How To Defeat Magnus Carlsen

ladies and gentlemen you know a chess player is really special when whenever they make even a single wrong move the entire world shakes twitter rumbles at its core people start chiming in about how this player is washed up and they will never be great again and i'm talking obviously about magnus carlsen magnus carlsen undisputed best player in the world at the moment and very mildly disputed greatest player of all time obviously people would argue kasparov he is currently playing in norway chess this interesting event where they combine classical chess with armageddon and his opponent for this game and this video is none other than russian grand master sergei karjakin who played him in the world championship match in 2016. now this video is a how-to guide on how you should play against magnus carlsen should you get a classical game against them and we're going to look at this game it's a fascinating game very interesting game and hopefully you can have some takeaways for when you clash with magnus in the future sergei is playing with the white pieces he begins the game with e4 and when you play e4 against magnus it's a very high chance you get a sicilian defense knight to f3 now magnus's pet line in the sicilian is the move knight c6 he played this exclusively in the world championship match of 2018 against fabiano caruana and he likes to go into the open lines of the sicilian with d4 but also bishop b5 the rossolimo and after knight c6 was played exclusively at that at that at that match knight c6 like took over i mean you got like 10 year old kids playing knight c6 uh trying to model their repertoires after magnus carlsen thousands and thousands of games have paved the way of theory but kayaking plays into d4 he does not go for the rossolimo takes takes and if you play this against magnus it's a very high chance you're going to get this move e5 which is known as the swesnikov variation of the sicilian defense rest in peace to the legend evgeny svechnikov passed away recently and knight b5 d6 there are two ways to handle this position with white number one is to play bishop to g5 to try to target this knight and fight for the center square d5 i mean that's obviously the whole concession of black's position is that the d5 square is slightly weak and this pawn can be slightly weak but black will respond with a queen side strike the second way and actually the much more modern way is to throw this knight into the middle of the board right away fabiano did this against magnus and since then magnus has played it with white and with black so step one it seems of kind of beating magnus just go directly into the prep that he probably knows better than how to spell his own name uh so we have knight d5 and obviously you have to take you cannot take this pawn because the knights are about to jump into c7 take take pawn takes and now there's two moves believe it or not this move is not the most common which kind of is surprising actually the most common move is to undevelop your knight completely and magnus has played this himself on both sides and the idea is that well your knight is like it's safe now and it can always jump out to d7 and maybe to c5 you kind of won the battle of the center because now you can always play f5 so you're always going to have more pawns in the center than your opponent and what exactly is this knight doing actually oftentimes white will even play c4 to then bring this knight back to e3 for example or to see or behind the pawn you know to stand behind the pawn so at least you have more control in the center with pawns but in this game magnus plays knight e7 which is played about one third of the time it's played in 2000 games according to my database knight b8 has been played 6 000 times um and now of course karjakin plays c4 and magnus rotates the knight over to g6 uh believe it or not magnus and karjakin have actually i believe played an exact game like this uh in the past uh and also magnus like i said has had this position with white he's also had this position with black uh so i mean how how more well prepared can you be so queen a4 here is a thread on the king through the knight so the bishop comes here and now the queen isn't guarding the pawn anymore so the move queen before all of this has been played in the past here magnus has tried to move bishop to f5 before uh just defending this pawn right uh but also there's this move queen b8 so the most common move in this position is just to play queen b8 black temporarily negates all threats and is ready to just kick out this knight okay great here white has a couple of ways to develop he chooses the move h4 this is actually believe it or not it is a bit of a developing move because this knight is on an awkward square so uh just to show you how bad it can get if you play h5 this is just already completely winning for white because this knight has nowhere to go if it goes to e7 you lose d6 and if it goes to f4 you can just trap it with g3 so black actually has to respond to h4 most likely with at least h5 or equal danger on the other side and yet magnus has also had this position himself in the past bishop e3 now magnus carlsen uh has played this position two ways before number one he played a6 to attack the knight and kick it out and then here he has played a5 to attack the queen and f5 oops sorry and f5 to try to create some sort of attack over here he played a5 in the tiebreaker rapid game against fabiano carolina in the world championship match he won that game he won that game uh and he's played f5 against jordan van forest in tara steele classical chess 2019 i believe in this game he plays bishop to e7 so karjakin is just in magnus's uh territory like all of it there's land mines everywhere but he knows the prep well enough himself he clearly has done his homework and white plays the move g3 to guard this and