today we began the magnus carlson tour final it's day number one there's four players magnus versus
ding hikaru vs dubov the same format as we've seen throughout the event but the manchester
best of five and then the finals is best of seven the hikaru versus duboff storyline has some lore
obviously hikaru beat magnus uh and then was knocked out in the final by daniel dubov but
in the very next event uh it was actually hikaru who defeated dubov and eliminated him before the
playoffs even began so there is history there's no real bad blood uh but there obviously is
a tiny bit of drama and in the first game it was hikaru who early on played a very aggressive
system with black and didn't play queen takes d5 actually qd5 uh is the only move in this position
that apparently gets played hikaru said after the fact that uh he just had a bit of a lapse
he chose the wrong capture uh and the puzz and once again i should just remind everybody
that there is just just in case anybody's kind of slow to the action to begin with
um that the real problem here is that uh black's king is just way too weak after queen h5 uh duboff
did not even recapture the knight because of how powerful this attack is and got off to a
very quick win early on uh and it was in this position hikaru resigned because of uh all of
this pressure queen g6 is also just a devastating threat let me just show you if the queen moves
out of the way there's queen g6 check you can't even take it uh and it's mate it's simply mate
so a very quick one-nothing lead for daniel dubov uh those uh who very vocally for whatever reason
show their disdain for hikaru must have rejoiced but their celebration was very quickly cut short
in the second game hikaru was playing white and was pressuring dubov maybe a little bit early
but it was actually uh daniel who began a very powerful queen side counter play
of his own and here he played the move rook a7 now it looks like here there is simply perpetual after
queen f5 king g7 queen g4 uh it looks like you have to repeat moves if king h8 probably just more
of the same queen f5 and queen f6 it's actually white who's who is first to the attack here
and there's nothing for black so but king f8 and here the engine during live broadcast was saying
was screaming actually that the black is just completely winning but how how is that possible
uh when when when rook d1 is coming uh really the idea here uh is that if black plays queen a and
goes for this mate there's the stunning resource queen takes rook rook uh queen takes queen and
you fork you pick up the queen right back and your position is completely fine and you've stabilized
the difference of the move order apparently is the important thing here you have to play
rook d1 because there is nothing that black can do here black plays queen eight check and you
take and it's all the same but the difference the way it happened in the game apparently is
losing because black has rook a8 in this position defending everything and queen a7 with this idea
again now obviously here the game can continue with bishop d5 and there's there's chaos there's
there's various engine lines something that the players uh both understandably uh in their low
time situation were uh i don't know if just just overlooked or something but king e7 was the move
here and now we have our thumbnail we're about to have our thumbnail the whole namesake of this
video the checkmate blunder here daniel duboff simply missed the move queen jesus i don't know
if he missed it i don't know what happened but there's no way to defend mate you have to
play bishop e8 because you don't have a king move actually if you play king e8 you still lose i just
play queen here and i take so bishop e8 and now the great move rook d6 now sometimes giving away
two rooks for a queen is not the best but in this case because you're picking this up with check
because the king moves and you're picking this up with check and all the pawns fall you are just
completely winning there is there is nothing there um so after queen c7 rook d6 oh excuse me after
bishop v8 rook d6 he did not take on d6 he played queen c7 and well just like the thumbnail shows
queen c7 and he resigned because rookie six is made on the board a beautiful checkmate
defended like this so the king cannot take defended well the pin here uh and so it it
it's winning a a blistering checkmating attack there by hikaru doubling the rooks coming in with
both the rooks and the queen uh and dubov a big opportunity missed in the second game to stabilize
potentially even go up 2-0 and it is one to one in the third game i'm actually going to flip this
kikaru was dominating from the opening big queen side advancement knights crushing in the
center but here daniel played a ridiculous move bishop f6 a stunning stunning move which looks
like absolute gibberish but the point is that if you take this bishop uh white is gonna play
queen h6 and rook g3 and f4 f5 and it's actually not even so clear who is supposed to be winning
uh the engine if you let it run will tell you something but that's why engine analysis isn't
always great i only show the computer lines to actually show you how ridiculous things are
i never try to show engine lines to be like oh look at me i know everything more just like
this is so ridiculous what human can possibly find this ikaru not to be deterred actually got into a
position where there was a bunch of pieces hanging both the rook uh excuse me both the bishop and
the knight and here he played a move of his own sacrificing a rook to stabilize the position there
was a moment here where the knight could have simply gone to a1 and gotten hit with queen b2
i'm not going to look through all the moves but hikaru then stabilized the center like this this
