I Trained Like A Chess Grandmaster

on this episode of challenge accepted i am going to see how good i can get at chess in just 30 days starting from ground zero i'm going to be trained by some of the top chess players in the world and at the end of this video i will be competing in pog champs 3 an actual chess tournament against some of the biggest streamers on the platform challenge accepted hi michelle hi my name is levi rosman i'm an international master and i'll be your coach through this challenge so i've been playing chess since i was five years old i played my first tournament when i was seven i've been in the top five for my age in the united states for basically my whole childhood and i was number two in the country when i was 12. how much just have you played i know how the pieces move i know the knights go in the l and the rooks go like that here and here and then the bishop goes here on the diagonal and then the queen is just like a baller who goes wherever why don't you and i just play a game it's not necessarily a fair fight so i will wear a blindfold for the whole game yep [Music] pawn be three hmm larsen's opening maybe you uh aren't such a beginner after all i'll go pawn to e5 [Music] okay i hope i'm doing this right okay my turn um how about uh knight goes from b1 to c3 i'll play bishop to c5 bishop you go so fast you're blindfolded you know what okay how about this pawn a4 uh i'll go pawn to d5 okay knight goes from g1 to f3 you're attacking my pawn i'll push that pawn from e5 to e4 knight e5 queen to f6 pawn f4 queen takes pawn bishop b2 okay so i could take your knight with my queen but i think a better move is queen f2 checkmate that's it i think the real problem is that you didn't push your central pawns so you couldn't really fend off my pieces out in the open respectfully what the [ __ ] my name is i'm a grand master at chess five-time united states chess champion and the number one ranked blitz player in the world the hardest thing for michelle is probably dealing with failure at the start i think it's going to be very difficult to get into chess i expect her to lose quite a few games at the start i think the most important thing is that she focuses and realizes that it's about the end result it's not simply about the first couple of games the game of chess is split into three phases you have the opening the middle game and the end game how many openings are there uh many hundreds maybe in the thousands am i gonna learn one well we should start with the first move yes i'm gonna choose to move the queen's pawn if i play also with my queen's pawn you have the option to play the queen's gambit like the show oh my god we're already there we're doing the queen's gambit the global netflix hit the queen's gambit follows the rise of fictional chess prodigy elizabeth harmon checkmating her way to victories in the male-dominated sport the on-screen matches igniting a new off-screen interest in the game the queen's gambit just completely changed chess forever the opening that i wanted to show you is called the london system they all have different names a lot of them have different names either after people or places and then some have meme names like the bong cloud [Music] so the bond cloud is an opening where both players move their pawns to start the game pawn to e4 pawn to e5 and then the player with white will move their king up one square you don't play it seriously because it violates every principle not only do you block your development you also move your king into the center of the board the more memes and chess the better because that way we can piss off everybody who's gate keeping it the whole way to london starts is with the move bishop to f4 getting your dark squared bishop to the center of the board controlling the center and chess is extremely important because from the center your pieces are the most mobile and active so your next move might be pawn to e3 but see if i do the same move that you just did you'll notice that i blocked in my bishop so now my bishop can't come out as far into the territory as your bishop develop your king's knight to f3 now finish your pyramid of pawns and the reason you do that is so that you can park your light square bishop in the small house that you built for it oh that's so cute look at it yeah already i feel like i can see how to move better across the board so for the following week i spent at least four hours a day playing chess online doing puzzles analyzing my games and taking lessons with some of the best chess players and coaches online and after only a week i am already mentally obliterated it's two move three moves sacrifices your threat is g5 which will kick the knight during the time of queen isabella actually in spain go find somewhere else to swim yeah and i apologize if i went a little too fast or sometimes i get excited i'm just gonna destroy you and before you know it you're speaking chess what we'll do for this lesson is just kind of start training our tactical vision this is standard right like the most universal first move black plays e5 generally what you want to do if you can is put two pawns in the center and you can take back with the queen but you do not want this because okay so queen f6 this is offering a queen trade why because if we take the queen they can they can take back with the pawn and the knight now bishop here so this is a super important concept if you go queen here now the bishop does come out to attack the queen is it protected yes by the pawn oh god oh my god by the oh oh so the queen has to just like retreat or go elsewhere anyways yeah but it can't because look who's on the same diagonal oh my god so that's something called a pin it's the fourth move of the game and we've lost our most powerful piece fantastic um what would you take this with you would take it with the bishop because then the king has to take that pawn and bye bye bye bye because the queen's there yes however oh no however queen is better but why the king the king could escape if it's a bishop very good yes the queen boxes the king in like this that's what you have to remember all these squares are occupied and it's