now castles and this is fascinating because magnus has put his pawn on h5 and he's basically left it to die he's just completely left the pawn to that i mean you are not saving this pawn if you play bishop g4 we have the same problem as last time i get to play h5 and let me tell you something if you ever have to play knight to h8 in a game and keep a straight face uh yeah chances are you're you're probably gonna lose all right this is not chess 960. um so magnus plays bishop e2 uh sorry uh karjakin plays bishop e2 and magnus just gives him the h5 pawn he just gives him the h5 pawn while creating a queen side initiative so aryakin takes on b5 to kind of freeze the structure and takes on h5 okay he's calling the bluff he's like magnus i get it you're the world champion i get it that you beat me in a match i get it i get it i get it but what the hell bro you're down upon pawns upon even in norway here magnus plays the move bishop to d8 this is a very high level move the idea of this move uh is that he's rerouting the bishop to potentially the queen side to either trade on with this bishop which is very strong or go to a5 and laser beam the diagonal he has another idea the knight now can go to e7 in many cases pressuring the center also f5 right to target the same bishop and this bishop has no target now taking like this and doubling the structure is an idea but i don't know why you would just voluntarily give magnus the open file castles and just have a ton of light scored weaknesses uh but it actually is a way to play you could theoretically take on g6 it's not a very pretty move so karjakin just decides to play short castle and magnus brings the knight back again his position is like a slingshot he's corking it back all the way with his piece with his pieces right the pieces are all the way back but they're about to just roll forward very quickly karjakin plays bishop g5 the idea of this move is probably that you are going to trade this bishop at some moment i mean i would imagine and if you get booted i guess his idea was he was gonna come back i doubt to the same square but maybe uh because f6 is just screaming to be played right and then the question is what now so magnus thinks for a while he decides to continue with his plan to bring the bishop to the queen side to attack koryakin drops back with the queen and here comes the knights now here come the pieces back back to take two steps forward bishop a5 knight five kryakan plays knight back to e2 and magnus also goes back to b6 and just in a few moves it becomes very clear that one gentleman has won the diagonal battle he's also pressuring the pawns i don't know what these bishops are doing it's adorable that they're holding hands together but they're not actually attacking anything there is like a vague hope that you might fork something here i don't know um and so he plays rook c1 and all of a sudden after rook c1 magnus realizes now is the best moment to pay homage to young elo and he plays rook to a4 and now we see the problem the past few moves for carjacking have not been very coordinated right he didn't want to trade the knight for the bishop so he ventured the bishop out here with just a vague threat of going to e7 this bishop has won upon and has not returned home he's about to become a awol uh and this rook on a4 is just hitting the whole thing and you don't know where it's going it could go to c4 d4 e4 not probably not here but like here here somewhere there in the future so now kayaking plays rook to c6 and this is step two of how to beat magnus carlsen confuse the hell out of him all right he's got a better position even at the cost of a pawn you play directly into his prep he is better prepared on the plans of the positions do you know how many training games magnus carlsen has probably played in these structures i don't know you'd probably have to ask him he's probably trained against the engine he's played against humans when these guys when these tom guys prep the style of position that they play they know so much that doesn't even get played over the board at least i'm assuming i don't know maybe they're all like love you have no idea what you're talking about we never prep we just eat cheetos and and drink snapple there's nothing we don't do anything else i'm assuming that they know what's going on so he knows how to play this position and karjakin slaps the rook down to c6 now if you're watching this and you're confused now if you're watching this on the video you see that the bishop can take the rook if you're watching this in another tab while coding or doing homework or you know other things that you do on the internet uh look you got to come back look the rook is hanging karjakin just straight up gives him a rook the trojan rook if you will now if you take this rook okay the pawn opens up the queen opens up and white's position kind of looks nice even at the cost of that piece if you don't take if you just leave the rook they're like i don't really understand you're not actually threatening anything you're not even threatening to take on b5 because bishop takes f2 check and i win your queen um like if magnus just plays queen a7 uh he continues the pressure on the queen side he continues to pressure the diagonal he can also lock this rook in and then win it in an advantageous way or trade it off it's another idea just to just just trade it don't even let it like don't give kayaking any satisfaction but magnus is so shocked by the move rook c6 he's like what is this guy doing that's just a rook like i'm a principled guy now i have a rook and a pawn oh sorry i have a rook for a bishop and a pawn so i have a one point advantage um but he lost the rook bro like what he's got no threats either he can't even attack anything f7's guarded this is guarded so magnus here plays rook c4 just immediately looking to win this pawn back again you cannot take