Magnus and Hikaru. Once Again.

ladies and gentlemen welcome to the first day of the quarterfinals in the ftx crypto cup we've got fabiano caruana versus janja pomnicci we've got wesley so maxine vashey legrov anish geary timurajaba and el clasico once again hikaru nakamura and magnus carlson four rapid games today then tomorrow four more rapid games and if it's all square then they play blitz and they go to an armageddon now there's a lot of games to show you today eight of them so i'm going to try to show you eight games in under 35 minutes i don't know how successful i will be but please bear with me if there are some moments where i gloss over things timestamps are on the video player not necessarily by game i might do it by match we start down that list caruana vs nepo it's game number one nepo is perhaps the most under appreciated eighth seed i've ever seen he's the eighth seed and fabiano is first and we begin with a petrov takes d6 this is all theory and now the players meet in the center of the board white will use this knight as a target and as you see nepo kind of tries to undermine the center with c4 fabiano defending the center with with c6 knight c3 is an exchange and the players just kind of have a normal looking position with some pawn structure imbalance on this side of the board meaning the queen side but then jan breaks what you would imagine as traditional opening principles and plays the move g4 and then he plays knight to e5 so he volunteers a damaging of his own structure to get the bishop pair and potentially play f4 and f5 and actually as the game progresses and he brings out all his pieces his position looks really nice his position actually just straight up looks really nice and he covers d8 to not allow fabiano to get it to get get moving and then he rotates the bishop around to f3 perhaps the most interesting that he does comes right here where he voluntarily offers a trade of a queen say okay levy what's so impressive about that i trade or lose usually lose my queen all the time what's so impressive about yan trading the queens well we get here and even though fabiano was able to break on the queen side takes takes and just a move of patience just a move of patience here we have a rook trade now we have just bishop back to g2 yes you can take my pawn but then i'm gonna play this move now if you move the knight somewhere like over here i'm gonna trap your bishop this bishop that i isolated with my pawn advancement earlier in the game so since i'm doing this you need to respond to me by attacking me and now i'm gonna go take the pawn so now i'm no longer down upon i've got the bishop pair and from here jan just improves his position he centralizes and watch what he does there is another very large youtuber who likes to say bishop pear from hell all right i copied his statement there sorry about that but now we're gonna continue through the game king to e7 rook to d3 look at him just rerouting the bishop nice that dark squared bishop these bishops laser beaming fabiano kind of the king is gasping for air not a lot of moves now a3 now the rook for black is not going to be able to take and now i will just hit continue to hit the right arrow button on my keyboard because you notice what nepo does he trades h for f so now he has two on one and that is going to be very important because he's able to create the outside pass pawn at any moment so fabiano sacrifices his rook to try to create a little counter play for the bishop and the pawn but it's too little too late nice little deflection there if king takes bishop rook takes bishop and um all nepo has to do now is not lose uh sight of the b-pawn because this pawn could become a queen he's constantly threatening a trade and uh ultimately the pawns on the king side prove to be decisive g6 there's nothing that fabiano can do i mean he can't possibly escort both pawns these pawns are rolling very very did i say that already very smooth game to start things off for yanipo now i'm gonna go to the second game the second game uh this is not the second game of their uh of the match the second game that i'm going to show you is actually the fourth game because the next two games were draw so if you look at the scoreboard it's been updated two to one is the score nepo now has the black pieces so now fabiano needs to win so fabiano needs to win jan plays the french defense which is what he played in the second game uh two games ago and it was a draw we have what's known as the advance variation where white takes some space the advanced french is great it's a great beginner intermediate uh weapon at the super gm level it's usually not not so popular because it's actually well known that like you can kind of overextend and black does get sufficient counter play but fabiano had a pretty good exp good experiment earlier so he decides to repeat it and super weird structure like move 11 like what is going on both sides castle black has whatever the heck this formation of pieces is and the reason this position can sometimes be difficult to play for intermediate and beginner players y'all don't really navigate that well when you don't have a lot of space because you have to make obscure maneuvering things and trade pawns but you know these are some of the best players in the world in fact this is a