Magnus Carlsen's IMMORTAL GAME

magnus carlsen is widely regarded as one of the greatest chess players who's ever lived he's also the current world champion at the time of recording this video june 11 2021 and every great player in history has had an immortal game or several an immortal game in chess is when you just pop off you sacrifice a ton of pieces you lead a devastating attack against your opponent and in this video i'm going to show you his game in the 12th round of chorus group c a tournament in 2004 magnus carlson is just 12 years old at the time of this game and he is taking on sipka ernst who's double his age he's 25 years of age at the time in 2004 and they are the clear two front-runners of this closed round robin tournament chorus is one of the most prestigious tournaments in chess group a has some of the top players magnus is on the come up he's in group c so this is a round robin tournament there's 14 players and 13 rounds and this is the penultimate round so magnus begins with e4 and his opponent plays c6 the karo khan defense d4 d5 nowadays the critical main line to the karo khan is to play e5 i mean like if you're gonna play the carol with white you should go e5 that is really at the highest level how to get an advantage now um also just quick friendly reminder both these guys are international masters at the time okay just keep that in mind knight c3 this is known as the classical variation and i'm going to take you through not just the game but also kind of the theoretical nuances of the way chess has developed in the last 17 years takes takes bishop f5 this attacks the knight the knight drops back and counter attacks the bishop the bishop moves out of the way and it was always considered that after h4 h6 by black knight to f3 trying to go to e5 and targeting this bishop that the best way for black to play this was to play knight to d7 preventing that white shuts down this bishop and then makes this trade and black really should play queen c7 and long castle like black should mirror white white wants to castle long in many of these situations um and black should mirror white because it's too dangerous to go short white already has a pawn here white's got pieces flying in this direction but theory started trending in a direction where black was playing e6 and saying i'm not going to castle long i'm actually going to castle the opposite direction of you let's have some fun but it was still a very dangerous territory and so magnus plays bishop f4 12 year old magnus carlson plays bishop of 4 covering the c7 square from the queen nowadays this is not the best move anymore the best move is actually bishop to d2 because after bishop f4 black has a very funny maneuver which when i was learning this in 2011 was well known but this is 2004. computers are weaker degree of preparation is not as high queen a5 check is a good move and the bishop comes back black actually offers a trade gets booted and then gets their queen booted however even though this looks like a waste of time the pawn on c4 will in many cases be a target you've baited white to move a pawn forward you pawns can't go backwards that's the only thing you learned from this video pawns can't go backwards okay you're done no more chess for today but but here's the thing about this move bishop to f4 this is 2004 we're talking about so siepka earns just plays knight of six he plays knight f6 bishop e7 and just says you know what i'm gonna castle short i have a very deliberate plan my plan is to castle short and because we are castled on opposite sides i will create an attack on your king you can try to create an attack on my king may the best player win so how do we do that how do we create an attack well we got knights in front of the pawns right so we're gonna have to move some of these knights out of the way magnus plays knight to e4 now black has a big option here black and take and nowadays this is actually considered good because you can win some time you can win some time and then you can bring your queen and actually you're also creating some threats but black in that game just played queen a5 right away now here it looks like white can do something very nice it looks like white can play this check now this looks just absolutely paralyzing but the problem is you just forgot why the queen came here queen is trying to hunt your pawn as well like this is not just a one-sided game so here magnus plays a move which is called a prophylactic move he plays king to b1 just safeguarding this the queen will now not have any entrance points and black says okay it's my turn to castle okay so white's got some pieces white's got the queen the two knights in the center the bishop looking good but when you're castled on opposite sides it's very difficult to create an attack unless at some point you play a move like g4 like modern day attacks in these positions require something like this they they need you to to pawn storm and it looks like a free pawn but the problem with taking this for black is it's just very dangerous it just opens up the g-file like you've given my rook my rook had no hope in this position to attack on the g-file but i've just given i i've given you a pawn but i'm gonna create this attack however g4 is just one of two options the other option is to take on f6 but there is a golden balance you need to strike when you are creating an attack why because what i mean by balance is you need to trade off pieces that defend your opponent's king but you need to not nerf your own attacking forces does that make sense okay we traded one night i apologize we traded one night but i don't want to trade both knights i don't want to trade both bishops because at some point i'm going to run out of firepower you'll run out of defenders i'll run out of firepower right we kind of have this quagmire shout out to family guy knight to e5 now the night