is a completely winning position and after about 10 or 15 more moves dubois resigned and hikaru
took a 2-1 lead normally that's good enough because with two to one and the white pieces
in the last round you stabilize you play it safe everything is good you take it easy but daniel
found a ridiculous a beautiful endgame resource here bringing the knight back and allowing kikaru
to march this pawn up to b7 rook a1 rook 8 not a threat how is it not a threat look at this
because the knight gets trapped in the corner but there is no way for white to win it
because watch bishop a6 rook before rook b8 the knight is gone then the knight cannot move
but after rook b6 you force white to take with the bishop because if rook takes rook a6
so they take and rook b3 cuts off the king and it's a zukzwang why can't move a single piece
why can't i move the rook and why cannot move the bishop and as long as daniel with the king keeps
his king safe he doesn't play king f5 because then you actually can move the bishop you win and he
used the h-pawn to create a barrier for hikaru's king and here had hikaru walked his king back
there would have been rugby too king g won in check and then black would have simply played king
e7 or king g7 and white is simply out of moves uh and so in the game we had you know hikaru try
to get it into a rook in game but this is winning because this pawn is simply too weak and the pawns
are connected passers and the game is over two to two stunning comeback let's go to the blitz the
fifth game of the blitz well i see well the fifth game of the round rather the first game of the
blitz five plus three was relatively calm after four decisive games to get things going daniel
played his usual catalan kind of thing uh but then all the pieces got liquidated their queens were
traded the rooks were traded slowly all the rooks were traded some pawn advancement occurred but
black stabilized and then opposite colored bishops after some moves the game was drawn so kikora has
white it is game six the second game of the blitz and we have this position after a tense opening
two buff strikes in the center with d5 trying to create uh some sort of counter play f4 knight c4
after it takes takes bishop d3 it looks like bishop f3 is crushing for black i mean you're
simply picking up some pawns here with the threat of the rook as well and there's problems and you
are simply not going to solve them uh well that is until hikaru plays the brilliant bishop g6
trades the rook and plays knight d4 he gives away the pawn but uses an initiative of the knight
to force the black rook using this trade to force the black rook to be behind the pawn then he plays
b3 that kicks the knight away to an uncomfortable square somewhere and also make sure that there's
no back rank weakness the knight also cannot go to d6 because you'll run into bishop c5 winning
because after rook d7 you don't necessarily have rook d1 but you have very nagging pressure
on black although knight d6 uh maybe the game can actually continue uh it is kind of annoying rookie
3 rook d3 as well as rook c3 uh and other other moves first also like rook g1 and and pressure
along the side of the board if you plug it again into the computer it tells you it's fine it's
fine the position is equal uh the winning might be strong when i say it but uh white's got very
active pieces if the knight goes back to d6 so he decided to go to d2 with check and put the
knight on d2 defended by the rook on d7 here hikaru and maybe should have paused here finds
a fantastic resource rookie 3 to play rook c3 and rook c8 and duboff played b4 but these two pieces
are on the same diagonal as the bad boy on f2 and now we get bishop e1 knight f3 and bishop takes
b4 and now we have a queen side pawn majority if in any end game you have superiority on the queen
side to one two to zero one to zero three to one you've gotta use your pawns watch what happens
knight h4 bishop back to d3 doesn't want to get taken rogue d4 bishop c5 and we pick up
the pawn on a6 black plays e5 we start to push the pawns bishop takes h5 bishop b7 now there is a red
carpet so knight f5 rookie three excuse me rookie one bishop f3 looking for the trait of bishops
doesn't even matter push it push it push it the bishop dominates the entire knight from entering
rook c3 and here we trade because it is finally time to just push our pawns a quick repetition
here by the players and hikaru finds a fantastic tempo winning move with rookie 8 to play rook
b8 and stabilize the pawns and while there are three connected pass pawns on this side of the
board they are just not fast enough because we are three away from promotion king e6 a6 rook c7 b5
try to bring the king but the pawns are too strong and it was in this position that daniel
dubov resigned hikaru won the match by the score of uh well what would that be that would be two
two two and a half three and a half two and a half good thing that i'm doing this in one take because
i almost messed up my math there and he secured a first match victory in their best of five well
somewhere on the left hand side i also posted the day one recap of the magnus ding match whenever
you're watching this uh hopefully you enjoyed let me know your thoughts so far on the tournament
some of your favorite games uh and if you could replace one of the players in the field who would
you replace them with and why we're live every day 10 a.m eastern both hikaru's channel and my
own over on twitch if you're not there already openings courses in the link below as well as
discord and other beautiful links that you can check out and i think that's it enjoy have a good
rest of your morning afternoon evening be a good person be kind and i'll see you in the next video