to another gotham chess recap video today we're looking at day six between hikaru nakamura and
magnus carlson and what a day it was first of all the drama of the day was the fact that
magnus was barely in his seat he was like sitting below the chair and everything and
it turned out that he was having terrible back pain which he suffered yesterday not
so clear but that's why that's the name it didn't seem to affect his chest play though
uh d4 knight f6 in the first game and he allows a nimso which is sort of weird because yesterday
uh he was defeated in a nimso in the final armageddon game not really the final blitz game
but in the final armageddon game and this time he comes back with this system of bishop d3 and 92
d5 from hikaru and after a sequence of exchanges we have the following position maybe i'll just go
one more move castles and bishop a6 so the nimso is all about black trading off the dark squared
bishop and then putting the pawns on this kind of formation white's dark squared bishop is nice
it's the only dark squared bishop on the board but you cannot really move it that's the problem
and so the only way to mobilize it would be to play something like c4 d5 and big central
expansion while black tries to just develop with the rooks on d8 and c8 and suppress that
from happening you see bishop b2 so long-term hope of c4 d5 get knight c6 rook c1 and c4 as planned
takes takes and again the idea is to play d5 here hikaru plays queen e7 which stops d5
because it defends f6 from the knight except that it doesn't stop d5 at all and he can still play it
with the following idea rookie one an absolutely amazing move from magnus to start the day
sacrificing a second pawn to hit the queen with the rook and the knight transfers to this side
of the board to attack now we get queen d8 and again how does magnus create another attacking
piece in this position he plays bishop b1 there's a gangster move now he avoids the trade he's down
two pawns but his bishops are snipers from the bottom left and they're hitting the king side he's
also got long-term intentions of knight f5 knight h5 ikaro plays b5 the idea of this move is not
very obvious it looks like it doesn't do anything but it defends the c4 bishop and you're gonna try
to play d4 because if you play d4 you're gonna block out the bishop and the queen from the attack
which is exactly what he does even at the cost of a pawn since he's up two pawns he doesn't
care about trades queen d2 bishop e6 and here's something strange happened ikaro had just gone
bishop e6 and taken threatening to take the knight to trade it and it doesn't attack anymore but here
he played a6 stabilizing the pawn on b5 and here the entire thumbnail of the video i'm not even
gonna you know pause you and ask you to think uh because then you'll all accuse me of being
a god mentor okay just kidding uh but because it's actually the thumbnail and it's already
spoiled a beautiful move here knight takes g7 king takes g7 queen g5 check king h8 and queen
h4 a move that on the surface does not attack anything and this is why this is so brilliant
it looks like it doesn't do anything and that's the beauty of it in reality black
has no moves uh i my former coach who i worked with when i was trying to climb to grand master
uh wojciech miranda polish grand master used to call these positions time stops because black for
a move cannot do anything it seems uh and hikaru struggled to find a defensive idea rook g8 and
now we see the whole point rook takes c6 because the point is you're trying to remove the guard
of this pawn take with the bishop protected by the queen and bishop takes f6 and the bishop the queen
and this bishop do immense amounts of damage rook c6 bishop d4 and king g7 i'm gonna show you very
quickly what the computer was suggesting here it wanted rookie 8 and uh hikaru had said afterward
that he thought that after h3 just allowing the king to escape and killing off any backrank tricks
that he thought magnus was completely winning and well it's a very difficult position after
all but the idea of rookie 8 is that if takes takes bishop d4 there is the stunning move
bishop f5 so now this is protected two times and the rooks are opened up so for example if we get
something like bishop f6 uh there there is always going to be the problem in this position uh of of
the back rank or one of the sides something like bishop takes rook takes takes takes oh excuse me
um let me back that up uh if bishop takes f6 it's not rook takes f6 it's king g8 sorry about that
and uh if you play something like queen g5 check just block and if you take the queen i went too
fast take the queen you get backrank mated i spent the entire day looking at it like this
from this perspective and i did not actually realize that in this position it's going to be
king g8 well there you go mistakes do happen but we're gonna go through this in one take
and for that reason we got this and hikara tried to run his king g7 and f8 queen h7 king f8
but unfortunately the pressure was too much magnus stabilized and here made a mistake apparently
he allowed some sort of traits to occur but the position is still so difficult
and after he brought a few pieces back hikaru just found it increasingly difficult to defend
his king in the center ultimately this is what occurred rook d2 rookie 8 and it was right here
this should e5 is the killing move not because it just attacks the rook
but because queen is going to a7 and the queen and the bishop line up on this square rook d5
queen a7 and queen c7 checkmate magnus carlson playing from his knees immobilized by payne
does not matter wins the first rapid game and we have game two game two was a long one and it was
a bit of a boring game it was another berlin but this time a different setup from magnus
uh much more closed rue lopez and rather than kind of bog you down here with all the theory uh
we will kind of slowly maneuver through the middle game uh carl plays a4 opens up the a file for his
rook there is a central trade and the structure is completely identical in terms of pawns but here a
little bit of an imbalance occurs b for c bishop e3 rook a8 a lot of this was equal but hikaru had
a time advantage players were shuffling shuffling i thought there was going to be a repetition there
was no repetition the first interesting decision light squared bishop is traded for the knight
and we have knight d3 rook c2 knight f4 and he carter started stabilizing and and getting the
the end game to a position where he actually does have something to fight for rook knight five for
rook knight five but he's got some threats and he picks up a pawn on h6 king g7 comes back and uses
his rook and his knight in a very effective way he trades off the knight on d4 this is supposed to be
