ladies and gentlemen today we concluded the preliminary stage of pog champs and
the last match that took place was the match between ludwig and moist
critical two fantastic content creators in very different ways and styles the last time they met
in upon champs was the consolation final in pogchamps one and this is how it went down
bang i can't believe it i can't believe it yes in a three minute game with two blunders i still
found that checkmate since then charlie has six wins over ludwig ludwig has nine wins over charlie
it's a pretty nice score and now they meet to determine who is the first and second seed in
group d as they move to face either logic or rain wilson from group c i am going to take you through
all of the games and we're also going to have some fun clips to look at let's go charlie begins with
e4 and ludwig who normally plays e5 didn't want to get vienna and actually starts out with the
scandinavian now i'm going to take a little bit of inspiration here even though ludwig does work with
a coach i'm just going to completely steal the fact that maybe that uh you know he was inspired
because i taught mr beast the scandinavian and then mr beast played it against ludwig
the scandinavian defense if you haven't seen my video on it posted it a couple days ago is the
whole point of it is to get your queen attacked and slide it back a square now black has a very
simple developmental pattern black will move the knights out black will play a6 stopping knight
to b5 attacking the queen and then black will develop the light squad bishop and as you notice
ludwig literally proceeds to do everything that i just said and charlie a little bit thrown off here
to be honest the queen d6 scandinavian can be punished in a main way with the move g3 which as
i said in my scandinavian video is not something that you will face a lot at the 1100 level the
point being that you put your bishop on this diagonal and then you play bishop f4 and attack
the queen charlie plays more or less naturally but here plays 92 not realizing he actually doesn't
need to defend this pawn what the heck do i mean by that well let's say he plays castles
this is not hanging because at the end of it there is a check you always need to look for checks
bishop b5 would be a check and even though you would lose your bishop this is called a discovered
attack on the queen so he plays knight e2 and now ludwig's already developing very actively he plays
bishop to f4 which is the best move queen goes back and he plays c3 so actually very solid job so
far from charlie we get long castles from ludwig and we get h3 attacking the bishop the problem
with putting your knight like this is that even though you're not pinned at all times black is
actually threatening to take this knight and even here black can take this knight and the reason
you would do this is that it irreparably damages white's pawn structure white now will no longer be
able to castle this way and in the meanwhile black will finish their development with g6 bishop g7
not here because bishops don't move like that i'm bad at drawing arrows but actually in the
game charlie does castle and here even though ludwig had just gone back he should have taken
because after takes there's no more rook to guard this pawn and he just comes in here with the queen
this is very bad news now it would have been potentially for charlie but ludwig was focused
more on finishing his development and that is actually why you always need to scan
the forcing moves first so we get e6 forcing moves being checks captures and attacks we get g4 now
yes you can bring back your bishop but ludwig is not a coward and he sacrifices the knight for
two pawns a very common sacrifice and one that's pretty mysterious for beginners and intermediate
players when do you sacrifice like this at this point i would not have sacrificed if i was ludwig
because if you want to start an attack on the king you need two more active pieces than your opponent
has defenders in this case ludwig doesn't have that but he does have a very annoying bishop and
defending this is not so easy charlie plays knight g3 but now he pins himself even though he guards
his knight he's pinned himself and here a really good move would be f6 and e5 just pawn storming
lodwig plays bishop d6 which is a move that i don't dislike the point of course is that after
takes takes uh charlie now has removed one of his defenders of his king and ludwig has activated his
queen a little bit charlie plays bishop to e2 i like this move a lot it's not the best move but
i like it now he's no longer pinned now ludwig plays f6 this is going to be the springboard
for the pawn storm at this point after the move f6 you should not go queen b3 the way you deal
with this is you bring it back and after it takes takes black has no more attacking pieces if black
starts launching their pawns you centralize and you look to immediately get at their weaknesses a
queen trade here would be great when you are about to be under attack you need to look for a way to
trade your opponent's most powerful piece which is the queen but i don't mean that you need to go
you know search for like 10 moves straight just if you can check and at the same time guarantee it so
charlie plays queen b3 why this is a bad move is because it moves the queen way away from the king
and basically you must land the checkmating attack ludwig plays h5 and charlie plays knight to e4
attacking the queen a very dangerous move because now the queen gets even closer and ludwig finds
it it's the best move but charlie brings something right back knight to c5 charlie now threatens mate
so rather than ludwig focusing here and being like oh two attack oh that's so great i wouldn't knight
no no no no you gotta look what your opponent wants and he sees it and ludwig plays knight to a5
defending mate and threatening the queen at this point charlie could have played queen before the
point of queen b4 is that you look like you're threatening the knight the problem with this
