vishwanathan anand known in the chess world by his nickname vichy
is one of the greatest chess players of all time he is the pride of india he was the world
champion for many years and for the last 30 years he's been competing in all the top level events
playing all the grades from kasparov to carlson so how on earth do i choose one of his games
to show us his best game ever well personally i think there's like three or four to choose from
including his 2013 win against levon neranjan i will make a video about that game but i think this
game takes the cake the setting is 1997. we are in switzerland in the beel chess festival and vichy
has the white pieces against french grandmaster joel latier and i'll tell you why i think back
then without the effect of the engine preparation prior to the game because now we have very strong
computers this game shows the essence of vichy and his true brilliance let's go e4 latte plays d5 the
scandinavian defense we have a trade and knight comes out to hit the queen now here black can play
a variety of different things black can play queen a5 queen d6 all the way back to d8 these
are all variations of the scandi the main line is queen a5 and vichy takes the center with d4
both of them get their king's knights out knight f6 knight f3 and basically black chooses where to
put this bishop in a lot of positions you go to g4 f5 you develop like this with the two pawns
and then you put the knight on d7 and move on with life vishy just takes the center he's doing what
he does bishop to f5 now for a beginner a move that looks very standard here is just short castle
i mean just you haven't developed yet right or bishop to target the queen or bishop out well
vichy you know this is where the first wrinkle of the game becomes apparent because she plays knight
to e5 which breaks a few opening principles uh in terms of you shouldn't move a piece two times in
the opening well you should take those rules as a beginner but you should know when to break them
not just when you're a you know an advanced player but when you're one of the one of the greats
so the move knight e5 threatens bishop takes f7 or knight f7 and so for that reason we get e6
but there's a hidden reason behind this move and it has to do with the g4 square now vishy plays
g4 so the game is already getting exciting he's essentially saying to his opponent um look i don't
like your setup and i think that i can punish it based on the way i can set my pieces up
i can avoid castling and all these basic principles and just go straight at you he
didn't say all of that uh he it was silent they don't speak to each other in over-the-board chess
bishop g6 and now vichy plays h4 so he's just he's just going in and the problem here for black is
that normally you would play h6 so your bishop has a getaway square but that's a really bad move here
because white takes your bishop now and now look what you've done to your pawns you've split them
now this is a big weakness your pawn structure is very damaged you would much rather take back like
this so your clump stays together and you have an open rook see that's the small difference and
that's why lattier plays knight d7 immediately looking to trade knights so it's already getting
exciting this is very uh non-standard opening play right so knight d7 knight d7 and h5 it looks like
the bishop is all but trapped you know see you tomorrow great video for today but bishop e4 not
so fast rook is under attack we can't take this guy because of the pin here people choose one of
two things they either castle out of danger they play i mean f3 is not a very good move
uh because black just goes bishop d5 that's kind of the other idea and here is really the second
move and well rook h3 yeah uh this is gonna be an exciting game of chess which is why i chose it
so the point is to obviously bring the rook somewhere on the third rank and black plays
bishop g2 why would you go bishop g2 if white can just play rook g3 that doesn't make any sense
right because now you'll just go back here's the point black is trying to force this rook
to this square so that you will get one free move of development in the future
it's a very refined idea you know you want to force that rook to g3 so that in the future you
can win a tempo and develop faster sufficiency says to hell with your id i'm going to put my
rook right here but isn't it just going to become a target yeah knight b6 hits the bishop mishi
drops back knight d5 all right well vishy what are you going to do i mean you can't move your knight
can't move your knight issue says i don't need to move my damn knight f3 what this year rook is
hanging i know so what if he takes it huh bishop takes yeah there's no way out for this bishop
bishop's trapped two pieces are better than a rook even if one of the pieces isn't yet
taken it it will be so here's a few completely insane things that can happen from this position
first of all let's just go down that rabbit hole takes takes bishop to a3 stunning move
if you take it and then i take on c3 for example just king f2 this bishop's getting trapped don't
worry it's gonna it's gonna happen now what if i'm clever and i throw in this like and if queen takes
then this is a fork and it wins the rook yeah just queen d2 and even if this
yeah it's all good just h6 and get the pawn out of danger if gh6 now you're not gonna be able to
castle this way you'll be your king will be wide open all of this works out for vichy somehow what
it what an insane idea i'll give you one more insane idea if if knight c3 takes takes block
white is just down two pawns of course you will win this bishop but look what you have to do
takes can't take with the rook because of the pin if queen takes then queen takes
so you got to play king takes f3 yeah and white is better here what's just up a piece yes white
does have a you know slight lack of pawns but you know otherwise the position is more or less okay
