I Was So Scared...

welcome everybody to my continued coverage of my national open uh campaign here in las vegas it's the fourth round and this video is called what it's called because of a couple of things but most importantly uh my pairing for this round and that person is named sriram krishna kumar and this is a very unfortunate pairing because he is having a very good tournament and i uh was paired against him and the the thing that i wanted the least in this tournament was to play a kid who's underrated because kids haven't played a lot of tournaments over the past one and a half years but they've been absorbing knowledge um and a lot of them are underrated they're actually significantly stronger in ability than their rating reflects now he's been playing a lot of online events and i saw that he does play e4 let me flip this so it's from my perspective and so i just decided we were going to have a karo khan i saw in the database that he likes to take the karo khan and then he plays c4 this is the panop variation and here there's a lot of ways for black to play the most flexible move is the move knight to f6 he plays knight to c3 and we build a tension around this pawn now there are three ways to play this position number one is to just play e6 and be very solid bishop can go to e7 or b4 knight c6 which is overwhelmingly what i play and a move that i've played like twice in blitz maybe three times in blitz and never in tournament game and i was i saw that we would play into this and i was gonna play g6 and g6 is actually one of the recommendations uh in my car con course link is in the description um i didn't you know play it in order to uh plug it but you know i haven't played g6 in a while and one of the nice things about making openings courses is that you uh you have all of this stuff in your in your toolbox and i saw that he had a game where he didn't play this correctly but this time he played one of the main lines which is c takes d5 queen b3 is the other main line he plays takes i take he attacks i back up to b6 counter attacking his bishop he goes here uh and i develop with bishop to g7 so this kind of structure from the karo khan from the panov is called isolated pawn white has this pawn on d4 that doesn't have an enc neighbor and isolated pawn positions are very interesting they're full of play because my opponent has open lines on the sides of the pawn he can use the diagonals and he can build around the pawn and advance it forward and what i want to do against the isolated pawn is i want to win control of the square in front of the pawn trade a few of the pieces and make this pawn a weakness which by the way i'm already threatening to take it so here my opponent thought a little bit and actually played knight to e2 which is definitely not correct uh and uh during the game i again i didn't know that um but i i you know i i figured going to the middle was better and you know i can't go here it looks nice but i can't do it because there's this nice tactical shot sometimes when the king hasn't castled yet you can do this and as long as these two pieces are not guarded you have a check and then you just win that back very common tactical pattern but when you played 92 i was like okay well you know i i said this in one of my earlier recaps chess is weird i said this in my recap yesterday actually from round three sometimes when you play black you're playing with the black pieces and your opponent plays an inaccurate move in the opening the best you're gonna get is an equal position that's just the way chess works why does fighting for an advantage and if white doesn't play the right way to fight for an advantage white is just just going to be equal so chess kind of sucks like that so i played knight c6 attacking his pawn he played bishop e3 his alternative is pushing the pawn and then i was going to jump out to a5 to try to create some sort of imbalance um whenever you play a lower rated player um in this case my opponent is a couple hundred points lower rated than me i mean well actually a bit more than a couple hundred but i think our our gap in ability is way closer um first of all i'm borderline retired um i'm also kind of an idiot and he's an up and coming chess player so maybe like 150 200 points maximum skill difference um and so you know he played bishop e3 and i played knight a5 and again like i said against low-rated players you're looking for that imbalance i'm looking to get a knight versus bishop i'm looking to get the isolated pawn position so there's something to play for position's not dry and i was very happy here and i i went for a little walk and i came back to a move that i wasn't expecting actually he played d5 anyway even though my knight is not there that was an interesting move essentially what he's saying is okay i am removing my pawn from the original target square and you'll notice what did i say about isolated pawn positions well i said that um you want to control the square in front of it and so i would go here and castle and he would not be able to push the pawn forward right so that is actually a very nice move he plays d5 and we get this position where we both castle here i spend some time because it's really not clear at all what my plan is he has all his pieces very actively developed and i started asking myself what does he want that's where this position begins he wants rook d one rook c1 once this roof is on the open files well i'm saying open files is actually the incorrect term there he wants his rook on the most as rook's on the most active squares maybe a4 a5 to attack my knight because it can't move forward and maybe a move like knight b5 in the future to target my a pawn which is the only thing protecting my knight and it was very difficult for me to come up with a plan here first i wanted to go e6 and i rejected that because he can defend this pawn by either playing rook to d1 and i thought this was kind of unpleasant for me it just didn't look very pleasant um or uh e6 i actually thought bishop c5 was very good and maybe