Norway Blitz Chess Tournament: Carlsen vs Nakamura

and round one of the ulti box Norway chest blitz tournament it seems only appropriate that the two pre-tournament favourites would be facing off and as you can see magnus carlsen and cara nakamura are already going at it Magnus employs a very soft opening which is a personal favorite of mine and the weird twisty noise in the background makes me wonder if the audio was already given as Sean Paul remix before I even got a chance to look at this game after a 6 III and Bishop f5 we have a pretty standard approach by Nakamura to face Tavares off the bishop here fully intends to meet the LightSquared bishop on d3 for a trade preventing white from getting what would normally be be potentially very good attacking chances over here and after Bishop to d3 the trade happens but Magnus gets something in return for that which is that when he captures with the C pawn the normal dysfunction of having the night in front of the pawn is gone though white now has doubled pawns the main point is that these double pawns are actually not the most useless things on the board controlling squares as we can see very very useful for white as he develops into the center Takara plays Bishop to d6 and is offering a trade right back at Magnus and he says no thank you I'd like to keep my bishop and I will pin your knight maybe getting some attacking chances anyway despite the absence of my light square bishop natural development continues castles h6 quickly by Nakamura the bishop retreats to maintain the pin and kuroky Recker OV cub now one thing to look at as Magnus lady 4 here is that the tension between these two pawns is going to be a critical aspect of the ensuing middlegame Accardo plays Bishop e7 since the immediate threat was obvious to fork the bishop and the night and this Bishop is also useful to unpin than I don't have 6 but I'm coming back to the tension here in the centre talking about the tension between these two pawns and then what it means for these doubled pawns right behind them the main thing is that when you have tension like that in the center neither side wants to break it obviously if black captures on e4 white is never unhappy with two dominant center pawns now completely healthy and aron nimzowitsch is clapping in his gray but the issue is that okay obviously white wants like to capture but blacks not going to do it hit karo plays Knight to b6 naturally he has the same intentions to just build on this tension because by the same right if white ever captured here black would capture back and now these double ponds have been revealed for the absolutely horrific weaknesses that they are so the tension there that exists in the center but this is one of the reasons we're going to see all this Rima Newbury Magnus plays the move okay to see one hey Carter plays c6 and again the tension has built the play has been set and as any cheesy Hollywood director would say and seen Magnus plays rook to e1 again all the pieces are going to do their best to maneuver and find useful squares and not just for the current position but assuming the tension will eventually break you see rooks coming to potentially open files if a trade happened this work already did the same if a trade happened but with both sides positionally aware of what they don't want to do a car not wanting to capture and give Magnus a big center and magnets not wanting to capture to weaken his or at least reveal his weak double pawns we continue to Cirie maneuvering moves h3 is useful hey Carter wants to offer a tray usually when you have less space trades help Magnus almost touches the piece on e7 as you can see there he almost made that trade and stockfish actually initially likes the trade but then backs up and actually kind of likes Magnus move having reviewed this game in pretty deep detail for all of you to try to offer whatever educational line nuggets I can in a very fast blitz game I can say that these two both played a very very high level game with only a couple critical moments where maybe one side could have done something different so hey Carmen plays rook to e8 that's just a useful move again staring the rook down saying I'm ready for the tension to break just as you are it also opens up this f8 square for either one of these pieces Magnus plays Adria Cara plays bishop of fate as I said the square was open and Magnus goal continues to be how can I improve on my position how can I create space without breaking the tension here he finds a very high-level plan a lob magnus carlsen style one that the computer loves to Queen 82 playing more like an engine than anybody else in his generation of course is Magnus Carlsen Queen a2 prepares the idea of b4 and certainly if these squares come under control and white is able to continue to advance on this side of the board why it's just going to gain space and have freedom here comes before and Accardo is is now in a tough position where it's not to say he's clearly worse here but it's obviously black is defending he's kind of maneuvering kind of waiting for white to figure out the plan plays Knight h5 playing a little tickle with the bishop and says I'll just back that thing up and ask Magnus again I know you're better here but how much better what's your plan going to be you still don't want to take obviously pushing also leaves these pawns behind maybe they're not as weak as they would be on an open file but not ideal so Magnus recognizes that again still putting the rook on d1 still kind of preparing for danger to happen Queen e7 is played you could argue that maybe this position is one of the few moments where her Karl had something better to play with the move a5 possibly getting that rook and Bishop involved but I'm not really even sure that's true he plays Queen e7 and then the move Knight to d2 comes from Magnus with pretty clear ideas he wants to bring the knight to b3 will he pop into a5 will he pop into c5 maybe it just depends on his favorite color that day is a blue or green and either way Magnus and all seriousness is going to be trying to continue to gain space on the Queen side and build on the tension hakarl quickly brings the rook to c8 Magnus continues his plan and Hikaru retreats the knight once again trying to keep his eye on the square and still defending a slightly worse position knowing that he doesn't