Using Hikaru to CHEAT at Chess

ladies and gentlemen I am currently participating in a very unique type of Chess event this chess event is called the team chess battle on chess.com it's essentially legalized cheating essentially what it is is a two on two format where a team has two players goes up against the team with two players and and you're allowed to talk out your moves two people get to come up with ideas and ultimately one person controls the mouse you can Trash Talk the other team it's a beautiful thing with just one major problem this event would make a lot of sense if the teams were evenly matched and in some cases they are there are teams like Grandmaster Daniel nitzki and Robert Hess there are teams like Peter Sidler and Jan Gustafson I'm on a team with a guy who's a bit better than me a little bit not yeah I wouldn't say too much but on a good day he's quite a bit better than me and that that that guy's name is hiar Nakamura yes top one and two in the world in Blitz and bullet uh top three in the world in classical he's playing in the candidates my teammate is hikaro Nakamura which is terrifying but it will make for good content and that is the most important thing you see apparently hikaro was actually given an option to choose between myself and Danny wrench and he chose me me apparently and uh thank you Hikaru uh yesterday we played our first matchup and we had a killer match up we were up against Eric Hanson of the chess bras and Jordan van Forest of no Channel because he doesn't have a channel but their average rating is like 2670 fet a they're probably the pre-tournament favorites and I'm going to tell you how this went now you may be sitting there wondering Gotham call me leevy Gotham what is preventing Hikaru from telling you every single move to make well that's the interesting thing that's my role I don't really know what my role is when my teammate is Hikaru I think it's to choose the openings be good with time management and suggest ideas here and there that's basically my role cuz he's better than me and he's going to be better than me in 90 out of a 100 positions maybe in 10 of them I'll come up with a better idea than him I maybe that's even generous so the matchup format is we play two games of Rapid chest we play 10-minute games and um if we need to we play an Armageddon so this was game number one Jordan and Eric opened up with E4 and hikaro let me choose the opening and I went for a caroan you know he uh his his hikaru's objective was was obviously to give me a level of comfort in the opening so that we're not just playing the night ORF Sicilian where I would just be sitting there going okay Hikaru yes yes I'm going to make every right so C6 and um the grand Masters uh chose the two knights caroan which is Knight F3 Knight C3 a very solid line here Kar and I deliberated a little bit and ultimately went with Bishop G4 there are many lines here Knight F6 used to be playable but white has claimed I think quite a considerable Advantage after E5 the position is very unpleasant so instead of that we go Bishop G4 we trade the Knight and then we're going to develop our position like this white attacks we take on F3 and now you can play E6 uh we played Knight F6 which is just a direct strike and we are actually trying to get them to play this move E5 a lot of newbies might be sitting there going what about that move and then D4 actually structurally white is uh in a lot of trouble here because black is going to immediately play C5 Knight C6 stockpile pressure and white needs to be a bit careful which is why most of top level games generally put you know a bishop over here and then Castle they play very very solidly uh we played G6 because we wanted to put our Bishop on the G7 square and then we played E6 because they were attacking our Pawn in the center of the board and uh now we have to you know get moving right we're going to play here and we're going to Castle and that's exactly what we did Rook D1 and Castle you will notice our position is Rock Solid very very solid White's objective in this position is going to be to play D4 not E5 also not taking because why would you give us this very strong position where we will just get very natural development so white is not going to take or push white is going to leave the pawn there and now we have a lot of moves um and essentially here in the opening Hikaru was like yo Levy play whatever you want and I was like Hikaru that's terrifying please don't tell me to play on my own I'm playing against two people who are much better than me but he was like you could literally do anything and I was like really even Queen A5 Queen A2 no sorry I'm not a Gotham subscriber I'm I'm Gotham himself so Knight bd7 and now the grand Masters played this move A4 just sort of arbitrarily taking some space and and a very important moment here is do we play A6 do we play A5 or do we not even touch the queen side right ultimately we went for A5 I don't think there's a huge difference uh this feels nice because it just doesn't let white walk into our position I think we definitely should avoid allowing white to get the pawn to A6 computers love this type of stuff they love to attack the base of the pawn chain and I