Stockfish Plays A Perfect Evan's Gambit Masterpiece!

today's game is an exciting evans gambit played between stockfish and leela in the chess.com computer chess championship specifically this game was played in the eco mega match which featured only stockfish and lila playing over 2 000 games in some of the most exciting theoretical opening positions now the evans gambit opens with pawn to e4 and then e5 knight f3 knight c6 bishop c4 bishop c5 and pawn to b4 this move is the starting position of the evans gamut now cowards may retreat and not accept the gambit but of course in this exciting game we do get the acceptance of the evans gambit bishop takes b4 white's idea is pawn c3 and then expanding in the center getting rapid development and open lines to compensate for the sacrifice pawn now the bishop needs to retreat and the most common retreat is bishop a5 as played and now wherever the bishop retreats whether to a5 or a different square you should pretty much always play pawn to d4 and after a capture you should castle so this happens now in this position the move pawn takes c3 is played and this is the end of book for this particular uh game it means that the engines are forced to play through this position lila would not have played the greediest and most exciting move pawn takes c3 if it was entirely lila's choice both engines agree that white is now a little bit better after this move and in practice white scores really really well black isn't lost but black is struggling so what would be better if you had full choice well the most popular move here is pawn to d6 now this move is one that is really unclear both players get their share of wins and losses here really exciting stuff now maybe the best move is the third most popular move knight g to e7 and here black significantly outscores white so if you get this position maybe play knight g to e7 but in this game we're looking at pawn take c3 now stockfish plays queen b3 tickling this pawn right here and that pawn needs to be defended queen f6 good move but of course the queen can be a target when it develops early so bishop g5 the queen needs to move and also defend this pawn so queen g6 and knight take c3 this captures of course the pawn on c3 and probably more importantly it develops the knight now the next move by leela is maybe one that might surprise humans a little bit it is bishop takes c3 you're giving up your dark squared bishop here for the knight but of course you're also down in development and you want to get some pieces off the board especially some of the active pieces that might attack you for example if knight g to e7 developing getting ready to castle knight d5 is a dangerous idea from white here leaping in and if you trade here on d5 then white has the ability to open the e file this can recall a famous game uh fischer versus fine where bobby fischer won in 18 moves so you don't want to lose in 18 moves and neither does leela so lila trades off the knight on c3 queen takes c3 and if knight f6 then pawn e5 is a little bit dangerous so leela tries knight g to e7 getting ready to castle and just get out of danger as much as possible so now bishop takes e7 giving up the dark squared bishop and allowing more trades when you've already sacrificed two pawns in this position but if knight takes e7 then knight e5 is a fork hitting the queen and also hitting the pawn on f7 and white has a winning attack here so the king needs to recapture king takes e7 now the king is obviously not happy to be on e7 but also white did just trade off the dark squared bishop that would be probably the most important minor piece to help get at this king on e7 so it's not like white is going to force mate anytime soon black is able to get the king out of the center of the board but that costs time and there's a lot of pieces that need development the next move i think is a really good one and i'm going to try to highlight as many of the building moves as possible that stockfish plays the great attacking master spielman once said of al jaekin that he can find the same combinations as al yakin but he can't get the same position so pay a lot of attention to how stockfish builds up this position and eventually gets a combination stockfish starts with pawn e5 great move this move helps get some control of the dark squares and makes moves like d6 much harder to achieve which means that developing these pieces is also very difficult rook e8 of course very natural developing the rook to the only half open file available to black and the king is getting ready to pull back here to f8 rook ae1 i like this move a lot i also think this is really instructive the two rooks are placed in the center now in the game they're going to double on the e file which of course makes sense but i think there are also some lines where you can imagine this knight moving and then the pawns rolling like this and they could be very very effective here i think a lot of humans wouldn't play rook ae1 because it kind of locks in this rook here on f1 but you can see stockfish likes the move so the king now steps back king f8 and bishop d3 hitting the queen and of course the queen doesn't want to give up the pawn on h7 so queen h6 now another nice instructive attacking move rook e4 this move threatens rook h4 which will hit the queen and also hit the pawn on h7 so there's an immediate idea to win material and we have a bit of a bit of a crisis here for black now at this point stockfish thinks that the best move is pawn to f5 now a human probably doesn't want to play a move like this that opens up a lot of squares against your king and also really softens the light squares but it does seem to be the last good try for black after pawn f5 of course you could consider rook h4 which is very tempting dangerous and might even be the best move but stockfish's best line the one that it thought was best at least when it was playing the game is pawn takes f6 opening more lines it makes a lot of sense of course now after rook takes e4 bishop takes e4 queen takes f6 offering a queen trade of course you don't want to trade queens you want to keep the queens on the board and try to attack black needs to defend this h7 pawn so pawn h6 and stockfish's best move is pawn to h3 not a very human move but there we go and now you really need to develop so pawn d5 and then after pawn d5 you have queen takes d5 and you go for a queen trade with queen e6 and stockfish thinks this is a little better for white so this is a long and complicated line but at least it doesn't seem like there's a forced win for white instead leela played the move pawn to g6 accepting a very very passive position and immediately stockfish goes from thinking hey maybe i'm a little better to hey i think i'm a lot better and i might be winning so after pawn g6 stockfish continues with rook fe1 here i love bringing out the rook the last piece that wasn't contributing the queen pulls back to g7 she feels very buried here but there's an immediate idea of pawn d6 to try to make some exchanges and utilize this pin right here which is why stockfish pulls back and