checkmate you win the game okay again g4 bishop c okay today i wanted to sit down and just practice some of my techniques at a physical board because i got really sick of using the computer when you play on the computer after every game it tells you move by move what you should have done and while that's an incredible tool it can be very exhausting and makes me feel like an idiot checkmate check me there is a perceived stereotype that people who play chess are very smart therefore if i'm bad at chess i'm stupid chess is historically associated with the highest degree of intelligence yeah that's absolute [ __ ] checkmate [ __ ] every single high school movie would portray the nerdiest most socially awkward people as the chess team and that was the stereotype that everybody who liked chess had to deal with i didn't like sharing with people that i was a competitive chess player and that i was spending every weekend competing because i felt like oh they would see me differently a great benefit of this online outlet is that you can see there is really no stereotype for what type of person a chess player should be i have no clue how i'm going to do this at a tournament in like a month from now two weeks two weeks from now my name is anna i'm a chess international master i've been playing chess since i was four years old and my dream was to be on the olympic team of hungary which i finally achieved at the age of 20. what we're gonna do today is to simulate a game that will be about the level of a pogchamps competition and what i need you to do every move you're gonna talk us through your thought process and you will also analyze my moves uh so i will just do pawn d4 because i've been practicing london i'm gonna copy you and push this pawn i'm gonna go bishop f4 just to continue my trip to london i'm gonna make this move do you think the knight is all right here uh i probably would have gone knight c6 to at least protect the king and also be more centered in the board very good which means that now my knight is stuck on the edge we have a saying at chess that a knight on the rim is dim if i want to move this night again what would be an alright move for me you just have to retreat back yeah that's really sad when you need to retreat to the square you're coming from i don't want to retreat i know you need to think of every turn as a time unit you want to make sure that you use that time for the benefit of your pieces and if i have to keep moving the same piece i'm wasting time when you make a forcing move and forcing moves are checks captures and threats if you give me a check i have to respond to the check if you capture a piece of mine very likely i have to take back if i can if you threaten my queen most likely i have to move my queen so forcing moves are a category of moves that are some of the strongest when you are making a move or a sequence of moves your opponent is kind of forced to react to them you win a tempo or a move on your opponent's position and you improve your position at the same time with rooks there are two things you oftentimes will aim for to get them to the seventh or second rank depending on which color you play with and to double them why do you think a rook on the seventh is strong even it's trapping that king in there eventually even cooler if you have two rooks on the seventh something that doesn't even have a separate name i think it should have a name a rook on the sevens like that's such a lame name of course no one cares that's not how cool kids are castlemania yeah [Music] uh it's an interesting way of renaming an already known theme normally what we call it is a doubling or tripling on the seventh rank first time i heard the term castlemania i was like huh but then it's like you know what this kind of makes sense if it works i could care less the tournament is just in a few days and i'm kind of embarrassed because i still don't have an opening or plan playing with the black pieces i think it's important to remember that white and black have totally different openings usually when you play with black you are reacting to your opponent how do you feel like everything has been going i'm really trying to figure out still like what a good plan is with the black pieces it's like a completely different game it's really weird i don't like it i play the sicilian i play c5 here someone in my chat said that they recommended sicilian dragon in an earlier stream the one i'm going to show you oh see that just sounds cool the sicilian defense is one of the most confrontational openings in chess it's played from the beginner level all the way up to the highest grand master level and the dragon sicilian is one of the major subsets of the sicilian defense it's certainly not something that the opponents are going to be preparing for in pogchamp so they're going to be very unfamiliar with it which definitely is a big advantage the idea of going c5 is that you want to take control of the center so when you're going c5 you're protecting the d4 square and they played yes take with the center you take with the knight and we leave it and this is when you go for the dragon so you can sort of think about it as this being a dragon tail this whole diagonal with the knight as the head of the dragon right yes then you place your bishop on g7 and this bishop is going to be one of your best pieces this bishop is very strong in this diagonal whatever they do if they bring the knight out or they go bishop e3 you're going to go d6 and the idea of going d6 is to stop white from going e5 whenever you place your knight on f6 okay so i just got the email from pogchamps rayne wilson rayne wilson is my first game rayne wilson only has one completed game on his account against magnus carlson magnus carlson is the best in the world in a sport played by 500 million people you're the number one chess player in the world um i'm pretty much the number one actor in the world right how can i disagree with that i know i've seen the game against magnus and he'll probably be a very tough competitor but i think that anything can happen and it's very unusual that there's an opponent in a competition who is unknown i pulled up