Hi there! Today is the birthday of
Magnus Carlsen, possibly the greatest
chess player of all times! :) And that's why of
course, in light to congratulate him with
all the great achievements that he had
with all the nice games that he keeps
playing, for our enjoyment. And at the
same time, I wanted to show something
really great from the chess practice of
Magnus Carlsen to you. And I have
selected the best game that Magnus
Carlsen played ever. At least I think.
it's one of them, because it's really
beautiful and instructive. He played this
game against Judit Polgár, which is also
a pretty interesting thing because this
game was played between, arguably, the
best male and female chess players
of all time! And moreover, it was a
blindfold game, so they were playing it
without looking at the chessboard, which
makes it even tougher for chess players
for sure. I'm Igor Smirnov,
International Grandmaster and a chess coach
from the Remote Chess Academy, and
without further ado, let's go to the game! :)
Carlsen is playing White, while Polgar is
Black. And currently it is white to play.
So what can we see right now?
White sacrificed a pawn and now White is ahead
in development, but at the same time
Black's position is also quite solid.
Black has a powerful bishop in the
center and right now Black is attacking
the White's pawn on b2.
How would you play in such a situation
if you're playing white? Just think about
it and try to come up with a few guesses
of which moves would you consider here
if you're White. And now let's check out
what happened in the actual game. All of
a sudden, Carlsen, instead of protecting
the b2-pawn, he played c5 sacrificing
another pawn, which Black can easily
capture either with his Queen or bishop.
Now what's the point of the sacrifice?
The idea is that White doesn't want to defend.
Instead, White finalized already the
opening development and it is time to
come up with attacking plan of the
middlegame. And therefore, Carlsen thinks
how to go forward and start attacking.
And that's the point of the move c5.
The reason is
What wants to deflect Black's queen
from the 6th rank, where it protects
the knight on f6, and after that, White
will be ready to capture that knight,
destroying Black's castling position. Although
Black can capture the pawn with
her bishop in that case it won't help
anyway, because White can continue with
Na4, attacking the queen
and the bishop of Black, and therefore
anyway the queen will have to go away
from the 6th rank. So ultimately it
will end up to a position similar to
what happened in the game. And that's why
let's go back to the actual game. In the
actual game, once White played c5, Black
captured with the Queen and then white
realized his original idea. He played Bxf6.
And then gxf6.
Now we have a very interesting position
where white already sacrificed two pawns
for the attack, while at the same time we
can see that there are no White's pieces
around Black's king. And they are no where
near. So it looks a bit sudden like how
can White create a powerful attack if White
doesn't have any pieces around or close
to Black's king. But pay attention to one
interesting fact. If you focus your
attention on the right half of the board,
you would notice that Black currently
has no pieces there, and it's very
difficult to bring...to transfer Black's
pieces towards the kingside. White found
a way to hamper Black from doing so
even more, while playing Nd5. Now
you may notice that this knight on d5, is
not only attacking the pawn on f6,
which is certainly a good thing for
White, but at the same time it prevents
Black's queen from going backward to
e7 where it could potentially
protect Black's kingside. And finally
the d5-knight is blockading the pawn
on d7, making it harder for
Black to establish coordination between
the kingside and the queenside. Anyway
let's see what happened after that. Black
played d6, trying to
bring the bishop, the light-squared Bishop
into play. And White continued with Qh5.
Now White can start bringing pieces towards
Black's king on the kingside, while Black can
hardly do the same thing. Black played Kg7
because the f6-pawn is still
hanging and White continued with
Be4, with a direct checkmate threat.
Black countered it with h6. And
White can bring up one more piece into
the attack by playing Rc1, which is
threatening Black's queen. And at this
point, it already looks like it's time
for Black to resign because in case
if the Black's queen goes away somewhere..
let's say Qa5, here White has
a final combination which wins the
game on the spot. It's Rxc8, to
eliminate the last piece which
controlled some squares on the kingside.
