Gotham vs. Rosen: FIRST MATCH!

ladies and gentlemen if you enjoy any chess content here on youtube then you're obviously familiar with the name eric rosen you're probably also familiar with the name gotham chess or levy rosman i really don't like that guy but i tend to feature him in my videos quite a bit uh he's funny he's got a funny chest style uh jokes aside uh you've watched myself and eric play many games against each other online probably seven or eight hundred at this point however few people know that we've played two games over the board against each other over the years in this video i'm going to show you the first classical chess game we ever played against each other in the year 2012. we also played one i think in 2016 in chicago but i don't have that game and it's nowhere in any database but this one is uh and the setting is in rockville maryland uh in a hotel along a highway because that's basically like 70 of america uh and it's the fourth round of the first ever washington international which was won by a very strong grand master komski both eric and i uh are one and a half points out of four ten years ago i mean about nine and a half years uh eric is an fm rated 2 328 i'm a no i'm a random dude rated 2194 here we go this is uh eric plays the move c4 now the interesting thing uh back in the day i my repertoire was e4 c6 so nothing surprising i played the karo khan but against d4 i also played the slav defense so i played a lot of c6 stuff so eric played c4 against me and here's why c4 is kind of a pain for people who play c6 setups because if i still try to play for c6 and i try to play into a karo khan or i try to play into a slav he can use this move order and you see folks eric was a genius even 10 years ago right that that really never went away um he uses this move order which nowadays is very trendy and delays the move d4 this move order is a super pain in the butt for people who play slobs because if you take on c4 the bishop is still defending but white can just delay the move d4 completely and now black is forced into a decision should black play a random pawn move like g6 white goes d4 and now black is playing a schlecter slav which is just trash it's just i mean it it's fine but it's not very good it's very passive um and if black develops the light squared bishop then in many variations yeah exactly i already put the arrow here actually preparing for this video queen b3 queen b7 and that's an issue so what did i do i played e6 this move order by white does not scare people who play the move e6 because now you're just in a semi-slav so black is going to play a semi-slab black doesn't care um here's the only issue in the year 2012. i didn't know the semislav not only did i not know the semislav for white i did not know the semi-slab for black so in my first time ever i decided to play this system the semi-slav defense uh this is one of the most theoretically complex systems that exists although because eric already played e3 on move three uh we are playing a miran so we're we're playing a miran uh semi-slav and not the critical main line which is bishop g5 because bishops can't jump uh jump over pawns uh i play knight d7 and now it's eric's turn to think so eric completely move orders me out of any opening i know okay it's move five move six and even though i'm 2194 i don't know the opening whatsoever so yeah you shouldn't you know don't fret if you don't know your openings because i neither did i eric plays queen c2 uh this is a very useful move i mean it happens quite often you free up this uh for the rook in the future the queen obviously stares this way just a generally good move also can team up with the bishop if it ever goes there i develop my bishop and eric very clearly is going to put his bishop on b2 now uh here according to theory there is one move that equalizes and it's e5 uh apparently white should delay putting the queen on c2 because black can play the move e5 i know this nowadays because it's better to obviously have the queen on d1 so that e5 is not possible if fight were to take but white move the queen so e5 is completely possible uh and i know that again now i didn't know any of this back in the day none of it zero so i was just trying to play natural moves in the opening so i played the move rookie eight this move can't lose so i played it right rook goes to e8 i'm ready maybe in the future to play e5 eric plays bishop e2 and now i'm like maybe i don't want to open up the position right away so let me fiancato my bishop and uh after 10 moves we have a very very common setup by both players um in fact you might have seen one of my games against uh people this year like i played chibiao wang i played or last year i guess norm events yeah last year january was it maybe i don't know chris and i played this against chris u with white um there's a lot of different ways to put the rooks here so the best ways for white to put the rooks are rook 81 and rook fe1 that's what i know now i had no idea back in the day and actually for black to do the same thing um this queen should go to e7 and then you know at some point i'll play c5 uh eric plays rookie one i'm completely on my own in a position with full tension right every piece is still on the board so you don't i kind of was playing uh i don't know cat and mouse a little bit i was like all right well he's not doing anything so i'm just gonna bring my rook as well uh eric brings his rook and now i'm like well i can play e5 and open the position i can play c5 and open the position but he hasn't done anything so let me just you know just let him do it you do it you do it you play e4 right it was a little bit of a respect that i had for eric rosen trust me that respect is long