everything on google i could find about rayne wilson i found an architectural digest tour of his home to see if we could find any clues in his lair welcome to our house hi a.d does anyone see a chess set in this frame i don't okay moving [Music] no on set but i do love the animals [Music] oh anyone see oh there it is i told you what did i say what did i say we zoomed we enhanced the entire twitch chat was going crazy because we thought maybe just maybe rain wilson had left the board in a unique position no the art department reset it was just a normal board no opening no information but it was a nice board [Music] welcome welcome welcome everyone it's pog champs three and boy are we excited in addition to even bigger names than we've ever had we also have bigger prizes it's a hundred thousand dollars cash now it's hard to even quantify how big this is gonna be for guys like mr beast to throw down with xqc you've got ludwig you've got voice critical you've got pokemane and then we have rain wilson making his debut versus michelle carrey we went on architectural digest and watched your home tour we saw the chess sets we zoomed we enhanced and unfortunately did not get to see your opening or anything i play the cockroach palace that could be real and i would believe it mr wilson let me introduce you to castlemania i know i'm old but no it's not because you're oldest because i respect you so much oh damn you and your sicilian i hate the sicilians oh my god he knows the names uh oh oh it's right oh no michelle michelle i think she'll she'll figure it out yeah that's a good move actually this is a very nasty kind of opening choice by rayne wilson this is very good he's not even just developing his pieces he plays e5 and hits the knight and oh no of course he does oh my god i don't even know how to recover from this the worst part is that she has done some preparation here in the dragon and now your game right out of the gate i just kind of lost control of everything it was not pretty it was not the game that i had trained to play okay i know this isn't the right move but i literally have no idea what else i'm supposed to do because i can't go here i can't go here i think i have to just take this pawn oh my gosh oh my god this is so embarrassing it's already very nerve-wracking to play chess in a serious competition and it's even more intense when there's tens of thousands of people watching you even just knowing that there's an audience makes it feel like your mistakes are amplified brutal first game oh my gosh harsh there are many positive takeaways for michelle you blundered in your first pogchamps game and that's okay because now you got a second one all right here we go castlemania oh oh my god oh i cannot believe he just did that not even a moment to breathe okay well i'm gonna go uh knight d2 good go open up my queen yes god she is clearly over match but she's still finding good moves yeah like bishop b5 is a very very good one yes so the first game didn't go my way but in the second game something crazy happened okay not the best move but i mean again oh queen takes what queen dick's queen what [Music] she doesn't even see it she's only looking at her rook under attack oh oh she's i think she spotted it she took its game on oh oh no rain played the old botezz gambit the bow test gambit is where you drop the queen for free and get nothing back but you call it a gambit so it doesn't look like you're very dumb it's fun it's like a meme for more casual games he's played very very well but i feel like rain at critical moments has made some mistakes she's also evolving throughout this game it feels like that's it walk the king there it is congratulations [Applause] oh my god i have no feeling in my hands and in honor of the hottest new tactic in chess you can now purchase your very own limited edition castle mania t-shirt and hoodie so be sure to check out the link below okay back to the tournament going into my game against logic i had something which i did not have against rain and that was data levy in the middle of the night before the game sent me a secret video decoding exactly what i needed to do to beat logic they are off a symmetrical london not unexpected i did mention to her that c4 is good against these setups when the bishop is out because then you can play queen b3 queen b7 everything is going just as the plan i move that pawn out to d4 i get that queen out on the b file don't just go queen b7 that's the very tricky thing here i'm still gonna do it is that crazy because we're creating a bigger threat okay this is probably a bad idea but whatever bam we take the pawn and then he moves his night which we had not planned for i'm a shell oh don't take the night the bishop sees it oh this could be so bad michelle is drawing an arrow toward the knight oh but the knee takes part off oh she's on it oh sorry prevented hold on michelle she is now looking for a way out to at least get some material for the pain i guess i'll just take the rook i don't know what else to do you gotta look at everything look at everything you can take oh and she took the rook anna after that i had no idea what to do so i hung my queen there are certain types of mistakes that are impossible to recover from for example if you lose your queen i would say it's very hard to come back i had a blast and i want you to know you're a great player thank you so much thank you i learned so much playing both of those games but so many face palms during both of them and that first game it seemed like you found this knight a5 idea to kind of trap her queen you've never seen knight a5 you just came up with that like over the board yeah i just saw it i was like that'd be a vibe you know i like to have fun i kind of like you know freestyling a little bit and just having a good time i don't want to be like this arnold schwarzenegger computer guy he plays chess like he likes to write music which is for fun and doesn't want it to feel like a chore and i realize up until this point i've been kind of making chess a chore so for my next match against tubo i wanted to have a little bit more fun let me bust out my distractional musical instruments