And now Black takes back the White's rook
White can continue with Qf5,
and we can see the Black's
king is defenseless. White is threatening
Qf6+ or Qh7+ and it's
going to be checkmate soon. So at this
point it looks like White is just
winning and it's time for Black to
resign because the queen is attacked and
the only logical move to the queen
somewhere is losing immediately. At this
exact moment of time, Judit Polgar
proved that she is also a great player
and she found a shocking resource - the
move Bxf2+!
So what's the point of this idea?
Well, first of all, this is a check to White's king,
so White has to react somehow
and if White makes the most natural
just by capturing that bishop,
Black would capture the White's c1-rook which left
unattended, unprotected and Black
and capture it. So already we need
some material. And even more
importantly, after that Black can finally
bring one of his pieces to the kingside
and hold his position there. And
now it's just winning for Black. Black has
extra material and she protected
her kingside. As you can see, the chess
games can be really tricky and sometimes
one trick, your source can
turn the situation to an opposite angle. :)
At the same time, this trick is not so
difficult to calculate and therefore,
Carlsen just stayed cold-blooded and simply
retreated with the King. Now Black made
another interesting move - it's Qd4
not only removing queen from danger but
at the same time, attacking White's bishop
on e4 and now it looks like White either
has to trade off the bishops or waste some
time to protect the bishop. However,
Carsen found a clever way to not only
protect the bishop, but at the same time
continuing his attack. This is a
multi-purpose move Qh4! And you can
see the Queen works in two directions:
it's protecting the bishop on e4 and at
the same time making threats of
Qxf6+ with deadly threats. So Qh4 is an
excellent move, which just really wins
the game from for White. Because now it's
really difficult for Black to defend.
Anyhow Polgar tried to continue the
battle as she played f5, also removing the
pawn from venture and at the same time,
attacking the White's bishop, and the bishop
cannot go away because the Queen will
will be exchanged. However White can go
inside with Qf6+ and now
finally White reached the Black's king and
the game should be over soon.
So now White starts to the direct attack of
Black's product. After these exchanges,
with checks, Kg7, finally White
simply took the bishop on f2, gaining
an extra piece and getting a winning
position. Black played e4, trying her last
chance, the last trick to push the pawn
forward and somehow disorganize White's
forces and let's also not forget that
this was a blindfold game, meaning that
both players were not looking at the
board and therefore despite of Black's
losing position, still she could hope
for a mistake or an oversight from
Carlsen. In light of that, it's even
more interesting to see
the following move of Carlsen. He not just
started to realize his extra knight, but
he found a way to finish the game in
style with a beautiful combination. He
played Rc4. All of a sudden, it's
hitting Black similarly on the queenside
but the real idea is to checkmate Black's
king on the kingside. The point is now
Black needs to remove the Queen from
this diagonal, from the diagonal where
it was protecting the f6-square.
It's a critical square which white wants to go
into to checkmate Black's king. And now when
Black captures the rook, White continues
with Qf6+, Kh7, the only move
and then Nf5 with a dual threat
of Qg7# or Qxh6+
Black has no defense
if Black protects the g7-square, then
White delivers checkmate on h6. Let's have
a look at the critical position where it
all started, once again. At this position
where situation looked totally unclear,
Carlsen showed great creativity and found a
brilliant move c5 to seize the
initiative and then he delivered the
final attack in a perfect matter, not
leaving any counter chances for his
dangerous opponent.. the greatest woman
player of all time, Judit Polgar! When I
look at such games, what always was
interesting for me is to understand how
the winner was able to find such moves
in his games. So not only to be a
spectator, but also to learn something to
understand how can this guy do this
because if we understand this, it will mean
that you can apply the same thinking
process in your own games and win the
games yourself like that!
And here I have some good news for you. :)
In honour of the birthday of
Magnus Carlsen, and ending of the World Chess
Championship match,
I'm providing a huge 40% discount
on my complete training courses
that contains this information. How do
world chess players think while
playing a game of chess, so that you can
learn and adopt the same way of thinking
and therefore your results will also
go up to the level of advanced expert
level players. Thanks for watching! :) Don't
forget to write birthday greetings to
Carlsen in the comments.
Enjoy your day, goodbye! :)