hopefully you've been enjoying the coverage thus far of norway chess
today we concluded the eighth round out of ten and going into today ali raza faruja had a one
point lead over magnus carlson that doesn't really mean much for the standings because
a classical win gets you three points it's not like traditional standings where a win gets you
one and so magnus has an opportunity to overtake alireza at the conclusion of today's games
magnus was playing against orientary obviously that's why they were in the thumbnail of the video
and uh the two of them are the numbers one and two in norway but are over like 200 points rating
difference and so i was just wondering do you guys know what other country has such a gap
between number one and number two let me know in the comments let's look at the games so we
get uh a rue lopez e4 e5 knight f3 knight c6 bishop b5 a6 bishop a4 knight f6 attacking the
pawn on e4 magnus castles bishop e7 d3 and b5 so first things first the main line rui is rookie 1.
this is the considered just the meanest of the main lines so magnus instead goes for d3 and after
d6 plays a4 this is already pretty unique as far as the rui goes it's pretty off the beaten path
i mean it's still relatively uh well known and actually magnus himself has played this with uh
white against dingley wren in 2017 bishop d7 the point is that if take take now the
rook is actually protected uh and actually in in these lines magnus was giving this pawn away
and the whole point is black takes the pawn damages his structure but has an extra pawn
which is good it's good to have an extra pawn all right video over see you next time
but i think magnus just had a feeling that uh that uh aryan might not go for this because it gives
magnus too much central control and he didn't i mean he never took the pawn until magnus took
and then rookie won and well now is really the question what does aryan do all of his pieces
are developed does he bring his knight back here and try to focus on the center of the board does
he play h6 going after this bishop the problem is that magnus wants this trade because that
allows him to put a really dominant bishop on d5 reroute the knight backwards and just
fight for the light squares in the center since black put three dark squared pawns in a triangle
that means all the light squares are weak but aryan goes for b4 which magnus described in the
interview afterward he just felt like aryan was going for exchanges a little bit too much
and so what he did is he traded the knights but now aryan's got all these dark squared pawns and
yeah the light squares are just incredibly weak and so queen c2 bishop b5 and even with this trade
uh this trade now occurs and this position from a positional and strategic standpoint
rather than a tactical one is is just busted for black you are left with a dark squared bishop
and three dark squared pawns so magnus here plays the best move
what is the best move here for white from a positional standpoint it's an advanced move
with an advanced idea you can pause here if you'd like but i'm about to tell you after i take a sip
the best move if you're looking at things like c4 you're not incorrect but c4 is wrong because it
has no long-term goal the move is knight d2 with the long-term goal of getting to those two squares
whether it's like this or whether it's just to hang out here and put pressure
queen c6 and queen to a4 pinning the rook knight to c4 and g3 this just is a good move
in the long run maybe you'll advance your pawns you also give some breathing room for your king
now magnus brings the queen back and brings all the pieces to the king side he will probably
infiltrate on this side of the board atari did not put up a whole lot of resistance i have to
tell you first magnus trades one rook he brings that rook all the way into atari's territory and
then plays knight back to e3 securing the outpost on d5 rook a7 again avoiding the trade of the rook
and h3 this move is the killer it is the killer uh after h3 the position despite complete material
equality is plus seven four white i cannot stress that enough plus seven essentially
what that means is white has essentially a rook and two pawn advantage or two pieces and upon it
it's because black is helpless you're gonna march this pawn forward plant the knight and
win the game and that's exactly what magnus does even against f6 because you cannot take
here and magnus ends the game in style with a very flashy move not the only winning move
but rookie 8 and the point is that if queen takes you have check you could have done that
without playing that but now you see the point the queen no longer defends the pawn
rook g7 you take the queen bishop bishop g7 you play knight to f6 cannot take and if you take
like this i take the queen yes for a move or two you will have a rook and a bishop for the queen
but let's not forget that you will lose both pawns and i will just destroy you or magnus in this case
will destroy aryan and so in the game king h8 knight f6 and orientary reside excuse me resigned
with a combined set of threats and the queen also hanging convincing win for magnus who picks up
three points are in not able to keep up with his world champion opponent and uh well who can really
blame the guy huh the second interesting matchup of the day uh was between uh karwana and ferugia
and this one's really interesting because uh well uh you're about to find out another kara khan
and f3 now you see the name above me fantasy the fantasy variation of the kara khan because here
you want a position where you have full control of the center and pieces out and castling with the
open f file now there's a lot of things that you can play against the fantasy personally i play e6
