there's one pretty cool thing about playing in the chess.com title tuesday tournament and it's
the fact that sometimes you get paired against absolute legends that happened a few weeks ago
when i got paired against alexis shirov he's a grandmaster of course and he was ranked number
two in the world in the early 90s in fact he won a match to set him up to play gary kasparov for the
world championship match but that never took place officially it's because of sponsorship
uh not being there but he actually wrote a book fire on board he wrote two books and he talked
a little bit more about things in depth and why it didn't happen uh i got a game against
him the next part of this video is going to be the video of me playing him but if you want to
skip ahead to the analysis you're more than welcome to do so i'll catch up with you then
and in the second round we get alexi shirov mr fire on board himself
well let's give it our all this is gonna be pretty cool this is pretty cool not gonna lie
what is he gonna play the shiro variation alexis shirov literally has a variation named after him
knight c3 okay so he's playing this way this is pretty cool uh i'm gonna play e6 here it's the
main move this is very cool we'll see how we do we gotta play fast i feel like shirov is it will be a
little slow with the mouse if we get to a time scramble so i need to play fast and play solid
knight h3 i have never seen that move
common idea here is queen a5 queen a6 to trade the queens
of course i'm star struck i mean you do you understand who i'm playing this is crazy i'm
playing like a total legend queen b5 is also interesting i feel like queen b5 might invite
some fire on the board so let's see let's see if he allows me so i'm letting him double my b
pawns but i'm gonna get the open c file i'm gonna play mr fire on board with fire on the board
yes this is indeed sure of the god exactly
he's thinking we've made mr shiroff think he's down 25 seconds early
we take knight c3 this is the really cool thing about this tournament is that you play just
absolute beasts i think a6 is a little slow but i play b4 he goes here a6 what is this idea
i'll play a6 i'm not i don't know what is his idea
that's his idea anyway okay well i have to play b4 but at least i stopped this but that's not
even under threat which is why i thought this plan was weird don't i just play knight c6 now
this just looks good for me okay he's trying to put his knight here
okay rook c8 obviously to fight on the c file i'm not convinced
oh he might have a5 rook a4 so i should have played a5 because now he might go here himself
he's not playing moves i really like which could be good or bad i don't know knight
a5 now because it takes i have knight b3 if he plays here i take take and then i play bishop b4
i think i caught him with knight a5 i think i might have caught him a little bit now let's
look at knight b3 or knight c4 or just b3 oh that looks kind of nice b3 and knight c4 oh
i like this very much what's up enigma how are you oh this looks very nice
getting the positional clamp here i think he's not so thrilled with his position
knight c4 oh this looks great for black now this looks fantastic ah but but i missed of
course i missed that move but it looked great for a move now i probably have to go back
about f6 again i'm just trying to create fire on board against the man himself okay take take
i really don't want to play knight back to a5 if i play knight back is he gonna go here
okay if he does i'll just take it i don't like that for him anyway
actually that's fine because then after it'll just go knight c4
this is why you can't play a guy named fire on board i've said that like 40
times already so i need to knock it off okay let's go knight h6 this is the idea knight f4
king f7 is he actually going to take this pawn there's no way that just does oh my god
cool thank you very much for the donation i will share the court wait he just gave me this pun
didn't just give me this or knight h4
this is good for me knight g2 is a threat
it's not a threat anymore it was a threat now let's go bishop d6 wait i'm i think i'm just
beating him which is weird that's not really supposed to happen i think he's just blundered
knight g2 by the way wait naichi 2 rook h8 here he has bishop f4 and then if i take
okay that he didn't blunder anything never mind how dare i say he blundered something
let me take this
can i go for rook c4
is this rook c4 rook h7 here yes e6 hanging
what if i take and play knight c what if i put my knight back on c4
the knight back on c4 he goes here knight g7
let's go here first
okay what about knight c4 or let me take this guy first and then go knight c4
c4
yeah let's go here yes check but then i go king see give it what is this oh
i just forgot he had this move
that's annoying
that's annoying i just totally missed that idea it's fine i don't think i'm lost
it's just a very unpleasant position to defend with like no time on the clock but
and i immediately hang this pawn too
should have probably left myself more time huh
this could be something
there's just no threats i'm not actually threatening anything which is a problem
oh what am i doing why didn't i that was my whole plan oh i think i subconsciously actually
uh what a
just got low on time let's analyze this game well obviously a little bit of a tilting game there at
the end but overall i think i can be happy with my performance now we started out with
the karo khan and it's important to note that the super grand master does play the advanced
car con which is what i always advocate and he actually plays the line that's in my course
you know you can make a joke here that he um you know he wrote he saw my course or something like
