Magnus Carlsen CRUSHING EVERYONE

ladies and gentlemen whether you like it or not magnus carlsen is currently the best chess player on earth but why how you ever wonder that like what exactly separates him from all of the players in the top 10 top 15. a long time ago i made a video called how magnus carlsen crushes chess masters but i really meant like 25 24 2300 you know people maybe my level international master like what's the difference between him and those people but in this video i'm analyzing the games that magnus just played in zagreb croatia uh in the first day of the blitz tournament uh of the uh the super bet or the super united uh rappin and blitz and i thought that this video was really interesting because it showed all the different elements of his game in his victories he won seven out of nine blitz games he had a day of only decisive games uh and i'm gonna go through the seven games i'm gonna try to you know go through them relatively quickly so bear with me um the first game that he played was against jordan van forest right and one thing about magnus is that he will always try to steer games if possible to territories that are off the main line and still practically decent and where you have to do battle and so first we have an auntie berlin right magnus played the anti berlin and he plays a really obscure setup already with the move queen to e2 like very very few games here uh and you know from a position that's been reached thousands of times just give it a couple more moves and this entire approach by white has almost never been attempted in fact literally this position has only been reached one time in practical play and it was like in 2007 and he goes for opposite side castling or rather he goes for long castle inviting short castle by jordan but jordan chooses to castle uh on the same side so one thing about magnus like from the practicality standpoint is he he's he's very very good at gauging opponents resources in positions uh and baiting them into certain situations so you'll notice that uh jordan's kind of keeping it still uh magnus transfers his knight to the c4 square and at some point magnus will try to expand on this side of the board to complement his bishop he's also doing a very nice job coordinating a set of forces against that bishop and this bishop doesn't really scare anybody so magnus plays h4 builds up a little structure over there and jordan tries to get aggressive right now magnus is the type of guy who when he sees an initiative coming if he evaluates it in such a way that actually that initiative for his opponent is only going to cause them problems he will let them do it like you notice magnus is kind of playing uh playing possum here right he's sort of allowing it to happen and the second that jordan takes one step back here comes this dynamite move f4 ef4 gf4 this knight is still kind of lurking this is a menace potentially you got a little bit of pressure here but jordan tries to fight back against the expansion on this side of the board now uh immediately magnus boots the knight okay he boots the knight and as jordan has split his pawns and allowed some potential tactics one thing about magnus is he is a cold-blooded calculator like if you he has enough time in a position he will execute perfectly right now it looks like there is nowhere useful to move this knight for example like what he does in the game knight to g4 um there's an attack on the queen but the queen could potentially move right for example like i don't know let's just say to g6 but the problem with that is that magnus will get an unstoppable outpost on the e5 square pressuring everything in the black position and instead of that we have hg and something like this now the game is not over jordan sacrifices the queen for the rook and uh and the bishop but the thing about playing against the queen when a queen uh and a few pieces are playing against like a rook a knight or a rook and a bishop and a handful of other pieces you need kind of a joker card you need kind of a wild card and magnus has that which is his h-pawn and he's able to use that h-pawn as a permanent decoy for the opponent to deal with and like i said he doesn't need a second invitation to the party knight to d7 check we have uh rook seeing knight seeing the bishop that's why you can't take this uh and when you fight against a set of pieces and you have a queen on the board simplifying is good right because not simplifying everything but simplifying enough the less pieces they have the better and that h-pawn is the joker card right and look at this beautiful move uh not not this one this one's just very simple you're threatening made in one but this nice move bishop g7 using the pawn as a shield uh defending the bishop i i guess maybe the bishop is the shield in this case but you're just trying to go h7h8 and magnus wins it in style uh and a long time ago you know he um and the game went like two more moves uh nice little finish here you can take it but then i'm gonna take with check and win this and jordan resigned uh taking opponents on a different theoretical journey than they're used to and making them play an interesting and imbalanced game of chess where somehow despite both sides having play and opportunities only magnus created something very nice coordination of his pieces he puts all the pieces on all the right squares makes a very well timed break f4 and he just never looked back he just honestly makes it look easy like almost none of jordan's pawns were able to move in this game uh in the next round magnus had the black pieces against tepalav now this game is a totally different story so first of all we have another e4 e5 but this one is an italian here comes the opening wrinkle everybody including your parents your grandparents and your dog and cat play