welcome ladies and gentlemen to this video on an amazing historical game played by the chess legend
bobby fischer the year is 1956 the setting is the martial chess club in new york city i've played
many tournaments there over the course of my life bobby fisher is 13 years old and his opponent is
donald byrne the brother of robert byrne both of them fantastic american talents donald played
many olympiads for the national chess team of the united states but in this game dubbed the game of
the century now i'm just going to say that this is probably the american game of the century because
in the 20th century there was a lot of games also in the soviet union which were amazing but
this is the american game of the century and in this game we get to see an early glimpse of the
genius of bobby fischer and what he would go on to become nothing else to say let's go knight f3
played by donald uh and we're looking at it from bobby's perspective knight f6 c4 so this is the
ready opening both knights coming out now we have something known as a transposition so white could
have started with this pawn push but plays it on the second move now it's an english opening black
plays g6 bobby was a big fan of putting his bishop out this way and then ultimately fighting for the
center a little bit later and we get knight to c3 by whites uh and here bobby plays bishop g7 d4
and castles so he finishes his full developing setup before choosing what to do with his center
pawn so far we have no real understanding of where his other center pawns are going to go
he's playing a very flexible setup he would say well why would black just give up all
this center control well as chess progressed in the kind of later 20th century and now it's 2021
when i'm recording this video i'm not sure when you're watching in the future but um there was
an understanding that you didn't need to put pawns into the center to fight for the center you could
actually control the center like this this is known as the king's indian defense and you would
be able to kind of target the enemy pieces which defended that center and slowly chip away at it
in this game after bishop f4 bobby actually plays the move d5 so d5 is a transposition i said that
word earlier not to a king's indian defense but something known as the grunfeld now the grunfeld
spell gru with the with the two dots uh n-f-e-l-d is one of the most complex if not the most complic
complex openings in all of chess if you're a beginner intermediate even an advanced player
i would say stay away from it uh enjoy chess while you can there are so many densities i don't even
know if that's a word there's so much depth of variations in the grunfeld defense and here donald
byrne plays the russian system now i don't know if that was called the russian system back in the
day but this looks kind of weird because it's like why would you bring your queen out now i take take
i mean as as beginners we're taught not to do this we're not supposed to bring the queen out and also
make multiple moves with the queen getting closer to our opponent's territory but this is just
one of many options white actually has a million different options doesn't even need to go queen b3
but does that here bobby play c6 he pushes the pawn rather than developing the knight or the
bishop because actually a move ago the queen and the bishop both stared at that pawn c6 now white
plays e4 taking the center with two pawns defended by this knight obviously can't be a bad move bobby
plays knight d7 again that looks strange to the uninitiated why would he block his bishop
he's got a plan i mean we're talking about one of the greatest players of all time right
so knight d7 maybe he wants to go to b6 later modern day chess theory goes b5 so it's kind of
agreed upon that b5 is the best move in this position for black to just immediately fight
back against that queen but we have knight d7 and in this position donald plays rook to d1 he
brings his rook to the middle if this pawn ever clears out that rook will have an open line stair
like staring down at this queen but again the modern day move is bishop to e2 and just trying
to prepare short castle so over time people worked out the fact that bishop 2e2 is a better move or
rook d1 now so far you say well i don't understand how is this genius i've spent almost four minutes
on this video i mean this doesn't look genius at all i'm gonna click out don't click out
i will reward you for sticking around knight to b6 attacks the queen and officially after queen
to c5 in the year 1956 we got a position that had never been reached before in recorded games
maybe two drunk guys at the local bar played this position but this position had never been seen
before up until this point the only thing that happened was queen b3 bishop e6 and something
like queen c2 and you would say well why would you go here here here and then just go back i know it
doesn't look like it makes any sense but the best players somehow make it work so we get queen to c5
just lurking around the territory bobby's on his own and he develops this bishop out to g4 now here
a rather strange move gets played bishop to g5 the way i can summarize this move um and why it's not
great is like white hasn't finished developing his pieces so he should do that like he should play
bishop 2e2 and just get prepared to castle but he plays this move he's trying to get confrontational
against the guy who's already set all of bombi's pieces are out the knights of the bishops and
