i think we might have just witnessed the greatest game of this entire year and frankly you can
probably make an argument the greatest game in the last decade it's daniel dubov and sergey karjakin
and they're playing in moscow the russian super final actually being held over the board classical
chess with some drama in the event mikhail and tip of one of the grand masters participating
tested positive for coronavirus for example but so far everybody else has been healthy and happy
okay we're gonna go through this game daniel is known as a prep god he's also known to wear a
balanciaga sweater i don't think he was rocking it for this game but i haven't checked the live video
uh not much else to say he's worked with magnus carlson in preparation for the world championship
match he brings a flare and an excitement and sergey karjakin is a very solid defensive
player very good theoretically played for the world championship in 2016. so
the game begins with e4 e5 and dubois plays knight f3 knight c6 bishop c4
bishop c5 here uh many of us know about the evans gambit which i i'm sure duboff has played before
uh duboff plays for c3 which normally after the move knight f6 results in d3 we've seen this many
times over the past few weeks in the recap videos that i've been making a lot of these djoko pianos
with c3 d3 in a slow game but duboff plays d4 which is something i recommend for beginners
to take the full center normally after takes you get takes bishop b4 some sort of sacrifice of
the central pawn and then white just gets very rapid development but here duboff plays a move
that has been played in less than point three percent of games point three less than 50 any
no meaningful games between grand masters he plays the move b4 which doesn't look like a crazy move
it attacks the bishop and then when the bishop goes back uh he again doesn't attack the knight
or take the central pawn he gets this pawn out of the way with the move e5 now normally in this
position the move d5 just in general in these structures is the thing that happens and then
what black does is they give away the knight they take here and this is actually not very concerning
uh because first of all there's just a check so your king is always kind of going to be okay
you're going to castle it this way and your rook just goes to g8 you know if i desperately try to
hang on to this pawn you'll play queen f6 you'll just like this is not something that's known to
be scary uh for black and i'm very curious actually why carjacking didn't ultimately go
for this maybe there is something he didn't like he moved his knight out of the center right that
very well in and of itself uh could have taken the game in a totally different direction i'll
tell you right now that after bishop d5 look at this bishop d5 sacrificing another pawn
in this position it seems very natural to castle uh but dubov plays the move bishop g5 attacking
the queen bishop g5 is a novelty it has never been played before i mean this whole thing is a novelty
frankly because again it's never been seen at grand master level maybe there are some computer
games but i didn't find any knight e7 is the only move to get out of danger and now castles so
what's the count in this position white has plenty of what's called compensation okay compensation
uh in chess is when you are down some material but uh you can counterbalance
your deficiency of physical pieces with peace activity or vulnerability of the enemy king
or more space and duboff has all three of those things he's got way more active pieces meaning he
controls the square in his opponent's positions the squares in his opponent's position his
opponent's king is stuck here none of these pieces are going to move for at least the next four or
five moves so karjakin's got a lot to deal with here he plays h6 bishop h4 and then he castles
here you're free to do deeper analysis on this with lilo or another you know very strong computer
but here the the big decision was whether he would play the move g5 or not now first of all duboff
can actually take on g5 and allowing this just looks terrifying at the same time karjakin can
throw in the capture now on d5 since you've kind of blocked your own bishop here and this would be
this would be bad but still i mean again it's very hard to breathe here with black so you have to be
very very careful but in the game karjakin castled right he didn't play g5 he spent a lot of time
he didn't play g5 and dubo just calmly develops another piece right brings the rook to the center
controlling the file we get queen e8 again as i said it's going to be really difficult to sidestep
with the pieces so carjacking place queen eight to get out of the pin
enabling the movement of his knight you know if he plays the natural move like d6
trying to get his bishop out it just loses just loses because when you take duboff's last move
rook to e1 now hits the knight so you're just losing the knight and your position falls apart
if you play something like c6 to attack the bishop it's just a bit of a short-sighted move because
i now move out of the center and you actually haven't done anything for your position literally
nothing if anything you've just helped me potentially set up like a long attack on your king
i mean c6 it just doesn't improve your position enough in the in the long run in the short term
it looks good but in the long run it just isn't so queen e8 and now dubois voluntarily retreats his
bishop so we see that c6 wouldn't have done too much so kayaking plays on the queen side he plays
the move a5 which looks good which looks good but it's a bit slow um and uh daniel here uncorks i
don't know if this was preparation but this is an app this is the first move of this is the first
gangster chess example of the game i mean he played this game like he was a you know yuri
boyka to make a reference you know he he plays bishop to f6 which which is just a savage move
obviously you cannot take the bishop because you open up the rook and uh this is death you've
removed the guard of your king and now i'm gonna take and trap your rook it's just over
but we see like the other points so first of all you know the bishop planting on f6
doesn't allow black to move comfortably uh for all future purposes you will use this as like
the trojan horse the trojan bishop knight g6 and now we actually see that this knight has no guard
say what this is guarding it no it's not because it's pinned to the king so daniel plays queen d3
and now this is a problem because if if sergey plays king h7 or let's say king to h8
so that you cannot play queen takes knight um first of all i can just pick up the pawn
but i can even play moves like for example knight h4 and if we trade off the pieces the more pieces
we trade off i'm now gonna start bringing my rook in the future you know i'm gonna start getting