what how do you like this thinking you're thinking how's your thinking going tobo he likes to have a lot of fun when he's playing chess he plays a lot of music he really puts on a show i'm losing my mind you're actually pretty good at it my main strategy when it comes to chess is to talk as much as possible and be distracted okay well i might mute you at some point and we got michelle starting off with a london system i feel like she's learned the moose she's smiling she seems to be you know pretty confident with this opening oh my god i can pin it i can pin the horse to the point usually when your pieces are exact the first reaction is to just move them but bishop to g4 is a very strong move uh-oh no damn it i should have taken that i got too trigger-happy he doesn't need to beat himself up over that move it was still perfectly fine i want to see if he realizes it's made in one he was so busy being upset are we gonna see this it's been played oh my god oh no oh my god that was so brutal i'm so sorry no you did awesome oh my gosh i've lost every match i've played so far it doesn't matter what group it's in it's embarrassing i know like i'm a lower rating than everyone else other people have more experience i get it but i feel like i'm known online as the girl who will take on any challenge work really hard and somehow get it done and here i i'm failing michelle actually has a much better chance to thrive in the consolation bracket because the players are starting from more equal footing for the first round michelle will be playing against mr beast i hope i don't get uh destroyed too bad have you been training a little bit that's an understatement but okay oh gosh if you pull any tricks i'm muting you jimmy we have mr b taking on michelle carey i really don't know who's gonna win i feel like this one is a true coin flip mission before's a great developing move knight e4 is on the agenda i already like michelle's position and look at the clock she's up more than a minute yeah and of course i mean i bet my points on her so she's gotta uh she's gotta gotta win the match you bet your your channel points yeah i bet i bet like uh quite quite a few of my channels okay well there you go i noticed in mr beast's other games in the tournament he struggled a bit with time management so i thought maybe if i just move faster than him i could end up winning very very nice play so far by michelle i think uh she's got she's got a great position the speed in which she's playing here shows she has an intuition now at this point that she has a feel for where to put the pieces early in the game right what does one do [Music] so [Music] um every move that she has played so far has been perfect and i'm feeling very confident my butt she found knight c3 oh man wow i deserve that you know i bet you hikaru is going oh well there's the fork that i was just telling you about five seconds ago i guarantee that's what he's saying oh my god let's go uh oh the pawn can't be soft jimmy doesn't realize it oh jimmy doesn't realize if i had more time to think all right i could have solved this but i've been moving so quick the last few turns all right so how do i how do i do this does she know how to meet with king and rook is the question well she realized that you can use the king she's going to play it she does i think she's going to gobble those pawns oh my god okay no stalemate oh my gosh you just resigned she ran out of time oh no he resigned we have our next two players ready pokey mane and michelle carey michelle has already made a blunder here she took on d4 with the knight instead of taking with the pawn and keeping the pawn structure intact in this game michelle's getting much more confident when she makes a mistake and she blunders doesn't get defeated by it but she continues to play on and fight back for the advantage it's not about who makes the first blunder it's about who makes the last blunder who makes the last mistake and she wonders back ranker [Music] yeah that's game over [Music] oh my god jesus the first game even when i was up um at night i it still felt like very very equal so yeah i hope michelle's like really really proud of how well she's playing oh my gosh i reflect the same back to you pokey i could tell by the way that you were playing it was very anti-london and i haven't really practiced against that or looked it up so good on you for preparing you did so awesome i was sweating hard over here well congrats i'm excited to play in the finals i'm so proud of michelle she's played so well 4-0 in a single day she's going to the finals for the finals michelle is going to be going up against nico she has been playing chess on her streams already months before she even knew she was going to be in [ __ ] gyms miko of course is a tick tock sensation she's had great games in terms of over performing her elo niko's amazing with time it blows my mind honestly it was like oh the [ __ ] is she playing so well so fast it's like one of those assassins who just comes in and gets the job done and gets out while nico has been playing chess for longer than michelle michelle has proven to be one of the best performers in the consolation bracket i think michelle is the underdog but she certainly has chances to win this nico moves very quickly and she has a very unique opening however castlemania watching some of her other games i learned that she plays the bird opening so i had an entire lesson with anna rudolph to prepare the best black response to the bird opening oh my god i'm nervous i'm not nervous i'm fine it's just another game of chess here we go niko plays her first move and it's not the bird opening sometimes chess feels like you're studying for a science test you walk in and it's history and then you panic you spend the first half an hour thinking oh god what am i gonna do and then scribbly writing down the wrong answers for the latter half if michelle can keep her nerves together that's really the big key for anyone who played against nico being able to control the tempo and not panic and get flustered when she'd make these moves in like two to three seconds oh wow okay yeah and now unfortunately after