The Man Who Defeated Garry Kasparov

gary kasparov is seen by many to be the greatest chess player of all time so then it's also really interesting to know who was the man that dethroned him from the world championship it was russian grandmaster vladimir kramnik but the craziest thing is he didn't even qualify to play the match you see after kasparov won the championship again against karpov in 1990 he broke away from the international chess federation or fide to form the professional chess player association he then defended his titles in 1993 and 1995 but was not recognized by fide as the world champion however the pca folded in 1996 after being unable to find a sponsor and so in 1998 kramnik and alexis shirov one of the strongest grandmasters in the world played a match against each other shirov actually beat kramnik in that match and he was supposed to play kasparov but they couldn't come to agreement in negotiation so then the offer went to vishwanathan anand but he also was unable to come to an agreement and then the match offer went to kramnik it was said that kramnik was going to be the biggest test to kasparov but kramnik went 1-7 against his opponents in candidates matches and kasparov went 32-1 against the same group of players so i'm going to take you through the match as always all time stamps are on the video player based on the games that we're covering here we go we kick things off in game number one and this game has massive significance not just in this match but for the next 21 years of chess this is being recorded in may 2021 and here's why because kasparov begins with e4 we have knight f3 knight c6 bishop b5 roy lopez and here rather than morphy's defense and the main lines which is what kasparov had to play for many years against uh karpov we have knight f6 immediately attacking the pawn on e4 known as the berlin defense castles and knight takes e4 now this position the whole berlin defense immediately attacking this pawn had been played prior but it had never been seen at the ultra elite level over the years grand masters have played it but i cannot stress enough what this means for this opening and essentially black's point is that after you try to attack the center black drops the knight back voluntarily attacking your bishop on b5 you take take take and it seems like you've you know forced your opponent to trade queens and not be able to castle so you look at this position you go wow white has a better pawn structure white is developed black's king is stuck in the center of the board but kramnik wanted this because with no queens and an unfamiliarity with the with the terrain which is very important in battle uh kasparov would would potentially not be able to generate some of his extra strong preparation and attacking chances so we have h6 played by we have h6 played by kramnik to take away anything from the g5 square and now king c8 the incredible thing about this position for black is that as passive as it is it is unbreakable and it is known as the berlin wall and so cram uh car uh oh my god i'm mixing up all their names kasparov played h3 b6 and then you see kramnik just reroutes the knight back to g6 to target the center now we have uh knight e1 being played by kasparov to play f4 f5 so h5 a very important pawn maneuver to prevent white from expanding that's actually one of the main ideas of the berlin defense breakthrough so we have knight d3 now c5 we have two-sided pawn play to take away squares by white c4 and a5 the flexibility of the black pawn structure on the queen side in the berlin is very nice and the king is very safe now we have the locking up of that structure and a locking up of this structure bishop e6 centralizing the bishop knight d5 king b7 kramnik is implementing every single correct game plan and if if kasparov plays a move like f4 to go f5 well as you're going to see later that actually does happen but the most important move here by black is this move rook h uh i apologize rook h5 this is the bread and butter of this position and you notice how black's pieces flow together the pawn moves up to h4 to take away the movement of the g-pawn but also the rook activates and pressures the center and the iconic moment of this game is right here knight back to e7 preventing f5 g4 is prevented by on passant of course and uh the game ends on move 25 with a draw offer a 25 move absolute neutralizing of the position from vladimir kramnik and i know you what you would say well i don't understand why would you show this game first i mean it was just a 25 move draw because this game proved to be the ultimate significance uh and we will talk a little bit about later what i mean by that uh we are going to for now move to game number two uh but when i when i return to this after i show you the next game uh i'll kind of tell you a little bit about what i mean okay in game number two kramnik who is a very very solid strategic player plays d4 c4 uh and it's time this is the first game that he's got the white pieces so we're gonna see what what caspar brings to the table kasparov responds with the grunfeld defense he had played the king's indian defense but the grunfeld obviously has survived the test of time if you've watched any chess videos at the highest level you would know about the grunfeld and uh well let the preparation battle begin we have c takes