blocking in this bishop but then kind of turning the game into a french and then expanding on the
queen side i used to play what alireza played in this game which is take take and e5 because if
you take you don't take the queen but you actually play check and the pawn in the center is attacked
this is very bad for white of course people don't take but they play knight f3 bishop g4 and now c3
and bishop d3 this is a new main line it used to be that everybody played bishop c4 this was
insanely popular it's what i studied but it's not popular anymore and now everybody does this uh and
actually ferruccia was spending a lot of time here he was down a ton of time in the opening which
is pretty surprising at the 2700 level so early so we got uh knight f6 from him castles bishop d6 and
knight a3 kind of a weird move from uh caruana engine was already giving some overwhelming
advantage for white i really like white's position the point is you want to go here so b5 but now
we see the second idea to put the knight here and hit the bishop now we see the third idea to bring
this knight all the way to f5 where ferrugia just says look man if you take i'm good giving you the
bishop pair i'm fine i don't it's it's all good but that's why caruana goes queen here in reality
caruana apparently had to just go all in on the king side so he had to play like queenie one
and if here then like something like knight three h4 queen g3 bishop g5 and just go all in on that
side of the board um even as far as to sacrifice this pawn potentially like totally just all in
he didn't do that he played queen c2 and that and that gave uh
perugia a chance to break in the center with the move c5 and despite all of these
trades three moves in a row resulting in a trade of pawns and then this position
this looks terrible for farruga if you just look he's got four pawn islands upon island being a
pond that has no surrounding ponds normally that's really bad it's really really bad it's like really
bad because your pawns are going to be really weak but in this case no it actually wasn't so bad
so first alireza uses the open files to put some pressure on fabi
he uh he mobilizes his weakness gluing his bishop in the center then he gets the queens
off and despite fabi still having a positional advantage he begins to target fabiano's pawns
and continues to activate his pieces continues to target his weaknesses
so he never gives fombi a chance to consolidate in a perfect way and continues to be active like
look he activates his king activates both pawns and fabiano shuffled around and for a very long
time looking for weaknesses but alireza got rid of them first he used the flank pawn push to
trade off his a pawn then he double then he traded off his doubled f pawn and despite having three
pawn islands remaining there's no way to attack them and then the players traded off their pawns
and it was on move 60 with the rook bishop and pawn each that they called it and sent the game
to an armageddon in the armageddon we repeated the opening but alireza did not he went for g6
which is another way to play with bishop g7 knight c3 bishop g7 and e5 from fabi now it's
like an advanced karo khan except g6 bishop g7 has been played and fabi puts his queen in the center
bishop b6 by ali reza is a hilariously peculiar move i think it's the main line though so is e6
the thing is that you want to do this and after bishop b5 you just ignore the pin and put the
knight on f5 that's your goal but fabi played a very nasty idea he planted his queen on c5
then he planted his bishop on e3 then he put his knight on a4 and then he moved his pieces back
and put his knight there so alireza didn't want that to happen he didn't want to castle and then
allow this knight to clamp down the position so he sacked the pawn the problem is that now he's
just down a pawn even though he's activated his bishop he's just down a pawn and with three on one
you have to advance on the queen side that's exactly what fabiano starts to do advances
on the queen side then he consolidates his king for a moment preventing any sort of pawn pushes
and starts to attack on the king side so because in here he's gotten it he's got a space advantage
and a material advantage fobby dictates where this game is going to be played so he starts
to kick this knight out he kicks it out to g7 he continues to play on that side of the board
aldi reza doesn't want the knight to end up on d4 completely shutting it down so he sacrifices
another pawn but it's not enough fabiano brings in some pieces gives a check and plays f5 a beautiful
move opening the door for queen h6 mates and uh well it's too little too late uh everything
gets shredded apart and uh actually he is down a piece his bishop and knight knight and two bishops
but it ain't it ain't much and now a nice move queen f4 transferring the queen to i the bishop
yes the queen's guarding but queen h4 is a mate threat so we get rook d4 and ali reza just played
on a little bit longer but uh resigned at the end when both rooks landed on the eighth rank
of course he could he could have resigned 15 moves ago but he goes down in the armageddon
he only picks up one point not one and a half points and now he trails magnus carlsen uh
by a point going into their matchup tomorrow they will play tomorrow
don't miss it that's all i have to say oh sorry not tomorrow at the time of recording
this it's not tomorrow tomorrow is a res day you're watching like two weeks in the
future they already played sorry at the time of recording they'll be playing on october 15th
now let's check the last matchup of the round now i'm going to say this right now
you might as well drop your like and write your comment at this point because this matchup was
