a couple of days ago grand master hikaru nakamura started a new chess
speedrun on his twitch channel using an eye tracker and he was rated about 900
playing in the three minute pool when he ran into a pretty legendary person
wait wait is this is this charlie wait is this charlie wait a second is this charlie
wait isn't this charlie's account now obviously that's moist critical aka charlie aka penguin zero
here on youtube the pog champs one consolation bracket winner and pogchamps 3 participant want
to take a look at the full game in its entirety and show you how well charlie played and at the
end if you wait or jump ahead until then there is a timestamp on the video player i've got a
clip of charlie's reaction so first things first charlie actually according to the chess.com caps
played 18 better than hikaru so let's check that out okay let's take it over to the analysis
uh let's crop this a little bit so that we can see our engine a bit better here at the top and let's
get rolling so charlie begins with the move e4 and hikaru responds with e6 now e6 is leading
obviously to potentially a french defense we will see what hikaru has in mind knight c3 from uh from
charlie and actually i taught charlie a couple of days ago uh to play the advanced variation
but knight c3 is fine d5 and now take take and he puts a pawn in the center so first things
first if you're gonna play the exchange variation of the french defense just an instructive moment
you don't want your knight in front of your c pawn because the knight on this square does not exert
true pressure here since the queen is actually defending in a lot of french positions you at
least have two pawns in the center and you're not taking or you are waiting to put the c pawn up so
that's lesson number one but then charlie just develops naturally you'll notice that hikaru
plays this to repel the knight from coming forward charlie plays bishop e3 good move 97 from hikaru
a little bit different not looking for knight f6 trying to create some imbalance bishop e2 and now
rather than castling hikaru immediately punishes charlie's early bishop maneuver uh bishop move i
should say with the move knight to f5 charlie moves his bishop again to target the knight at
this point you know it's better to get castled so you either castle or move your bishop out of the
way defending your bishop is also an option but it's a three-minute game so obviously you don't
need to spend a whole lot of time and actually hikaru just castles himself castle's castles put
his rook into the middle of the board saying look man you can take my knight i'm fine with
this trade so both players playing well and now hikaru plays a move which actually makes sense but
for some reason the computer is trying to tell me you know this move is uh is a bit of an inaccuracy
uh and uh you see white's advantage start to uh creep up a little bit so f6 uh tries to repel
these two you know squares from charlie's knight uh charlie plays the move g4 so g4 as you can see
uh from the evaluation bar completely tanks uh the position uh into black's favor why because this
pawn while it attacks a knight the knight can take the bishop and then this bishop is now open to
see this pawn so of course you don't want to push pawns where your king is castled right so at this
point the computer wants you to back up with the bishop i would just say keep making progress get
the queen out maybe stack the rooks on this file etc but it's true hikaru's knight is extremely
annoying white's problems really begin with the knight on c3 if the knight can rotate around this
way maybe trade it would be better but hikaru immediately punishes charlie for his misdeeds
but then charlie attacks the center this is a very nice pawn break it opens up the board but hikaru
is hikaru so he anticipates this and now plays rook takes e1 now if charlie takes with the knight
he's going to lose his queen and if he takes for the queen he's going to lose his knight except in
this position let's see if he can find the check and come back into the game though i'm not going
to just like okay he misses a golden opportunity there um let's go here yeah he had queenie's six
check to hit the king of the bishop there is queen to e6 a concept called continuity the bishop on g4
even though it just took a knight used to cover the e6 square and this is why in all positions
you must scan for even the possibility of a check of an attack on the king white has two of them
and one of them is obviously better than the other queen e6 would just pick up the bishop
charlie takes on c6 though misses the check hicaro plays knight b6 and queen e6 is still
available and look at this in this position if you give a check the king goes to the corner you then
have queen h3 with an attack of mate and queen takes bishop crazy that charlie had this resource
charlie though playing c takes b7 and now hikaru brings back the bishop and charlie offers a trade
takes takes hikaru brings out his rook of course still charlie should look for a way to improve his
position i would say bring the rook to the middle and don't even think about it okay knight to e2 is
played bishop b8 the point of bishop b8 is to play queen to d6 and you'll notice the time discrepancy
now is obviously creeping in black's favor charlie goes for c form uh this can be taken a couple of
different ways but of course i mean he's trying to get back into the game playing quickly hikaru
plays queen d6 and allows this fork but he's got queen takes h2 king f1 queen h3 king moves over
and queen to d7 apparently now after king to d2 charlie's actually you know making a couple of
things happen here like if hikaru hadn't been accurate for this one move you know for example
if hikaro plays a6 then after rook to h1 it's not really so clear what's happening because
it's very dangerous position for black it's never too late to screw something up so hikaru
plays rook to d8 look at that move very sneaky threat there on the king and after charlie pushes
he misses the idea right moving the knight out of the way with the rook now seeing this but charlie
doesn't give up man he goes queen to e7 um that's a good move that's not a bad move let's go chuck
the fighting spirit in this man attacking the rook making hikaru work knight c4 check
using the concept of danger levels the king is worth more than the rook making the king move
jumping in again with the knight repeats once and then goes wait a second i gotta get my rook
out of here i gotta attack this pawn and from a distance my queen is defending you'll notice
it's a three minute game and black is up one minute on the clock so that's obviously quite
nice charlie continues with d5 hikaru goes knight to e3 the king slides back knight takes d5 in here
tragedy strikes can i take it should just be winning for me because all the squares
are covered no no no queen six no queen e7 ups ups ups ups ups rook to c1 played by mr moist critical
uh and then uh knight takes e7 the queen falls so a tragic ending unfortunately uh to this one
but um well there was a couple of instructive moments number one uh as we go back you know
to the opening you see a french defense knight c3 is good but personally uh you i i think that it's
it's subpar to take on d5 because then it's you see basically what happened in this position white
was just sort of naturally making moves uh but nothing was really coming out of it and black just
kind of like got an initiative very early in the game so already on move six or seven there's some
advantage for black so against the french defense what i recommend couple of different options uh
i think you should put two pawns in the center and then a very tricky variation first of all if
you're going to take this pawn is to attack the center with the c pawn uh the idea then
is that you will play knight to c3 knight to f3 but you'll be more active with your pieces
rather than bishop e3 bishop e2 as was played in this game you want bishop f4 bishop g5 bishop
out on d3 and you want to take on d5 if possible obviously if black takes you will get the bishop
out on c4 and you're very happy there's a couple of other french defenses uh and uh for white i
think one that's really good is the move e5 hikaru convinced me at first i wasn't too sold on the
advanced french but i think it's fantastic uh at many many levels as you get to mastery maybe not
as popular but the point is that you take space and then you reinforce your center with another
pawn uh and then ideally in a perfect world you play knight f3 bishop d3 you castle your king
and you use this space advantage to potentially create an attack if black is not fast enough to
fight back against the center like let's say black you know just plays a move like a6 for
example then in a dream situation you take even more space with the f pawn for example
knight f3 bishop d3 and you castle your king and you've got an a turbo activation of space here on
this side of the board other than that i mean as far as this game is concerned what are you gonna
do huh you played hikaru like you know what i mean uh but as i promised ladies and gentlemen um
here is moist critical's uh reaction when he found out that he had played hikaru and just
before i show you the clip just remember that when we do speed runs we are authorized by chess.com
to do them and after we are done with them everybody we play does receive a rating refund
you can't just get a rating refund if you lose a game but if you play against one of us when we're
doing a speed run you do get your points back take a look at the clip that was actually hakaru's
smurf wait really okay let's keep going
is this wait wait is this is this charlie you son
of a [ __ ] wait a second is this charlie you took my elo