d5 knight takes d5 and e4 black's entire idea is to trade the knights and play bishop g7 to chip away at the center with moves like c5 knight c6 queen a5 bishop g4 you're gonna see all those moves by the way c5 queen a5 bishop g4 you see black is chipping away on the open lines whereas white is gonna try to solidify the center and have a good time rook b1 played with the intention to play rook b5 and take this pawn potentially and this move a6 now the whole point of a6 is that you you can take on b7 um but what what that does is it lures the rook really far out of the territory and white is losing precious time and as white is losing precious time black will again just just launch a massive assault castle the rooks will come down the open lines it's a very dangerous position which is why it was all the more impressive that in this position vladimir kramnik took on b7 at this point this was deemed a novelty a move that had never been played now obviously kasparov is not a a joker he played a6 because he had prepared the move rook b7 and uh well it's going to now become a theoretical batters better battle bishop takes f3 takes knight c6 all so far so good looking to launch a massive strike here if d5 then bishop c3 and you lose the queen so we have bishop c4 by kramnik we have castles and we have castles so he castles despite damaging his structure and we have takes and takes and here there's an interesting moment uh you can take on d4 you can also take the queen but what's going to happen is we're going to get through the entire justification of the temporary sacrifice of the pawn so for example you cannot take because of course you will lose your queen and if you were to go for queen a5 here i would take your rook is hanging your bishop is hanging this bishop is hanging and that's bad but karpov uh see i can't there's so many k's they're all these russians with the letter k kramnik plays bishop d5 volunteering a trade uh if this were to happen queen e3 is very strong so uh kasparov plays bishop c3 to attack the queen knight d4 and we get this position and basically what kasparov is saying is that yes i am down a pawn but mr kramnik your structure is very badly damaged you have isolated ancient a pawns these pawns are hardly mobile and let's not forget that the opposite colored bishop end game will probably be holdable so it was interesting when uh in this position he played rook a7 that is a trait of rooks trading one of the most active pieces that uh that kramnik has so kramnik now needs to take this opening uh advantage that he's received of an extra pawn and push it to the next level and he does that by playing f4 like my broken structure i am now going to use to attack you like i'm gonna take my broken arm and slap you over the head with it right queen v8 queen c3 centralizing taking away f6 and maybe going to g3 the queen will hold everything on g3 okay f3 is just as good queen h4 and now a nice little structural maneuver e5 kicking out kasparov's bishop kasparov is a man that likes the initiative so he finds the very nice idea g5 also attacking on the same side because again if pawn takes g5 this is just terrible i take i threaten mate queen g5 is coming and then it's just the draw so rookie one rookie one and you can take my pawn yes you've won your pawn back congratulations but at what cost at what cost you have split pawns and a bad structure and now i i'm gonna add this level of nagging pressure pawn takes rook takes uh and i'm threatening your pawn in a discovered check so what do you have to do king g7 and we see how the long-term pressure just when kasparov had gotten his pawn back immediately kramnik strikes and he wins the outside pass pawn now we have an end game that's obviously clear bishops but one guy has a past pawn if the rooks get traded at an inopportune moment in opportune moment black will be losing because i will play a pawn and i'll bring my king over there but more likely if the rooks get traded it's a draw so how will kramnik play this end game first he very nice plants that bishop in the center and guards it with the f-pawn now it's time to move our a-pawn offers a rook trait nope and let me let me bring it back let me guard my pawn rook d7 and now it's time king g2 now it looks like uh kasparov has everything that he needs but it's a really brutal end game to defend one wrong move at one wrong moment could do the job and now we're getting it to move 34 35 so the players are low time move 40 in slow games is where uh the players get the added time and we look at this you see look at kasparov trying to get aggressive and trap the king there is some argument to be made that h5 was the losing move because in endgames any slight weakening of the pawns could be damaging like maybe here he could have again tried to go rook b2 i would have you know he would have obviously had to calculate that this end game is a draw it very well might not be like a5 might ultimately win even though the pawn can be stopped maybe in the long run okay so maybe if rook if not rook b2 maybe he plays rook a2 and patrols the pawn from the back but it's not going to be easy to stop what kramnik wants and so after king h3h5 he plays this pushes his pawn rook a2 and now we just get check king e7 and a drastic blunder a terrible blunder bishop d5 attacks the rook and threatens rookie