the move bishop c5 in this position i mean it's an italian you might as well play bishop c5 right that's kind of what right that's what you're supposed to do no magnus plays a little bit more passively okay so now white will not play c3 d4 white will not play b4a5 so there's the little opening wrinkle right and magnus i told you a long time ago very good at baiting things out of his opponent so he plays the move knight e7 so if white does nothing let's let's just give white the move rook b1 magnus wants to play c6 d5 maybe knight g6 he knows that when he signs steps back with the knight tapollov will come forward with d4 okay beautiful now we have our little positional transformation i'm going right back to c6 you remove my two plans right so now i'm going to try to get your bishop to paulov lunges forward and yes according to the engine this is very very reasonable we have a giant exchange of pieces and the following position where the engine gives white a very healthy plus 0.7 that is no joke now where does that advantage come from well king safety is about equal here material is equal so why is white so much better well black just has one major weakness if you look at the structure it's two now two but one is connected this one's just standing on its own uh the the quality of the knights i guess is higher than the quality of these two pieces but really the game is determined by this so how is magnus going to win this game i mean you know that already right i don't have to spoil it for you but what is it okay well tabala plays knight c4 and knight a5 okay so the knight is trying to go to attack this pawn now magnus is very good at evaluating true threats and true plans right he's like oh you want my pawn and you want to go to a5 all right so do it then so do it do it come on hit me do it and paul's like jeez bro relax we're the chess tournament it's not it ain't like that right so the plan continues now with knight a5 now there's two pawns hanging what on earth does magnus want here i mean he's just gonna lose material sometimes good defense better offense in the words of mark jackson rook d2 all right he is fighting against the weaknesses with a counter-attack and tapallov plays the move rookie too so now we have a little bit of a simplification now again you have a weakness here probably magnus will go b6 inviting the knight in for t and now you cannot play rook to d8 no rook d8 seizing the only open file b7 is now still able to be captured topolo plays king f1 anticipating rook d2 where he will go here and then kick the rook out okay but magnus is like nah dude be careful what you wish for rook d5 now if you take on b7 the knight has no way out you gotta make sure you know when you're down here scream gasping for air my rook is going to get in rook d5 is an amazing move topalive's entire plan which seemed very sensible is just coming back to bite now what tapalov has to do is back up okay so now topalov has no advantage because magnus has fought back giving away two pawns at the same time and creating counter play but the position is equal right i mean you can't win this look at this knight f4 attacking the rook in the pawn take my pawn go ahead the paul is like no i'm good c5 threatening upon fork c4 defending upon fork let me attack that defending now white is still a little bit better here right king to e2 i mean how on earth is white gonna lose this game well first of all it's blitz right things happen players get low on time magnus plays e5 now the incredible thing about this position is like black wants to go here the only reason black cannot rush with this move is because white could maybe play f3 knight d2 just blockade it the second tapalip plays this magnus plays e5 now the move f3 will run into certain problems like e4 and now that's a weakness which you did not have a move ago so the second the polyp sort of plays a mildly absent minded move just because he's in low time here comes e5 e4 and it looks like the polyp set a trap with g4 where if the rook goes back the pawn is taken but rookie six and you defend it but i kick the defense out from underneath you and to boliv resign now the interesting thing here is that tabalev didn't have to resign i have a feeling he resigned because after king of three there's gf4 and rookie three but uh you can go here and try to do something like this now is magnus still better here unquestionably and it's sort of an avalanche but this is the second flavor of position that magnus is able to beat former world champions in i mean look at this position how do how does he win this in like 10 moves it's only he can do that only he can somehow from a long while ago defend the most unpleasant of positions with active defense forcing exchanges to get himself back into the game and moves like rook d4 telling the person where to go and then rook d5 yelling at them to take the pawn you really wanted the pawn so bad so do it right only him i swear it's like incredible i mean he's just able to win positions that are unwinnable um the game against maxime vashila graf so maxime is a night or player magnus sends the game into a super obscure sicilian defense all right mega sideline typical magnus things um this game is a has a combination of games one and two uh the first game of course was uh a different opening the second game was kind of a a grindy end game well the the position that we get here um is one of opposite colored bishops so what you're going to see after about 25 moves opposite colored bishop dark square versus light squared bishop and that generally benefits the attacking player right look at these weaknesses but mvl is one of the best tactical defenders in the world he removes one of the center pawns and uh five moves later the players trade queens okay so the players get the queens off the