just you know rather than doing all of that we decided to play A5 and now the grand Masters played H4 right so they're trying to create a samide attack very important moment for us you know if I was playing here on my own I might consider this move H5 just don't let them Advance hikaro was like no what you got to do in this position was quite instructive he was like the only real plan for for black is to take everything in the center play Knight F6 and sit just wait white has to come to us white is the one that played this line white has a slight Advantage white has to prove the point white either has to create an attack here or here and hikaro was like you can sit and wait that's what you're supposed to do uh he also said taking with the pawn was a slight inaccuracy because white could play Queen E3 when I was like what that is bananas uh but uh they took and we went here and basically what higo said was look they're trying to play H5 so now we go here and now we sit and wait and according to the computer white is a little bit better because white is going to put the bishop on G5 but how is white going to break through and yeah it started becoming pretty clear after a lot of shuffling and just being Rock Solid look at look at us we're just literally shuffling the pieces back and forth right we're just literally moving the pieces back and forth it's really hard for white to actually do anything in this position because white has to get in with a pawn break but every single pawn move for white weakens the position and black is completely solid everything in our position is protected it looks scary and then they went here and traded Bishops and that was their key mistake so that was their key mistake once they remov the bishop pair from the board we just got a very powerful uh Knight they can't go G4 we go here they can't go C4 we go there and the rest of the game was sort of spent shuffling look at why White's time look at White's time hikaro was just kind of telling me you could literally move back and forth there is nothing you can do here and uh yeah slowly but surely the guys got kind of low on time and ultimately we made a draw and that's kind of instructive it's kind of instructive that white has absolutely nothing in this position it's kind of nice I mean we we sort of to you know we sort of neutralized them completely which I don't think is a bad result with white uh with black rather so we had to play again uh the game review in this game said we both played at 97% and you know uh it was a very very solid game and uh yeah life is good so here we go to game two now we have white and I was like I was thinking hey let's put this game away hikaro asked me what opening I wanted to play I said hikaro I want to play the Vienna but I don't want to play the Gambit and you say go what the Gambit but Gotham I win all my games in this opening yeah but your opponents aren't two 2700 level players okay Hansen's like 2610 but you know 3100 online not his rapid but his Blitz and bullets the the problem with the Vienna Gambit is top level Grand Masters are very well prepared and you're not really going to surprise them this opening is extremely effective for 99% of the rating ladder but I said hey he Caro why don't we play G3 and this is another way to play the Vienna and basically you just play Bishop G2 you play D3 you play Knight E2 right and then you uh you know you you keep a lot of pieces on the board and I and I said let's go for this so they thought for they played Bishop C5 we played here they played Knight C6 Knight E2 and um I think this was Jordan van forest's Innovation A5 I think this is very much like a Jordan move uh and also black is not rushing to Castle so I had a feeling that they were going to try to attack us over here also here my internet disconnected and uh I lost 20 seconds and then I lost another 38 seconds uh but luckily I I managed to you know recover um so I played you know we played H3 to stop n G4 stuff and then we play D3 to get our Bishop out and then here black played A4 and to me to me that's a weird move um and we were kind of talking about it with hikaro like we didn't understand why uh you might remember the last game when white played A4 like this makes sense because you're trying to instigate and but what's the what are you in like if we just play A3 which is what we did isn't this Pawn just a target for the rest of the game that's what we couldn't understand uh but they played it so clearly they seemed confident and then they played H6 so they're still not castling they're disallowing Bishop G5 they might also be preparing G5 but then we both castled and and and and that was that um and so in this position the major idea for white is to get some sort of f4 going G4 F4 Knight G3 and so to do that you've got to move the bishop out of this diagonal to me by far the most natural move is just to play King H2 I played King H2 and then hearo started being like well actually maybe King H1 was better like I would never play King H1 because it feels much more natural to defend my pawns with my king but with the King on H1 you are more susceptible to various like knigh hops like there's sacrifices and then there's like moves like Bishop G4 