gone long got no i'm just kidding but uh you know i was a lower rated player so i'm playing a strong player who's kind of tricked me in the opening i'm like i don't know if i want to open things up right so i played queen c7 and now eric plays the absolutely thunderous and terrifying move h3 i'm just kidding that move is not terrifying i mean h3 is just sort of a waiting move obviously prevents knight g4 and gets this pawn out of my sight that's not what i played uh but uh but you know it doesn't really accomplish much so what do i do all right ball is back in my court a6 a6 actually has a point this is just intended to build up on the queen side like at some point i'm going to play one of these moves uh he can again play e4 um which is very much what you should be doing in this position but here eric plays queen b1 and at this point i'm just feeling mildly disrespected um you know he's just he's what is he doing like honestly what does he do what are these h3 queen b1 moves he's waiting for me to open up the position i'm like no no i'm not gonna open up the position you know i'm gonna put my rooks on the center lines just like yours i decided i didn't actually like where this work was so i decided to slide it over um sometimes the queen goes here and goes to a1 and then teams up with the bishop so it's like kind of common uh eric plays one more waiting move and finally i'm done waiting um and i know nowadays that before you play c5 it's actually better to take on c4 so you take on c4 and either the bishop has to move again or this and c5 and there's a big battle ahead i decide it's it's time to play the move c5 i have made as many waiting moves as possible so it is time to play the move c5 and open things up eric takes i take and again here he can explode the middle of the board with the move e4 i mean e4 all the center pawns are going to collapse we might get takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes takes and knight f6 here's the problem it's probably just a draw i mean we have the exact same pieces and exact same pawns i mean it's no one's winning this position as you can see the evil bar is ready to go home so am i actually i'm home already so this doesn't make any sense maybe eric doesn't want to explode the center in this in this in this way uh you also don't want to take c5 because there's no reason to give black to center pawns well not really but they both control the center so that's not very good so eric thinks about the position here and overthinks which is a thing that that sometimes happens when you're kind of too too focused on on uh keeping the tension he slides the bishop back to c2 now that move is weird because it i don't know what white wants so now black has a free turn basically and i decide to play h6 which gets my uh my pawn out of the way as well um he now can go bishop f5 to target my knight he can continue with the plan of queen a1 eric plays the move rook c1 and this shows me that he is ready to clear out the c file so i slide my queen out of danger you know why i did this by the way i'm not gonna lie to you i don't know what i was thinking 10 years ago but i think because i saw him do it and his rating is higher than mine that i could do it too all right i'm guilty of the same stuff you're guilty of all right queen b8 i don't think is absolutely necessary at all um eric plays rookie d1 and again when notice how he slid his rooks over that means that he is intending to attack on this side of the board he made my next move very simple because he wants to open the position for his rooks well i'm gonna shut the door and after c4 the game completely changes flavor shape form texture whatever you want to use c4 is a very important move why well if the pawns are traded right um the pawn blocks his rook okay then my next move i'm going to play b5 so i'm going to lock down the queen side completely his pieces are really suffocating to get out right um sorry i keep clicking squares now he could take the center absolutely uh and it's gonna get very messy i mean i can play bishop f4 for example who even guards the rook nobody the rook is trapped like literally the rogue i mean if you play knight d2 okay congrats you managed to literally make the ugliest formation of pieces ever um so that's not possible right so that's the issue with the move c4 for white um and oftentimes in chess it gets bad to worse very quickly so eric plays a4 which is a good move preventing me from playing b5 and now i prepare the move b5 by playing bishop a8 i was very happy with this move now apparently here the computer says that white has to play bishop a1 to play the move b4 like to to to get the queen into the game with either b4 or takes on all right so like if i play b5 we have takes takes and uh the queen can activate like this here's the here's what the computer suggests after bishop a1 a draw the computer thinks that we should repeat moves and make a draw eric being 134 points higher than me uh wait 100 uh 30 yeah 134 okay just making sure my mouth is right um he doesn't want that eric doesn't want that at all so he's he's trying to keep the tension he plays the move 92 and now black is much better black is much better because eric is basically admitting to the fact that i have a queen side expansion and he is not intending to stop it he's letting me just push he's like go ahead and do your worst and i'm like uh okay b5 queen out to a2 all right and now i am ready to transfer my rooks over to the queen side as well so i slide my rook over to c8 because it's obviously far more useful than it is on the d-file uh eric plays bishop f5 now bishop f5 is not a direct attack i think it's more intending to kind of like make it tangled for me i could slide