matchup of the last two guys to challenge magnus carlsen for the world championship fabiano caruana and later this year jan so fabi goes for a queen side expansion e5 bishop a3 e4 look at jan's position look at yance look at jan's pawns this looks really nice i mean he he's he's improved his bad french pawns to stand just on a beautiful little crown in the center it's a really nice position black is most certainly better and fabiano has to stop the initiative now jan can take on passant but jan doesn't he's not a member of anarchy chess so he doesn't know that he doesn't know that that is the house rule instead proceeds to drop the knight back um a5 and now throws that is the funniest infiltration of a bishop move i've ever seen look at this bishop just standing among everybody if you back up to b2 to attack me well then i just take your knight for free thank you very much so he has to go here volunteering himself for a pin and that bishop's just chilling like the bishop's just hanging out on a4 there's nothing you can do about it fabiano plays rook c5 jan's got a beautiful position i mean it's a dream french completely shutting down your opponent's play more space you can always play h5 h4 if you'd like to start an attack and yan does that in 12 moves we still have to get there fabi plays c6 why c6 because it can get taken four different ways but you target the pawn you target this on c5 pawn sacrifice to open up the position because he has to win so fabiano plants the bishop on c5 and now starts to just target the queen side and this kind of maneuvering thing that he did where he sacrificed the pawn on c6 you'll notice doesn't this look a lot better like if we go back six moves his position looks really bad he's really stuck but once we fast forward six moves everything looks nice okay he's down a pawn but his queen is activated the b7 pawn is weak and he breaks through and okay jan picks up a5 fine very good very good and knight takes f5 the thing about having a beautiful crown of pawns like this is it's very nice it's very nice as long as like a car doesn't drive through your wall or as long as a rook doesn't infiltrate on the other side of the board you buy a big fancy house it looks great but what if you know someone drives a car through you like it's not gonna look very great and that's kind of what's happening here that's the weirdest analogy i think i've ever made doesn't really matter let's just keep going so fabiano goes around back and starts destroying everything right he brings his bishop to e5 now we have a trade then we trade knights and this end game is super weird because one dude has a bunch of scattered pawns and the other dude has connect four so somewhere eric rosen super happy just kind of twitched a little bit doesn't really know why and now nepo starts pushing his pawns the position's equal but it's super complex another pawn push i just flick myself in the eye it might turn red here i'm just very excited sacrificing the knight for the pawns but the pawns are rolling one guy's got three connected pawns so sack the knight back and now we have rook on three versus rook and two okay h4 nice idea very common in the end game to use the h-pawn or the a-pawn to break apart the structure but fanbiano's no slouch he's like nah i'm good i'm gonna pass go ahead and take my pawn and he can he can he can't take the pawn but jan brings the rook now the other way and then puts the rook behind the pawn and pushes it but that was the last mistake that he'd ever make he thought that doing this was good but it was not he didn't need to push he needed to start bringing his king this is what he should have avoided by not trading his h-pawn he allowed fabiano to leave this pawn exactly where it is and just simply go and win it you see that's what nepo should have done which is very very tricky he should have taken on g3 because the second he let fabiano do this that was where fabiano got his one winning chance and then here uh jan instead of putting the rook behind the pawn should have played a3 because then if zeru goes like this then at least your rook stays active that's what he needed to do he needed to cut the king along this you need your rook active yan put his rook behind the pawn which looks smart but now the rooks are frozen because they can't go anywhere and the rest of the game is just literally one guy pushing his pawns i'm not joking it's just one guy just pushing his pawns so fabiano caruana wins on demand and ties the match two to two so all square in that match which takes me to the next match between maxima shiloh grav and wesley so they drew their first two games so not much to show you i'm showing you the third game and this was well surprise supplies supplies supplies supplies berlin now a main line berlin so we have castles 94 d496 bishop c6065 end game okay the berlin end game all good and now the players i mean there's like 45 different variations that they can play rook d1 is normal bishop e7 g4 so g4 is one line where you try to play f4 f5 and get a lot of space whereas black tries to trade on h4 now again to the untrained eye this looks completely idiotic but it's completely equal and white is more than okay so now the knight goes to the center a4 a5 of course uh knight c5 the bishop goes back and like black is super passive