and that's you know the king is safe here but on H2 it's not so I don't know and uh hikaro was kind of telling me you know maybe it was better to go to H1 but we followed up with our plan right now the position's getting very very complicated very tense and here the boys played Knight to D4 jumped into our position and hikaro was like okay they're trying to justify this by advancing the pawns behind the movement of the Knight makes sense all right so here we started thinking all right we started thinking we thought for a while and basically hikaro said if you want the game to be decisive you should go for F5 someone's going to lose black will play C6 we will play G4 black will play D5 we will play Knight G3 we will start our attack black will start their Counterattack on us and very tough to predict what's going to happen here uh the alternative to that was to take the Knight now taking the Knight we can anticipate that black will take with the bishop because if they take with the pawn they lose control of the center and they also block their Bishop very important positional thing for a lot of beginners Pawn takes makes sense because you attack the Knight right level one chess is I take back and I attack the Knight it's got to be a good move but as you get better in chess you go wait a minute then I double my pawns I lose Central presence and I block my Bishop so I do three things wrong but me attack horse right and then here Hikaru spotted I didn't see this but it justifies the move night it it justifies our whole plan thus far take take oops oops that's a free pawn and it kind of I was suspicious of this plan and you may be wondering how is that a free Pawn well if they play Rook takes A4 we play Pawn C3 targeting the rook and the bishop and you might say but so what Levy so what this is that's not a free Pawn Yeah but it might as well it might as well be a free Pawn because we're going to get the bishop PA we're going to go B4 Bishop B2 and black is going to be in a lot of trouble this position is very bad for black so they went ef4 and then came up with a very cool idea and the very cool idea was this the move P this is this is what happens this is why team chess is so interesting you pair two strong Grand Masters together they come up with some really interesting ideas Pawn takes F4 Bishop takes F4 and they came up with Rook A5 Rook A5 and the idea of Rook A5 is to swing the look at that look at that to Target our King they still can't take the Knight because of C3 now we're in trouble except it's team chess and Hikaru does what Hikaru does in this position and finds a move that is so brutal it's a move that stops Rook H5 and it's not G4 and it's not Bishop F3 the move is Bishop to D2 a backwards bishop move that attacks The Rook prevents Rook A4 because of C3 and Rook H5 is no longer possible because when we move the bishop here our Rook opened up targeting the Knight which would be defending the Rook so we would play Rook takes F6 and then Queen takes Rook that's just what Hikaru does man Bishop D2 is absolutely ridiculous Bishop D2 is Absol I mean that is a cold shower and the tide shifts they thought for 3 minutes they thought for 3 minutes and 39 seconds on this move cuz they realized their position was in bad shape and they went Rook to E5 now here I got really confident I just thought it was over I was like we're up a pawn we're going to consolidate what we should have done here is we should have traded their Bishop that's what we should have done their Bishop is very strong and they can't go to A7 because of course we'll take the rook and this is great I mean this is a completely winning position much better not completely winning but much much better position for white um because we're just a clean Pawn up but instead of that we sort of were like ah we're just going to play KN C3 right and then they played D5 and all of a sudden the whole game shifted back and the point is that we're going to win a second Pawn but they have a lot of activity they're going to play something like Queen D7 all right and let's say we play like Rook B1 and then they're going to go take take and Rook E2 and uh whoa right what's happening here that's crazy how are we losing King H1 they're going to sack The Rook they're going to sack The Rook they're going to M us Queen H3 so all of a sudden D5 and our celebration was very shortlived we played Queen F3 and now we had a massive simplification and at the end of it they Aon up but he aru was like we can't lose that's very interesting that Hikaru sensed danger and decided you know what I just got to you know and maybe we could have played Pawn takes but the best thing that we could have done there is it's very instructive we should have traded their Bishop we should have traded our okay Bishop for their really really good Bishop it's just instructive it's an instructive moment we should have played Bishop C3 faster uh and they found this really critical idea D5 saying we're down a pawn but we need to open the position create activ it for ourselves and when it's all said and done we go to this end game white is a pawn down but black has a very terrible structure so we just brought our King and uh this is just un losable for