board now if you just take a look around uh what is magnus's best asset in this position it's the a pawn right now black has a pass pawn of his own actually but this pawn is very very strong and if it ever gets to a7 it'll be a permanent problem now how will magnus create practical winning chances here look at this sacrificing a full pawn in the end game a full pawn black has to take because if black doesn't take white goes d6 and white is now completely winning because there are two past pawns to deal with that is not good at all but in black taking this pawn he now has a horrible structure the worst structure of all time every pawn is isolated two of them are on the same file five isolated pawns that don't work together whatsoever magnus has a blob he has one one kind of like uh big island over here and this pawn is still very good so now he's going to keep threatening to either infiltrate into mvl's position or create threats against his weaknesses and in due time what he's going to do is he's going to bait mistakes right here comes mvl trying to use his b-pawn as a decoy to to uh to win the a5 pawn i mean this looks really nice but who's guarding who's who's going to protect against that pawn now magnus is is uh no longer upon down rook b6 making the correct exchange if rook b6 played this is interesting but this will probably keep more winning chances alive and a few moves later that's exactly what happens look at this magnus goes correctly threatening threatening a simplification into what might be a winning endgame because this king will just run to b6 right it's got a few steps to go but it's going to go to the b6 square that's terrifying this king has to beeline it here as well so the threat the constant threat of the correct simplification into the end game right is a major part of his game now he's a pawn up now he's notice how he picked off the b-pawn several moves ago now he's picking off the d-pawn and black still is a sitting duck with all those weak weak puns rook d7 another weak pawn right for the taking mbl's like i don't want to lose my pawn magnus is like oh my good g4 if you take like this there's this if you take like this you're gonna lose h6 and that's what he does and now this pawn and this pawn are both runaways a and h running down the edge of the board and this is still defendable like you can still defend this position all right stockfish still says that it's within reach but the constant pressure the constant pressure and the ability to cold-bloodedly calculate that even though your king is suffocating on the back rank he's completely fine h5 look at this h6 the runaway pawn now there's two pawns the a and h and finally mvl blunders it takes 60 moves to crack him but look at this sacking the bishop with check and going back to the home square because no one is close enough to get to you and the second that you try to go to e3 and f2 magnus sees right through it and plays rook to e8 and the idea of rook to e8 is the sacrifice on the bishop and one of the pawns will promote i think the best move actually was to make a queen but they had five seconds on the clock he can be forgiven h.a queen and mvl resigned because this is covered by the queen in the corner just long term constant pressure it is never ever over and this all began like 30 moves ago when magnus played this move d5 okay splitting all of these pawns up these pawns remained intact but slowly he won the b-pawn he ended up going around and winning the d-pawn and then he got to the h-pawn via tactic and both pawns went up the board it's just like just the understanding of the temporary sacrifices the constant threat of the winning simplifications gets it done now he had to go up against the guy that tried to uh he tried to win his world championship from him as well right so nepo played a super upset upset super absurd opening like what is going on here look at this i mean tactics galore the craziest thing about this position is that jan played all of these moves up until this point with black against fabiano carolina five years ago this position had been reached with fabiano caruana as white and yan nipomnishi as black and i don't remember what was played in that game one of these moves bishop h3 which is what magnus chose in this game is a novelty now if we just take stock of the opening blackster's down a pawn the only thing that black has to not be down upon is activity black has the bishop pair white obviously has a relatively weakened king on the light squares interesting idea here by jan giving up the bishop to take a bishop magnus is like no thank you and now magnus grabs back the pawn on b2 now you're gonna get you're gonna you're gonna get reminded of the tapalive game here okay the tapal of mvl game back uh all in one because it's five pawns a piece right four on three on this side one on two this is really the only difference maker but that pawn is never going to be useful what on earth is that pawn gonna do magnus trades the queens magnus thinks that practically speaking this end game is better for black if the queens come off the board nappa goes for the pawn magnus says no nepo prepares going for the pawn again backs up with his rook and goes for the other pawn magnus says no f3 now that pawn is moving all right h5 is always a good move kind of like seemingly to prevent anything from moving here also just ideas to break up the structure so now we've kind of figured out what's gonna happen over there now it's time for the rooks and the knight to dance okay bishop back to e6 king g7 rook d7 trying to go down that pawn has served its purpose and now that pawn will be captured a seven can be taken here but with what for example rook a7 i have this oops two rooks hang you gotta choose one of them right and knight a7 looks like he can be taken but