the king is castle they're ready to safety so here it's time for black to start taking action
and he takes action in a way that well frankly is just dazzling it doesn't just finish his
development or bring a rook or something he plays knight to a4 the first punch wait what can't that
just be taken well it can't actually in the game we got queen a3 knight a4 attacks these two pieces
so if you take the knight literally for free and this is the way i want you to think about chess
that knight used to guard something it guards the pawn in the center bobby's idea was to take
hitting the bishop that just moved there punishing his opponent and the queen and when you take the
bishop this knight has to take it and this bishop doing something called pitting the knight to the
rook would take the rook so for example something like queen before we would get takes takes takes
takes and even though material is equal if you count everything it's all equal white's got two
knights and black has a rook and one extra pawn black is crushing here because you're just going
to kick out this knight you will take on d4 and you are just gonna open this up i mean this is not
gonna end well because white's king is stuck in the center of the board so donald didn't want that
to happen so he went back with the queen and bobby traded knights and you would say why did he do
that i mean he just helped white restructure the center he traded off one of his attacking pieces
well what was his plan to take this pawn but that opens up the bishop to see this now we got
bishop takes e7 so donald is hanging in there in fact he's creating threats queen and rook
i don't understand so is bobby just gonna lose material maybe that's part of the plan he plays
queen b6 and donald again doesn't bite he plays bishop c4 wait why would he not just take the rook
well here's the idea the idea is that now i take back with my bishop not with my rook which hasn't
moved yet i attack your queen board is a big place so you got to move your queen so if you go back
just to try to guard this pawn first of all that doesn't even guard the pawn i can just take it
you can't take because you're queen and king which you negated or neglected i should say
you neglected to get it out of the center gets punished and my bishops are laser beams i mean
crisscross applesauce down to your king the other bishop pins to your rook you're gonna lose your
queen here so you can't do that you can't go into this position you just cannot do it donald says
all right i gotta play bishop c4 it's the only way i'm gonna get my king to safety i need to castle
now here if bobby had played the move just rookie eight getting his rook out of the
way of the threat well then white would have castled and he would have been safe and you
know black still has a little bit of momentum but no advantage so bobby needs a forcing move
what's a forcing move in chess a check which is an attack on the king a capture
if you capture something in the position you'll force your opponent to respond otherwise you're
just gonna get free stuff and so bobby plays this brilliant move knight takes c3
what what is he and for the third time in the game donald can't take he can't take
the knight he cannot take it why why can't he take because he'll lose a guard of his bishop
now i will play this move and if you just lazily go back trying to guard you're paralyzed
so i can just win your rook first of all i'm going to take this knight and you can't even take like
this because you're still guarding that so now i've also damaged your pawn structure and then i'm
just gonna go here and pick this up and what might happen is we'll get a position where black is only
one pawn up if you count it's only six five but has a dominant position because white's structure
is shattered those are called pawn islands they are big structural weaknesses you'll see that
black has these three pawns right that looks very nice and healthy so for the third time this
game the guy cannot take the piece that bobby's offering and instead he plays bishop back to c5
attacking the queen now bobby for the fourth time play something brilliant what's worth more than a
queen in chess sometimes in chess you don't need to address a threat if you can create an equal or
a higher level threat so he plays rookie eight the king which is the most forcing move in chess right
this check is worth more than the queen so he finds a moment to activate his rook with a check
white plays king f1 getting the king out of the way bobby can't take the rook because his queen
is hanging but what's worth as much as a queen you say a queen or a king right those two so
in this position bobby could theoretically play knight back to b5 and attack the queen
because they're worth the same and if bishop takes he would get his queen out of danger
but he finds a way here to attack white's king indirectly what what are you talking about
the only way to attack white's king here is to go rookie one that's certainly not the move
i said indirectly try to pause here and find the move and i'm gonna tell you right now it's
not moving the queen i'm gonna take a sip of water and then i'll tell you the answer
in this position bobby fischer played bishop to e6
now if this is the game of the century in american terms this is the move of this century
what what a move so for the fourth or fifth time or whatever donald byrne cannot take the offering
he can't do it he took the queen but he can't take this why not because i'm gonna take back because
you've cleared out this diagonal to the king the game will end with check you can't go here