the computer finds some way to sacrifice this but i was very hesitant to allow this this just i mean maybe i can do it but it looked very i mean with knight b5 knight c7 coming i mean so tempo winning moves to then defend his pawn um i didn't i didn't like that very much and then i came up with an interesting idea i really wanted to put my bishop out and maybe go here and c4 but i wanted to do it like this and you ask well how does that get there well i baited him into playing f3 and that softens up the bishop now the bishop is unguarded so the next thing that i will do is mobilize my queen side with my rook and my knight hitting that softened up bishop and so you make him play this f3 move and then you play bishop back to a5 i also could have just played the very tame bishop back to d7 and i did consider this as well just sitting back and waiting and then still going with this plan but this just didn't strike me as natural of course the computer likes it because it's a computer um and you know it's actually funny in a lot of these carl con positions and this is just from experience this is not something that you know unless you have played many games of the karo khan these pawns look weak and they can be taken but it takes quite too much time to get them and in that time i will counter attack b2 e3 d5 etc so i played bishop f5 he played rook d1 and i continued with my plan and he played knight d4 attacking my bishop and i again continued with my plan i'm trying to go here take the bishop which is now softened up as a result of me having played bishop to g4 i was very happy here of course i uh hesitated here for eight minutes before i played knight c4 because i completely forgot that he has a crazy move he can actually play this ridiculous move danger levels right bishop queen and this disconnects my rook from my knight and this is actually very funny move because there is a chance that after takes takes takes takes we trade everything like there is a way we trade that we trade that we trade a rook and that's just a draw everything flies off the board so i was like oh my god i really don't like this um i mean you know maybe queen c7 and once i realize that queen c7 can kind of avoid the trades like i'll have to lose this pawn but i can get in here with my queen you know um that i can that i can play my move knight to c4 it's funny like when you play lower rated players especially when there's a large rating gap you have to take these things into consideration you can't always play what you think is exactly the best move because if the best move will lead to a total simplification you don't want that you actually don't want that at all even if that might be the top computer choice this is one thing about tournament chess so once i realized that i don't have to trade all the pieces uh he took here and then he played his bishop here and i was getting a little bit frustrated i was like oh man you know now i have to trade because you know if if if i don't trade my king gets out in the open so we got here and i hovered my hand i was like gonna go move the knight just back to d6 guard everything and uh i think white is a little little bit better because my king is a little bit open but i just want you all to to not be too too abstract with your evaluations um people just see this and go oh my god my king is open it's weak no your king is only weak if your opponent has a way to get over there my opponent has no way to get over there this queen can't jump over two pieces the root can't go here and i mean if the root goes here okay that's great but it's in the line of sight of my queen if i ever move my pawn so i'm actually not really worried and you know if anything i can always trade the queen i can always create an attack on the queen side so at the end of the day he still has an isolated pawn and if i can get this down to an end game that pawn might become a liability so he played rook d4 and i was about to play knight d6 when it dawned on me i don't have to move my knight if you're in a danger situation you don't have to move what's under attack you can just protect it i realized this move is pretty tricky because first of all i guard this second of all i threatened queen c5 which is very unpleasant and third of all which i thought i had but computer is terrible i thought i was threatening knight takes b2 and that removes the guard of the night so for example after rook d1 i thought i just take take take take and of course if he takes there then i um i have something very brutal here i can give this check force the king to the corner because if the king goes here this is game over for white queen f2 um and if the king goes to the corner i use the back rank threat and go here and that's a brutal way to lose because you take my queen and then um i go here and it's mate so i saw this and i got really hyped i was like wow queen c7 i'm in business um but the computer finds rook d1 knight b2 and d6 a shocking counter attack hanging the knight and the rook but a counter attack on my queen and after it takes takes takes there is de7 attacking my rook and i cannot prevent rook down i just can't prevent this there's nothing i can do he's queening if i go back he takes either rook but this one is cleaner and then he just does this i mean absolutely ridiculous i didn't see d6 at all um if if he had played rook d1 i would have had to see d6 but he played rook c1 and that guards against this threat because now this is protected but this allows for something else here i can leave my knight hanging with this nice move queen e5 and the problem is that queen e3 now attacks that rook that he just put there forcing him back so here i felt momentum was on my side i thought i was playing now for advantage after having you know just having escaped the opening with equal position so i have a lot of options here i was calculating queen e3 i was calculating king h8 you know this is the one benefit of having pawns with an open file like this you slide your king over you know and i spent a lot of time finally i