but black is completely fine now you see this you see how the structure is mobilizing the four on three very common uh in the berlin and this bishop if it can come alive on the light squares very nice in the berlin and if this pawn can sacrifice on c4 to break apart the structure very nice in the berlin and you'll notice that wesley does exactly that he also utilizes the outside h-pawn in the berlin to trade this g-pawn that's the drawback of playing the move g4 and move 11. there are some lines where you can you know get this massive initiative but you're always worried about h5 very common pawn break in the berlin and we have h5 and i'm not exactly sure what happened in this game but it it looked like mvl maybe mix something up and and then just wesley just oh my god f5 and uh again super gms don't look at anarchy chests so they don't take on poisson um instead he took this pawn for free and it was like you know uh eve's garden it was just the poisoned apple he took back the pawn wesley brought the rook to the center and kind of made this game looks like effortless now wesley so is just a pawn up and this is perhaps the most savage move of the entire game that same bishop traveled non-stop to h4 non-stop to e1 and now is destroying things over here and uh the trade comes and this is completely winning for black not just from the pawn up perspective but also from the perspective of the activity of the pieces wesley doubles the rooks on the second rank very instructive double your rooks on the second rank of the opponent takes the next pawn rookie seven and uh mvl resigned i've never seen a berlin look this easy and wesley in this tournament has played 19 games of chess because today he played four and uh in the prelims he played 15. i think he's made like 12 draws where he basically didn't play the game at all he's conserving his energy he's undefeated and he won the fourth round of this matchup almost effortlessly because again he needs to not lose with white so he just played solidly mvl took risk and uh wesley so wins three to one i mean just wesley is so solid no pun intended which takes me to the next matchup of the day between timur jabov and anish giri now folks uh obviously those of you watching from india have watched these guys on the streams of some irena as well as vidit the first three games were draws these are two of the most solid players in the field and their first three games did i say two three games were drawn three draws which takes us to the fourth and final game i would not be showing it to you if someone if they made a draw i mean i would not show it to you right i'm not i'm not listen i click baited you once okay and some of you got very upset i'm not gonna ever do it again i promise knight f3 c5 but then how the hell are we going to have a game of chess when one guy is completely copying the other like what is this like what is this i mean so timur here does like what any what any normal guy i would do and go stop copying me and he takes on d5 because again if you copy me and i copy you and you copy me and i copy you and i got like you know what i mean like one of us is gonna checkmate the other first so he plays he takes d5 finally we have a little bit of imbalance okay bishop b5 very common takes takes he takes with the knight because if he takes like this why why why are we doing this we don't need symmetry knight d4 the position that we now have in front of us is one known as an isolated pawn position it's when one player has a pawn in the center that has no neighbors and now we're gonna have a big discussion amongst our pieces uh whether that pawn is weak isolated pawn if you control the square in front of it successfully and don't let the pawn move forward if you then start removing the guards the bishops the knights that pawn is going to be weak so aneesh uh the guy with the isolated pawn wants to keep his pieces more or less in the game and you'll notice that he kind of avoids trades for a while he then takes on f3 why well he takes on f3 because the knight guards the center and now he can play d4 he has this move d4 he looks to solve his problems because after takes takes he yells oh no my knight and if timur had taken it you always look for checks oops and queen is lost so that's not what happened but clearly both players had seen this move bishop takes b7 and i guess anish thought that after rook a7 he's fine because the if the bishop like let's say moves to f3 then there's this move this was anish's idea to bring the rook and attack down the d-file but here timur remembered that a long time ago he saw a video on the gotham chess youtube channel about danger levels and he played this move because the bishop is left to hang but i hit everybody and the position all of a sudden explodes queen takes d4 now if you do this uh and then take well then you're gonna take this as well so we get king h2 queen d4 bishop d4 rook b7 white is better here why because bishop for knight endgame is usually better for the bishop but what else is important in the endgame my friends pawns two on one that's what that's called you have a queenside majority and as the game progresses the pieces go move around and one guy is going to start pushing his pawns on the queen side come on timor come on okay you guys can trade rooks let's go push the