Magnus & Radjabov: SEMIFINAL

welcome ladies and gentlemen to the semi-finals of the ftx crypto cup we have magnus carlson and timur jabov and we have yanya pomnishi and wesley so so we are potentially on pace for a magnus vs yan final and obviously they were playing in the world championship match later this year in november uh because this is the semi-final round there are not as many crazy games if you were watching the quarterfinals uh then you will know that i had to cover eight games in one day we will start with so versus nepo and then we will finish with carlson rajabov uh all lower seeds eliminated the higher seeds by the way five six seven and eight are all right there time stamps on the video player ladies and gentlemen here we go we will kick things off with the first game between wesley and jan we have e4 and young goes back to the french defense this is very uncommon to consistently play the french defense at this level why number one alpha zero trounced the french defense so the french is not really seen as much at this high level uh because there's better options on move one for black to play like the sicilian like the sicilian or uh e4 e5 and all those you know symmetrical positions but jan understands that human beings are not computers and just because the computer finds ways to systematically get advantages against the french humans don't so we have e5 this is known as the classical variation of the french defense black will be playing c5 uh and wesley will play knight f3 and really this position is is kind of the theoretical tabia now here black can play a lot of different ways he chooses to play a6 to maybe play b5 and after knight to e2 we have a position that's been reached in like less than five percent of games uh normally white just kind of continues natural development with queen d2 maybe bishop e2 sometimes you castle long sometimes you castle short sometimes you play h4h5 but we have 92 id of 92 is that you want a structure like this with c3 and you want to get your connect four because wesley is obviously inspired by international master eric rosen and then you want to play g3 so now you've completed the pyramid the a pawn is the odd one out but the the pyramid is is obviously a nice and structural advantage here so black's counter play in all of these close friend structures has to do with the c pawn break and the f6 break but also queen side counter play with a5 why you have a majority of pieces here a lot of pieces are on the side of the board whereas white's pieces are kind of more geared toward a king side attack so queen c2 we have our first trade in the center wesley takes back with the knight and knight c5 blocks the dark scored bishop from targeting the queen rugby one bishop d7 finishing development everybody's finishing development here we go jan jumps in knight e4 the first man to kind of cross uh the the halfway point of the board for the black pieces jumps in starts attacking things king h1 prophylactic move moving the queen uh sorry the king out of the way of the queen this knight this bishop bishop c5 bishop d3 and now the center begins exploding we have knight d4 knight d4 and that key pawn break that i talked about earlier f6 if you were to take which is exactly what wesley did rook f6 you get a nice little barrier right here and you would love to transfer your knight there but the second you move your knight i take your bishop and losing a bishop to gain good control of one square is not very good welcome to gotham chess recaps so first we re-strengthen the bishop and then we take the knight and you would say well i don't understand isn't this just a really good position for white white just want a pawn like let's do the counting there take take take i'm up a pawn not quite because your light squared bishop was very important why because five of your pawns at a six are on dark squares which means you're a light square bishop needs to cover the weaknesses but now that you've given up your light scored bishop and we trade the light squares become very vulnerable i'm about to activate this bishop and laser beam you so now you got to scamber out and you got to go for a queen trade no queen trade and by the way if anybody's curious yes there is a hanging rook here but the queen was hanging so it needed to get out of the way and also wesley is threatening sorry janice threatening queen h1 so now we get a king hunt bishop f6 queen h1 king f2 queen h2 king e3 queen g3 king d2 queen f4 this man just looted his entire house he just took every pawn and he did it with check instant replay three pawns down and now i give you one more check for good measure to either deflect your king somewhere or make you offer a queen trade and then i trade queens and i take your bishop and now black has bishop and two pawns for a rook and this position is super unclear i mean black has three past pawns now this this position would be a lot better for black if the pawns were connected connected pawns always better work together better shield you from checks better very imbalanced position jan begins to push his pawns what does wesley do super important my friends you gotta br rooks are bad alone they're very bad alone they need to be together all right they're like a dog that's sitting at home because you went to work they need a friend e5 rook g7 another pawn is going to be pushed forward now it looks like you can take on h5 the