want to break the tension but asking Magnus exactly what he wants to do plays Queen to d8 and here we go the fireworks will start happening as soon as trades start being offered it Carl quickly put the rook on e7 which I think was the right idea not to trade right away obviously if he had traded by the way in the end of these lines white is probably gobbling that pawn so to stay with him in the live position we do see the trade now madness takes it with the D pawn I spent some time looking into B takes with the engine it's possible that the B file could have been a an asset for white he obviously decided against it and decides to open up the position heading for this plan with with d4 and Hikaru immediately plays b6 knowing he doesn't just want to sit on a lack of space this is a position where I do think there was a cool idea to talk about Magnus does not play this move but a5 where the sacrifice of the pawn and then a quick grab of the B file was an interesting idea for white to consider especially because that Bishop is so dominant it means that black could never really have come back and challenged the B file Magnus didn't do it and I'm going to stay with the live position because b5 was played we had a whole bunch of trades that undermined the center and he ends up winning the d5 pawn eventually heading toward an endgame that we're going to see where Magnus was still the only one who could win sort of playing for two results but I think he kind of relied on the open tactical nature of this position revealing something or giving something more to white that he got because it seems weird right now Carlos rook is on g6 it's on a7 this bishop is really nicely placed we got a sexy knight on d5 and with that should come a whole bunch of tactical possibilities but in the end there weren't there weren't the concrete possibilities that delivered a serious material advantage so I'm wondering if those who want to back up the video and look at that a5 suggestion by me maybe that was another interesting thing for Magnus to do to keep a sort of a grinding edge more Magnus tile now after Queen to be 7 he is still better so don't get me wrong and hakarl has to find critical moves rook a2 is a very nice move trying to make sure his rooks have the potential to meet for a date on g2 if Magnus blunders Magnus plays Bishop to c7 the engines do initially suggest moves like Queen to g5 or Queen a4 but neither really does anything the bishop can back up and probably black gets in trouble he plays Queen a8 which allows the forcing combination you see before you Magnus goes for this pretty aggressively because once you maneuver to the seventh rank and that Knight has to move Bob's your uncle he wins the pawn on c5 and we're looking at a position where again Magnus is clearly in the driver's seat with this extra C pawn what's amazing here is how hakarl really keeps his head there's a lot of ways to try to defend this drawn ending but he points the absolute best move rook to c6 because if he's going to trade into the rook ending as Magnus does he actually is much better served if his rook is already in this position but in front of the C pawn and so now as both sides sort of try to run their pieces out white trying to bring in his King black bringing up his King aggressively to d6 it becomes clear I think pretty quickly that Magnus is going to lose that C pawn so the car just has to make sure he doesn't lose any pawns on the King side in the meantime the moves continue to maneuver around Magnus realizes he doesn't want to repeat and take a draw now so he'll bring up the king and take the risk that the King upon ending might be a drunk hey Carl obviously has to play at first to keep this King out of the King upon ending but once h4s late Accardo calculates as fast as anybody on the planet and correctly decides he can risk this kingdom upon ending his king we'll get back in time and he is going to have the chance to draw this ending very dangerous and scary to go running in like this when your King is so much farther than the opponents but as we're going to see he calculated it very quickly and accurately as Occam Nakamura does often this trade only means that both sides are going to get their ladies back on the board at the same time and the players body language is already revealing to us that both both of them know this is simply a draw that Carl finds the fastest way to get these Queens off the board and we love these two professionals playing it out to their only Kings remaining before we end this game and our live video coverage courtesy of Peter Dockers who was on-site in Norway and I want to come back to the only other critical moment where Magnus maybe had winning chances was right here according to the analysis I did with the engine probably in hindsight once he realized he wasn't getting the best winning chances in this rook ending any any bishop move would have been better Bishop to d6 maintains better winning chances Bishop to e5 maintains better winning chances and even Bishop to g3 all of these moves remain remain in a position where black does have to figure out how to guard this Knight now with decent joint chances black is black is not out of it yet but I would bet that if he had it to do over again Magnus would consider this a much better fight for a win the engines agree black lacks ideal coordination to stay in from the pawn so with that we bring our analysis of round 1 of the ulti box Norway chess super blitz tournament again faced off the two pre-tournament favourites thanks for checking this out please subscribe to our channel here on YouTube and look for my next video coming out this week where we where we review the next not necessarily the next round but the next game we had of Magnus Carlsen playing at the Norway chess super tournament

Channel: Chess.com

Views: 1,333,049

Rating: 4.9162154 out of 5

Keywords: chess, checkmate, chess videos, checkmate videos, chess.com videos, chess.com video lectures, chess.com video lessons, Magnus Carlsen, Hikaru Nakamura, Norway Chess, Blitz Chess, Fast Chess, Grandmaster, Norway Blitz, Chess Commentary, Chess Defense, Chess Endgames, chess master blitz, fast chess, quick chess, fast chess videos, quick chess games, chess blitz

Id: bdfBdw8EWF0

Length: 11min 7sec (667 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 10 2017