of 73 black has never won after knight a4 has been played never according to my database never maybe like in a blitz game so maybe one time in a blitz game but in classical chess knight a4 only white has ever won and it forces the following sequence takes takes uh there's a fruit fly in my room there's no fruit in here maybe i'm the fruit huh knight d6 king e7 knight b7 all these moves have been played before all of these moves have been played before there was one game played in a between sarana and rosem i think uh russian tournament and that game featured knight h6 20 moves of theory played by daniel dubov rook b8 is the move chosen in this game by kaimer who did not know about that game because knight h6 is the only move here's why you have to develop quickly with knight h6 f6 and knight back to f7 so for example you have to play for f6 and then you have to play for knight f7 to counteract the incoming positional assault the move rook b8 allows white to play knight c4 and you are now too slow to deal with this knight on d6 now what kymer probably wanted here was this this so at least the knight on d6 is not creating a threat and now his idea is 97 knight c8 or 97 knight f5 so that's the way he was going to deal with it but you you don't have to play rogue b8 rook b8 is one tempo too little you need the knight out immediately because all of this happens and dubo finds rook d4 and even though you get to play knight e7 duboff just goes here and is like showing a giant middle finger to kymer like he plays g4 presses the clock writes the move down and just boom and camera's like he can't do that and dude was like i don't know i don't know what you're talking about so now if knight c8 is played the idea is the absolutely exceptional rook before if you take i take and i win your rook rook before is a beautiful idea and when you are faced with a move like rook b4 when you notice that after knight c8 there was rook before you're kinda gonna struggle a little bit you might have to play king d7 and then rook a fruit and and i mean it looks like your position's falling apart apparently it's not apparently it's not after rook b5 the sack the rook sack the rook go rook b8 and focus on the light the positional liabilities that white created for himself in trying to restrict the movement of your pieces sometimes you you flinch too hard right and that's when you can hurt yourself right so rook b8 was the idea but kaima plays rook b6 one move too late bishop b5 and i think at this point kaima realized he can't move his king can't move it he can't do anything get absolutely no moves and when you have absolutely no moves white is going to do whatever the hell he wants to on the chessboard rook a4 knight goes back to c8 because there is no rook before anymore the bishop blocks it but it doesn't matter takes takes okay so beautiful look at this he sacks the rook rook d7 is made how do you stop that rook c7 and you have to give away your other rook rookie 8 is now mate once again so uh f6 rook c8 forces a trade i mean you can play rook a7 but i come back to c6 you cannot take because rook c7 then i take the pawn my king is always safe on the back rank rook k7 rook c6 and vincent kaima resigned we are really seeing the struggles of a gentleman who is a very very strong 2650 player but he is trying to throw the karo khan out against absolute chess goons chess geniuses and uh in the last two rounds aranyan and dubois have really punished the karo khan really punished it and uh i had a game almost very similar to this when after 18 moves of theory this was 20 but after 18 moves of theory against nicholas hushenbeth there's actually a video he made it on youtube uh where he remembered like 18 moves of theory and i remembered 17 and i lost like basically on the spot and that's just the brutal nature of some of these karo khan variations uh so duboff wins in group c the problem for dubov is he's in a group with levanan who's in first place so the group leaders after four rounds hikaru nakamura uh group b has a tie between uh vaitashik and ferisev report is half a point behind them levon and wesley so the leaders of group c and d respectfully respectively and also respectfully folks it's been a pleasure making four days of recaps for you tomorrow we have a rest day i don't even know who's even write a comment if you even heard that tomorrow is a resume in the comments write a comment uh if you're if you even heard 38 minutes into the recap i feel like i'm talking to myself at this point although i am in all my videos anyway i'll see you for round five get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 305,660

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: gwzolwakkgA

Length: 38min 10sec (2290 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022