pawn push the pawn or just lose it now you say well why did he just lose it i don't understand like why didn't why did he allow that like why didn't he you know do well because he's gonna lose this pawn so anish had to part ways with one of the pawns uh he chose to part ways with the apon which is bold um the thing is that there's there's really no winning because even if you end up in an end game like this this is just lost for black uh because again of the two on one and i'm gonna push my pawn trade and then make a queen uh the way his pieces ended up getting tangled aneesh had to lose this pawn uh and uh it never really got much better he got a little bit of active play you'll notice his rook and knight are looking nice but very often in end games you can sacrifice one of your pawns like this but since one of the apon one of the pawns will survive uh no matter what happens like look all rook behind the pawn you're just too active rook chad is a mate threat bishop is is attacking the rook and he's just not able to do anything and rookie six tactically defends this pawn because bishop e7 check would win it so anish did his best but suddenly was left with no pawns versus three pawns and no pawns versus three pawns is not a winning endgame formula and uh yeah here he resigned because again he can't even take that and this will be me removing the defender of the promotion square very smooth win by timur jabov who wins the first rapid mini match two and a half to half ladies and gentlemen thank you for making it 17 minutes in my recap video because now it's time you um if you skip the head okay if you skip the head welcome to hikaru versus magnus folks welcome to hikara vs magnus you ready i'm ready i hope you're ready it's about to be the best damn 15 minutes of your life here we go hikaru with the white pieces plays e4 the players now begin to bust out like 15 moves of rue lopez theory e5 knight of three knight c6 bishop b5 a4 uh a6 bishop a4 knight f6 castles knight e4 d4 b5 bishop b3 d5 de bishop e692 knight c5 c3 bishop b7 bishop c2 d4 so far so good levy slow down talk about the intricacies of the opening don't lie to yourself you're not interested in the rule lopez i'm not interested in the rue lopez no one's interested in the rulopas not even rue lopez okay he didn't sign up for having him in the opening named after himself knight b3 up until this point in the database 500 games have been played in this position d3 is played in about 99 and a half percent of those games there are like seven games in the database one of them magnus carlsen played against yani palmichi and that is d takes c3 why does everybody push the pawn well because it's fine i guess you know white is just it's an equal position well magnus throws in the first opening wrinkle so let's discuss first we have a trait of knights now kikoru doesn't take back on c3 plays bishop e4 she pins the knight to the rook forces magnus to play a little bit passively with queen and rook like this now do you trade queens no you ask yourself the question what does my opponent want my opponent wants to cast a short queen c2 good luck castling now you would say why did magnus just play h6 oh it's not that easy that's the thing it's not that simple here there's a really nice idea i was actually very happy with myself i spotted this during the live commentary if you don't know that i also commented do commentary on these games before doing this recap i don't know what to tell you four or five hours every single day and i still got plenty of energy you know why because i love to do this and i love seeing your support in the comments or hate hate is also hilarious people who hate are like that's what i imagine they sound like so i was very happy i spotted this idea bishop e3 during the live broadcast voluntarily shattering your own structure but you open up this and if castles you have like knight coming to d4 for example and you have different attacking possibilities on this side of the board so bishop e3 bishop e3 is definitely something that um you can do as well as there's also like various rook d1 ideas so magnus uh never got to castle in this game and hikaru pounced on him by attacking his queen chopping down his knight and after a trade magnus did this now for the next 16 moves kikaru played top engine move the whole way knight to d4 centralizing the knight rookie 8 trying to escape now who do you want to end up over here the bishop of the queen the queen so bishop by three king's trying to escape queen's ready so now magnus blocks this up that immediately weakens this so hikaru plays queen to d2 magnus plays bishop takes d4 cd4 improving your pawns pushing them down the board bishop g4 so obviously you got to deal with this no you don't d5 look at that stunning move because bishop takes f3 what's worth more than a bishop all of my viewers but d6 check you can't take because queen d6 is made we leave this here for a moment king d7 pawn takes not this i know it's discovered check but then the king will hide in the corner levy rook c1 nope no no sokikaru patience now here now here all right he's moved his pawn immediately go and attack it and now i can infiltrate and i'm gonna just start taking all of magnus's toys away from him like a mean parent and now we end the game in style by sacking the queen