now i'm coming down you should have you should have been real careful over here all right my bishop is coming as well so since that pawn can't be taken jan has to ignore it for a while right end game is constantly hovering around zeros oops he grabs a pawn knight c3 stops rookie two but this move is an x-ray and all of a sudden magnus just has the a pawn and we've talked about outside past pawns before right sustained pressure so look at this the check check king up rook back covering the entire seventh rank bishop back but how are you gonna push the pawn white's got a pretty good blockade right uh-oh oh now this is a problem the correct simplification again all right knight c5 bishop c6 white is paralyzed white can't move anything white moves the knight they they might trade rooks so he starts moving the king but now king back king here and white it just just get you notice white has to just move his king around right this is another correct decision look at him creating the outside past pawn possibility which is the same thing that he did against mvl look at that the same way the same exact way and uh magnus just walks his kingdom white is totally paralyzed those pieces are stuck in a trance rook d2 h3 and that's it he just resigns for the last like 15 moves of the game jan was unable to move his rooker his knight he freezes the enemy pieces and he gets the job done just absolutely amazing all right fifth game that i have for you this game and the seventh game of this video the last game of this video are when magnus gets mad all right this these are games where you try to pipe up you're like all right magnus i'm not going to let you get to your sweet spot and magnus carlsen goes full michael jordan on you he takes it personally so the players here play a an imbalance uh neo grunfeld kind of style game d take c4 mambijarov played this against magnus in norway chess and after e4 bishop g4 lost a very interesting game but it was kind of uh very one-sided this time he plays b5 and then plays the move bishop a6 which according to my database has only been played once uh in a game between paravian and gelfand in like a blitz tournament uh and then he plays back to b7 so i guess he was just trying to bait this this and then looks kind of like a mouse slip but they played this game live and like i said this is what happens when magnus gets mad e6 knocking on the door mama's yar of your overdue with your rent where are you at bishop c8 knight g5 uh-oh uh oh oh it's bad i'm i'm going in i get that you you can invite me in and i have no way out i don't need a way out okay knight c3 counter attacking the queen he just takes back queen e8 and magnus is like wow look at this pressure i have over here huh this knight might die in a couple of moves so what do i have to do before black is able to kind of consolidate everything oh i know a4 smashing on the opposite side of the board don't make magnus mad and do not for the love of god put six of your seven pieces on the back rank against him he's not gonna look back magnus with the catalan bishop the light squared bishop is a savage bishop e6 now rather than taking like this he gives a a check check forces the king out takes this and this is coming this is coming down as well and you know what's going to happen when that pawn comes down this pawn will decide the game that pawn will decide the game magnus will get in here on the files and unlike the other games it took magnus 15 moves in this game to get a completely dominant one-sided beat down of a position do not play positions against magnus where he gets long-term positional compensation for just one pawn just don't do it all right rook a7 d5 the pawns are joining forces queen e3 hits the rook he grabs the pawn he's now a pawn up along with everything else and mamijarov tries to get some tactics here but i told you doesn't matter if it was that c-pawn or the d-pawn that became a c-pawn the game is over when that pawn moves up one square and finally it does and uh mamijarov resigns because he just he can't prevent the catastrophic loss of material here uh and i'm just telling you he just makes it look completely effortless like i i am just i'm sitting here like how does he just completely how does he do this like really i mean to take all magnus has to do is throw one punch speak softly and carry a big stick all right e6 and it was over ma mijara tried to get a little bit creative here with bit and he just don't just don't get creative against him all right he's gonna gordon ramsay you all right i mean just like uh i'm telling you all right the sixth game that i have for you is the game uh that he played against ali reza ferrugia all right this one was a semi-slav defense uh queen's queen's gambit declined semis love defense and a relatively tame position all right not a whole lot happened in this game in fact the structure is completely symmetrical from an early point in this game you're not seeing magnus's opening genius uh sorry geez sorry what did i say opening genius you're not seeing his opening strategy of taking the play you know the game to kind of a unique territory you're not gonna see his sustained equal position or ability to defend unpleasant position or beat down this game is what happens when you allow magnus to be creative and allow him to be a genius okay so first things first imbalance in the game all right some crazy tactics here rook pressuring this all right everything is defending everything else alireza uh really took the fight to magnus in this game and uh the queen side structure is imbalanced right stack versus connected we have a threat potentially over here so a3 just prevents b4 knight c5 and the attack has been thwarted on that side of the board so magnus plays the move knight a4 the idea of knight a4 is trying to undouble