Viswanathan Anand's Best Chess Game Ever

vishwanathan anand known in the chess world by his nickname vichy is one of the greatest chess players of all time he is the pride of india he was the world champion for many years and for the last 30 years he's been competing in all the top level events playing all the grades from kasparov to carlson so how on earth do i choose one of his games to show us his best game ever well personally i think there's like three or four to choose from including his 2013 win against levon neranjan i will make a video about that game but i think this game takes the cake the setting is 1997. we are in switzerland in the beel chess festival and vichy has the white pieces against french grandmaster joel latier and i'll tell you why i think back then without the effect of the engine preparation prior to the game because now we have very strong computers this game shows the essence of vichy and his true brilliance let's go e4 latte plays d5 the scandinavian defense we have a trade and knight comes out to hit the queen now here black can play a variety of different things black can play queen a5 queen d6 all the way back to d8 these are all variations of the scandi the main line is queen a5 and vichy takes the center with d4 both of them get their king's knights out knight f6 knight f3 and basically black chooses where to put this bishop in a lot of positions you go to g4 f5 you develop like this with the two pawns and then you put the knight on d7 and move on with life vishy just takes the center he's doing what he does bishop to f5 now for a beginner a move that looks very standard here is just short castle i mean just you haven't developed yet right or bishop to target the queen or bishop out well vichy you know this is where the first wrinkle of the game becomes apparent because she plays knight to e5 which breaks a few opening principles uh in terms of you shouldn't move a piece two times in the opening well you should take those rules as a beginner but you should know when to break them not just when you're a you know an advanced player but when you're one of the one of the greats so the move knight e5 threatens bishop takes f7 or knight f7 and so for that reason we get e6 but there's a hidden reason behind this move and it has to do with the g4 square now vishy plays g4 so the game is already getting exciting he's essentially saying to his opponent um look i don't like your setup and i think that i can punish it based on the way i can set my pieces up i can avoid castling and all these basic principles and just go straight at you he didn't say all of that uh he it was silent they don't speak to each other in over-the-board chess bishop g6 and now vichy plays h4 so he's just he's just going in and the problem here for black is that normally you would play h6 so your bishop has a getaway square but that's a really bad move here because white takes your bishop now and now look what you've done to your pawns you've split them now this is a big weakness your pawn structure is very damaged you would much rather take back like this so your clump stays together and you have an open rook see that's the small difference and that's why lattier plays knight d7 immediately looking to trade knights so it's already getting exciting this is very uh non-standard opening play right so knight d7 knight d7 and h5 it looks like the bishop is all but trapped you know see you tomorrow great video for today but bishop e4 not so fast rook is under attack we can't take this guy because of the pin here people choose one of two things they either castle out of danger they play i mean f3 is not a very good move uh because black just goes bishop d5 that's kind of the other idea and here is really the second move and well rook h3 yeah uh this is gonna be an exciting game of chess which is why i chose it so the point is to obviously bring the rook somewhere on the third rank and black plays bishop g2 why would you go bishop g2 if white can just play rook g3 that doesn't make any sense right because now you'll just go back here's the point black is trying to force this rook to this square so that you will get one free move of development in the future it's a very refined idea you know you want to force that rook to g3 so that in the future you can win a tempo and develop faster sufficiency says to hell with your id i'm going to put my rook right here but isn't it just going to become a target yeah knight b6 hits the bishop mishi drops back knight d5 all right well vishy what are you going to do i mean you can't move your knight can't move your knight issue says i don't need to move my damn knight f3 what this year rook is hanging i know so what if he takes it huh bishop takes yeah there's no way out for this bishop bishop's trapped two pieces are better than a rook even if one of the pieces isn't yet taken it it will be so here's a few completely insane things that can happen from this position first of all let's just go down that rabbit hole takes takes bishop to a3 stunning move if you take it and then i take on c3 for example just king f2 this bishop's getting trapped don't worry it's gonna it's gonna happen now what if i'm clever and i throw in this like and if queen takes then this is a fork and it wins the rook yeah just queen d2 and even if this yeah it's all good just h6 and get the pawn out of danger if gh6 now you're not gonna be able to castle this way you'll be your king will be wide open all of this works out for vichy somehow what it what an insane idea i'll give you one more insane idea if if knight c3 takes takes block white is just down two pawns of course you will win this bishop but look what you have to do takes can't take with the rook because of the pin if queen takes then queen takes so you got to play king takes f3 yeah and white is better here what's just up a piece yes white does have a you know slight lack of pawns but you know otherwise the position is more or less okay well evidently f3 was quite a shock to joel lattier who played the move bishop to