problem is that jan is investing in his past pawns you understand that's why he's okay giving the h-pawn away because he knows his pawns are going to stand there together so we have a check that forces the king back and wesley is more than happy to make a draw here or is he he's like ah let me let me play this game on there's no risk no risk to play the game on double up f3 but again because now the rooks are not working together on a straightaway they're working together laterally uh this is gonna be very difficult to make progress this is as far as the pawns are gonna get now your king cannot go forward and if you play a move like rook d3 it's very important you go up why because even though i get one score away from promotion the king don't forget that at the end of the day the king is the piece that is the most vulnerable and wesley so forces a repetition of moves because his alternative his alternative was to go back to h1 and that just loses that loses to a couple of different things but you should always look for checks for yourself and for your opponent rook f3 check would deflect the king away you would lose your rook then you would lose your other rook to my pawn and then i would make another pawn to promote right i'd make another pawn promote and so for these guys it's a draw and they kind of understand it the whole way through jan gets his counter play very imbalanced end game this is the best result that we could get levy you never cover draws i know but there's only four players left so i had to cover the most exciting draw otherwise this would have been a super long recap for no reason i'm not one of these youtubers that bs's you okay every now and then i have an overly dramatic title but i'm i'm trying to give you guys the best kind of game the next game of this match was a draw in 19 moves then they drew in 69 moves which is nice um but uh we're gonna go to game number four the score of the match is 1.5 1.5 all right that is the score of the mini match they've made three draws this one was crazy the third one was a little bit also a french defense now jan's got the white pieces and he begins with a king's indian attack knight of 3g3 bishop g2 castles and he plays this move d3 then he plays knight d2 and e4 this is uh this is the king's indian but colors are flipped right so um now rookie one and essentially what happens in these positions is white allows black to play d5 c5 b5 a5 a4 b4 etc and you go all out over here you bring all your pieces and when you play this with white and you get into this close center position um you know someone's gonna lose the game okay so you see everything that i'm saying white solidifies the center you're gonna try to create some attack here generally these positions are actually preferred uh computers prefer them for black they actually don't see white's attack but obviously you know humans are not computers so knight e3 bishop b7 c4 so jan is kind of trying to do this both ways he's trying to make wesley completely close the center so that way now i go this way and then h5 and then h6 and then etc right if i can close the center it'll be a lot harder for you to transfer your resources to defend your king it's like a naval blockade all right if you're a history professional in the chat in the chat in the video in the comments you're probably gonna be like that's not actually how naval blockades work look i i don't know all right i'm a guy who makes chess videos on the internet now you'll notice wesley kept the position open his knight is able to jump in his queen is active his bishop's active his knight can come to the middle that's what you need to not get attacked on the king side okay you need to keep the center more open because you're able to create counter play all right so jan has to focus on this side with moves like knight to c2 disallowing you know just full destruction over there and now he plays bishop g5 the point of this is that if takes you have h takes but also knight takes and you're just you're just going for this oh not there to e4 and then and then this way um so wesley see the benefit of not closing the center his bishop still sees the whole board at any moment he can also trade the queen he can come and say no queen trade for you and that's exactly what we get we get a massive trade-off in this position okay now if you plug this position into an engine what is it going to tell you 0.00 if this was a classical game the players might have even agreed to a draw now i think white maybe has a slight advantage just a slight advantage white has more space in in end games bishops are worth more than knights but you know white white is more active with the rook maybe a little bit more space with the pawns but at the end of the day the only way you can win this is winning one of these pawns and winning a super long end game or background checkmating your opponent or hanging a night fork you could also lose right now for the intermediate or beginners watching that's very possible it's very unlikely this game ends in intro but at this level you know there's still moves to be played wesley takes the pawn jan uses his h-pawn sacrifices his h-pawn to damage the structure of the black position says okay i'm down a pond these are stupid wesley says how dare you call my pawn stupid so rook b4 i'm going to create lateral counter play king h6 you can't have my pawn john's like what do you mean i can't