the structure create a bad structure here for white and rotate back this way and keep in mind this rotation idea because magnus uses the b-pawn to chip away at that structure and then rotates the rook behind the pawn so pawn up rook behind pawn okay then he defends his rook and then when ali reza attacks the pawn on b4 because you cannot take on a3 because the knight is hanging magnus sacrifices a full piece just gives away the knight completely right he gets a couple of pawns back so full piece is a bit of an exaggeration but why i mean the queen is hanging and the rook is hanging but look at this move ali raza or this move alireza must have seen this and was like well i'm just a piece up yeah but magnus is a genius right he used the pawn to break forward put the rook behind it and just gave away his knight because he had foreseen that after all of this nobody can stop the pawn that pawn's going knights are too slow and too clumsy they trip over each other nobody can get over here so alireza goes back bishop b5 hits the knight the knight gets defended and now just a very slow improvement of the position the knights are too clumsy i can even trade queens he picks the right moment to simplify the position i've been trying to tell you this throughout the video this is what he does constantly now bishop c4 a2 the knight cannot get close like chael sonnen and vader lay silva and g5 is coming and b5 b4 is coming he saw all this he understood two knights cannot take on rook bishop and pawn a full piece sacrifice to get not a tactical attack on a king but the pawn will go alireza tries to sacrifice a piece and win the pawn back folks we've been here before he's got the outside passer it's not an a pawn all right it's a b-pawn bishop vs knight situation but you know who the hero of this game is going to be the hero of this game is going to be the king king to g6 king to f5 king takes e5 and king d4 when it was time the king was the one who arrived and the game was decided by this walk because now the pawn goes the king really cannot go here because this king will go here and the rest of the pawns will die don't allow magnus to be a genius and speaking of how uh he ends things in this video with being a genius does this position look familiar i swear we just had this right queen e2 bishop a6 that is exactly what happened in the game between carlson and mummy diaries did shotish not see that game or was he just like well i'm gonna play knight a6 i'm not yeah i'm gonna bring my knight in over here and uh i don't care uh what you did uh to mummy tiara if you're not you're not gonna do that to me good luck all right good luck doing that to me magnus says like okay a4 let's break up the structure you're defending the structure knight to e5 he understands exactly how to apply pressure and exactly the right move to make in that other game he played e5 e6 knight g5 this time he drops the knight in the middle but black's position is very solid right wrong d5 oh oh we're crashing through over here over here over here look at black's position the crazy thing is this is still okay for black if you defend correctly knight h5 attacks the bishop boom we hit the queen boom you hit the queen back but i have gf4 you can move out of the way and just like i shoved my knight in your mouth last time 97 trapping the rook if you take the pawn walks even further and now just stands on your doorstep ready to become a queen so we have knight d3 finally that knight arrives to cut the circulation but white has another knight and knight e7 is a winning of a queen so you have to protect but now that queen is stuck defending that side of the board so a takes b5 continues to bulldoze a takes b5 um i think actually was unnecessary and i think knight f8 was better my job here is to hype up magnus in this video of watching how he does things but if a better move is available i will be showing it i'm not trying to sit here and be like well i would have played that move um but knight f8 right now would have actually been the better move uh maybe he thought there was this and this is trapped uh but then there is this amazing knight before which hits both things uh but it's blitz so ab5 takes takes takes and the pawn continues to walk it's been uh balance has been restored to the universe magnus is upon up with another pass pawn and uh he ends the he ends this in style by prying apart the defenses of black we have knight c5 queen e3 queen a7 and just another mauling it took 26 moves but he's up a full piece at the end of it and he will be up nine more points when that pawn goes stop taking pawns against magnus and holding on and allowing him to just pressure you to death i don't know what to say so in in games five and seven was him getting mad about three or four times in this video it was like super smooth end games a couple of times maybe uh like three or four times against the mvl topolov and jordan it was interesting opening battles and this one is is no different i mean these catalan style positions would just supremely fit his style where it's like one player against another not a whole lot of preparation and he's just i was just he just makes it look easy now he wasn't perfect all right on day two which finished about an hour ago he lost a couple of games uh but he went on to win uh he went on to win the event um slowed down a little bit in the last two rounds but i was just fascinated by the way that he beats other players who are right there up there in the rankings with him and i wanted to share it with all of you hope you enjoyed the video see you in the next one get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 433,460

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna

Id: OflfTMA8Tbs

Length: 30min 26sec (1826 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022