if queen takes queen pawn to d7 and promotion so magnus carlsen resigns on move 36 hikaru played this game at 99.7 accuracy i told you i told you you should be happy that we made it this far it's one nothing hikaru which takes us to the second game we have another e45 this time magnus carlsen goes into hikaru's e45 repertoire by playing the italian and up until move about 1314 it was uh a position that hikaro had before on on the board right up until this moment and here black is a choice of which way to take on d5 okay so hikaru took like this with the e knight queen d2 and here he thought for a while clearly the idea of queen to two what are you setting up he's setting up something nasty and hikora told us after this game uh after the day he told us in the interview he was supposed to take with the f knight so that this knight could always go to f5 and defend g6 and a uh g uh h6 and g7 but in chess sometimes it's that one subtle difference you misplay the line you forget the line you forget your prep and that makes all the difference because now you're faced with a very tough decision do you take the bishop or not it looks very simple you stop the sacrifice but then rookie three rook g3 rook here not so simple knight is going to move so hikaru says you know what magnus go ahead you want to sack a bishop sack a bishop i'm going to be up a bishop so magnus says okay takes takes takes bishop f5 the bishop has arrived to defend now magnus carlsen proceeds to play like a genius first rook to e5 bishop g6 rook to g5 knight h7 drop back understanding that even though he makes one passive move it's very tough to defend this position with the black pieces rookie a now magnus plays knight takes d5 c takes d5 bishop back to d3 when you want to attack your opponent you want to make sure the center is completely locked the center is locked this bishop cannot enter this territory and because there are no breaks or openings now you can just line up all of your pieces this way magnus plays knight e5 rookie six and now we have the moment now what does a player want to do when they have a big attack certainly they want to trade all their pieces right because if they trade all their pieces they have no attack anymore well that's why in this position magnus carlsen proceeds to trade every single piece because he just needs to bring the rook hikaru needs three moves to get safe one with the queen and probably two with the rook magnus needs two rooks two rook moves to win the game so he gives a check and a check zigzags by using czech's back to defend this pawn so the bishop can't take it and just place rookie one rook c8 rookie six and hikara resigns fun stuff right and it's over because even though you can give a check and you can give me another check you can't stop my my queen and my rook he was always a step ahead he realized that even though he can chop down the whole tree that he just needed to he was it was just in time all his pieces are gone all his pieces are gone but he's just in time with the rook ladies and gentlemen magnus crossing back on the board it is one to one here we go i told you this was going to be the best damn 15 minutes of your life you're like wait a second levy's not skipping any games it's game three it's game three it's no game four it's game three here we go hikaru plays e4 now this game's a little bit different because we have rue lopez but berlin attempt by magnus car says hey anti berlin baby move forward d3 and here hikaru normally would take on c6 this is considered the main line anti-grunfeld but hikaru now plays something that's barely ever been played d3 knight c3 is not common at the highest level of e4 e5 positions because normally you play c3 and d4 or b4 magnus likes the pawn on c3 he very rarely will put the knight on c3 hikaru plays this and then this and just goes knight for bishop okay so he just trades the knight for the bishop actually those of you that have my e4 course you know that some vienna positions look like this you play knight a4 knight b6 okay normal developing moves by both players hikaru doesn't trade the bishops he wants to keep his bishop pair moves it back d4 and right he on move 15 magnus plays bishop c6 and a very big decision by hikaru do you push the pawn and you would think oh well magnus has to go back i'm so smart the thing about this is you completely locked the center and it's not clear you want to do that so hikaru plays knight d2 and magnus spends a long time here deciding whether he wants to open the center and normally that's wrong because the guy with the two bishops wants the center opened up so hikaru very happily starts to open the position but in this case magnus has a lead in development so he is able to swarm in faster than hikaru might be able to respond so that's why he does all this so what does hikaru do he does what any normal person would do here the guy wants to attack me let me just take his toys away again i mean magnus with no toys you know he's not having too much fun so now we have two rooks bishop knight versus two rooks bishop bishop okay we play bishop e3 nice and solid knight comes back to a five very important move here very important move king f2 king f2 why because when the knight trades you need the king here why because the rook wanted to come to d2 okay and that's