today magnus carlson played his first competitive chess event on chess.com in nearly three years
that's mainly because he has an exclusivity contract with chess 24 much like hikara has
one with chess.com a lot of poker professionals do something similar they play on only one website
for example like pokerstars but magnus obviously came to terms with just.com for this event it's
amazing to see him playing he played against the number one iranian player parham maksudlu
and in this video i'm going to take you kind of through the story of the match the cool moments
and at the end i have a fun clip for you where magnus trash talks in each geary who doesn't love
that alright let's jump into the games so we kick things off with magnus and the white pieces five
minutes one second bonus an english opening knight c3 d5 d4 bishop b4 e3 knight f6 so far so good
looks like a nimso all right magnus what do you got for us huh that's a strange move i thought
maybe you would develop your knight or your bishop or attack the bishop well it turns out this isn't
some sort of genius opening preparation within his first five moves back on chess.com magnus
carlson mouse lived he actually meant to play a3 well in the rest of this game he was
slightly worse but he was able to consolidate his position this is not where the pawn belongs
in this system it belongs covering these two squares so you would want to go a3 but magnus
luckily you know he he kept the pawn structure symmetrical he traded pieces he played solidly
uh and many many trades later he managed to stabilize trade and a short while after this they
drew their game the second game was also a draw so we will jump ahead to the third game of the match
the players repeat their opening from the first game and now magnus plays a3 drama avoided this
should be set so perham you know has a choice here to take like this this is also very common uh and
then he you know he would try to play c5 and queen a5 it's a very common nimso indian idea to trade
the dark squared bishop damage the structure and basically play against this bishop you've given
white the the dark square bishop you don't have one anymore so you don't want that dark square
bishop to completely get beastly anyway um in the game parham went back because he didn't want to do
that and now magnus played in a very unique way rather than just developing his bishop normally
he takes a lot of space on the queen side he just doesn't develop on the king side at all he clams
down on his opponent it's really difficult for barham to move in positions like this one you're
looking at pawn breaks when there's eight pawns aside you need to kind of poke holes in the fence
that's how you should think about a closed position and so the key move would be e5
b6 or a5 those are your three pawn breaks only one of them will be successful and that's why
parham went for it the problem for perham is that he was spending so much time early in the game
on seemingly trivial decisions and at this point already you know once this whole trade came
he was down like four minutes to two in a five minute game and it's only like the twelfth move so
let's see how magnus is able to continue to apply the pressure he plays queen c2 guards this guards
this now moving the knight can be a threat on the queen brown plays queen h5 okay that covers the
king from ever going this way and if the king ever goes short you'll play knight g4 and you'll check
mate magnus carlsen you'll tell all your friends about it at the bar in library so then knight
back to e2 i mean very high level move from magnus how many of us would play a backwards night move
uh and then and then transfer the knight over here okay probably all of you but not me
knight g4 so now obviously you know at this point i would castle allowing checkmate and then go oh
i missed that but we get h3 this is not a real attack because you can't actually threaten but
you need to open the possibility of being able to castle because then queen comes down to h2 that's
not that's no longer possible so knight e5 and magnus sees an overloaded situation with the queen
the queen cannot guard both points so he plays takes takes and bishop takes e5 and so magnus
is up a juicer or a pawn b6 barham begins active mobilization on the other side of the board but in
doing so this is very very important pushes upon and leaves himself a weakness on the c6 square
i get knight to d4 and bishop to d7 rook c1 rook c8 he's doing this magnus because he wants again
long-term pressure here now magnus takes a hit of his bomb cloud and plays a moderately delayed
king to e2 he then proceeds a little bit later to play king f3 and he's doing this because the
king is actually very safe here parham's got very passive bishops staring into rock solid formation
but perham to his credit plays the important pawn break on the other side of the board and
plays the rogue 2a4 magnus stabilizes the queen side and begins to push on this side of the board
what he does is he checks forces the king back and a very important move
rook to b1 he plays this to have over protection on this and in the future to potentially trade a
a rook excuse me so rook up to a6 rook three uh rook three b2 rook a3 king slides over
why does the king slide over potentially he can go knight back uh to this square
at the same time it's it also very much is a pass back move uh you might want to expand with the f
pawn in the future you couldn't do that when the king was blocking it uh but here parham
just lashes out with f5 looking to sacrifice the pawn and open up the bishop the problem for him
is that even after this you just got nothing and after bishop takes pawn takes
magnus up two pawns parham resigned uh and magnus won his first game in the speech championship
