The Legendary KING WALK Chess Game

ladies and gentlemen i generally don't make videos for just one chess game but so many of you requested this game over the course of the past like i don't know six months that i decided to do it we are currently in tilburg the netherlands for the inter-polis tournament gary kasparov is playing karpov is playing nigel short is playing some of the best players in the world it's 1991 and this particular game is known as the legendary king walk game because in it there was what very good i don't even have to finish that sentence um this is uh if you're in any sort of chess enthusiast you know about this game perhaps you clicked on this video because you want me to re-tell the tale in my own words because you enjoy me as a content creator and if you've never seen this game you are about to just have a very good time so here we go nigel short with the white pieces plays the move e4 and we have knight to f6 from yan tiuman and by the way you might have never heard of jan timon because many of you might be new chess fans yanti was one of the strongest players who competed in the 80s 90s um and uh local hero by the way timon from the netherlands so e5 knight d5 you might say why would why would someone do this why would black just jump a knight around in the center well here's the thing there are lines where white does in fact kick this knight around all the way to b6 but white overextends with pawns and you're very rarely going to defeat a full setup of pieces with just pawns so black will then spend the remainder of the game developing around your pawns and chipping away at them e4 knight f6 is called aliokin's defense alakine named after alexander alakine and there's a ton of theory and nigel short plays like this he doesn't actually move his c pawn to c form he plays uh with the d pawn and then i don't have three this is one of the main lines uh bishop g4 here is a move there's lines where you can take but in this game we have g6 trying to play this bishop g7 move bishop c4 so actually the bishop is the one attacking the knight and voluntarily retreats when it gets counter-attacked because obviously nigel likes this diagonal he thinks this is a solid diagonal and should black play something like this this is actually just not very good because now white will create a structural connect four eric grows and squeals and delights someplace and the bishop is counteracted upon it will always rotate back this way and anticipate the king moving to a short castle situation this might be crazy to you like how are all these big brain plans happening on move eight of the game but there's a lot of silent conversation that goes on in chess and a lot of what-ifs so black plays bishop g7 maintaining the tension in the center queen to e2 is a rare move normally this is not a move that's played in this position so nigel short takes us already out of some degree of uh of theory black plays knight c6 adding another layer of pressure to the center nothing is under attack though and castles and here there's a move that black would love to play and that is the move bishop to g4 that move looks great because you pin the knight to the queen and these two pawns are very delicate now in the center if you just play a lazy move like this black will probably castle and just chip away the problem with bishop to g4 and this is a very rare tactical trick a couple of things need to go right for this if the bishop pinning the knight to your queen is unguarded number one unguarded and the f7 pawn is up for grabs and only the king is protecting it you can play bishop takes f7 check and if the king takes the third criteria you need is to be able to move this knight safely to give a check now you give a check you cannot be taken you emerge with an extra pawn black cannot castle knight to e6 is coming and the game is over so bishop to g4 you would love to play but you can so black needs to spend the move castling so that f7 is protected and now how do you prevent bishop to g4 very simple move h3 great this kind of move like h3 and queen e2 and all this stuff it's the it's what i like to call superseding concepts because as beginner you know when you're a beginner you're taught knights and bishops out first don't touch the queen don't make random pawn moves and you notice that black is actually kind of doing that he's moving all his pieces out before the queen and uh meanwhile nigel short is kind of breaking those principles but he's doing that because the opening demands it the position demands that he's playing in this way so black is now struggling if black war two just develop the bishop uh the rook will come and actually the bishop can just get booted out very quickly so black decides to try to create play on the queen side with a5 nigel short looks at that and says well i understand that you would like to play a4 good sir so you are not allowed to play a4 please find something else to do so he does he takes on e5 takes and tries to simplify with knight d4 very often in a chess game when you are lacking space you would like to trade some pieces and try to gain some space well that does happen but now rookie won and nigel defense is only weakness in the center of the board which is the pawn on e5 now again it's very common to think that here you would play bishop to d7 or bishop to f5 like this move looks very natural the reasoning behind him not playing it i don't really know i haven't spoken to yan timan um i would imagine nigel would also finish his development and perhaps timon didn't like that his queen is in the center of the board although you can't really play bishop e3 so easily because the queen would just take the pawn so maybe he would play like king out pawn to defend his pawn and then bishop here i don't know haven't spoken to these guys about the game here it's human plays a move which kind of makes me uh gag a little bit he plays e6 now he is uh far and away a stronger player than myself and certainly this move has a purpose it stabilizes the center doesn't let white play e6 and maybe in the long run you want to put your bishop on c6 maybe that is the idea but my god i mean what you are doing to this bishop i mean i i you know it's kind of hard for me to wrap my head around it so knight d2 not the natural developing move