they trade now i think niko is almost certainly going to spot uh rook takes bishop here oh wow but again i think the problem for michelle is also i suspect she did not expect to be in this position and so i think she's also very nervous as well now e7 and it's game over and it's even worse because the pawn on b5 accidentally guards c6 so there's not even a way to stop the attack yeah the only trick is richie to rick takes g3 that's the only way here for michelle to try and stay in the game very impressive game by nico very impressive damn okay definitely not my best game but that was really hard good job nico michelle is now in win or go home territory what has she got to do in game two is white and make it happen i think michelle needs to be calm just stick to her opening and play relatively quickly for the first like 10 moves nico's got a great position i mean the problem for michelle and this is why i also sometimes don't like the london opening is if your opponent does not play a traditional pawn d5 pawnee setup the ideas are completely different the black king is so safe here credit michelle finds bishop e4 which is actually a great move because the only weaknesses black has here are on the queen side that's it nothing else it's a tough position michelle also down three minutes so it's gonna take a lot for her to keep this consolation and her hog champs dreams alive yeah it's going to take some time oh no oh no oh my god oh my god [Music] or michelle but also very well played by nico multiple ways for mate one choose your flavor oh my god wow i just got my ass handed to me holy cow yeah this is just brutal just all apart with one move and um you can't even be upset if you're michelle you just tip your hat because that was a grand master level game nico seriously what a day here you just came out you played fast you played well what can you say so honestly i was actually really nervous when i was gonna play against michelle today because you guys told me that she played very methodically so i was very i was actually very nervous the whole time i was playing up against her nico was streaming chess before it was cool to stream chess so i think it's just only fitting that queen nico takes her throne michelle thanks so much hi anna thanks so much for meeting with me today so i wanted to talk to you because i have something to tell you what is it michelle what is it for the first time ever in challenge accepted i'm going to continue my training after finishing the challenge i know i can do better and i really want to hit that goal of a 1000 rating this is the best news i heard today thank you so much for sharing it with me i went into this challenge really wanting to overcome my fear of not being smart enough a lot of this i feel has been me self-doubting my own ability and i just wasn't expecting so much love and support from this community i've never experienced it to this degree in any challenge i've done and i think i owe it to you and to anna kremling and to levy to achieve the goal we set out from the beginning if they offer you the second pawn i wouldn't take it i wouldn't take it but you can play something like c6 if they make your queen abandon the b2 pawn then they could no put it away [Music] after six grueling months i finally hit what chess professionals referred to as the chess plateau at a certain point after you start out you hit the wall where your ranking stops improving that happens to everyone in chess everybody plateaus you might plateau with 500 800 1200. i personally have had that multiple times i think the most obvious i was 2000 elo at the age of 12 and then i quit for three years because i got to a point i could beat no one above me consistently [ __ ] how are you [ __ ] kidding me i hate chess y'all hate it [Laughter] i'm so pissed right now i need chances one week ago you tweeted i love chess and all cats every time i lose a game my rating drops and what i needed was a big win against someone who was higher rated than me this time moving the bishop to defend the knight on d3 what who is this girl and where's all this chest knowledge come from a night fork now winning even more material oh i didn't expect that and this is a real sign of michelle's excellence that she finds the way to get the rook onto the second rank she now is attacking all the pawns of quaglon all of them to now freed away to her a pawn she's pushing it she was going from promotion and quaglum cannot stop it queen in coming for misha and now if the crew moves and he has to he has to move the king to the edge of the board he has to do it it's castlemania it's castlemania if she finds it the rook check the rooftop jack [ __ ] she did it she did it [Music] you had 96.8 accuracy that's insane she beat an 1100 rated opponent with a lot more experience than her and she converted this game from top to finish so perfectly when i finally beat quaglon my goal of 1000 elo was finally within reach here we go just another game [Music] oh shoot oh my god anna's here and i'm trying to win this game i'm at 996. here here here take brooke is that crazy ah i'm gonna do it what could they do they have to move the king or the pawn come on use your time oh my god oh my god five four three two one oh my god i just hit a thousand nothing about this milestone was truly revolutionary except that i didn't think i could do it and we did it oh my god this is so crazy i'm shaking and gareth had to deal with all my bullsh complaining about [ __ ] and he stayed with me you guys that's real love now i need to give a thank you speech can i play the national anthem is that copy written it's been an eighth month battle a war if you will not just against my opponents across the board but against the woman i am inside could i do it at times the answer was no but today it was yes i would like to thank chess.com danny wrench levy rosman gotham chess anna rudolph anna kramling for all of the hours you guys sat with my ass teaching me this game it all paid off today when someone abandoned their game because they were scared of our tactic baby you know what it don't count so go home we had a thousand baby what a thousand and three [Music] you