uh magnus played this game with a 99 accuracy parham played 94 and a half or something like
that 99 for magnus not too bad we jump ahead now uh a couple of games i believe maybe three games
i don't believe that this was the next game but now parham has the black pieces once again oh
sorry this would be two games because magnus had the white pieces again okay so more of the same uh
but this time parham doesn't go for d5 very quickly although he did play it a few moves later
uh and now we have a main line nym so indian dc4 bishop c4 and c5 so this is very common
this is very common i did mention this earlier uh in the video c5 knight c6 super super
straightforward uh castles b6 and bishop b7 in a perfect world white goes here here here here
and this bishop comes alive on on b2 and you win the game but parham plays e5 very important
move clamping down on the center with dark squares again he's traded his dark squared bishop early on
and therefore he needs to replace his dark square uh kind of attacker with dark square at baby
attackers dark squared pawns if that makes sense you see white has a problem all his pawns are also
on dark squares there's this kind of positional struggle so knight g3 cd4 cd4 ed4 and here i
was talking with hikaru during the game in hikira was was was looking at the idea e4 and then f4 uh
with the intention to potentially play e5 and this would lead to a super imbalanced position magnus
didn't do that instead choosing rook c1 hoping that parham would take this again opens up the
two bishops and for the cost of one pawn magnus has a very powerful attack where he has now opened
his rook his bishop his knight is targeting that side of the board and the queen can come out here
in the future once this knight disappears because for now that knight is extremely powerful okay
glad parham plays rookie 80 doesn't want to get checkmated e4 knight back to d7 super impressive
move to put the knight on c5 or knight e5 again these backwards knight moves by these guys
super super uh accurate i mean just amazing to see so bishop b5 he targets the knight knight comes to
c5 that guards this knight because it disconnects the rook from seeing the knight and this knight
is protected now we get f3 magnus rebuilds in the center a6 takes takes and bishop a4
magnus carlsen in this position blunders a piece what he should have played was queen takes d4
and after queen d4 if take take this is not really a fork because the rook takes the bishop
this should be five rook d1 and the game goes on uh but magnus played bishop d4
and in inexplicable fashion blundered bishop to a4 just crazy and this is a huge mistake for for
magnus because his only way to cover his bishop is to play queen d2 and then simply knight b3
and that's it and next move i take with chuck and and you i mean for example queen before
queen takes check queen takes here and it looks like you fork me it looks like you've made it
but i have bishop to b5 and you haven't made anything and so magnus sacrifices the queen he
takes on c5 and bishop takes d1 rook f takes d1 and parham here i don't know why he didn't move
the queen but parham says look man i'm gonna keep this as easy as possible i'm gonna sack
my queen back i have a rook for a knight i have the past c pawn i'm gonna win this game
and it was very scary because you never know what magnus is capable of but perham
did the right thing he marched this king all the way forward to support his pawn
this pawn is passing and that's exactly how he ended up converting this position
bringing his four most important pieces to the party very nice move to finish it off
uh if you take the rook i just take this knight c3 rook c3 if take the take if take then take and
parham maksoulu struck back and the score is two and a half two and a half
and uh from this point forward magnus carlsen won every single game that they played
not throughout the match but for the next hour and a half this is when magnus lost magnus then
adopted parham he beat him 11 straight games the game i'm gonna show you is the second to last
game of three one which was simply breathtaking everything was falling apart for barham in these
games and if you look at the cap scores magnus carlsen played one game below 93 if i'm not
mistaken he averaged 95 96 caps absolutely unreal from him just stunning stunning play and the game
that i really want to show from magnus's perspective is the second to last 3-1 game
because this this one was was just incredible so it was a slav defense and i mean at this point
magnus was experimenting with different openings keep in mind at this point he's already completed
the 10 straight games that's what adoption is uh in considered in in online chess so we get
just a very simple and straightforward kind of reverse london by the way
london fans uh castles knight d7 b3 parham at this point just trying to put pieces on squares aren't
we all uh but trying to you know stop the bleeding magnus plays knight to e4 he could have played
bishop d6 but he plays knight e4 first then bishop d6 and here plays a very common idea played in the
london system which is this move queen b8 queen b8 targets the h2 pawn before castling i always
recommend you guys can see this in all of my d4 rating climbs the london video there's positions
in london's you don't need to castle and you can just start an attack you can especially start an
attack when you're up 10 points in a match and so that's exactly what magnus does g3 gives magnus
the hook that he needs to target and rather than going crazy and sacrificing which wouldn't work
he plays h5 so parham under normal circumstances would play h4 so the pawn can't come forward
he can't do that right now because he needs to guard against this so knight e4 de4 forcing the