not that exciting it really wasn't that's why i saved it for last the last time they played these
two had a dead drawn game that somehow resulted in a losing rook end game for duda this time
they played an accelerated dragon resulting in a moroxy structure spelled marrow m-a-r-o-c-z-y
and this is a very positional kind of idea from white who sets up the cascading triangle well it
would be a triangle but the top of it is missing like the waves like this and has a nice bind but
the queens got traded then some pieces got traded and then uh due to give away this pawn to create
a dark squared opposite-colored bishop blockade and you can't play rook c1 because of bishop to h6
like i said uh not not too exciting of a game they just shuffled and by the 30th move called it
and we go to armageddon this one was more interesting because this game you can actually
learn something from so it was a french now let's remember duda gets seven minutes he needs to draw
aronian gets 10 minutes he needs to win a classical french with knight c3 now
keep in mind what do the plays here if you're a french player or not against knight c3 or knight
d2 guarding the center you can trade and put the knight here and here you can play bishop to d7 and
bishop to c6 this is called the fort knox french it's an interesting line and in many positions you
try to trade this bishop for one of these knights play c6 and just be very solid but not have the
bishop pair knight d7 knight f6 knight comes back to g3 i just accidentally clicked the entire game
to go forward and normally here it's take take and c6 however dude plays something unique here
he has played this before so has magnus carlsen and that guy's like a decent chess player so
when he plays you should listen and that move is g6 which doesn't look like crazy but at
you know at the title player level a new idea before the 10th move in the french
that's pretty unique the point is simple to play this move in castle and delay taking so
aronian meets that with this aha you can't castle judah says all right well let's trade bishops
aronian says okay but now you can't castle duda says and i'm just gonna put my king on g7
and he's very solid he's traded off his light squad bishop almost every pawn he has is on a
light square replacing the light squared bishop and now he will play a5 trying to instigate on
the queen side aronian here has to come up with something so he goes for g4 uh but this this is
this is not a serious attack uh knight goes to d5 and queen comes to f4 offering a trade of queens
he gets it he gets a nitrate and now it's two rooks and a knight versus two rooks and a bishop
let's see bishop back to e2 f4 and king f2 bishop f3 so he gets space puts his bishop out this way
although it does look into a very solid structure rook d8 rook d3 and b6 and due to basically just
come in come and get me baby come and get me you're not going to hit me
there's nothing you can do i am indestructible well let's see king e3 and do to play c5 the
point is a3 was played but if you take i'm gonna go take take take take take or in the words of our
youtube legend we have captures on c5 black captures white captures black captures
captures on d3 and black captures on c5 and i mean this position is equal on a serious note obviously
i'm very happy a godmotor is back um you guys were writing some funny comments like you know trying
to hold it down while he's away but it's great to have him back i was planning to make a video doing
some you know impersonations or uh saying things and phrases that he says but then he i didn't
know that he was going to return so he returned quickly so just good that he's happy and healthy
and back to his grind anyway king f8 pawn trades pawn trades rook trades so many captures knight
and five versus bishop and five should be a draw even with the two pawns here potentially making
a passer it's not enough very nice idea by the way g5 uh the point is that takes takes leads to this
that's just stupid it's not good uh and even with the activation of the king black just guards on
the dark squares that's the thing light squared bishop only fights on light squares think about it
you got a piece here that has access to half the board the other half it doesn't have any access to
this piece has access to all of the board light and dark so the knight although a little bit hard
to maneuver like the bishop can hit the edge of the other side of the board in one move
the knight does fight on both sides and is able to create a defensive barrier and here
duda puts up his dark squared resistance kicks out the king and with some more shuffling you
under normal circumstances this is a draw but because levon aronian has to play for a win and
the players have like three seconds at this point he tries his best um he shuffles around his pieces
and then duda breaks with h5 and well aronian's king goes for a smoke break but forgets
that he left the stove on and uh yeah he's going for a smoke outside but the kitchen is on fire
suddenly the pawn has made it through suddenly the pawn is collapsing suddenly the pawn is collapsing
over there and it was here that he just resigned again he was going to lose the armageddon anyway
because it was going to be a draw but he decided to play on so at least credit to him for that um
and yeah but duda gets another win rough start for him at the beginning of the tournament but
he beats aronian two more games to go i hope to make a fun recap video for you guys between alirez
and ferruja and magnus carlson uh and that's all that's all for now check out the courses check
out the website in the description check out the discord and yeah be good see you in the next video