why the king needs to stand here because if the rook takes rook here it's all about what your opponent wants to do when there are only four pieces left on the board it's up to you to realize the best things for you and your opponent to do here here magnus carlsen did a crazy thing he played a nepo move g5 again opening up the position so we have rook to d1 take take and hikaru's king goes for a walk it felt brave it felt brave it finally got over its agoraphobia i believe that's the right word that's not the one where you're scared of spiders right agoraphobia is social social anxiety anyway whatever i i just make chess videos on the internet so king on f4 now now white is a lot better here how do you know in an endgame who's better or who's not well i said so so you know white is better so you got to listen to me but how do you know in the end game obviously it's all about material as well but material is completely equal peace activity weaknesses and future prospects in this position e4 is a goner future prospects these are weak okay this is a goner and these pawns magnus made a very big decision when you play g5 split pawns split pawns isolate them hunt them down get them all right so that's exactly what hikaru begins to do magnus though starts playing some wild stuff he just starts pushing like just just all the pawns are going he wants hikaru to play rook takes before so he can play rook to d2 but the computer was saying you should do this you should call magnus's bluff he's bluffing but hikaru didn't want to do that and instead played this move which allowed i think some some way for magnus to to maybe hold here um to play like rook a8 like just go for this weakness but still after bishop b3 like it's not clear why this is okay for black because you're gonna be down upon anyway like you sack this pawn to open up your bishop i don't know but do you remember how two games ago hikaru did the same thing improving his central structure and joining these pawns together do you need a reminder do you need a reminder if we just go back remember this that's what that first game looked like you see how chess patterns repeat themselves yeah uh-huh and so now it's very easy now you just get into a rook end game let's get into a rocan game now you have five pawns versus four and all the other things that i mentioned you've got the split pawns how do you win a rook end game you advance your pawns together you take as much space as possible as much space and now it's all about the right way to make a pawn break ladies and gentlemen that's exactly what happened a few moves later when we got this and now here you have to calculate what hikaru calculated i actually also i was really i was proud of myself a couple of times during the commentary i realized here that after takes takes white can play a move that looks impossible rook to e5 you need to constantly be asking yourself this question in rook end games when can ice trade down and be winning because after rookie 5 de5 king e5 king c5 king f4 king b6 king g4 king b7 king h5 king c6 king g4 b5 h5 b6 h4 b7 h3 b8 i'm faster i'm faster if this king was here and h2 draw you don't know your king and pawn vs king and queen end games watch my end games video this is a win for the guy with the queen which is why when rookie 5 was played that trade did not occur and that allowed hikaru to just activate his pieces another pawn break to break through and a short while later it was on move 58 hikaru managed to scoop up the final pawn and now magnus carlsen resigned and it's 2-1 hikaru you think i'm done there were four decisive games in this match game number four aren't you happy you stuck around isn't this awesome this is amazing four decisive games in the marquee matchup i told you you have to stick around what are you gonna do you gotta call somebody call him after this game so now we have e45 once again we have another italian this time magnus uh has to face d5 you see in uh two games ago we didn't we didn't see d5 so hikaru opens up with knight d5 a4 bishop e6 knight g5 magnus immediately goes for the bishop hikaru says ah slow down you can't have it queen f3 knight e7 you can't have it and you'll remember that hikaru uh put his knight on c3 last game uh but magnus likes c3 so magnus prefers pawn expansions he really likes this stuff he plays these positions like this more than anything else and then he puts the the night out and the bishop out finishing his development hikaru has played king 28 not because the king is out for another dimension it's it learned its lesson from the last recap video because it wants to unpin you play king to the side to unpin and move the f pawn that's his plan so we have this magnus takes the bishop on d6 and we have cd6 because again queen d6 looks nice but b5 and bi so cd6 now b5 knight a5 and you would think knight for bishop is not a trait that you would want to allow but magnus says no go ahead please take my bishop if you take my bishop which one of your stupid pieces is going to protect this what knight f5 oh yeah i'm so impressed with this move because who's gonna oop i apologize who's gonna deal with this see magnus's pieces are really active so they're able to target things from far away whereas hikaru's entire plan is predicated upon pawn play do you understand like when your