because my queen comes in and it's mate guarded by my knight so this and now we would get one
of the most beautiful tactical sequences in all of chess the smothered mate when you get knight
jumping into e2 the king moves and the absolutely beautiful double check the knight avoids being
captured because the queen also attacks the king again if the king goes here we have the same mate
even though the knight would guard from the other side king goes here and now the beautiful queen f1
rook takes and checkmate the king smothered by his own allies now you say that didn't
that didn't happen though right it i i would have loved if that happened that's not what happened
but again i'm showing you that's how chess works we have variations we have what did happen and
here's what could have happened but that is why you can't take that bishop
because bishop takes would have led to this unbelievable thing so donald said well damn let
me just take this queen and see what happens so now bobby takes the bishop with the check and here
he engages in something known as a windmill which is when you check and anywhere you move the knight
it's going to be checked by the bishop so first he takes the free pawn then he goes back then
he checks this way and then he takes the bishop first to create a threat on the rook and the queen
and then once the queen moves he plays rook a4 he still doesn't take because he wants to
guard everything and finally finally finally he takes this rook and we get h3 so the count of
material here is that black is up three points uh the actual balance of material black has an
extra pawn two bishops and a rook that's five plus three plus three plus one which is twelve
and they have a queen um five plus three plus three plus one is twelve right
correct geez i thought i was doing all my math wrong there for a second
so here we have a situation where one guy's got a queen and the other guy's got a bunch of you know
uh soldiers trying to fight that queen let's see how he converts rook takes pawn king moves to h2
knight takes pawn he's picking up pawns like it's you know candy that is falling out of a
pinata now we get a simplification the rooks get traded this is a big benefit for for bobby because
by by just trading off one of white's only three remaining pieces that can fight in this game it's
gonna be to his benefit he puts the bishop on d5 this is a glorious bishop standing on what's
known as an outpost square knight to f3 and here he could continue simplifying uh but he moves
the knight back because he thinks his bishop is stronger advances the pawn so as to avoid capture
white tries to create a little bit of flank pawn counter play bobby shuts that down moves the king
out of the way of what was a pin not letting him move activates his dark squared bishop the last
piece uh which has not been in the game for uh for forever actually did that bishop ever move
this bishop after i took the bishop like 35 moves with the bishop got involved and now in
this position we have what's known as a mating net which uh to some of us might sound nice but the
donald byrne definitely does not rook is cutting off the king the bishops are flying around and
the night is close and now we get check king moves over check king moves over check with the knight
king moves over knight check and now here there are two checkmates bishop a3 and rook c2 and bobby
fischer chose rook c2 kind of in the face of the king and the game ends with made now you can argue
that donald byron could have resigned earlier um in fact i think most modern day grand masters
would have resigned around here because there's really no hope but credit to him for actually
not resigning and allowing the game to be fully played out just allowing bobby a chance to convert
or who knows i wasn't around in 1956 maybe he was just mad maybe it was like damn i can't believe
i lost to this young whippersnapper or whatever they said in you know in the mid 20th century but
with this game it's actually funny because bobby didn't have a good tournament at the
marshall chess club but this was a sign of things to come and further down the line bobby went on
to win the u.s championship and this kind of game served as a big confidence booster uh to the young
player which really is how growing in chess works you need that big breakthrough game i remember
my first win over a 2200 rated player a master uh actually that game was in a brand new opening
that i had learned just months prior so that was a huge boost of confidence and led to a streak of
good results for me um so it's all about that first win uh against a very strong player and
esteemed opponent and this was a super impressive victory i mean remember the year 1956 donald byrne
went on to play in the olympiad for the united states representing them on an international level
so this guy this guy was no joke but bobby made it look like this game wasn't even close and as
i've been saying it's a sign of things to come in in his career so i hope you enjoyed uh if you've
made it this far in the video you are amazing and if there's other historical games you'd like me to
cover that are not yet on my channel do let me know in the comments below if you're new to the
channel welcome if you're returning to the channel welcome back i've got courses that i sell on my
website in the description you can feel free to check those out and if there's anything else that
you'd like you know that comment section is open i look forward to seeing you in the next video