knight c3 because perhaps he didn't like the fact that the knight didn't have as much of a future if it went this way actually nigel prefers that the knight would go to f3 or to c4 or to e4 probably f3 stabilizing the center once again um and he plays 92 and here's human plays 95 again delaying the development of his bishop and uh knight f3 finishing the plan hitting the queen queen backs up if timon gets a couple of moves to just finish his development bring a rook to the center he's gonna be fine so how does nigel play this position for advantage well if you're from 2021 and you've seen the games of alpha zero the super computer of course without hesitation you play h4 and apparently this is just a very good move uh if you run this on nowaday uh nowadays computer you know black plays like b6 and tries to develop this whole flank pawn attack is apparently very strong because you are more equipped to fight on this side since these pieces are kind of pressed that to the left you know like these squares for the knight are all occupied and the idea is actually to play h6 so this is the computer's idea to just march the h1 down the board shut down black's position but in this game short plays queen e4 which is a very natural move uh trying to activate the queen to still go over to the king side at any moment trade off the dark square bishop and just created some sort of attack and here you start to begin realizing black's position is a bit slow so black goes for a trade of queens that is an extremely logical move should you trade queens here black emerges with basically zero problems uh you are never attacking black now black will finish development and have nothing to worry about or bishop d7 bishop c6 uh and we obviously will not get our legendary king walk game nigel sure will not end up in a youtube video 30 years later so he plays bishop c4 uh of course c4 is also impossible because queen b3 so bishop c4 knight b6 and now a very professional move b3 not afraid of trading the bishop for the for the knight and damaging his own pawn structure because in this position even though you've given up the bishop pair and again it's like i don't want to give up the bishop pair i know that the bishop pair is good yeah but look at black's position every piece is on the back rank certainly you cannot say this bishop is doing anything and this queen is just the target so actually black has a lot of problems to solve here he begins by solving this one and now nigel plays another very nice move he understands that this bishop needs to get into the game for black to have any sort of equality so rook to d1 sometimes when grandmasters play and we look at their games we take moves for granted this is just a very good move black is still a move away from developing his bishop because he would be hanging a rook if he did that so it's not so clear what black's next move is but he goes back with the queen to kind of avoid being a target in some of these variations queen also pressures the center maybe he has some idea to play queen c6 as well it's an ugly move but at least by trading white's queen you remove some of the pressure of your position but now nigel shows the point of queen here and he rotates his queen over to h4 and now black has problems black has to deal with bishop to h6 black has to deal with bishop g5 bishop f6 and knight g5 and white is following the age-old rule that i love to say you need two more attacking pieces than defenders and in this case if you can get rid of this bishop and leave yourself two on one versus the king rook can come over this rook can come over at any moment it's bad news this pawn is like the naval blockade of the position so b6 finally to activate the bishop bishop to e3 activates white's bishop and hits the queen and the queen has to back up and now this bishop will not see this diagonal and you might think that the bishop and the queen are very powerful but actually if the bishop got here it would take this night without hesitation because the knight is going to be involved in the attack but by forcing the queen to go in front of the bishop this queen will not be taking this knight so the queen is actually going to block the bishop's activity and we have all of this and now a very nice move this is a very funny move from nigel rook d8 i mean it's just a very intrusive move rook d8 of course you cannot take because it's back rank mate so he plays bishop b7 and now rook d1 and we have a sta like a a state of paralysis here where nobody can really move if black were to take this pawn we would get uh well i guess rook 8 rook 8 there is rook d8 but rook 8 bishop 8 is ok um but there is just the absolutely glorious queen e7 uh and the game is over you cannot take the rook because of back rank problems and if you go here and go i'm safe you're not because after takes takes i come in with the rook again and it's game over so rook d1 and black here decides to play bishop g7 because again it's it's never too late to really make a mistake like you would think take stakes is very simple and you're not wrong it is very simple but after takes i actually don't take the bishop i now take this you say well so what i still have my attack yeah but now i take check i don't get it i'm attacking you no you're not who are you attacking you're attacking somebody queen e7 so i'm safe you made a mistake so you know sometimes we take these super gm games very much for granted we're like yeah but hold on it's all about like we know that in this position rook takes the eight was not a problem but now that the bishop has arrived there would be a switch an in-between move i can never say that word correctly but in between move i take the rook before i take the bishop and then i survive so nigel backs up nigel backs up he would love to play knight g5 but he can't because this bishop right is hitting a bishop in the queen combo battery is hitting over here so rook f8 takes takes and nigel plays a very nice move rook d4 protecting c4 forever uh also just an aesthetic move kind of paralyzing everything uh maybe some ideas in the future to actually play rook to g4 to defend this to play knight g5 and figure out what to do with this rook now black cannot trade rooks whatsoever black cannot tag the rook for one move but then that takes all the