doesn't allow that with queen c1 if pawn d6 had been played then there was pawn takes d6 and after a trade on e4 the bishop recaptures and this is a problem and this is a problem and white's position is just overwhelming so after queen c1 we see king over to g8 doesn't really accomplish anything but it's very hard to accomplish anything pawn h4 another great instructive move that helps build the attack you have the idea of pawn h5 and maybe even pawn h6 and these moves are often utilized by neural network engines to really clamp in on the opponent's position and provoke weaknesses pawn h6 trying to make sure that you know this pawn doesn't get to h6 and lines are not opened so you're getting ready to meet pawn h5 with pawn to g5 for black now i think this is maybe the best attacking move in the game rook 1 to e3 this rook suddenly lifts and it doesn't seem like it should have any potential here along the third rank but as we will see in the game it definitely does have potential in this position it seems like there's only one move that might not be losing that's king f8 which is stockfish's preference and it definitely thinks it's much much better here which of course makes sense black can barely move anything in this position and king f8 may avoid some of the immediate threat threats in the position but it certainly doesn't give black a desirable position however there's at least no clear forced wind that stockfish saw after king f8 instead though king h8 is pl is played here now pawn to h5 and the idea of taking here and opening things is really unbearable so we see pawn g5 which again was the point of pawn h6 trying to keep things closed and now knight takes g5 absolutely brilliant from stockfish and definitely winning it's only now that lilo realizes it's much much worse stockfish is saying hey i'm i'm basically winning here and leela's going oh i'm definitely worse in this position now after knight takes g5 you can capture with the queen or the pawn both are losing i'm not going to dive too deep into all of the possibilities after queen takes g5 but here's the basic idea queen c3 threatening pawn e6 so that pawn needs to be stopped with rook e6 but then rook g3 hitting the queen which can go back to a few different squares and after queen e7 you can double here this is very strong and you're soon going to follow up with the idea of bishop b1 and then queen c2 or queen d3 making a battery total control of the g file total control of the light squared diagonal and it's just overwhelming there's no way to defend against all the threats that white quickly sets up so in the game after knight takes g5 we see h takes g5 and pawn to h6 of course the queen cannot capture because rook h3 pins and wins the queen right here so after h6 we see queen back to f8 rook g3 just getting ready to go go over and win the g5 pawn and finish off your crushing attack here an interesting move is pawn f5 when we can capture on passant and after rook takes e4 this move is good and should win but the strongest move is queen takes g5 and here queen g7 check making a pass pawn on the seventh rank and forcing it through in multiple different ways is absolutely crushing so a beautiful position here that would have been completely overwhelming in the game after rook g3 we see knight takes e5 here and now queen takes g5 and pawn f5 hitting this rook right here in this position leela was expecting rook takes e5 when white is a lot better but maybe white is not winning instead though stockfish played rook h4 and it's only after rook h4 is on the board that lila goes from thinking oh this is a bad position but not necessarily lost to leela's acknowledging oh i am definitely lost and again stockfish has been thinking that lila is definitely lost for a while it clearly calculated better in this line with rook h4 so this move threatens queen g7 check even a move like rookie 7 to add defense to the g7 square doesn't really help because you still go queen g7 check and uh if uh if rook takes g7 here pawn takes g7 with double check you get a check from both the rook and the pawn and the only way to get out of double check is to move the king here we have king g8 and then there's rook h8 your next turn is to capture and promote a queen with check and obviously you're completely winning here with the white pieces so the only try here and evidently what lilam has calculated is knight g4 and the idea here is of course rookie one check and also just to clog the g file which is the basis of white's attack but after knight g4 stockfish just clears things out rick h takes g4 and now pawn takes g4 and you might be thinking about capturing this pawn right here that's enough compensation for being a full rook down but it does not win the game instead the critical move is rook e3 this move just threatens rook takes e8 and then queen to g7 and checkmate so this is a huge problem and there's really no defense you can also consider rook d8 here and then just rookie 7 threatening rook h7 mate among other things there's no defense after rookie 3 we do see rook takes e3 and now queen takes e3 black is up a full rook here although of course these pieces are completely out of the game so it's hard to count them as full pieces this position is simply winning because there's no way to stop a check on the dark square diagonal here and then after the king moves over you simply have h7 check and then h8 equals queen so in this position with all of the extra material and the ability to make the move in this position there's no way for leela to save the game white simply executes the idea pawn d6 is played queen d4 check king g8 h7 check of course the bishop is defending and then king over and we make our protected queen from here of course it's just a simple a process to checkmate but in the computer chess championship we do play out to checkmate so this is how the game concludes of course the technique is always nice and the queen and bishop work perfectly well together in finishing the game off so final position here sees the queen come into d7 and checkmate so i hope you've enjoyed this great game and i hope it inspires some of you to play more evan's gambits the chess world needs more evan's gambits if you're interested in seeing more great computer chess games then a watch the computer chess championship at chess.com ccc but b also check out the playlist that's popping up with lots of great computer chess games that we've analyzed on this channel you can't find most of them anywhere else

Channel: Chess.com

Views: 107,273

Keywords: chess, computer chess championship 2020, computer chess championship, computer chess game, computer chess vs computer, computer chess tournament, stockfish vs leela, stockfish chess, stockfish vs chess.com, chess engine vs chess engine, chess engine championship 2020, chess engines play against itself, chess engine championship, leela chess zero, leela chess zero vs stockfish, leela chess vs alphazero, leela chess zero best games, leela chess zero vs stockfish 13, evans gambit

Id: uUFWj2PSO0M

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021