over there uh with uh with my rook potentially to attack you i'm gonna get closer with my queen
and i'm gonna remove a guard of your position so karjakin strikes out with the move d5
now here there's a rule of chess rather than taking like this we can take onpassant and the
rook is attacking the queen bishop e6 and it looks like we've made it out except here daniel dubov
drops another haymaker and doesn't take the bishop but rather sacrifices the queen on g6
okay and this is the thumbnail so the queen is given away for two pieces not even a rook
he hasn't won a rook yet maybe he won't ever win a rook so he's just got a bishop and a
knight right and an attack on a queen and a discovered check that's about to happen
so carjacking can't play the move queen c6 because then i go check here and then i go check and then
here and then i go check for example on c7 and we end up in this position still this is a game
though i have to tell you uh it's still a game uh for some reason karjakin decides i'm gonna hang on
to the queen i mean for some reason it's a queen god damn it king h8 and rookie four and queen f5
okay so here the machine just cannot figure out who is better right like duboff goes back to e7 to
try to go after this pawn um karjakin plays rook g8 now has to give away one of his rooks in order
to protect the king the count of material here is that karjakin is up one point he is a queen
uh and uh he's up he's just as a queen for a rook and a knight so that's nine eight however again
when you're playing against the queen and you have a rook and a bishop or a rook and a knight
it's about the coordination and activity of your pieces and you have to not have a lot of
weaknesses also pawns will decide the game that's like another thing like if one guy has a pass pawn
that could ultimately decide the game so d takes c7 i said right so queen c2 and here he's got two
weaknesses to deal with and dubois invests in his pawn i like to say this a lot he defends this pawn
giving away the pawn on f2 would check which not a lot of us would do because that looks a little
scary it's a pawn it's check but he realizes my king is completely safe in the corner and uh
let me just give it a little bit of breathing room here now king h7 and now let me play the
move rookie one i gotta get this bad boy in the game he hasn't moved for 29 moves he's slacking
right we get a3 i said it's about the pawns so he might take on a2 and cause some problems king h2
okay king h2 is a waiting move gets the king off the back rank and it's actually the best
move according to the computer the point being that in the future you know you wanna you wanna
get down here with the rooks that's where you wanna you wanna do your your fighting so we get
g5 out of karjakin who gives this king some space knight to d4 which attacks the queen
and if this trade occurs then you've lost the main attacker basically black doesn't have a
bishop on b6 anymore i'm gonna play rook d7 rookie seven my king is completely safe uh i gotta worry
about some check like this but i will monitor for that and i'm going to win the game and so for that
reason karjakin does not trade instead he moves his queen to c4 which attacks this this and this
we get knight f5 sacrificing another pawn for the greater good and rook c1 we now have three pieces
monitoring this pawn that pawn that pawn is the key okay this pawn is getting the police escort to
the other side of the board king to g6 rook takes g7 check so now we have to trade the rooks right
and i've removed your defender of the of the back rank but instead karjakin takes the knight takes
and then sacrifices the bishop for the pawn so we've got two rooks and a bishop now the key here
is not to lose this pawn because that will make your life a lot harder or it's to win this pawn
if you can win the a3 pawn two rooks in a bishop coordinate beautifully queen b2 we see rook c5 and
uh karjakin could have went back here but then he would have been laddered right he would have just
gotten cut and then all over the course of time he would have been checkmated so instead he ran his
king to the center but then there's rook d8 and on this mysterious move uh sergey koryakin resigned
the game you say why why why didn't he just take on a2 i didn't take on a2 because it's made in
two the queen stops guarding the diagonal and uh rookie five check nice in the middle of the board
king has only one legal move here and here you have mate uh rook cafe is made in two because the
queen sacrifices you also have just a very nice ladder checkmate in the center of the board the
king cannot take the rook because of the bishop the king cannot move forward because all of the
squares are occupied and that's that um it's not clear in this game where sergey karjakin made
a mistake that's how you know it's a crazy game it's an extremely high level game uh all the way
back into the beginning of the game like the fact that b4 got played here and has never been played
in any meaningful games now this could be daniel duboff paving new theory so once he's done getting
his balenciaga sponsorship and getting a new uh you know sweater uh specifically designed for him
or some sweatpants uh he's gonna pioneer whatever this is gonna be called we could call this the
duba variation this very well could be like the new thing the only big question of this variation
is what would have happened if the move d5 had landed on the board which is frequently what
occurs in these positions somebody will go analyze this that is how chess works and that is how new
theory is paved but oh my goodness i mean just to recap that was absolutely stunning bishop to f6
it shows you how to take your opening advantage where you have more active pieces you have more
space you control the enemy territory better and restrict their movement and take all of that to
the next level oftentimes we get good positions from openings and then we don't convert them right
that's the danger of learning openings as you get great positions you might still screw it up
i'm talking about myself maybe i'm also talking about some of you but and then just finding ideas
like this i mean queen g6 chef's kiss not much else to say uh daniel dubois finished his campaign
in the russian super final with six and a half out of 11 not quite enough for first place i'll put
a link uh in the description uh for you to browse around the tournament you see some of the results
i think nepo ended up winning it yon nipomnichi uh but dupov will be part participating in uh
the magnus carlson like the tour that we know is going on the champions tour and that one starts on
december 26th so stay tuned for more recaps i had to do this video because i would i mean what
a game right let me know if you have any other candidates for best game of 2020 as i might make
a video on december 31st but i just have to share this with all of you hope you enjoyed