white because the pawns are so weak if this was here this is absolutely losable for white but because the structure is so bad they decided they have a minute and a half we have three almost four so we made a second draw very tense match it's all going to come down to the Armageddon friendly reminder Armageddon works by bidding so it's 10 minute with 10-second bonus but Armageddon is 5sec bonus and it's that way because it's team chess you got to talk about it so it's a slightly different Armageddon format you wager what time you want to start with right so you wager hey I want seven minutes but I want to play black but if the game is if I'm playing Black I and I draw wins me the game Draw odds so you take less last time on the clock but you're playing for two results we bid 736 they bid 557 that's aggressive so they're going to start the game with black but they are going to start the game with four minutes less than us now remember they get 5 Second bonus from the very beginning but and hiar is an experienced player but I was very happy with myself here I called this opening the thing is when you're playing Armageddon and you're playing white what you need to do is stay up on the clock and complicate the game you need to play an opening where exchanges will not happen Pawn trades will not happen and there is a lot of imbalance and a lot of complications hikara asked me what do you think we should play I said I think we should play the English the point is that the English is an opening where you can play a really long game and if black plays E5 which is one of the most confrontational englishes you can play a reverse Sicilian and those lines are like you know 8 to 10 moves of theory and then you got to play chess hear like the idea he said yeah let's play C4 that's what we did they played E5 I anticipated they would play E5 because it's the it's the main line and I've been studying a lot of this English recently uh Knight C3 Knight F6 and now we play a reverse Sicilian with G3 and they try to go for this D5 which is exactly what you're supposed to do in the Sicilian we're kind of playing a reverse Sicilian Dragon if you will so D5 take take but then here we were like hey they might not go Knight B6 or Knight F6 which are you know just normal Retreats they might play Bishop C5 and I realized like oh yeah Bishop C5 is a very critical very forcing line and that's what they did because they're strong right they're strong players so castles castles and now Hikaru recommended we play the specialty we play the specialty by the way some of you may be wondering about Knight takes E5 it's a move but it leads to a very forcing line and um we decided that rather than playing that forcing line let's keep pieces on the board now hikaro here recommended a move which he used to make the candidates couple of years ago Hikaru was playing Grandmaster yeno Russian player and in the C in the Grand Prix hikaro played this move Queen C2 yeno went back to F6 and lost not right away like in the future so hikaro has very fun memories of this move Queen to C2 the critical defensive idea here for black is to play Knight to D4 Force this queen back and then put that Knight there so to play like this this is the critical defensive idea for black and if you play oh actually it's Knight D4 takes Knight B4 like this but they did this they played this night there first and I was trying to figure out what's the difference right because like I just said what you're supposed to do is take then here then Queen B1 then here Knight E4 the game goes on but they played here first now we played Queen B1 and here hikaro and I spent two minutes and 50 seconds which was really bad really bad we were trying to calculate like can we play Knight E1 we ended up rejecting Knight E1 because of how strong Bishop G4 was I was actually happy to sort of point that out hikaro agreed with me uh and he he said yeah Bishop G4 is a problem then we were calculating A3 but after Knight C2 Knight D4 the guys can take our rook and our Knight is hanging and if we move the Knight their Knight escapes so we were like wait a minute we can't do that so then we thought about playing A3 and Rook A2 but that's also bad because they come here and then they come they they bring the Knight out so we were stuck and then finally after 2 minutes and 40 seconds we were like you know what let's just take and put the night here and you know what we messed up the difference in where black moves first black has to go here because if black does what they did in the game we had to play Queen E4 that was our mistake not Queen B1 we were not supposed to reach we were supposed to put the queen in the center threatening the pawn and also putting the queen on the C4 square that was what we did wrong we made that mistake so we accidentally stumbled into the same position then spent 246 we had a 4minute Time advantage and now it's gone now we're up 2 minutes that's it so very very tense E4 Knight E4 if we draw this game we lose so we have to win the game now we try to keep pieces on the board and try to keep the time Advantage 706 457 now it's an English right it's an English so we're going to use the queen side we're going to play Bishop D2 Queen C2 Rook