out of the pin but i'm a guy who likes to solve my problems immediately with the move g6 i'm like i don't really care if i'm weakening my king eric i mean you obviously went to f5 to take on d7 right so do it eric goes bishop b1 what i mean eric drove his car to the nearest restaurant got there and decided he didn't want the food and just went all the way back what there's no way that can be good now at this point i begin a series of suspicious moves um suspicious in the sense that i have a very clear plan forward here i shouldn't take on b3 i should play b4 with the intention to play the move c3 that is what i should be doing for example i mean just you know this is the worst bishop in the world on on a1 that is what i'm trying to do right i'm playing b4 in order to play the move uh c3 so he should obviously take on c4 and i suppose what i just never saw here like something that i overlooked was that after takes on c4 rook takes c4 if i play bishop d5 pinning the rook to the queen then he just takes my rook and i thought the advantage was gone i missed i think the move b3 rook takes c8 b takes a2 rook takes b8 rook takes b8 and now there are two hanging bishops so at the end of the day i'm up a piece and uh you know he's higher rated but i'm going to win um so uh yeah i i don't know what i really overlooked i mean b4 looks incredibly juicy to play i decided to play bishop c6 which in hindsight i don't understand i mean the bishop's not like what what i don't know sometimes i look at my old games i want to vomit i want to vomit like separate of looking at the games though um you know digestive problems uh but uh yeah i mean bishop c6 is what am i doing so now i let eric liquidate one set of pawns i mean i should have played b4 and he plays queen i5 now here again i have the move b4 and this actually leads to a really really incredible sequence which i obviously completely missed because i'm not as good i would have probably not even seen this nowadays b4 forces b takes c4 and now after this there is an absolutely amazing sequence it's minus four if and only if i find bishop takes knight forcing his rook to take my rook right otherwise all right and here it looks like there's nothing i mean what is my next move this is my next move queen b7 and it's not just this i probably saw this and was like well i mean he just goes here his queen is trapped oops i s i that i make the little getaway from my rook and every square on the fifth rank is covered by the way remember the move g6 that he forced me to play like five moves ago yeah well thanks to that move i'm trapping his queen so a while ago he played bishop f5 to force me to play the move g6 but that actually helps me now now here uh was my was my last chance to play the move before here i play one of these like if i could go back like 10 years you know they say if you could go back in time and give yourself advice like what would you do if i could go back to 2012 and give myself advice i would slap me across the face for playing the next move in a position where i am much better i decide to trade queens what am i doing i mean what am i doing now obviously i'm still better i'm still better you could see it's minus one but what am i doing this queen is literally the only good thing that white has except this haircut eric does have a very nice haircut very nice eyebrows too um but i wasn't looking at that when i was playing him i mean i'm like why am i trading queens and you know what the craziest thing is it's it he just goes away and and it's actually still fine right now finally i come up with the move b4 of course at this point b4 is not as powerful knight b6 followed by b4 is quite powerful as well i decide to play b4 and we get takes takes and rook takes c4 so now i guess this was my intention the entire time my intention was to take on f3 and win back the pawn so play you know this whole trade and actually i'm taking on f3 again if we go back a couple of moves i just showed you why that wasn't necessary i did not have to bring the queen here i could have gone for this sequence of moves where i have queen b7 rocate at the end i missed it because i'm trash but that's okay um and we you know we have a big big big trade and this position and eric plays queen f1 protecting his king uh and the pawn and also defending uh this now black is still much better black is much better in this position for a couple of reasons first of all uh the quality of the activity of the pieces right all my pieces are active and really powerful this knight can jump into the position right this bishop stares down the king i mean come on let's not even compare the quality of the queens uh also that my rook sees an entire open file this bishop is you know living in a in a in a windowless apartment so um the other thing i have is a past pawn like my pawn is just it can just walk right it can just go down his can't my knight can go here and remove the remove remove the blockade of the pawn as well so i have a lot more space everything is good for me right so what do you do in a position where you're better well you try to build behind where you're better right you try to go this way uh eric plays bishop d3 that prevents the move knight c4 but it does not prevent the move knight a4 now in this position uh he should move his bishop it's a little hard to do that though for example if you play the move bishop c1 and let me go b3 that looks terrifying apparently it's not apparently it's not terrifying to allow all of this white can allow the pawn to get to b2 and supposedly according to stockfish i can't get through that's pretty difficult to do also it's move 33 so keep in mind that we're both low on time we're probably both nearing move 40 in the