a lot of you recently enjoyed the video that i made called the best chess game i ever played so
i figured that i would make a logical follow-up with the worst chess game i ever played but it's
not really going to be that it's more going to be the most painful loss that i've ever had and it
actually came in the exact same year as that other video which you can check out i'll put the link in
the description this was in 2016. it was in the millionaire chess open uh this was the seventh
round and a little bit of background as to why this is the video and not just more generally the
you know the worst game i ever played it's because we all have bad games games that never make it out
of the opening some you know i probably lost the game when i was like seven or eight years old
in 10 moves or something that even happens now when i play blitz but this one hurt because in
the seventh round of the millionaire chess open i was on fire i was having the tournament of my
life i had already beaten three grand master level opponents uh and i was over 2600 performance for a
grand master norm i was playing with the black pieces against jarabuch and well we obviously
know the outcome but let's see what happened now this game we actually had played a queen's gambit
all the same a few months earlier so i surprised him by playing into it again and having some
more preparation here he played this move e4 uh and i i uh played a line against him that was
very very dangerous the move b5 essentially you hang on to this pawn for dear life and you do it
to such an extent that even when he goes like this you you you just keep hanging on and you
sacrifice the rook you might say lefty what just looks like a this looks like a dumb bullet game i
mean what are you talking about this is actually not uh it's not bad you know it's been proven
over many uh iterations that the move rook a2 here is better than rook a1 according to correspondence
but this is really the starting point of the opening now why is this even theory well
for the cost of a knight white has won a rook but this blockade here prevents me from developing or
prevents white from developing the pawn on d4 is a very big target and at any moment you can pop in
here and and really the point here is that white has sacrificed a lot of safety on the queen side
and that's why this is viable and if white is unprepared he's not going to know what to do
so he played f3 which is the main move it's been played all the time and all i knew here is that
i'm supposed to play the move f5 i'm supposed to completely wreck his structure this looks totally
different than standard opening theory and if you're not familiar with uh opening theory i
would recommend you don't play like this you just you know this is what you do after you've learned
all the rules now after pawn takes i forgot everything i couldn't remember if i was supposed
to play knight e7 or knight c6 97 being the line that is actually played where you just let
them take everything but then you go here and now you're threatening queen h4 and bishop b4 and you
know once you get this bishop you're gonna castle and this really shows you that despite white being
up four points of material white's position is extremely dangerous but i played knight c6
and this sufficiently confused my opponent uh because he played knight e2 and i took and um
you are not supposed to take this pawn because after you take b3 is apparently very good white
just immediately breaks apart the pawns here uh if you play bishop before check white can even block
normally you get this move but white has already moved the knight like if this night wasn't here
this would be winning but white just takes and you don't get anything so i messed up my opening but i
did it so well that he he just didn't fall for my bluff i mean and what happened is i developed the
night naturally and he kept kind of coming forward hitting my bishop in my queen i played bishop b4
check king f2 and move my queen he did this uh the trick being that if i take it he has this move
and if i take it very common queen sacrifice into a night fork remember this tactical pattern
and i went back with my knight he offered me a trade of bishops i took a pawn we traded bishops
and he played queen d4 now i was giving him this pawn because here i had envisioned a situation
where i moved my king something like 2f8 he takes and i play queen f4 and he has very big
difficulties defending this knight because if he plays g4 i just take and he can't take because of
the pin on his king if he plays queen c2 i thought knight before was very strong just attacking the
queen and the queen has to go somewhere here and you know again it's it's chaotic i mean it's an
insane position but i i figured my chances were definitely not worse here and i'm my pieces are
far more active but he played queen d4 and i realized that he was giving me this because he
thought that i couldn't take it since he had rookie one but my opponent blundered here he
blundered and interposed defensive method when you put a piece in between an attack the move knight
e4 check which looks like it doesn't work because after it takes takes takes you're losing a queen
but what he had failed to envision back here was that when we arrive in this position i can
castle out of check and i can castle out of danger and my opponent has to play the move
king to g1 if he plays king to g3 i mean he didn't but i would assume that i would beat him somehow
like this i mean a queen d6 and that's it i mean just give checks he can't block because i have
way too much attack so he played king g1 i played queen f5 attacking the bishop and he can't move it
uh because i think i just moved my knight now like anywhere for example and i have just a devastating
attack he can take i can take i'm up two pawns and he's most likely getting checkmated somehow
so rookie one and this is really this position is why this game is so painful because
had i won this game the performance rating would have been 26.90 over seven rounds which means that
most likely i could have lost two games i would have maybe needed one draw and i would have had
my first grand master norm ever in this tournament i did secure my second i am norm but it would have
been crazy if i had gotten a gm because it would have given me all the confidence in the world and
who knows where we'd be now that's why this is the most painful and it begins right in this position