E1 Rook C1 bring our pawns forward put our Knight on C5 these are all ideas in the position they play H6 they spent a lot of time on that move but it was to prevent Bishop G5 now we got to continue to build our time Advantage Queen C2 we get our pieces off the back rank we're going to put Rooks where they belong and we're going to start advancing and play Knight C5 they are going to go here strengthening their Center develop these three pieces and probably bring the bishop back this way okay Rook e eight now we're very close to getting our Knight stuck or at least losing this Pawn so we played Rook E1 they played A5 so every every single game they've played they've made an a pawn move it's very much uh Jordan style right this game A5 A4 first game of the match A4 very interesting right a lot of flank Pawn pushes we played A3 the reason we played A3 is because if we don't they're going to keep pushing we're going to lose control of the queen side so A3 Queen E7 Rook C1 C6 making improving moves we have a two minute 40 second time Advantage which is very very important in the Armageddon now we play H3 again we just have to keep the game going right they play Bishop F5 now we have a three minute time Advantage now we hop the Knight to C5 and we are very very close uh to uh you know to to to crashing through on the queen side hikaro here spotted Knight E3 very nasty move trying to get us to take take and block our Knight but he wanted to go take take F4 and this is really complicated position but that is one of the ideas so Rook d8 now we advance on the queen side and we're making progress now to very tense moment if black does nothing if black just sits we are going to play Queen C4 and then we are going to play B5 or we're going to just take this Pawn but in general the idea is this it's to crash through on the queen side and pressure white pressure black rather with this bishop right our Bishop is better than this bishop this bishop is sort of staring at nothing whereas we are going to we have very natural improving moves so sensing desperate times call for desperate measures sensing that they are down about three minutes here they lash out H5 it's now 245 versus 5 533 the Armageddon wager is coming back to bite them right H5 they're trying to attack us we decide you know we're thinking do we play H4 do we not so we decide Queen C4 now with the idea of B5 with the idea of Queen D4 all of these ideas are on the table now they make a big decision what's interesting is that this is the top computer move and they liked this move Jordan and Eric Hikaru hated this move they took our kn so they G they got rid of our Knight but they lost their bishop and now the plan is very simple and if we trade these pieces we're going to keep playing B5 and Etc so what's interesting is that the computer actually didn't mind this trade for black Hikaru really really did not like it for black I mean he thought we're just crashing in but that's the beauty of Chess we can have this debate forever and ever they played Queen D7 right now they're attacking us here and now a key defensive resource for them we are better in this position no matter what unless they find this move and they find this move with two seconds on the clock excellent defensive measures from Jordan and Eric Knight C7 Hikaru called this move a brilliant defensive move the idea is to get out of the way of this stop B5 and even put the Knight on B5 and then go here later so now we are in a very very tough spot we are up 3 minutes but what are we going to do here and here came up with an idea I'm very proud of this idea I said hikaro what about Bishop F3 giving up the H3 Pawn for the H5 pawn and our and my idea was to open the H file just to have an attack just to get an attack going my other idea was that if we play Bishop F3 and they play G6 I love this that looks really nice and maybe in the future we'll play G4 I'm not saying right now I'm not saying we're going to do this right now but in the future Maybe maybe we have something like this Knight B5 and G4 and this is going to be our idea and that's what we're going to try to do and maybe not you know maybe Rook G1 they can just take on H3 but that's the point like let's let's go for a little something like let's make them make a difficult decision so they did and they swapped pawns with us I was very happy with this because now we have a development now we actually got somewhere hikaro found this idea to bring the queen over to G5 and we have a very simple plan and this plan is to go here Rook H1 move the bishop and Checkmate them now the boys found another very nice defensive idea Bishop out of the position to take control of this diagonal now I said hikaro what about Bishop F3 King G2 he said that's probably the best plan Bishop F3 I'm listen I'm doing my part I am happy to suggest ideas Bishop to D5 King to G2 defending this looking for Rook H1 they have a minute and 42 they're still down two minutes this is the nature of Armageddon if they draw the game they win but if we win the game we win that's why they have less time Que Queen E7 we can't trade Queens so we keep the queen on the board Queen E5 we can't trade Queens we got to keep the queen on the board F6 and