is transferred here it's called a nice kind of borderline outpost square in the position and now maybe magnus will play g4 another idea here is something known as a rook lift rook h3 rook g3 now we've created a target so we've got g4 rook here rook here we have other ideas uh bringing the queen over bishop takes always on the cards maybe maybe team up little battery there with queen and bishop when the queen and the bishop are on the same diagonal bishop h6 a lot of fluid and attacking ideas rook to d8 played by black activating a rook targeting the center can't be a bad move and magnus doesn't like that his pawn is being pinned to the queen so he again plays a prophylactic move he brings the queen back to e2 um aaron's play c5 here basically saying all right you've retreated so now it's my turn to strike in the center and the truth is if magnus like takes this pawn the board just simplifies uh black can take the rook that's one piece being removed black also just reactivates the queen now the queen is targeting some very important things from there the queen's not targeting too much i mean it's got eyes on the knight but that knight is very well protected so c5 now white's got to do something right now if white waits even for one move and tries to defend the center black just gets a great position black will chop down the pawns black will jump the knight to d5 attacking the bishop black can fight on this file it's very very dangerous black can line up an attack on b2 it's it's too slow so what do you do what do you do well you've got to look at the most forcing moves a check is a very forcing move white has no checks on black but white has some sacrifices white can take on f7 or h6 neither one of those do anything individually white can retreat and attack the queen but that's too slow magnus carlsen plays knight to g6 i always like to say that moves that look impossible in chess if they are possible are probably bad news they're very bad news magnus gives away piece number one f takes g6 now you say well i don't understand why does he take i mean just go here right we always wanna it's like the magician right like the magician on stage you wanna poke holes in the act why didn't he just play rookie he didn't play rook e8 because after takes takes takes we have a problem for black if you take my pawn i take your rook for free that's bad but then you say well that's very simple i'm gonna take your rook and then i'm gonna take the pawn no that's also bad try to find why give you a couple seconds it's bad because just the bishop fork and the way you get better at this is you solve a lot of puzzles you can also be uh the greatest child prodigy of all time you can also just solve a lot of puzzles bishop to d6 this is a quick pattern boom boom material is lost so when knight g6 arrives on the board you gotta take it now what has been destabilized every time a capture occurs in a position you've got to realize what's different now so here's what's different the e6 pawn has no guard so of course we gobble it's check and the bishop is hanging you cannot play rook f7 because this is also hanging and i take this i get the root the game is over no youtube video 17 years later we have king2h8 played and now you would think you would cash in i mean i got my bishop back i mean i'm so happy i got my bishop back i sacked the night i got a pawn i got a bishop i'm so smart not so fast because then knight d5 uh-oh uh-oh and the way you avoid mistakes like this is envisioning how your opponent can attack you it's one thing to watch magnus carlsen babyface assassin just destroy everybody but it's another thing to learn from these videos you need to anticipate how your opponent can put you in danger because you're not the only one at the chess board so we have h takes g6 instead right now the balance of material is black as a knight white has two extra pawns white has seven pawns black has five seven minus five is two didn't think you would be studying math here right but white has also opened up another attack on this h6 pawn and this is very bad news so black not h5 black has to play this move knight to g8 but not really actually uh black according to the engine can also give play a move like queen to b6 and and try to trade the queen off give away the bishop and uh and then try to create an attack on the queen but the computer is a scumbag and should just stay out of it like it has no business here so knight to g8 very natural looking move which defends everything except for the fact that it doesn't defend anything at all because bishop takes h6 magnus carlson two pieces sacrificed here's the problem if you take me with the knight then i have force mate force mate i sack my rook you can't stop me from checkmating you game is over queen's got a helper the helper is the baby pawn game's over can stack all your pieces i will mate you right after so you have to take like this and you say well what's the difference here's the difference uh now if i sacrifice this the knight is still alive and covers checkmate it's still the best move rook takes h6 this man has just sacrificed a bishop a knight and a rook okay black has to take king g7 rook h7 is made knight h6 okay queen takes e7 now the threat is queen h7 checkmate the game doesn't end with like c4 queen h7 that would be terribly underwhelming we would not be able to make content out of it black plays the move knight f7 here's the thing about the move knight f7 um if you play gf7 it looks like for a moment black is just up a rook and just needs to defend because obviously white wants to bring the helper white wants to bring the queen but black has time that's black's whole point um except for the fact that no matter what black does here black has nothing imagine that black has nothing the good thing for white is that there is no back rank problems the king is completely safe and the