have your pawn now wesley's like now i'm going to use my pawn to damage your structure okay that should be two i'm waiting i'm not gonna take in fact i want to play f4 to block your rook and then take with the rook so what does wesley do knight e7 knight e7 and if you go for this plan with f4 now i have rook b2 i have knight f5 knight f5 will defend my h4 pawn from your rook right so rook b2 knight f5 oh my my arrow drawing is just super off today so we get rook takes h4 and a trade but the problem is now wesley's flank pawn break weaken this hopefully you can use this in your end games these h-pawn breaks to break up the structure so what happens jan trades and gives away the e-pawn and brings back the bishop knight and three versus bishop and two most of the time this will end in a draw because these pawns will not break through these pawns the f and h won't break through f h and if everything gets traded i can just sack my bishop for the last pawn beginners keep that in mind why because king and knight alone cannot mate a king so you can sacrifice your bishop and not allow anything to promote now you'll notice as the end game progresses not too much is happening one guy is activating his king it's very important that wesley blocks out jansking from entering and then tries to activate his own king which is sort of what he's doing see the knight is hopping around and along with the h pawn you're not allowing the king to come forward and you're also not allowing trades for example f5 might lead to some you know drawn end game for example take like take take take like maybe this is a draw in fact i do believe it is because i think after h5 it's quite simply a draw because black is too passive despite being a pawn up okay hopefully you guys are learning being active in the end game is important but black is not going to trade black's not interested in trading unless it's advantageous and plays h5 now your king can't come forward king c5 you see wesley's activating the king he's bringing the king now what's interesting in this position um jan had to play king f2 i think because on king d4 he would be able to play king f3 he had to await the move king d4 and land on f3 and it mattered where his bishop was and because after king d4 he still went to f3 the problem is that now knight f5 is going to come in some position and knight h4 will be a check like now for instance here we got king d3 and you can't move your king because now i get closer it was like the ever so slight difference now bishop a4 knight f5 and your king is geometrically cut off from this see if his bishop had stayed here awaiting the move knight f5 he can't do it anymore because this is a fork he can't take the pawn anymore i understand so if he had just played king f2 here king f3 king d3 there would have been bishop b1 check but the way that he did this and got and wasn't able to transfer his bishop to g6 because jan played the move bishop b3 he wasn't able to make that check in time one square makes all the difference for drawing this game and because of that wesley's able to win a second pawn use checks and now the knight holds everybody look at this brutal geometry and jan is now down two pawns and uh yeah being down two pawns is game over in this end game and his his bishop gets trapped his bishop just gets trapped everything is guarded bishop runs behind the pawns and gets the door shot on it and the game is over so wesley wins today's mini match two and a half one and a half which means that tomorrow jan must win in the rapid to force a blitz playoff and potentially in armageddon which takes us to our main event of the evening ladies and gentlemen magnus carlson the man who knocked down arguably the second best player in this format in this event in the quarterfinal potentially his biggest rival has been has been eliminated already must be feeling on top of the world timur jabov made seven draws and defeated anish giri in a very very very tough game so he had a little bit of a different route um but uh yeah carlson had six decisive results actually eight out of ten games and timor had one out of eight so something's got to give you got a locomotive and a what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object they make two draws to start the match they make two draws to start the match so i'm gonna take you to game three of the rapid magnus has the white pieces and timur goes for the patented king's indian defense knight f6 g6 bishop g7 so what he plays timor is known for this magnus goes for a fianchetto there is no better way to suck the soul out of a king's indian player than playing the fiance or fianchetto or fianchito king's indian defense so bish we have c5 bishop g2 uh and basically timur wants to create some chaos you'll notice he's playing in a very strange way not moving his knight or bishop not his pawns the queen is targeting this and magnus just blunders it magnus just completely i'm joking he's hitting this he offers a trade now his pawn side steps danger and he castles his king so now what completely symmetrical position everybody has d through h pawns right a b queen is here bishop is here how do you get an advantage in this position first let's utilize the black's positioning of the queen to get development and now you see trading that dark squared bishop and a few moves later that bishop does come off the board magnus expands in the center takes some