now a very big moment Hikaru really wanted to play Rook C5 I really wanted to play Rook H1 I was like Hikaru I think we have a winning idea with Rook H1 and the point is Rook H1 looks really dangerous because they can take here and that looks really dangerous for us so first we calculated queen h8 king F7 Bishop takes D5 check Rook takes D5 and we don't have Rook E1 because our Queen is hanging o because our Queen is hanging so then we calculated Rook H1 Queen E2 Queen H7 King F7 Bishop D5 Rook D5 this apparently works because of Rook E1 but what if cd5 now we don't have anything Rook E1 if this we have some check but there's nothing there so I thought about Rook H1 and maybe this works maybe we can get you know Queen H7 King F7 Bishop D5 cd5 but we have to play Rook H6 which is not findable not from a distance the idea is Queen G6 if the queen goes to G4 we have Rook H4 it's not finable all right not finable so we spent a bit of time we ultimately went with Rook C5 but we lost a minute now we're only up one minute on the clock very tense game they get their King out of danger we double up on the C file right we're just trying to make some progress they play Queen F5 and now the guys have just totally figured us out we go King G1 getting out of the pin right so that's not possible here and all of a sudden it looks like we are about to get mated but we have Queen F3 and we are safe we are safe and this is a little bit under attack black only has 30 seconds they give us a check they get out of the position with the queen now we have Bishop F4 and here hikaro comes up with a nasty idea we calculated here very quickly Bishop C7 deflecting The Rook away from this Pawn if this we get in with the Rook Rook C8 and what we had calculated was Rook D5 but in this position they have the brilliant Rook C7 if we take this queen C7 Queen E4 King F7 Rook B5 we're M we lose the game on H1 however if we play Rook takes D5 Rook C7 we have Queen E4 check F5 and then we take if they go here now we have Queen F5 check and we win so the only move here is Knight C7 here here here Insanity insanity but they play Queen E8 with 11 seconds on the clock and we leave our Bishop hanging here with Queen F3 this was given a brilliant move by the computer this idea is just designed to play Queen G4 or queen F5 they can't take on C7 if they play Rook C7 we can even take and then we have Queen F5 and Rook D7 and we're getting in King H6 we have Rook D4 Rook H4 so we are getting to the king queen F3 was a was a sneaky a cheeky little find I would have played Bishop F4 here if I was playing and I would have probably lost all the advantage and went on to lose the game Queen F3 Rook H6 and now we go for an attack we we thought down here to 16 seconds Queen G4 Rook D7 and now cold cool Comm and collected in this position I was thinking Rook G7 but that's only good enough for a draw because after King G7 Queen D7 Queen F7 if we take the Rook we lose see I would have what I would have done here against the Grand Master I would have panicked P car says what do you do just just Rook C5 Rook we're just winning and here a nice little tactic finishes the game we just take the pawn and when they check us and take one back Rook is hanging Rook is hanging check and The Rook cuts off any king move so it's check we're going to take the Rook what a game that was a very very fun game and all of this opened up cuz I I I really like that Bishop F3 idea and and and Hikaru blessed it and I was very happy about that and you know hikaro was like ridiculous I mean queen F3 very nice idea just leaving the bishop to hang but it's all instructive right and if you if you're curious about the full VOD and kind of the way we were exchanging ideas and some of the bands are there um I think I did a good job I think I did a good job it's a really weird situation in an event because uh I mean theoretically hikaro can just tell me what piece to move to what Square that would be ridiculous but I would like to think I you know I contributed uh I said we should play the English I think it worked out perfectly we got a very complicated imbalance game which is basically exactly what you want in an Armageddon we had a complex fight it was very back and forth um and we move on to the semis and we will be facing Daniel nitzki and Robert Hess on paper Eric Hansen and Jordan van Forest might be the strongest team in the event on paper but Daniel nitzki and Robert has obviously going to be a very very tough match up as well uh this was a this was fun I mean I learned a lot I uh you know I learned a lot from this game this was a very very high level English battle uh the caroan game in the first game was very solid and you know the Vienna in the second game was also quite instructive how to how to complicate things you know when you're down material and time but hiar and I move on uh was very fun collabing for the first time in a uh in a while and um yeah I look forward to the semis that's all I have for you today get out of here

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 408,557

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

Id: EAXXW9WytKY

Length: 32min 29sec (1949 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2024