just decided let me be super direct also i can go here and like bring my rook this way or or the b6 i'm never too concerned about this because i can just counter attack on the b file b2 b7 pawns are known as poison pawns because you can blunder this rook attack the other way and i spent some time and i decided that knight to e3 was the most direct thing and here i calculated that when he plays rook to e1 i will go queen to d4 setting up an attack on his uh king if he goes to the corner i will go down with my queen and attack this pawn and then i'm in business that forces his rook to go hide with his king and i'm doing well and i'm happy um another thing that i could have played here is rather than moving my queen i could have played f4 gluing in the night and also threatening to rotate my queen around to hit that soft spot just not putting my queen out in the open also maintaining pressure here maybe rook d8 is possible in the future and i considered f4 as well but when i saw that queen d4 forced the king to the corner i played it and i was very happy there's also something funny here there's a trap that if he plays knight b5 which attacks my queen and counter attacks this um i have this move and this is brutal that's a brutal way to lose for white uh if he takes my rook i take that one and it's mate if he takes my knight i take his queen and then his rook has to choose which piece to give up so queen d2 would have and also i'm threatening mate so i saw this nice tactic i was very happy and then he started thinking and i was like what is he doing he only has king h1 what is he thinking about is he gonna blunder knight b5 and then he picked up his knight and he played this i was like what and then it dawned on me after queen down to d2 he is going to play this move and this is where all my concerns started coming true that the youngin underrated kid just found a crazy king move to defend everything not just defend all of my initiative is halted because he's threatening queen takes knight and i am in some serious trouble here i'm in serious trouble because i'll give you an example if i take on d5 he just slides his rook over and i lose my knight i cannot check his king at all i just lose my knight um if i play queen d5 he just takes my knight i can play something like knight takes g2 and the logic there is that if he takes i take his rook and then i take the knight back right because this rook has to stop guarding it but knight g2 doesn't do anything because he just goes here he just oh i'm sorry he just plays rook to g1 he has some moment he can play rook g1 not even right away actually rook g1 i can still do this by the way i can still play this but he has this move um he has this and even though i can take his rook like again i can't move like there's nothing i can do he just takes my knight if i go here oh i'm sorry if i go here now he has rook g1 i was like dude what am i losing like what is going on i think king of two i was like yo so i was like okay calm down calm down you can still guard your knight you can still play this f4 move it glues everything together um but if you do that he's gonna take your rook and i saw this and i was like i don't i don't like this he's attacking my rook he's attacking all my pawns of course computer gives zero zero zero but i hate the computer so i saw this i was like okay okay okay okay calm down here's what you're gonna do you are going to play knight c2 rook d1 and just trade queens just trade queens if he takes you take his queen so that doesn't work you're gonna get this position and that also doesn't work because he just goes here and i was like yo what is going on if i take his rook he takes and the spawn's never hanging and here i started panicking a little bit and then i realized i can go here here and then f4 combining a couple of ideas now if he takes on b7 there's no rook to attack so i would go here then now there's no rook d1 so takes takes very unclear position i mean i'm inclined to think it's close to equal but he has a weak pawn and if i can somehow consolidate my knight in the center his king is also a bit open it's anybody's game i also thought that he can just play rook c8 be very annoying trade rooks with me kill my winning chances maybe rook c8 doesn't work but he thought for a while and then played g3 i was like what so my first instinct goes uh well now i can take you know why i can take and this is a concept called continuity in chess i can take now because rook d1 doesn't work anymore a move ago i didn't have this move but now that i've pushed my pawn there and i thought he blundered this i thought maybe he forgot that i can do this now and i can get queen e3 and now we're gonna trade but i also was like what if i just take on g3 and th this just doesn't look good for me because my pawn is completely gone and you know like knight d5 rook d1 is still a threat so obviously i can't do this um yeah i was pretty unhappy here so he played g3 i'm like okay i mean i you know i can play queen d5 you can play this and then we would trade queens and then maybe something here i don't know but then i realized i can take on d5 so okay i'm gonna take on d5 uh and if he takes on f4 i can just go here and i i'm still a pawn up my king is open but i'm safe in the corner again your king is only weak if they have checks and they don't they don't have checks because we'll trade queens and at the end of the day i'm going to be a pawn up which is fine because we've been dead equal the whole game so all of this happens and now he starts to think again this is from like what on earth is he thinking about because he only has one move i mean you're not going to play king f1 i take the queen and i fork you i'm sorry i fork you now if you take i would remove the pawn from capture and then he would go here and i would go here and here i thought okay i'm up a pawn i have six pawns now my problem is this pawn is a little bit too far a little bit too far he goes here he keeps an eye on it maybe he wins it but in that time i'm going to go rook c8 