six and you can in this position play rook e2 but then i just push and you can't stop a7 and rookie 6. now cr kasparov instead of king e7 could have played king g7 and avoided bishop d5 with rookie 6 but it would have been still a very brutal defensive task and so it was kramnik who struck first in terms of winning so now kramnik has a one and a half half lead and so now it's game number three and we're back where we were on the first board where we have e4 e5 and and kramnik goes back to the berlin defense we have an incr complete repeat of game number one and now it's up to kasparov to find where the wrinkle is going to be and the wrinkle uh actually goes bishop d7 b3 h6 bishop b2 kingston all from game number one this time around kasparov plays rook d1 we have b6 knight e2 and he looks to infiltrate with the knight and the pawn you see him planting the knight in the center with knight d5 but knight e7 rookie won rook g8 stubborn defense from kramnik g5 rook g6 bishop g7 all the pieces coming at the right moment and a few moves later kramnik just took the knight took the knight and played knight c6 and this was the position after 28 moves and 25 moves later on move 53 it was agreed once again to a draw and this aft these first three games were so important for the flow of the match kramnik two times neutralized kasparov's e4 and from that point forward for the next few games that kasparov had white he no longer played e4 he played c4 and this also did not prove to be particularly fruitful because kramnik was responding with the symmetrical english which is also deathly boring and symmetrical and after the second game where we got a grunfeld a grunfeld defense because of the way that he was defeated kasparov never played the grunfeld in this match again which takes us to the eighth game of the match it's four to three kramnik has a 4-3 lead that's six draws and one win uh kasparov at at this moment has been playing a lot of d4 d5 and queen's gambit accepted he played that two times after playing the grunfeld in this game he plays knight f6 and goes for the nimso indian now nowadays uh kramnik would have played knight f3 and would have gone for the catalan uh the catalan is kramnik's bread and butter uh and uh he has pioneered so much modern day theory in the catalan it's really not it's really i mean it's really crazy so queen c2 play okay queen c2 is played uh we have castles a3 takes takes and b6 black trades off the bishop for the knight and now wants to take dominance over here now here uh a very fascinating idea bishop g5 that's not the fascinating idea but if i were to ask you what is the uh theoretical move in this position you would probably be quite shocked somewhere ben feingold twitches a little bit and he plays well not ben feingold but kramnik plays f3 now if you just look at f3 it actually makes a ton of sense you want to play e4 like for example if blackboard to play just a6 well you just play e4 you have this massive center and you're very happy which is why uh black fights back and plays like this plays h6 d5 and in many nimso structures white kind of just takes a small damaging uh to their position you know with e3 and just kind of tries to play against this bishop and uh here kramnik took on d5 we have knight d5 uh kasparov in terrible fashion blundering a queen but very luckily having this that's a joke it's a trade and goes back to d5 and bishop f2 okay the dust has settled in the opening one side has two bishops the other side has a massive lead in development right just like we saw in that grunfeld game kasparov likes that development even if it's you know giving away a bishop pair or something or a pawn and here kasparov lashes out with c5 you need to jump on your opponent not physically that would probably be resulting in some sort of lawsuit um you need to jump on your opponent before they are able to successfully get their pieces settled so kramnik plays bishop b5 attacking the knight the knight is protected and you know what the craziest part is about this position it's kramnik versus kasparov in 2000 this exact same position had been reached two years earlier with them flipped kasparov was with white and kramnik was with black so kasparov says anything you can do i can do better and kasparov won that game with the white pieces now he's gonna try to hold it with black now in this position uh the moves knight f4 look natural knight e7 looks natural but we get knight c7 which just looks like a blunder because i mean black is just going to lose a pawn and here mr kasparov detonates a little punch with f5 beautiful idea f5 takes takes and it looks like you can just gobble this pawn and have two pawns on the queen side that are passing but not so fast because you'll get a position like this and this is far from clear this is kasparov swarming kramnik before kramnik is able to get his piece of cell now kramnik is like okay i gotta go 92. let me give him back this pawn and let me get my king castle okay position is in the balance uh but kasparov has obviously a lead in development now kramnik afterward had said that he was surprised by the opening he was not in a good mood the day his spirit was not very good everything was going down he needed to buckle up and defend now kasparov rook d2 flies in attacks knight c3 kicks the bishop out and now b4 but the problem