pieces see the opposite side of the board and targets they're faster pawn play is slower and that's what hikaru is looking for he's looking for pawn play and now kikaru stabilizes just for a brief moment so magnus finds a very nice move bishop d5 again offering the bishop up for trade because this knight is garbage and these are all weaknesses which will slowly be scooped up the hikaru doesn't do that the magnus glues the bishop in and now here comes the pawn play the aforementioned pawn play f5 it's a very complex game the machine gives plus one because of the better space uh this knight on a5 is probably the worst night of all time it literally has no access ever uh and so a few moves later well magnus just takes it he takes it because the the new pawn that has arrived here will be very difficult to protect but first magnus carlsen uh plays a super grandmaster move okay in all parts of a chess game a player establishes their skill level and it shows you why they're not 1600 and he finds this very nice strategic pawn break d4 here's what this does if hikaru takes he now has doubled isolated pawns on the d-file this will get taken the rook will come and eat everything and you've lost the partner for the f-pawn see hikaru wants his pawns to march together okay he wants to keep them together magnus is interested in splitting the pawns apart he's like a bad in-law okay so rook f6 d5 and now hikaru goes to trade the bishop why does he trade the bishop this bishop is super strong e4 f4 knight g6 is on the cards magnus turns his attention to the queen side r8 and now oh c5 the three musketeers they're all ready to go very tense moment in the game if dc 5 d6 pawn break activates everything is falling apart ikaru here had to play the move e4 he had to go e4 here to kick the queen out before he took it's still total chaos instead he played a4 and magnus says you can have my knight you can have my knight because now i have doubled to together connected pawns they're not double pawns they're connected protected past pawns walking down the side of the board and it was in this position that hikaru decided to create a bouquet now queen d3 i barely spoke english there queen d3 if you take there's this and ladies and gentlemen tragedy struck here hikaru played the move rook b8 he should have played maybe rook back to f8 for example it's still a very tough position he played rook b8 because after rook a4 queen b5 he had calculated that after the queen trade queen takes b5 rook takes b5 that this attack followed by c7 isn't winning for magnus and he was right but he missed something hikaru missed the fact he can't take on b5 at all because of the absolutely stunning c7 sacking the queen to make a new queen and take a rook and if queen takes knight one of the most savage moves i've ever seen in my life rook a8 to deflect the queen away to deflect the rook away from the queen because if you just take the rook i go back rook a so hikara was obviously very frustrated with himself uh when he talked to us after the game said you know he felt like he he should have seen this and he also should have played e4 instead of a4 but that's chess my friends that's chess and so magnus a few moves later took on a4 and just sacrificed the rook killing the last hope of hikaru's counter play on the f file and now magnus converts in very nice fashion by getting the queens off the board hikaru resigned here because even though he can trade the queens he can't stop the pawns it's impossible queen's e4 the final move of the fourth game and the barn burner is finished for day number one the players are able to take a deep breath aren't you happy you stuck around for 35 minutes i managed to do eight games in my exact allotted amount of time tomorrow whatever match is tied after the rapid portion will go to a blitz so that means that mvl needs to defeat wesley tomorrow that means that giri has to defeat rajab of tomorrow to force a blitz but the other matches are all square at 2-2 so whoever wins that rapid portion wins the overall mini match and if it's 2-2 then they also will play blitz i don't know what's gonna happen but i will say if you are interested in joining the live broadcast tomorrow that's may 27 2021 we will be doing a charity stream myself and anna rudolph will be hosting the coverage excuse me on our twitch channels uh we'll be raising money uh for charity every single one of our last charities has raised over 350 thousand dollars we've crossed a million in three tournaments so if you want to join that'll be on twitch recap as always on youtube ladies and gentlemen i'm out i hope you enjoyed that as much as i did take care and i'll see you in the next recap

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 459,703

Rating: 4.9757214 out of 5

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, melwater, meltwater chess, meltwater tour, meltwater champions tour, meltwater champions chess tour, champions chess, champions tour, champions chess tour, ftx crypto cup, ftx crypto, crypto cup, crypto cup chess, champion chess tour, champions chess tour 2021, chess24, chess 24, chess tour, crypto cup tour, crypto chess tour, chess tour live, ftx crypto chess, magnus carlsen, anish giri

Id: mH0QWyLDBX0

Length: 36min 26sec (2186 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021