is that after takes i'm first i'm first by the time you take my night and get here and get back
first of all i'm guarding it and second of all even if that didn't exist i'ma get you before
you get me okay so queen a4 gets played which is around the same idea and at this point ludwig well
uh he takes and then charlie takes back and ludwig completely inexplicably doesn't take this
bishop i mean maybe he was worried about queen takes a five and he didn't like that very much
but in this position he is winning how is he winning well the queen needs help
who's gonna help the queen if you set the king by going here here here here here here
and then down here and then mate well you need to stop smoking before you watch my videos
the best move here is either rook to d5 rook g5 or rook h6 rook g6 it's called a rook lift it's
when you bring your rook up and over to join the attack you cannot go bang bang bang that
is way too slow although it's actually even very difficult to stop this by the way because of how
weak white's king is but white could at least go here for example and if h3 maybe play like
you know like super cocoon defense and maybe survive uh but uh instead ludwig played b6
which defends the knight and counter attacks tonight now charlie plays knight takes e6 for king
ludwig takes the bishop charlie takes this takes back and here rook to e1 and all of a sudden
this has been stopped and even here potentially rook to d5 would have been playable
and so and and really uh here an exercise for you is how does white survive getting checkmated
you have to use forcing moves check forces king to be seven and now queen to e4 beautiful using that
last move you hit the queen you guard and you pin that's the most important thing you have not made
it possible for black to move it's illegal okay so you use forcing moves in a defensive nature
but in the game we got king to b7 and now rook to e7 so charlie's not having any of this defensive
stuff he's going aggressive at this point at any moment ludwig has a draw how does ludwig have a
draw he's not going to enroll in art school he is going to give what's called perpetual check
so at any point here ludwig can go check check check check check check check check
in this order and there's nothing that the king can do but ludwig plays g5 and now charlie finds
queen to c2 queen to d1 is the same idea but you need to get rid of the queen so that it
cannot go to g4 and attack your king and that's exactly what he does and then charlie infiltrates
and when ludwig pushed he took his queen square away so now ludwig is standing around but has
no threats but charlie is standing around and he does have threats ludwig finds rook
c8 but now charlie's going to pick the panzer that's the problem then charlie plays rook g7
look at this move hits the knight danger sorry hits the rook with the knight danger levels hits
the queen guarded lottery gets low on time here ends up trading down charlie has a rook and a
pawn for a knight if you can't count that's six to three six is more than three welcome to my videos
or should i say welcome to gotham chess recaps rook g8 check king 2h1 how do you win a position
like this you ask your opponent to resign if that doesn't work you trade a pair of
rooks and you promote a pawn or you promote two pawns so watch charlie immediately gets the pin
immediately swaps the rooks and the perhaps the most clutch thing of the entire game realizing
that he can go here you can sack the rook because you get a king on five versus king on three and
now we march the pawns down the board and charlie turbo fisto moist critical penguin zero pushed his
pawns to glory from he missed the mate in one or two in there but it doesn't really matter
and then he mated the man he made it him he made it him and he took a one-nothing lead
and this is what his coach the prophet daniel naredinsky had to say about it amazing game
this is the best game he's ever played this is the best game he's ever played
this is the best game he has ever played now ladies and gentlemen i am no scientist but i'm
fairly certain daniel naredinsky thought that that was the best game that charlie has ever played now
we go to game number two charlie's got the black pieces ludwig begins with e4 but ludwig knew
the sicilian dragon was coming and he played the alapin c3d4 if you've been following my recaps you
know that rubius gave a lot of headaches excuse me headaches here to daniel negranu and the headaches
continued and charlie plays g6 and you can't do that the whole point here is black has to go d5
your sicilian player learn this d5 variation or knight to f6 because if you do this you get hit
ludwig doesn't just lose lucy goosey just develop his pieces you know my coach so
no he goes to punish turbo fisto and now the knight is trapped it's crazy that the fifth
move for charlie loses the game and now he's down a night now easy ludwig develop your pieces
castle your king and win the damn game beautiful stuff all right that's fine and okay let's just
castle the king and finish our development and then move on no he plays the move queen to a4 the
point is that after queen takes there is night takes but this move hangs a queen take a look
at these two grandmasters reaction to this now i can see ludwig do oh don't hang your queen oh oh
oh oh he just threw oh oh so ladies and gentlemen this is why you always look for checks
because bishop takes knight is just it's just a win it's just a check and you remove
the card ludwig was done the game was over but charlie spent 10 seconds and he just did this
because sometimes when you lose you're like damn all right whatever you know
there's nothing i can do it's okay all sports teams lose before they win well not some some
are leading from start to finish but we're not talking about you know golden state warriors here
when they had kevin durant we're talking about uh you know normal sports teams
and now ludwig brings it back and he begins the stabilization process he puts the knight in the
middle he trades he centralizes and perhaps the most impressive thing is that he made a pass pawn