eyes off of the diagonal and white will deliver a devastating blow by breaking through with rook f7 rook d8 whenever you have massive amounts of forces and one defender there is likely a sacrifice that stretches your opponent's defenses thin and the game is just going to simply end so black plays rookie 8. we have a check king g8 and of course nigel oh i'm sorry this was a miss click but i'm not going to edit it out because that's comedic queen takes g2 would be mate um i was trying to click off the knight but i accidentally clicked knight g5 nigel of course does not play this move and plays the move h4 because again what is black gonna do here well nigel's got a dominant position he's trying to play h5 h6 and deliver mate and black plays the move h5 okay now what well duh g4 no because then you hate then you hang your knight all right well uh you're more than welcome to pause here uh and try to find uh the winning idea and uh i'll give you a few seconds to like pause the video you know maybe some of you are watching another window because you're playing some video games or studying for something or doing some work at the office um this is the most legendary king walk of all time in this position nigel short played king to h2 and the idea of king to h2 is that in the game when black plays rook to c8 because again this is move 3132 in this time control the players have low time and by move 40 they will gain extra time that is classical chess format nigel short said that he had two minutes and he wanted to just play like a like a solid move and he saw this idea um but he was a little bit concerned about bishop ca which we will analyze momentarily in the game we got rook c8 and the game ended with king to g3 king to f4 and king to g5 and yan timan resigned because if he does nothing by taking the rook then king h6 and gg now should he play king to h7 it's a little bit upsetting that he resigned but if he plays king h7 there's this pin and there's a lot of ways to win but as nigel short wanted uh he said this in an interview i'm not calling him stupid nigel short said he really wanted to play this stupid variation check here check here and get his king successfully to f6 from where it cannot be removed and queen g7 is unstoppable that is the most brutal thing i've maybe ever seen in chess um but of course yan timan resigned after king g5 and he did not even indulge in this it would have been five king moves in a row to win the game now it is rare in chess that the position is so good but the tipping point is the king walk there have been king walks where a person is winning gets their king hunted down it has to go over there and now you're still winning but it's very rare that the king is the deciding factor it's like when you're you know football you're on the end you know the end zone and the person jumps over the pack of players like it's one of those things okay this is crazy uh i mean this is just so legendary and nigel in an interview said that he had about two minutes and he was kind of concerned about bishop c8 bishop c8 would have been the most testing move because if king g3 this actually loses because here's what happens like let's say you just keep going because you see you think that you're winning like i'm gonna get over here yeah just this and you don't actually have queen g6 because i've taken this rook so that's one way for me to deflate the balloon bishop c8 would have led uh to the only winning other move which is g4 absolutely brilliant move sacrificing the rook completely for free um to win the game by virtue of taking and you cannot prevent this attack you just cannot prevent everything because the bishop now does not also hit the knight normally the the queen could take the knight but everything in white's position ties perfectly together perhaps the most aesthetic win is that if this um you have to be very precise uh for example if you play h5 here this loses to queen f3 now and now the queen is protected however you have knight g5 bishop d7 and the tipping point move h5 black is black is hopeless none of these pieces can move uh the king cannot move at all and white is just threatening either to take but i mean just even more brutal to push push the pawn you know queen a4 h6h78 this is made also but h7 is even more brutal um so very very brutal finish to the game if gh to kind of clear it all out you have this and this is also unstoppable so i mean uh bishop c8 is the move that nigel said he was concerned with but instead we got this just shuffling and i mean what a game king g5 and nigel short uh etched his name into the history books by providing us the greatest kinglock uh of all time so folks i never show solo games but some games are so good that they should be shown solo you're more than welcome to look up like you know king walk games on chessgames.com it's like a massive database of some historical games but none of them are like that see a lot of games have a king walk to escape danger and then you continue with your attack but this is just crazy and it's a beautiful game and i think nigel short went on to get second place in the tournament overall behind gary kasparov if i'm not mistaken um half a point ahead of anand and a few years later he ended up playing kasparov for the world championship match nigel short obviously an incredibly strong player and finds himself you know at the forefront of a lot of debate and fun tweets and conversation uh definitely a good character for chess so uh yeah folks if there's any other historical games you would like me to cover please do let me know in the comments below welcome to my channel if you've never been here before and welcome back if you have i will see you in the next video peace out take care get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 332,103

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess london, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, king walk chess game, nigel short king walk, nigel short king walk game, nigel short, nigel short chess, nigel short bobby fischer, nigel short kasparov, nigel short handshake, nigel short agadmator, legendary king walk game, king walk chess, nigel short bongcloud, nigel short sexist

Id: ZFbt_pf6ZIM

Length: 18min 22sec (1102 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021