center space checks the king and now the king goes back now here white is comfortably better why more space much more space much more active pieces queen is much better than this queen potential access to the open file what is this knight even doing magnus says yeah that's a great point what is this knight doing if it goes to h6 i play g4 that knight is out of the game forever then i just i don't know how it's gonna ever get back into the game i can also just attack it and force your king out so he goes this way but now again magnus is just this is this is called an initiative i mean he's just making attacking moves that improve his position the knight has to dance over to c4 the problem with that is you've just springboarded my center attack e5 okay queen b6 king h2 sure we can trade queens and we do trade queens i still have a dominant control of the center of the board okay but credit to timur he traded his one of his passive pieces actually magnus's queen was very very powerful bishop e8 now we have b3 the only weakness and you would say why didn't you just take this he can take it but maybe he was a little bit worried about rook b1 he didn't like some of the stuff that was looming there uh computer is very unafraid it thinks that knight takes b2 is the best move timur is not the computer he makes a retreating move gets hit with b3 and now magnus just advance it advancing knight bishop two rooks knight bishop two rooks seven pawns each how on earth do you find an advantage activity and taking away the activity of your opponent and as you notice as the game progresses even on backwards moves magnus has dominant control of the position he's only got knight rook and bishop but he wins a pawn say why didn't he more guard his pawn not so simple my friends remember peace activity d6 is killer it hits the rook and the pawn marches through so timur had to part ways with his c pawn magnus just begins advancing and he just makes a bunch of forward moves rook c5 king g3 g5 and now he makes a backward move to make a forward move and continue to expand and um brings his king now great idea here by timor to create some sort of counter play but as the end game approaches uh magnus wants a trade of rooks and he he goes for it timor doesn't go for it but every pawn in magnus's territory went for a march this game and um he advanced advanced and uh rook c7 or k8 and well here it seemed more resigned and sometimes i'm sort of flabbergasted how magnus just makes his opponents look like they weren't even competing with him i mean timur is an exceptional player he's in the semi-finals he has dominated some of these events and he in fact won one of these events and that was effortless from magnus magnus up 2-1 and it all comes down to a couple of critical moments right here timor had to be brave take on b2 but that's the thing magnus gives you like one moment in the game to call his bluff and he's not even worse he's just it's going to be equal and your knight is going to be dancing out of the territory while the rook storms in very tough to see the counter play so now magnus wins a relatively seamless third game and it's up to timor now to win the fourth game so of course he's going to take some risk d4 knight f6 c4 e6 and uh we have a ragozan queen's gambit declined if you've been watching any recap over the past few months you've probably seen this opening on the board bishop g5 critical mainline h6 attacks takes takes and i guess what magnus is going for here is uh this is a very solid position like you can play e3 blackwell castle maybe play c5 timor says no let's begin the creation of imbalances first of all i attack you like this you're not losing anything but the knight is now in front of the c pawn which inherently is an imbalance of the structure now i play e3 castles and rather than developing my bishop and castling i'm going to solidify my knight with my rook which is already down in the trenches of theory not the most popular move queen g6 this move is designed to punish white for not having moved the bishop do you understand you see how chess works oh you didn't move your bishop well now you can't because if you move it i'm going to take this now at this point in the database there are still some games but not on the next move and ladies and gentlemen if i preface this move by telling you what do super grand masters do nowadays when they don't know what to do in a position i believe this is timor's prep i was not watching the games live so i don't know how much time he spent on this move he played h4 it seems like you can play this move in any position now now at this point there's like three games remaining in the database and after rook v8 there's none there's no games remaining magnus moves the rook plays a natural move uh and and this is the point i mean timor just wants to play h5 and on queen f6 timor doesn't want to attack the bishop and force it to take he doesn't want to go back and develop because now the queen's off no he wants to play rook to h4 now my friends this is how you play when you've either done top-level computer preparation and played some training games or when you had a few beers and that's the beautiful thing about modern chess you don't know maybe on the break timor pounded down some modelos or i don't know my favorite beer stella artois i don't know what you guys drink if you don't drink then well in rook h4 and the point of rook is