well evidently f3 was quite a shock to joel lattier who played the move bishop to b4
stockpiling pressure on the night saying all right man i gotta you know i gotta i gotta put some
serious pressure here before vishi gets my bishop all right put as much pressure as you want you
could take this you could take this i'm gonna go for your bishop oh well joel tries to justify his
setup by going like this and rook b1 from vichy vishy at this point is down upon but he's going to
obviously win this this bishop on g2 this knight can take here at any point it wants but but black
doesn't really want to do that black takes another pawn and here uh vichy can't take yet because if
he takes let's not forget that this guy now loses a guard so knight e3 bishop e3 and well this
is actually very bad for vichy he needs to make sure he gets two pieces for the rook not just one
so if she stays patient plays the move rook takes b7 just rook comes down takes the pawn
now here black played rook d8 if black plays just a natural move for example like castles
how does black lose i'll take a sip you can think about it for a second
correct always look for checks first bishop takes h7 and it's a greek it's not a greek gift
it's a discovered attack on you know the queen gg you'll lose so you can't castle and if you can't
naturally bring your king out of danger that's going to be a serious problem so
that's why in the game uh mr lattier played the move rook to d.a and here vishy uncorked uh for me
probably the greatest move of his career actually uh i mean there's been a lot of games but this
move is amazing you can pause here and take a look one move crumples the black position
i'll take another sip even i'm not really thirsty i just need to kill some airtime
yeah h6
the hell does that do well let's say you're
stubborn right and you don't want to take it you play the move g6
well um you know i actually just realized i would be spoiling the solution anyways i'm
just going to show you what happened in the game it's the same move same exact move here's the idea
the move in the game was g takes h6 uh and now i mean just an absolute stun i mean just a stunner
stunner again you can pause if you'd like to find it bishop to g6
that is a free queen on d1 the bishop is hanging in two different ways and it all loses obviously
you can't take the bishop because you're queen if you take the queen you can try to solve checkmate
here rook takes e6 check can't take king f8 and now the bishop gets its first move of the game
king here and bishop takes f7 as mate you can also win in a different
way um if rookie six knight e7 i mean there's a variety of ways to win for example you can
also go like this every piece you have gets involved here and and and black is just busted
there is nothing that black can do here in the game after this absurd move bishop to g6
latier played knight e7 reinforcing the queen and now the bishop has three things trying to take it
and vishi plays very simple chess trades the queens and plays the very nice rook d3
and this shows that despite the bishop being capturable by three different pieces
the bishop guards the rook and if the rook takes the bishop will come out of danger
safe and sound also not to mention that there is some you know back rank stuff here going on
so in the game we got rook back to d8 vishy traded and played the very peaceful bishop d3
and it was in this position that the bishop escaped out of danger unscathed and despite
being two pawns down or i guess despite being two pawns up joel lottier resigned the game and
he resigned the game because he's going to lose his bishop on g2 and then he will lose everything
else probably including his desire to play chess although it's been 23 years now so um you know
maybe he recovered psychologically from the game but to me this game was sheer genius on on on the
level of creativity uh on the level of just just brilliance i mean absolute brilliance from vichy
this whole idea of rookie three uh all the way back to the opening when he put his rook here
just stunning stunning and this is still kind of considered like the the consensus you know um best
thing to do getting the bishop trapped on g2 i think isn't even necessarily fatal uh but it it
it very well might be um i remember like engine scanning this afterward uh and realizing that
you know if if you don't play into all this and maybe you try to get out with a move like bishop
h3 to try to sacrifice the bishop at least for some pawns white has an opportunity uh sorry
black has an opportunity to maybe get back in the game but still this move h6 continues to be
incredibly strong because it just dislodges all the defense on this side of the board
you can play moves like queen e1 for example looking for something on e6 later on down the
line once you unpin your king so this game was absolutely genius and probably in the future
unless you're already watching in the future i will show vichy's game against levon arenan
when he played in 2013 but if there are other games that i'm missing a win against kasparov
for example the many times that vichy played him uh the 2000 game against alexa shira for example
let me do let me know them in the comments below uh vishy is an incredible person an incredible
talent i'm i'm kind of honored to make a video about him uh he has one of the highest awards
given by i believe by the uh by the government of india he's the only sports person to have won it
uh which is incredible i think the name is the the uh the padma vibhushan if i'm not mistaken
i'm sorry if i'm mispronouncing that uh and he's just i trust god by you know by all of
the credentials and uh and all of the success of his career he is now 50 years old and he's still
competing with the very very best so vishy takes the video today uh and if there's any other games
that you'd like me to feature of his let me know in the comments below i'll see you in the next one