on b5 because bishop takes f2 and you lose your queen so karjakin here detonates a4 which is a wild move because when you move your rook off a square that's covered twice the last thing you expect is to get hit with a4 and here's the idea of this move so if you take with the pawn you lose your rook simple if you take with the rook then you um you wouldn't believe it you still can't take on b5 but there is this move bishop g6 and if you attack f5 the queen can't protect it because then b5 is hanging and if you go to the middle then after it takes takes the bishops get in like i'm hitting this you can't move because queen f7 this is actually kind of problematic so a4 is a very tricky move very tricky and you can also take on c6 you can take the pawn which is the culprit of the whole position but then your pieces look how poorly they coordinate you can't play knight e7 or knight before the knight gets taken if you defend both pieces with the queen you gotta get to this position and i'm not really sure who's even better here because i'm a couple moves away from just straight up mating you okay bishop f6 queen h5 and queen h8 is a mate and if you come back to trade my bishop like i don't have to trade i can hang out and also i can just play rook d1 knight d5 all your pawns look really soft and really tasty so very problematic situation for magnus after a4 he should not have called the bluff sergei is now back in business knight d4 we have a trait of knights and take on b5 this is the way magnus decides to go about it he wants karjakin to kind of blockade his own bonds and he plays the move d5 now d5 is a is a move he can also play rook c5 here to try to attack the pawns because obviously the pawns can't move they need to defend each other uh and if and if kayaking were to defend passively here then rook takes c6 as an oopsie rook c6 is an oopsy only in this case because if you try to do it here then bishop to e7 is again a problem the rook needs to stay guarding f7 and if it can it's just going to be lost and there goes all of your advantage too many threats so magnus plays d5 now the queen's diagonal is blocked but carjacking trades rooks when he's losing i mean he's not down material anymore he's gotten his pawns back but he trades rooks because now d5 is under pressure and the pawns are going to walk up the board but not yet that's the thing not yet magnus blocks the pawns and starts creating counter play on f2 so the truth is that once you play directly into magnus's preparation and play a move so confusing it rattles his world the third step of beating magnus is you know at all costs this man will try to liquidate to an end game he's so good at winning end games but he's so good at defending them too he creates practical chances even against the best players in the world so bishop e3 cold-blooded decision by karjakin to trade and by the way notice that he's not fiending for a queen trade this of course is winning because these pawns are too far advanced but magnus wouldn't do that he would just take on b5 and once you lose this pawn it's a very high chance that you actually lose the game so he takes with the f-pawn voluntarily weakening his king's position the pawns are very delicate but it's not easy for magnus to get in again if you just go for a belligerent counter play i'm gonna believe it or not just take on d5 and this looks scary i admit but you're completely safe there's a difference in chess between oh my god that looks scary and oh my god that is scary because there's no checks it's all about concrete danger there's no checks you're completely safe rk1 looks scary but it's not because you're actually getting to this king much faster king h8 and yes you might have to find a move like bishop to f3 and you're safe there is still no checks so you're completely fine so magnus goes for rook d8 now he has a new plan blockade these pawns and push the d-pawn kayaking king g2 cool as a cucumber organic non-gmo cucumber king to g2 magnus kicks out the bishop bishop back to e2 and king g7 this is always going to be useful um because now the obviously the queen doesn't have the same diagonal as the king queen c3 okay d4 playing directly into the plan takes takes let me block this pawn real quick all my queen side is safe now what how am i going to win now queen a5 and now magnus begins employing a bit of a slow crawl into the position queen b4 apparently it was better to employ rookie 8 first as a move order before you play queen b4 i'll show you why so queen before b3 was played in the game um but i believe that uh now you can play queen e4 this is the way the computer wants to handle this position just give b2 completely give this away and then go here which is a little bit not very human it's just not very human to give away a pawn for absolutely zero reason uh and there's just no counter play i mean you just very slowly push these pawns instead of that karjakin decided to create a very pretty defensive formation that's just very it's a very aesthetic thing everything is guarded uh the problem with doing it this way uh is that apparently here uh even c7 is faster c7 is apparently a very quick move and leads to a transformation into a winning end game so like this and here the absolutely savage bishop takes f5 hello hello me have rook down and you can check me but i'm gonna win your rook and if you take check i picked this up winning end game but you're not gonna do that unless you're two thousand percent sure that it's winning so instead of that he gets the very pretty formation magnus brings in the queen and um right here karjakin for an inexplicable completely like he of course king h3 is wha we've always been pointing out but he has so many moves that win he can play queen d5 for example allowing this check and then king h3 and the big difference is that there's just too many threats like queenie one queen d4 is