i spent about 25 minutes deciding where to move my knight okay whether to go night before or night f4
and i thought and i thought and i thought and i played night this way and i thought that i had
made a mistake because of course going toward the king feels more natural it just does i mean
it must be better yet there you're looking at sacrifices i calculated a variation here h3
bishop takes g2 incorrectly i did not see or or let's say h4 just so you know the rook can
potentially get out this is the only way white is going to get out in this position so if takes
takes and something like queen g4 this this just doesn't work because of this
okay this just doesn't work and i and i had seen something like that but i realized that i can just
play queen g4 here and i have two threats taking on g2 but also like let's say this knight h3
and the queen is hit the knight hits this this is pinning but the queen is hit that's the threat
and so i said well what if he goes h3 i don't see a win because if this then this and then if i take
he just pins me and and i just can't move i don't have a win and i'm panicking and i'm thinking what
do i do and i'll show you what i missed this is why it's so painful this is the just the beginning
so i had missed here that i can just take and if take here and rook h2 you can try to figure out
the win here for black i didn't see it during the game i just thought that my attack gets stopped
you can pause i missed 92 check and if he takes me queen c1 and it's just mate the king is cut off
and there's no way you can block i mean it's just it's beautiful it's ridiculous i mean
it would have been a stunning way to win the game but i didn't see it
and so that's one of the reasons i didn't bring my knight this way and i brought my knight this
way because i thought that this threat would be powerful enough to stop him from developing
the side he played the move queen b6 here with two threats hitting my bishop and at any moment
threatening a trade of queens that is a threat because my queen is super important
and here i miss the move this move haunts me to this day and it's such a solid move and
it's just an instructive moment where a quiet move can lead to devastation that move being
bishop d5 stopping this and winning basically on the spot because after h4 knight c2 rook
d1 i play the gorgeous idea i didn't see anything like this during the game the only move that wins
here for black again you can pause and give you a few seconds pause before i tell you the answer
we need four and uh excuse me that's not a threat but that is and if rook h3
an amazing way to end the game so black so white would have had to play rook h2 and then i would
have slowly won because i've put my pieces on their most on their strongest possible squares
i've trapped the bishop trapped the rook trapped the rook and i and i set up a little getaway
score for my king forever and this is just winning for black and i didn't see that instead i played
king h8 sidestepping this and i kept looking i mean i i just i kept getting closer and closer
and then finally i just i i just went crazy and i and i sacked my bishop and at this
point i had like five minutes on the clock i just didn't find anything i got desperate
sacrificed my bishop but he just gave me back the material and had an extra piece
and maybe here i could have saw you know tried to be solid uh but in trying to reach
the time control i had about five moves to make here it's like move 35 on move 40
you get the bonus time i i just totally lost my cool i mean notice how my opponent walks his rook
coordinates with the queen i have no check and now he's just gonna come down here and just do damage
and i offered him a trade of queens thinking that after takes takes i would be able to
hold this end game but he played rook f8 check and that's it because if king h7 i get mated
and if i take here and he played rook f8 on move 39 and i had to throw in the towel and resign the
game and that was a tough one that was a tough one i can't lie i mean i ended up still getting a norm
in this one but it was definitely definitely to this day is it's probably the most pivotal loss
uh that i've that i felt and i think in the heat of the moment it was it was it was okay because i
was having such a good tournament i never would have thought it was possible for me to get a gm
norm so i was happy to get an i am norm anyway but such a brutal comeback from from from the
from you know moves 20 to 30 as my opponent found this really nice idea just to get his piece out
like rook h3 to consolidate it's a lesson in and of itself like don't give up if you have the
position here with white look for the most logical continuation um and and you know with black don't
go don't play your emotions play the position when i got to this position there was no need
for me to like you know sacrifice material i could have continued you know to create
threats i could have tried to get it into an end game where i've just got a very solid structure
but i let my emotions get the best of me and we're all human we're all chess players and
i figured i would share this uh share this with all of you probably in terms of tournament losses
uh th this is the one that hurt the most uh in in in recent memory and uh you know four hours after
you play a great game you still don't get the result that you want it sucks and it hurts and
that's why ever all of you who are asking me you know we believe in you and we hope you can become
a grandmaster you know i i hope so too but uh it's definitely easier said hypothetically than done
but games like this once again do inspire some confidence uh that i can hang with the very best
of them all and i can give them good fights and i do create some serious winning chances from myself
let me know in the comments below what other things that you want to see i mean i've played
a lot of chess so i've showed you my worst most painful defeat i've showed you probably the best
game i ever played let me know some other ideas that you you'd like to see if you want me to
continue the the series of uh some games of my old scorebook and so on uh maybe my first win
ever over a grand master or something like that uh let me know and as usual two videos will appear
on that side you can check out my best game video if you haven't already and i'll see you next time