he invested in his past pawn and while charlie was kind of busy snatching his pawns ludwig found
arguably the nicest idea of the game here this was crazy for 11 30. normally you get
your bishop attacked and you move it but he plays rook c1 which is a savage move the point is that
if you take there's rook c8 very common idea if there's a rook covering the back rank and blocking
a past pawn you can bring a rook down there especially when it's pinned to the king like this
as long as no one can guard the rook the rook is dead and the pawn is gonna make it through
so charlie played king to f7 the point is that he wants to meet this with this and that's not
necessarily incorrect but ludwig finds a beautiful shot here bishop takes g5 look at that move
look at that move utilizing the new king's position pawn takes knight takes picks up the rook
and it was ludwig who converted this game i mean it took a little bit of time but he brought the
knight back he took the pawn and then finally he was like all right i'm done taking stuff
i got past pawns i'ma push him i'ma push him i'ma push him and he brought back the material
took him a second but he got the job done and ladies and gentlemen we're all square
now because between the two of these games ludwig had a 97 cap score in this game
which by the way doesn't make any damn sense because youngest queen on move 12 but whatever
i don't make the cap score qualification ludwig got to choose what color he played
in the armageddon white gets five minutes black gets four minutes but if black makes a draw then
black wins uh the armageddon format makes sense for super gms but it just it's the most ludicrous
thing for bog pogchamps it doesn't make any sense i mean no one draw odds doesn't mean anything
you're just basically giving black four minutes it doesn't make any sense but that's just my opinion
anyway why did ludwig choose white well if something just worked why wouldn't you do it again
but this time charlie played d5 he played it a move late but it's still completely okay and now
we got pawn takes queen takes and knight to f3 now charlie needs to develop all of his pieces
quickly beautiful there should be two and knight to f6 castles long castles all right both sides
have castled opposite ways what is going to happen well ludwig plays a move centralizing the center
and we get c takes d4 and c takes d4 now this trade this one pawn trade is a drastic mistake
see what does that mean how's that a drastic mistake well not all pawn trades are created equal
this pawn is blocking the c file to the king you've now opened it so rook c1 is going to
come with devastating effect number two you freed up a square for your opponent's piece
instead of that charlie should have played something like e5 or e6 the point is that
now the bishop defends the pawn and if pawn takes that's not scary at all you just take or you take
the queen or something and you're able to win that back but this one trade suddenly allowed ludwig to
get his knight into the game again charlie should move his king out of the middle but he plays e6
a4 ludwig sees that you're castled on opposite sides so what do you do in your
castle on opposite sides you attack primarily with your pawns so now a4 right h5 i mean
now it's a real super gm game bishop to b5 pinning the knight to the queen again i would
like try to get out or finish my development charlie plays a6 you don't need that move
the thing is you don't need that move because now takes takes and ludwig immediately senses
something might be up here he plays first he plays b4 which which theoretically uh blunders the pawn
but it's still a really good move uh but then he plays rook c1 then he plays rookie one and
by the way look at look at look at charlie e5 it's a cross pin there's two pins crisscross applesauce
here down the middle of the board but ludwig stays calm plays rook c1 plays rook c1 and now charlie's
in trouble he's got to get his king out of the way but he forgets he takes the pawn and now ludwig
knight a2 knight to a2 drops the rook i mean sorry drops the knight back
guards the rook and he's infiltrating down and now my friends we begin the cleanup process
anytime you get a winning position you got to clean up knight takes bishop charlie plays rook c8
queen moves out of the way takes takes rook here let's bring the rook active into the game let's
play f3 to kick the bishop out and also make sure our king is never back right bishop c8 bishop f2
why bishop f2 because maybe in the future you want to line up a battery to get to a7 also because
bishop g3 which charlie stops with h4 now we play h3 just i don't know because we we just push pawns
g5 queen to e2 and queen to c2 because our queen's under attack but we are setting up the
glorious stuff here on a7 and ludwig the madman danger levels what's worth more than a queen
you your word you're you're worth more than a queen you're amazing but also the king knight dc6
and if you take queen a7 is made the madman set it up from a distance
charlie plays king a8 queen i7 and here's a live look at how ludwig reacted after he won the game
i was expecting an absolute roar of emotion but ludwig takes a deep breath and just says
damn that feels good it's it's one of those two right you win an epic game of chess i wouldn't
know but you would know because you win many games i wouldn't know no but like again my
match against eric rosen for example you just let out that emotion so ludwig wins two to one in the
armageddon he is the top of group d he will play the second seed in group c that is logic
charlie goes on to play rain wilson not a pairing that you would love but he's fully capable of out
preparing rayne wilson and getting a nice position in the opening fantastic end to the preliminary
stage of pogchamps thank you all for all of your support throughout these videos
i've been loving making them depending on whoever is playing it doesn't really matter to me your
support has been unbelievable and for the haters keep on hating baby you're still giving me views