with b4 is that you're destabilizing your structure and so now we get rook to f8 a very nice move playing on the initiative again you cannot take this pawn because rook g2 and you die so rook a2 looking to trade takes takes the knight jumps in the b6 pawn is protected knight f4 is on the cards if you get knight f4 maybe knight h3 you just straight up win the game so bishop d4 he wants to trade rooks ah no rook trade rook a3 and now a very difficult decision by kramnik does he play rook f3 and defend this and reserve his position to being extremely passive forever or does he play the more practical approach which is knight c3 sacrificing the a pawn and trying to get an opposite opposite-colored bishop end game where this pawn is nothing you'll remember from earlier in the video in the other game the a pawn was the difference there was an opposite color bishop situation but a flank pawn makes all the difference a center pawn is right in the midst of everything it's not that big of an asset bishop d4 b5 rook f4 trying to solidify on the dark squares and now we get rook g4 forcing g5 and kramnik plays aggressive counter play with h4 and we have takes takes you cannot take on g5 unless you want to lose your bishop so we have king f2 volunteering a second pawn for loss but in this position the players agreed to withdraw because despite being two pawns down there is no way that mr kasparov is going to be winning this game now maybe they were low on time this is a defensive fortress because the pawns are split if the pawns were together you can play e5 bishop e1 but how are you ever going to make a queen like that's my question you will never make a queen maybe you go king g4 i like i don't know i'll play bishop g3 king g4 i take the pawn right so i'm gonna keep my bishop here and and then here and and you just will never make it through like for example you don't believe me you think oh well okay i mean i don't know bishop f4 you just you can't make it through so kramnik identifies the right defensive plan all the way back here and rather than keeping his material and being gluttonous defends the position even finds a way to neutralize kasparov's initiative two pawns down and this was a major major major defensive hold and uh with this game we will move to game number 10. before we jump into game 10 i want to go back to our original board remember this thing yeah it happened again in game number nine so in games one and three kasparov played into the berlin in five and seven he was fed up but still got nothing and then here he went back all the way to this position anticipating what i would expect bishop d7 because that's what kramnik played twice but kramnik came prepared with this rook d1 and not this but king e8 keeping his king in the center and nowadays this is actually the main line there's a lot of mainline positions where the king just stands in the center and uh this was the way that kramnik handled that position blocking up the center of the board allowing kasparov to kind of advance here but ultimately he held that in the shortest amount of time which was 30 moves so well no actually game one was 25 moves but 30 moves was also incredibly short and you could tell kasparov was fed up with the white pieces because two games prior he made a draw with the symmetrical english in 11 moves so at this point kasparov's spirit is somewhat broken with the white pieces which takes us to game number 10. kasparov found success in game number eight with his nimso indian so he returned to it but obviously kramnik did not go back to queen c2 instead despite uh he went for e3 and this is one of the modern main lines bishop d3 knight f3 and after the center clears out with takes on d4 takes takes takes b6 uh this is a very very common uh system where black plays bishop b7 knight d7 white has something known as an isolated pawn which is bad if you trade off a lot of pieces because that pawn will be a liability in end games but it's also good if you have a lot of pieces surrounding it at any moment you could push it forward you could use the shield that it creates to mobilize pieces behind it and it gives you a lot of open lines so you see that kramnik activates his pieces on very nice squares knight d7 brings everybody to the center and in this position uh he doesn't play the most popular move uh bishop d3 i believe is considered the main line but he plays queen b3 attacking the bishop on b4 to kick it out now you can take on c3 in fact this is usually what i always did when i played this position and there's some even funny lines that look like bc3 bishop f3 gf3 there's this hotly debated position where you have a damaged structure but two bishops versus two knights or of course you can also just play rook c3 and try to go over here and attack but kasparov went back to e7 and kramnik looked at the position and went can't i just do this and if you were to take back with the knight i have this dynamite move bishop takes e6 now i don't know the story behind this the point is that if you were to take i take with check and i win back my bishop if you play rook f7 i just go here or here and you're dead so the best move after bishop e6 is actually rook c7 just not taking the bishop defending your own bishop so that fork no longer works and then threatening this capture on f3 i don't know if kasparov got