Channel: Michelle Khare

Views: 2,443,133

Keywords: chess, grandmaster, gotham chess, hikaru nakamura, magnus carlsen, gothamchess, anna rudolf, anna_chess, fide, world championship, pogchamps, tournament, chess.com, botez, botezlive, andrea botez, alexandra botez, training, routine, challenge accepted, checkmate, queen's gambit, beth harmon, netflix, how to play chess

Id: t8IVLOM1fXI

Length: 35min 28sec (2128 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Max Deutsch should watch this video and learn a thing or two about how to approach a challenge honestly and humbly! Great video.

[u/seekret]

This video was great. I was really glad to see Michelle embrace the roller coaster and not sugar coat the struggle we all face when trying to accomplish something out of our comfort zone. It made the ending all the sweeter knowing that every step of the way was hard fought and took true grit to accomplish.

Nice job Michelle!

[u/mattwilliamsuserid]

r/chessbeginners that’s a great video. Thanks for posting

[u/lucretiuss]

Was looking forward to this since I heard her on levy’s pod. Stoked!

[u/sprcow]

What a well-produced and insightful video. Michelle Khare is one of my favorite pogchamps players because she just put so much energy into this journey. Tons of fun cameos too!

[u/TrenterD]

This is a really great video that shows how humbling chess can be. Lots of familiar faces, too (Levy, Hikaru, Rudolf, Cramling, Botez Sisters).

[u/YepC0CKpepega]

Great video 😄

[u/[deleted]]

Hikaru looks so lit

[u/bonoboboy]

Didn't really like the beginning, felt kinda fake (the whole bit in-person with Levy was a bit like Queen's Gambit, trying to make chess 'glamorous'). No knock on Levy though (post blindfold part), could see he was keeping it real.

But 22:00 was so real, and so good. She played really well (IMO) for the amount of training she put in and time she had. I would make some of those blunders and I have been playing much longer than she has.

Also, I believe there is a saying for the rooks on 7: "Rooks on 7, I'm in heaven".

Her journey to 1000 reminds me of Samay Raina's journey to 1600/1700.