four is that you just want to go here so what does magnus do what any human would do e5 activate your bishop and prevent rook f4 now computer here wants queen f5 preventing rook f4 because then you would take on h5 i don't know what timor had prepared on on that maybe he would have played like bishop e2 and tried to just just play g4 i don't know i don't know um but we got e5 and now the center explodes cd5 rook d5 you can't take the rook because you're pinned so what do you do you play this now bishop c3 rook c3 knight e5 wait a minute whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa hello whenever in chess games can you do stuff like this like be this is how beginners hang back crank mate now i don't think magnus hung queen eight he has king h7 but now rook f4 and um folks magnus is in serious trouble look at the position one guy somehow managed to bring two rooks into the action without even moving his king this is like some legendary accomplishment his bishop is standing by the king though it's okay don't worry i got your back um the other guy can't move two pieces he just can't move he moves the bishop he's gonna lose his rook and okay he can move rook to b8 but i've seen more impressive things in my life than the move rook to b8 so bishop e2 and now magnus plays f5 why does he play f5 um wants to obviously control some center squares also the rook will now no longer be able to pressure anything and maybe there's some moment he can trade the queen like again magnus would love to trade queens okay knight to d4 now there's no queen trade punt to c6 basically not allowing the rooks any infiltration and covering the b5 square but seymour takes on f5 you can't take with the bishop because if you take with the bishop i'm taking your rook so now he's up a pawn and magnus just says all right i know i'm not supposed to trade when i'm down material but what am i gonna do that queen is harassing all my pieces bishop d7 rookie four rookie eight how do you beat a guy when you're up a pawn against him with a space advantage by taking more things away from him now the knight has to go back and now you play bishop to d3 you are looking to trade pieces on your own terms so he trades on his own terms and now he plays b4 it's all about the pawn play just like we saw last game sometimes that the pawns you know you look at this position bishop g6 okay okay but the only way you're gonna win is by making progress with your pawns so b4 now bishop goes to g6 now a4 taking squares away from your opponent and sometime later after you make some advancement b5 you need to know how to utilize pawn play to create open lines and weaknesses rook to b2 not going for a2 but going for b8 sorry not going for a6 but going to b8 bishop e8 rook b8 this is two games in a row now we've seen a depressed bishop on e8 they got to stop going there right king f8 knight f5 one guy's absolutely dominated so what do you do we're okay he's got no more moves knight d5 and now the simplification process snap snap snap knight f4 check comes and it does pick up the h5 pawn which is very simple g4 knight f6 and knight takes h6 sometimes in end games there are these tactics the pawn is overloaded and there's nothing to be done if you take you are simply two two pawns down in a rook end game you might be named magnus carlson you ain't saving this i mean maybe against me but even i would win that end game rook and three versus rook and one at a certain level if you don't manage to win it it maybe chess is not really the game you know maybe maybe checkers where all the things move the same so now altimor has to do is simplify and uh solidify his structure and he does he gets the night end game and on move 54 uh magnus carlsen resigned the only way you can screw this up if you're playing with white is by doing this okay for my beginners don't allow a sacrifice we saw this earlier in in in the end game with jan and and wesley i believe don't allow a sacrifice for multiple pawns because you need these pawns so you need to bring the night advance advance bring everybody only lose one pawn for the night not both because king and knight cannot checkmate the king right um and so with that rajab tied to tie the match that is it seems like that's how you got to beat magnus strong opening preparation hikaru won three rapid games with very good opening preparation fresh ideas h4h5 freaking rook h4 some drunk style chess and two more wins in very very convincing style getting magnus out of his preparation with some wild idea and what more to say pretty exciting first day of the semi-final uh folks as always it's a pleasure making these for you and um i've been reading your comments so keep leaving them um hoodie season is gone so now listen i've been stocking up my shirts some of you are very very negative about some of these shirts i'm gonna keep wearing them so you know you might as well turn the negativity into positivity and if you're positive about the shirts well boy do i have a whole collection of them in store until it gets cold again tomorrow two of these players will be eliminated and sent to the third and fourth place match and two of them will move on to the finals of the ftx crypto cup get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 269,537

Rating: 4.9746585 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: nu3INwkdxFA

Length: 26min 15sec (1575 seconds)

Published: Fri May 28 2021