that but grandmasters all agreed that this is a very challenging variation in the kara khan
but fun fact uh knight c3 e6 and g4 is known as the shira variation and a lot of variations
named after shirov involve a very early g4 now just for fun here i'll show you one of
the lines of this variation c5 attacks the center h4 to trap the bishop h5 to not let that happen
knight f4 looking to take this bishop and damage the structure so you go back sacrificing this pawn
let's stop piling your pressure on the center here bishop b5 pins the knight to the king and knight
e7 reinforces and one of the most fun variations here is the move bishop h6 i just thought i'd
share this with you because it's so funny looking uh it targets here and you can't take
because smothered mate now black is fine if black knows what he's doing but just a fun variation
so more or less normal middle game i have to say knight h3 caught me a little bit by surprise uh
here queen takes h4 is possible i actually could have gone for this but i was a little bit nervous
i'm not gonna lie to you uh and and i just didn't want to invite any tactics against somebody who's
this good at them and i went for this kind of novel idea i made this up at the board actually
uh queen a6 is theory but i made this up over the board uh and i and i liked the fact that i
had the open c file so i wanted to create a little bit of chaos i like what he did here and for the
majority of the middle game i thought i was doing quite well i thought i was playing logical moves
uh i was taking advantage of you know his inaccuracies i locked the queen side structure
and probably maybe the the most important moment of the game the the most fighting moment of the
game was around here uh where he took my pawn but in doing so he opened up my rook and he actually
opened up uh the king's side for me to play on and i if you actually look back i was playing quite
well i was playing pretty confidently uh knight takes h4 creates a very cool threat which i talked
about in the video you know for example rook b1 there is this really cool move knight takes g2
and if he takes this i take and if he doesn't take let's say he plays king e2 well k2 is very
bad but like king f1 for example um i just trade everything down and i'm up a pawn so i would be
winning here and i would be confident that i'd win this game um but he actually right here started to
freak me out with going for this counter play and i sort of backed up now actually this plan which
i was talking about there uh it works it actually works um there's a small thing i have to throw in
the move bishop takes f4 so in the game i had calculated knight g2 takes takes and he would
take with the bishop hitting my bishop and i can't take two pieces at the same time but i should have
taken first and then i should have gone for this and this is actually winning for black
and so he would have to go here and i would have to take his pawn i actually had a chance to be up
just a clean pawn with pressure on alexis shiroff and apparently here white has only one move not
to be much worse and that move is bishop h6 which is a ridiculous move but the point is that if i go
after his bishop he checks me he takes my knight and he's able to take an initiative over here and
this could be very very bad for me um but i got freaked out and i spent all my time so it's a good
lesson you know for all of you i don't spend all your time and i started just freaking out
when i didn't have to i mean i could have just you know stayed calm and focused and
worked on potentially dealing with his weaknesses but i freaked out a little bit
uh was a little bit deer in the headlights even here a move like king e7 uh you just kind of
hide the king and everything is protected but i got low on time he started winning my pawns and
rather than consolidating here uh i did something crazy i played knight v6 instead of knight b2 so
uh like i said you know deer in the headlights uh and once he picks up this pawn there i don't
believe there was another moment i tried to create some counter play but notice what he
does he plays very instructive chess he plays g4 because he assumes that i'm gonna play in
the center and he's right and then he's able to create this beautiful outpost for his knight so
he's anticipating all of my moves in counter play before i can get it he locks my structure and he
goes directly for my weakness and all these moves tie together because that protects that so i can't
even win this because of this uh and you know once he starts picking up material i
don't believe i had anything else here uh i could have tried to resist a little bit more
but probably long term he would have broken through although you know it's not so simple
i remember if rook a7 go back and it's not so easy for him to make progress but that is blitz
i lost the pawn and i ended up losing my knight and that's why i resigned in the final position
but very interesting game figured i would share this with you uh in this tournament i also
actually had a game against godakomsky which was a super super long game ah man playing these super
grand masters is tough but it's really fun to do it entitled tuesday i always hope i can get a win
obviously i don't even remember how long ago that was at this point maybe six months i had that
title tuesday where i beat peters fiddler uh and luang liam and i do have those videos up
but uh yeah i'm gonna keep uh gonna keep trying to keep doing my best and games like this motivate me
and they show me that i can actually you know hang with the grand masters when i'm fully focused so
hope you enjoyed this video uh and leave uh leave a comment let me know uh let me know
who your favorite grandmaster is i'll catch you in the next video