game which is a very common uh place where you know both players don't have a tremendous amount of time anymore so eric plays the very natural defensive move rook b1 intending to meet knight takes b2 with rook takes b2 now you might have noticed that the eval bar completely planted plummeted that's actually because rugby one loses it's not the right way to play defense here here's why here's why i can just take i would have never in a million years done that okay why is it winning because after rook takes b2 there is a winning idea by white try to find it by black not by white there's a winning idea by black it's minus three only if you find this idea otherwise the position is equal very incredible idea incredi i mean honestly incredible idea very hard to fight you can pause and try um here's the winning move rook a with the intention to go rook a5 and rook g5 and that cannot be stopped white will have to sacrifice multiple pawns in order to stop that probably d5 probably something on f you know rook c rook 8 rook a5 ruchi that is incredible i mean that that is just in the middle of this position to do that for example if he plays queen g2 that gives away the back rank so i play rook a1 and now he he's busted you know bishop b1 queen f5 i'm going to win his piece or all his pawns so uh yeah i mean rugby one only loses to knight b2 rookie or okay five rook g5 i didn't see that i mean i'm not gonna sit here and go i missed the win right so he plays rook b1 i come forward once again he offers me a queen trade now um i play the move knight g5 my intention here was to meet queen takes queen with takes and if he goes like you know king g2 for example uh i have this shocking move and then i'm taking his bishop or fork on the back rank so i i thought knight g5 was very clever i also thought i'm attacking h3 with check now here apparently eric can freeze me in my tracks and equalize the position with the move king h1 very sobering move um if i actually do pick up an extra pawn he is actually just getting out like even though he's a pawn down i have no more queen so i can't really hurt him anymore and apparently i'm not that much better he doesn't find king h1 he tries to solve his problems by force of the move h4 and the eval again completely plummets because black is completely winning you might say how i don't understand how is black winning if knight h3 check white is actually winning king f1 and um my knight is trapped my knight is literally just trapped on h3 i can't get out so how am i winning you can try to pause here and find it uh i'm winning for a very very beautiful reason so remember how knight h3 king f1 is an idea right so knight h3 king h1 is not the idea because then i take on f2 with check and i win everything it's king f1 i'm winning after h4 because now i take on b2 you say levy what you just but okay and now what this same idea no a different idea knight h3 check what i'm getting deja vu i don't understand just king f1 why is this minus 10 because rook c1 check i did not see that the rook is off the back rank takes queen d1 mate surrounded by all the white pieces but it's mate rook c1 h4 knight takes b2 is the knockout punch i have all these different ideas at different moments and i have to find them but i don't i miss it after h4 that was my final chance to play this knight takes b2 instead i played queen takes and i play this and he plays bishop b5 we get a trade and like i said you know a couple of like maybe 10 moves ago black is much better because of the quality of the pieces and everything in the past pawn now i have no queen now white is completely fine white's weakness here is hardly a weakness he also has a pass pawn and um he starts actually advancing himself look at eric just galloping into my position i have to be very careful here so i play rook c5 uh i hit his bishop he plays bishop c6 and i'm ready to untangle so for example if he plays the move bishop a8 i just get rid of his bishop uh so eric decides to take on b4 offer me a draw and i say no you're tret no i agree i agree because i'm gonna take he's gonna take i'm gonna take and uh this is a draw i i mean we could play this for a little bit but it's rook bishop three verse rook knight three and um that's it we drew the game i missed a handful of chances uh i actually to be honest with you i probably never even thought i could win this game uh if i know anything about myself um you know nerves in my over-the-board career particularly when i'm playing higher rated players uh i was always kind of very bad at putting the nail in the coffin i had games where i was able to do it and hold my nerves but in general i'm kind of uh sometimes at the critical moments especially when time is running low i struggle but i feel like that's common for a lot of you know competitive players that have yet to reach the grand master title and even when they do because then there's a level of grandmaster above uh those grand masters so i had a couple of chances in this game a complex fight for sure uh but a game that ends in a draw and like i said we had one other game there's a lot of noises outside today um maybe they're throwing a parade for this video so that's uh that's the story of how eric rosen and i uh played a game for the first time in the year 2012 over the board uh in rockville maryland and maybe he will find the game that we played in chicago and make a sequel hope you enjoyed folks let me know in the comments if you did and uh i will see you in the next video that i make get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 247,589

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

Id: pdm765FBfgk

Length: 22min 38sec (1358 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 15 2022