something mixed up in his preparation i haven't asked him perhaps this uh maybe on f6 he was he was she should have taken with the bishop but even that move comes with certain drawbacks i don't know but disaster struck he took the bishop and uh well when the dust settled i mean he got to this position where he's still down upon but okay i mean you can argue that kramnik's got some damage pawns here but kramnik again proved to be extremely resourceful knight b5 gives back the pawn but now we have a trade and knight d6 and after knight b5 the best move apparently was queen d3 attacking the knight or queen d2 lurking it was not to take because for example if rook c8 rook c8 knight d6 which is what happened in the game here the incredibly ugly human move rook a8 is possible simply protecting your a7 pawn i mean kasparov would never play a move like rk8 just because it's i mean it's simply the ugliest move you you just you and kasparov is a you know a genius attacking player and playing on initiative a rook a8 is just not just not something that you even think about so instead he went for the pawn grab but after knight f7 there is this very quiet kill shot queen e6 and you simply cannot go back to the corner if you play king f8 uh i move my knight and you cannot avoid made in some moves so in the game we got rook f8 but that leads to a loss after check here and queen e7 and you simply can't guard the rook if you play rook g8 you get smothered maiden if you play rook e8 well then i sack my queen and then it's checkmate on the back rank and kasparov was defeated in this game uh in just 25 moves he was defeated after the move queen to e7 a shocking loss considering the fact that he couldn't find comfortability with any system with the black pieces throughout this match uh losing with the grunfeld and now with the nimso indian after having such a successful game the score is now six to four and the next five games of the match were drawn and so vladimir kramnik won the 2000 world championship match eight and a half six and a half and uh this match was really quite something historically first of all we had the introduction of the berlin defense at the top level and i understand that for the average player the berlin defenses for even for me and i i'm average compared to these guys but uh the berlin is is nothing particularly exciting but it is incredible that one man was able to pioneer a movement the berlin is now widely accepted as a solid weapon against the rue lopez there are dozens and dozens of branches some of the lions run 25 moves deep that's number one number two came along a man superior to kasparov in preparation gary was methodical he was an opening just genius is an understatement and here comes kramnik with his solid systematic approach he had car he had a kasparov making draws in 11 and 14 moves with white no one had ever done that and so here he was mr kramnik defeating kasparov and kasparov didn't challenge for the world championship again he retired five years later and did go out as the number one ranked player in the world um for the next few years there still was this split so there was uh kramnik as the the pca world champion the classical world champion as they called it and the fiji world champion was was in 2002 was uh uh mario in 2004 it was rustam because i'm john f he played uh i believe also peter lecko was involved in a match against kramnik in 2004 and kramnik was the world champion up until his match with anand he did defeat topaliv in their toilet gate world championship i do have a video about that but this was incredible and you know in many sports that are team sports the older a player gets you just get a little bit less playing time you mentor the younger players but in individual sports father time is undefeated and in fighting that ultimately means that you get knocked unconscious and potentially lose a few fights in a row in chess it's not quite the case because kasparov stayed at the top for five more years but it was shocking at the time because no one had been able to do this and it was it was it was huge i mean it cannot be understated and obviously there was it wouldn't be chess if there wasn't drama the players couldn't agree to a rematch afterward and while this rematch ultimately never happened they did play games after that but not for a world championship so as always ladies and gentlemen if there's a historical saga you would like me to cover for chess in a future video do let me know if there's something that you haven't seen if not leave a comment respond to a positive one up up vote one that you think is funny and uh as always i will see you in the next video thank you so much for making it thus far much love take care uh and uh yeah get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 441,062

Keywords: gothamchess, gothamchess caro kann, gothamchess openings, gothamchess vienna, garry kasparov, kasparov, garry kasparov vladimir kramnik, kasparov carlsen, gmhikaru kasparov, hikaru kasparov, kasparov kramnik, carlsen kasparov, kramnik kasparov, kasparov agadmator, kasparov vs the world, kasparov topalov, kasparov karpov, kramnik topalov, kramnik, kramnik vs kasparov, kramnik carlsen, kramnik vs carlsen, kasparov vs kramnik, berlin defense, berlin defense chess

Id: sv34vbKkpPQ

Length: 26min 38sec (1598 seconds)

Published: Thu May 20 2021