a draw rook a4 and if you take on c6 and you take on b4 three on four is a draw it's going to be
it's going to simply be equality so hikaru decided that he was going to shuffle a little
bit and here magnus made a huge mistake he played king h5 which removes the defender
from the f6 pawn and now it allows rook c2 and you are too slow to defend so we get this
this and now the king begins to run but this king begins to run too but this is winning for white
it's winning for white because you are going to get to the base of the pawn chain and start
taking stuff it's winning for white but it's a little bit tricky and it was here tragedy struck
ikaro needed to deal with rook b6 that's the point magnus wants to kick the king back cut it off from
the pawns and use the active king's positioning and that's actually exactly what happened yukaru
missed the in between check and now all the pawns get traded what hikaru should have done
was play instead of rook c3 he actually said this afterward king e6 and if rook b6 you have king d5
if c4 you have king d5 at the same time you also have c5 and king g6 with the idea to outflank this
way and then deflect the king away from the pawns and take all of them and i only say that tragedy
struck in this moment because there was a massive evaluation shift check my watch incoming haters
saying things about me being biased toward hikaru in three two one okay comment boom
and so the players simplified to king vs king and time for game number three so we get game three
let's go magnus has a chance to put hikaru away one and a half to half here we go here we go we
have a berlin but rookie one d5 d4 castles bishop before bishop d6 between f3 and the repetition
i have nothing more to say we've already seen this from magnus carlsen
two to one magnus it's time for game four and we have another berlin i know i know i know i
know how many times can you quote me saying we have another berlin this one took on a slightly
different nature than last time but hikaru's got the white pieces he has to win so he's trying to
keep as many pieces on the board as possible again this position and the one from the second game uh
look very very similar and so after a4 gets played you're trying to again instigate in the same way
so after rook d8 takes takes hikaru's gotta find a way to make some sort of progress on this side of
the board and this was kind of the critical moment right so um d4 right d4 and if if if c takes d4
then something like pawn takes d4 kind of makes it really difficult for white to maneuver here so
hikaru thought for a while and played the move queen c1 which attacks this and kind of forces
magnus to make this trade but there was a very interesting idea here that he could have played
and that idea is the breakthrough c4 after something like b takes c4
there is then b5 a stunning move hitting c6 and the pawn on e5 loses one of its guards
and the e5 pawn is hanging those of you that watch the live coverage are gonna know what i'm talking
about those of you that are not are just going to think that i'm referring to a hanging pawn
chaos could have been sued here but instead we got queen c1 dc3 and the following position on e5
ikaru began to route his knights backwards to try to create a pawn break in the position remember he
has to win to force the blitz so bishop c8 rook jumping in fearlessly to the a8 square bishop f8
rook d1 excuse me rook b1 defending the b4 pawn obviously that's the whole idea we have bishop d7
rook a6 and rook a8 magnus here trying to trade the pieces but he kind of removes the rook from
guarding the center and in doing that ikaru starts creating some play on the other side of the board
he starts to look for knight f3 bishop all these ideas but b3 activates his pieces a little bit put
some pressure but here magnus just plays knight d4 and this is a problem this is a big problem
because now white is going to have to trade some pieces white does not really have a choice
get takes d4 takes d4 and again if you take with the knight that's there's nothing wrong
with this you just move your bishop but the position is way too equal um
it's way too equal and you need to win the game to force the playoff so you've got to play bishop
d4 ed4 and go for it you just go f4 uh and start going um something like e5 so we get bishop g4 e5
and a free pawn taken on d4 counter balance with another free pawn on h4 when you are trying to
play for a win you have to win this game to force the blitz um the five pawns versus five pawns
are only counter balanced by the fact that both sides have different sets of pieces and
different things to play for white has a much weaker king with the advancement of the pawns
but potential weaknesses for black on b5 and c7 here the easiest thing to do is to trade the queen
offer a queen trade take on f2 take on f2 and then try to mobilize with rook c1 hitting this
etc but hikara played rook c1 hitting c7 and magnus found a really nice idea rook d8
the point being that if you play rook c7 here there is rook takes d4 and if queen takes d4 we
need one check and the match is over king h2 right and he wins because again at this point he has a
one point lead so rook c1 was met with rook d8 and now we have a problem we have the fact that
there is this you know you can't move the rook off the back rank so kicaro plays queen c3 and magnus
swoops in queen g3 threatening queen f4 bishop h3 queen e3 this pawn whenever and there is too many
threats here after queen takes c7 you cannot take on d4 uh because then there's queen takes this
queen ga however there is an in-between move rook d7 and that's the problem that's the problem
yes you can give a check but you cannot prevent all of your pieces from collapsing
and it was here rook takes f4 magnus attacking the rook threatening check threatening mates
threatening check threatening different mates was magnus carlsen who won the game he carl resigned
a dominant display from magnus today uh it seemed like every game came down to a very
very slight error at the very end but you can't ask for any better four rapid games magnus jumps
back despite spending 90 of his games not even in his seat but under his chair sitting in pain
overcoming it overcoming adversity and tomorrow we get match seven there has to be a winner
and tomorrow somebody is going to go home with a hundred and forty thousand dollars he crowned
the champion of the bangladesh carlson chess tour finals as always if you're enjoying your recaps
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been loving reading your comments so many of them i think last video had over 600 comments maybe we
can try to break that today much love and i'll see you after the last recap tomorrow afternoon