and try to activate my rook complex end game um and i thought that's what was going to happen then he started thinking i was like why is he thinking i'm like oh he wants to go king e1 not king f1 but now this and now there is no fork when i land there i was like yo what is he doing and then it hit me if i trade queens i have a night hanging and a pawn hanging i'm not going to save my pawn like yo this kid is ridiculous and then i realized i can play something really nasty here pawn takes pawn justifying my earlier kind of attack queen e3 and now taking and he can't take my knight because if he takes with the queen i just push and this is a very savage position check is covered i make a queen and it's mate or i make a rook i would have made a rook because i'm mean um no i would have made a queen i would have made a queen they gave us extra queens i would have made a queen and i also realized that if he just takes back well he's just a pawn down now he's just pawn down trade queens go here again pawn down and i don't have an overextended pawn see the difference i just showed you a position where i was a pawn up but that pawn was weak it was over here now i don't have any weaknesses they're all back good position double pawns here good position for me and the last thing is if he takes with the rook uh oh sorry if he takes with the rook because this actually is a problem because my queen is hanging let's not forget we can't just keep going actually actually was miscalculating this for about 30 seconds i was like root d5 g2 i'm so smart he has no check oh i'm gonna hang my queen don't do that and then i realized i combine everything about my last few moves f4 and queen back to e3 and i have this nice little suicide in between move i don't trade queens because i'm not going to be in time but i go here using my pawn to check the king and at first i thought this was too dangerous because my king is completely open but i'm safe you just have to decide what to do here you take you take because the knight doesn't cover the promotion square you take the pawn and even though he can check me i just go to the corner and i block the queen check i'm just in time and if he goes here to cut me off then i just go here and he can set up all sorts of attacks but i'm gonna hide on h8 and make my queen that's what i'm gonna do and i got very excited when i saw this um this was a very this was very very tough and he he ended up giving me a check and and going here and he's kind of guarding promotion and maybe he wants this but he's a move too short i played this entire game without activating one of my most important pieces and since the rook has to abandon the cover of the king that's why you always look for checks and he just has nothing he can trade rooks with me but then i make a queen and the only thing he can do is give me a few checks but i will get out of them um and in the game he played here and i mean it's still a little and when i say a little tricky it's like you know if i take the knight maybe he'll like go here and it might be a draw although i'm not even sure if this is a draw i think i can escape but you know it's never too late to yeah it's it's not a draw i will go here and he'll check me and i'll run my king over here but it's never too late to blunder perpetual check on the verge of checkmate in one and making a second queen so with checkmate so i realized that before i take the knight i have to give him one little in-between check which is this and um here i knew i had a force mate but i found something very easy i just went here and here and he resigned because i'm gonna win his queen and his knight and make another queen um this game i was pretty happy with honestly i i i analyzed it with chess.com's computer i played at 98.7 so it was a closed game it was a very tough game uh there are no easy games in this event i mean this kid was easily master strength i don't even know what his rating is i think it's like 2150 20 but he's like he was you know we talked a little bit after the game and um i told him that when i blundered 92 i actually just thought i was gonna lose the game i was like oh my god what have i done but luckily i can just defend it enough um and he told me i thought he blundered queenie three it turns out that after queenie three he saw everything at least that's what he told me hopefully he wasn't lying he said that he saw this whole sequence of moves but he missed the fact that when he goes and stops my pawn that i have this move and that of course is the killer if i don't have rook d8 if his queen is already on d3 and he's threatening mate then i lose but it's crazy kid was very very sharp and um you know i thought that i was screwing up but we both played very decently um here he was his kind of final decision kingi1 was a mistake he had to go into this end game but hey i can't complain i try out a new variation in the pan off with the black pieces and the karo khan and i'm still very scared i'm still terrified it's my worst nightmare to play these underrated kids but now that i have three points out of four i'll be playing with the white pieces next game probably against somebody very strong most likely a highly rated grandmaster so keep it moving keep it rolling make my recap uh for you amazing people stop telling me to rest by the way i'm gonna keep making recaps what are you mike my grandma stop all right doesn't matter what time it is i love doing this i love coming back here analyzing my game making this recap sharing it with y'all um and uh yeah i'll see you for round number five peace out y'all get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 364,120

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, las vegas chess, vegas chess, las vegas chess tournament, national open, national open 2021, national open las vegas, las vegas national open, vegas chess tournament, vegas chess tournament 2021, las vegas chess tournament 2021, las vegas, vegas

Id: iWR5-ZwZXyA

Length: 22min 55sec (1375 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021