knight to get out of here bishop to h3 and parham just goes crazy with d5 he can play rook to e1
but then g5 h4 and bye-bye so we get d5 bishop e5 very nice move chomping off this guy takes oh
bishop comes back let's not forget this bishop doesn't want this rook this bishop is far more
powerful than this rook so magnus drops back to e6 a sure sign of a strong attack involves a locked
center you don't want your opponent with an open center because then they can move their pieces
across the board creating counter play on your position and at the same time finding ways to
transfer their pieces to defend themselves so magnus kind of locks the center right because
this queen isn't threatening anybody but queen d4 and perham probably thought while i'm out of
the woods i mean i'm going to get his queen off the board fantastic i mean if queen g5
you don't have an attack anymore because how are you going to get rid of this guys
to hell with that g5 knight g2 c5 take my queen buddy let's go take my queen take take
h4 all right i don't want to play g4 because right now this pawn is controlling this knight's
movements so magnus plays f6 reinforcing the pawn the pawn on g5 then he plays king e7 because again
he was taking bong hits basically the entire match we get rook to d2 rook g8 rook d1 knight
comes into f3 so after bishop takes in pawn takes which is what happened the knight is crowded on
e1 of course you can play g4 that looks very nice but why did we do all of this the knight
stopped guarding the pawn so we take knight to d3 so we take of course he can't take because
of this okay knight to f4 now here you can go g4 with the plan of bam bam and bam and that's
mate it's not going to happen though so magnus just plays h4 rook d6 hitting the bishop and
the bishop parks itself on g4 covering all of the important squares near the king knight to d5 looks
like a nice check on the king but then just king takes rook the rook is protected by the other rook
and if the knight comes here that's what happens rook six back to d2 the pawn continues to march
magnus carlsen shows that he doesn't need a queen under traditional attacking patterns
to launch a devastating attack at this point if rook takes h2 was played you would get f2 check
and winning the rook via discovered attack we got king to h1 but he plays it anyway the pawns both
make it one square before promotion and white's position is absolutely busted he literally has
no more moves and magnus ends the game in very nice fashion he could have won it actually just
brute force here he could have played here here force through the queen take take and now you
can't take the rook because of promotion magnus does it in a more aesthetic way rook takes g3
and after rook f takes f2 a very quiet move bishop e4 and parham resigned because he literally can't
move he just can't move if he plays like rookie 2 for example black can literally play here here
here and here like you cannot move you cannot move you can do this forever but at some point i will
break through because you are absolutely paralyzed a gorgeous attacking win for magnus queenless
attack using just two rooks and a bishop and a pawn storm on that side of the board not castling
another game played at 98.9 caps simply brilliant i mean a brilliant performance going into the
bullet um he had a i don't know he had a gigantic lead uh one game i will just show for fun here
uh is uh is this one this was i believe the last game of the entire thing
at this point magnus already was on a six-game winning streak i think he had a 9-2
lead in just the bullet which is one plus one and we get c3 f3 and this
i don't know how you feel about this you know some people are chess purists they really don't
like to see stuff like this but uh i don't know at this point magnus had a lead of i think 18 games
there was basically no time remaining i don't know if you think this is disrespectful
i i don't i don't mind it you know i think it's gonna happen if big leads are built and magnus
just still when when it comes to getting serious just beautifully mobilizes his pieces and even
and just converts brilliantly i mean i don't know how many times he moved but look at the
coordination of his pieces the knight on d5 is protected five different times uh or one two
three four four different times and uh well yeah the it all ends with this this this this bishop
takes rook and um a6 and that's it you cannot stop a7 and a8 perham resigns and magnus carlsen wins
24 to 5 in his first round matchup of the speed chess championship 2020. after he was done
magnus had something interesting to say i you know i don't want to be one of these guys oh
it's such a spicy statement but i'll end the video showing you this clip as i promised um what do you
think about it and who do you think we will see in the finals of this year's speed chess championship
and who do you who do you want to win it because we all we all think we know who's gonna win it
but who do you want to win it who would you like to see emerge in this field and score some really
dominant victories let me know in the comments below but it's amazing to see magnus playing
on chess.com again even if it's maybe just for this event i think this is obviously good for
just chess in general so yeah hope you enjoy these let me know if you want me to keep doing them for
the speedchest championship and i'll see you in the next one later on um magnus congratulations
again uh for winning the match and moving on one last question we like to ask everybody you've got
either vladislav artemyev or aneesh geary coming up next any uh any pick on who you'd rather play i
would rather play uh player tammy if i think he's by far the strongest blitz player of those two