queen is boxed in by its own pawn that's really important the queen can't just fly over here like again if let's just say like this was the position like the queen would be able to get back and at least try to defend but it's blocked off by its own pawn so magnus plays g takes f7 now here's the interesting thing about this position this position had been reached the year prior but magnus didn't know that this was reached uh in a game between an international master from spain and jan gustafsson if any if any of you like chess24 he's one of the main commentators there uh in a tournament in spain and in that game white played queen f6 king g8 and tried to go for checkmate but suddenly freaked out when this happened now the queen is hanging and this oh i can't get through and white freaked out and repeated moves in a completely winning position completely winning position white repeated moves freaked out repeated moves magnus carlsen didn't know that that happened because that's just the way chess was in 2004 now if a person plays a blitz game on the toilet it might make it into a database okay like you you ha there is there is no uh there is no comparing preparation 17 years ago like a game could have happened and you wouldn't even know about it so magnus takes aaron's plays king to g7 trying to escape bring the king closer and here magnus has to be very fast because rook takes f7 is coming if for example magnus gives a check and plays king of seven and gives a check the king is gonna run away like being up a rook is a real thing so as long as you don't get mated run your king in the most obscure fashions do a little dance you're gonna survive magnus has one winning maneuver and only one winning maneuver one try to find it i'll give you a few seconds it's a youtube video i can't just sit still and i'm not editing this there's going to be one take so that move folks is the move rook to d3 and chess is a game of inches so are some sports but queen to e1 looks like back ranked me but it's not because this queen triumphantly attacking the king also serves as a defender of the back rank this is known as a rook lift and this is better than going to h1 because h1 looks good in theory but it does nothing um it will take a significantly more uh arduous vocab word effort to win the game here it's still winning but very very close you'll have to win an end game you'll probably have to get queen versus two rooks and some extra pawns instead of rook d3 black plays this move rook d6 which actually is quite creative because if you just gobble the rook you get mated that's that's something i call continuity remember what your piece used to protect before you make a move so magnus has to find the best defense rook d6 is serving the purpose to meet rook to g3 check with rook to g6 and that happens but now magnus finds a way to pull apart the defenders he plays the only winning move again queen e5 check king takes f7 queen f5 i don't understand you're attacking me like this i can just block and here if black just plays king e7 black will be mated in like 12 moves and i don't know if magnus saw the win by force but after rookie 3 it's all over anywhere you move your king it will be taken with check and then just hunted down it doesn't matter where you go but black was a good sport and he allowed something called ipowlet's mate which is when a queen checkmates a king surrounded by two rooks or one or generally two but this one usually happens vertically this one happens horizontally because the rook serves the purpose of cutting off the king and the queen attacks and the king's got nowhere to go every single square is protected by the two pieces and this poor queen which took a gander out to a5 earlier in the game participated in zero of the moves from that point forward and magnus carlsen won this game now the significance of this victory cannot be understated it's one of the greatest games magnus ever played he's played many great games in fact i have a video on my channel called magnus carlsen's best game ever but that was modern day magnus modern day magnus will not sacrifice pieces in most classical time controls because you don't get this opportunity because the truth is nowadays everybody is playing pretty dry theoretical stuff with some small wrinkle and magnus has kind of evolved into a more long-term grinder he plays a lot more strategic middle games and uh and and kind of flows into the end game more often than not but back in the day you would get a karo khan and so you would be able to kind of implement the sort of crazy game plan and go for these belligerent attacks the other thing about this game is that magnus carlsen was the only person that defeated sepka ernst earns finish with 10 out of 13 in chorus c magnus finish with 10 and a half and it was his first grand master norm 2004 was the year of magnus carlson it began in chorus where he won this tournament and got his first gem norm and by the end of the year he became a grandmaster at the time the second youngest of all time so wonderful game shout out to 12 year old magnus carlson who would beat most grand masters and um i hope you enjoyed it's very rare we get to see magnus sacrifice a bishop a knight in a rook in a game and get the game over with in under 30 moves also a very beautiful picturesque checkmate at the end uh and yeah folks if you made it this far in the video as always i do appreciate you very much i've got other magnus carlson content got other content of top grand masters as always do get involved in the comments if there's anything that i haven't covered do let me know about it and uh i will make a video about it in the future so until next time see you then peace out

Channel: GothamChess

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Id: gkslWPoCN-s

Length: 17min 28sec (1048 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 11 2021