b4 stockpiling pressure on the night saying all right man i gotta you know i gotta i gotta put some serious pressure here before vishi gets my bishop all right put as much pressure as you want you could take this you could take this i'm gonna go for your bishop oh well joel tries to justify his setup by going like this and rook b1 from vichy vishy at this point is down upon but he's going to obviously win this this bishop on g2 this knight can take here at any point it wants but but black doesn't really want to do that black takes another pawn and here uh vichy can't take yet because if he takes let's not forget that this guy now loses a guard so knight e3 bishop e3 and well this is actually very bad for vichy he needs to make sure he gets two pieces for the rook not just one so if she stays patient plays the move rook takes b7 just rook comes down takes the pawn now here black played rook d8 if black plays just a natural move for example like castles how does black lose i'll take a sip you can think about it for a second correct always look for checks first bishop takes h7 and it's a greek it's not a greek gift it's a discovered attack on you know the queen gg you'll lose so you can't castle and if you can't naturally bring your king out of danger that's going to be a serious problem so that's why in the game uh mr lattier played the move rook to d.a and here vishy uncorked uh for me probably the greatest move of his career actually uh i mean there's been a lot of games but this move is amazing you can pause here and take a look one move crumples the black position i'll take another sip even i'm not really thirsty i just need to kill some airtime yeah h6 the hell does that do well let's say you're stubborn right and you don't want to take it you play the move g6 well um you know i actually just realized i would be spoiling the solution anyways i'm just going to show you what happened in the game it's the same move same exact move here's the idea the move in the game was g takes h6 uh and now i mean just an absolute stun i mean just a stunner stunner again you can pause if you'd like to find it bishop to g6 that is a free queen on d1 the bishop is hanging in two different ways and it all loses obviously you can't take the bishop because you're queen if you take the queen you can try to solve checkmate here rook takes e6 check can't take king f8 and now the bishop gets its first move of the game king here and bishop takes f7 as mate you can also win in a different way um if rookie six knight e7 i mean there's a variety of ways to win for example you can also go like this every piece you have gets involved here and and and black is just busted there is nothing that black can do here in the game after this absurd move bishop to g6 latier played knight e7 reinforcing the queen and now the bishop has three things trying to take it and vishi plays very simple chess trades the queens and plays the very nice rook d3 and this shows that despite the bishop being capturable by three different pieces the bishop guards the rook and if the rook takes the bishop will come out of danger safe and sound also not to mention that there is some you know back rank stuff here going on so in the game we got rook back to d8 vishy traded and played the very peaceful bishop d3 and it was in this position that the bishop escaped out of danger unscathed and despite being two pawns down or i guess despite being two pawns up joel lottier resigned the game and he resigned the game because he's going to lose his bishop on g2 and then he will lose everything else probably including his desire to play chess although it's been 23 years now so um you know maybe he recovered psychologically from the game but to me this game was sheer genius on on on the level of creativity uh on the level of just just brilliance i mean absolute brilliance from vichy this whole idea of rookie three uh all the way back to the opening when he put his rook here just stunning stunning and this is still kind of considered like the the consensus you know um best thing to do getting the bishop trapped on g2 i think isn't even necessarily fatal uh but it it it very well might be um i remember like engine scanning this afterward uh and realizing that you know if if you don't play into all this and maybe you try to get out with a move like bishop h3 to try to sacrifice the bishop at least for some pawns white has an opportunity uh sorry black has an opportunity to maybe get back in the game but still this move h6 continues to be incredibly strong because it just dislodges all the defense on this side of the board you can play moves like queen e1 for example looking for something on e6 later on down the line once you unpin your king so this game was absolutely genius and probably in the future unless you're already watching in the future i will show vichy's game against levon arenan when he played in 2013 but if there are other games that i'm missing a win against kasparov for example the many times that vichy played him uh the 2000 game against alexa shira for example let me do let me know them in the comments below uh vishy is an incredible person an incredible talent i'm i'm kind of honored to make a video about him uh he has one of the highest awards given by i believe by the uh by the government of india he's the only sports person to have won it uh which is incredible i think the name is the the uh the padma vibhushan if i'm not mistaken i'm sorry if i'm mispronouncing that uh and he's just i trust god by you know by all of the credentials and uh and all of the success of his career he is now 50 years old and he's still competing with the very very best so vishy takes the video today uh and if there's any other games that you'd like me to feature of his let me know in the comments below i'll see you in the next one

Channel: GothamChess

Views: 84,247

Rating: 4.9751701 out of 5

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Id: i-dkK4IBpgs

Length: 12min 56sec (776 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 10 2020