winning so karjakin voluntarily just goes to h3 and magnus here could have played queen to e1 which could have potentially led to this position and you actually can't take this if you play bishop takes d3 i i uh first of all i have check but second of all i have rookie three so i'm forking you and i have queen h1 on the way and queen g3 so it's bad news so we could have ended up in a position and queen d3 queen h1 we could have ended up here where there would have been four queens on the board and god knows what is going on oh and only god and god's not magnus in this case only god knows what's going on in this position so magnus goes back doesn't go for the active counter play and decides that the way he's going to save this is by sacking the pawn winning the bishop and notice karjakin actually goes for this too because his pawns are too far advanced a rook cannot protect two past pawns together on the sixth rank two squares away from promotion it's not strong enough it can't guard both on the fifth rank yes at this time it doesn't have time but you know what magnus goes for in this position magnus is going for this end game he wants an end game where he gets rook and two versus queen and two you know why because this end game right here something like this this might be a draw yeah this is the way you draw rook versus reverse queen you create a fortress your rook stands and patrols an entire like section of the board protected by everything and believe it or not i am not sure there is a way to break through this because if you walk up to this rook and try to sacrifice for it to transform the end game into a winning end game then the rook will just go to h5 you're never actually going to win the rook and if you get really close to it it doesn't matter you're never going to win the pawn never and your king's never going to cross the middle either so is magnus a genius has he found the solution to this position no because here cardiac can implement step 3 of defeating magnus carlsen you got to be ready for the endgame conversion and he plays the move h5 i cannot tell you how important it is to even at the cost of it of a pawn very temporarily in the endgame to split the structure because that allows for so much that allows for so much first of all it depends now rook and pawn vs queen the pawn has to be in a very specific setup if the pawn is even one row over or one rank up or two ranks up there is no fortress sometimes because there's enough space on the board but the way that karjakin does this he marches this gets his queen and just brings it back this position is completely winning for white and here magnus carlsen resigned the game why why is it winning great question well let's try to find a move you see what white wants is to check the king and win the rook if white can check the king and win the rook with with a fork like for example rook d5 queen b7 or queen g2 gg but if the rook hangs out on the fifth rank like rook to a5 i'm i'ma just touch up this rook real quick because i want this pawn so if i can win this pawn i'm just easily winning and if the rook again hangs out like on f5 well then i'm just gonna i'm gonna come closer now the rook is slowly running out of squares he said no look at black's position it's a fortress you know what happens when the king and the rook are on the same line i played this absolutely savage move it's zooks one you can't move a piece you have to move the king and i take your rook ouch so that doesn't work so what do you do let's say you keep hanging out there is nowhere to hang out nowhere to hang out rook a5 rook b5 check and you lose king h6 great idea wonderful idea love it check king g6 i don't know i probably mate you somehow or again tzugswang and if you go back to h6 i mean we can get this position and i can play queen d3 like you're just going to run out of moves at some point you have nothing and the worst part is about a position like this there are going to be moments let's just say you employ cocoon defense like this you're like no he can't get to me as long as i i can sack the queen for the rook because this is a winning king in pawn end game so you are just totally out of resources and it's only possible because he sacked the h-pawn to split black structure you say well why did magnus do that he didn't have to take it doesn't matter didn't matter if he did if he took or not like if magnus played rook c6 first of all h8 check by the way uh h6 check might also be winning but like what's he gonna do if he doesn't take if he plays like here well i can take but i can also just go here that's made so that's bad and this is probably also mate that's also bad so sergey karjakin wins a really nice game of chess which was really made possible by that sacrifice on c6 on move 24 and what's funny is that if not for that then magnus actually had a pretty decent position which now will mean that we have to go back to the drawing board against this variation the magnus's pet line continues to hold serve but karjakin shows that the way to do it is to complicate the waters muddy the waters not complicate the waters muddy the waters versus magnus um create a very very tense position potentially at the cost of material uh and don't show a degree of respect and then you have to convert it all in the end game so a very nice win by kayaking wanted to share it all with you and now you know the next time you play magnus the steps that you need to take in order to defeat him results may vary

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 306,975

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, norway chess 2021, karjakin carlsen, carlsen karjakin, magnus carlsen chess, magnus carlsen, magnus, magnus chess, magnus interview, magnus carlsen loses, magnus carlsen interview

Id: JYuNvJPhj1s

Length: 23min 13sec (1393 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 13 2021