welcome back everybody to another video in the best chess game series today i am covering vidit
gujrati vidi is one of the strongest grandmasters in all of india he's beloved primarily because of
his chess but also because of his online presence he's pretty active on social media he streams on
youtube i have a video where i played him in title tuesday uh and uh one of the best
games that he's ever played if not the best game that he's ever played personally i'm making the
case for this game is the game where he had the white pieces versus vladimir kramnik kramnik was
of course the world champion uh and he defeated kasparov the mighty kasparov and ended that reign
in the year 2000 so anytime you have kramnik involved uh you know we're gonna pay attention
and this game began with d4 and before we go any further uh further further this game was played
in 2019 in the tara steel that's the tournament in vaikunsay in the netherlands kramnik begins
with e6 knight c3 bishop b4 this is a nimso indian defense white wants to take a full
big boy's center with e4 and black plays bishop to before pinning the knight to the king
now white here plays f3 which is a very confrontational move and the point is that
you want to play e4 you're just you're not going to take no for an answer at the same time you're
willing to take a temporary sacrifice to your dark squares and you're not going to put your
knight on the standard square of f3 black response by playing d5 and saying no no listen i'm serious
you're not going to be able to play this move but when you play the sameish you also have
to combine it with a3 and here he gives black the choice of taking on c3 or going back to e7
the reason for going back to e7 and not taking would be like okay well come forward and then i'm
going to play e5 and try to damage your structure here in the center of the board but kramnik plays
principle he takes takes and plays the move c5 this is considered the main line and actually this
kind of way of playing forces white to take well not to take but to at least play this next move
which is the move e3 and you would say well this just looks garbage for white i mean why would
white ever do this white's got all these awkward pawns i thought the whole point of playing f3 was
to go e4 yes and no uh the the argument here is that white has at least gotten the two bishops
and now white will slow play the position so for example in black castles wyatt will play bishop
to d3 knight to e2 and castle and very very slowly build up the center and then once your
king is safe and your center is open the benefit is that you've gotten the two bishops and to be
honest as ugly as this looks it's okay it's kind of like me you don't have any obvious weaknesses
i mean this rook can't really get in by itself none of these squares can really be occupied so
it doesn't look very good but somehow it does the job much like your favorite chess youtuber
so in this position uh black actually played the move c4 so kramnik locks the center and disallows
this very natural move bishop to d3 so instead vivid plays knight to e2 black plays knight c6
and you would say well how the heck is vidit going to play now i mean all of his pieces are
kind of blocked up i don't understand is he going to play knight g3 and then try to play e4 knight
g3 actually looks very logical the problem with that move is black can lash out with h5 and you
know you got nothing else except h4 because if you try to play in the center now i just go here
and it's a very wanky game but it's gonna work for black so bit it like any normal human being pushes
yet another pawn and plays g4 which i mean listen of course i have to feature a vidit game if this
is going to if this is going to be how he plays i mean vidit is not afraid he is making this a
massively complicated middle game plays g4 in order to develop his bishop this way that's
exactly what he does meanwhile we see kramnik sneaking in through the queen side and landing his
knight on b3 but this multiple move might but uh multiple move maneuver oh my god try to say that
five times fast multiple move maneuver by kramnik results in not too much progress made on the queen
side i mean he moves his knight several times but is he actually gonna take the bishop on c1
i mean on the one hand moving a knight like four times uh one two three four and then getting rid
of it for a bishop that didn't move doesn't make much sense on the other hand you're going
to destabilize white's center so vidit plays is he going to move his bishop out of the way now
he's like come and take it that kindly plays b5 locking down and clamping down on the queen side
now b5 uh it looks like a good move obviously nothing wrong with it and still white is not
really able to make too much progress like why is vidit not playing this for example
well because black just goes here yeah but then you go here and this knight can't move
yeah but neither can you like black black can't move but you really can't move and i'm just gonna
come and get this pawn right so white doesn't want to overextend his pawn structure in the wrong way
and for that reason plays the move e4 e4 would have made a lot less sense if black hadn't played
the move b5 so it's a good move by vidit he sees that long term there's going to be tactics on that
open rook whereas a couple moves ago the light squared bishop if the board opened up did not have
that possibility so he plays e4 takes takes and you would think well this is kind of dumb i mean
he just hung a pawn two different ways just knight takes g4 the problem is that after just very
simple h3 kramnik doesn't have anywhere convenient to put his knight if he puts it back to f6
now vidiq plays the bishop out and all of a sudden this bishop which was stuck behind all the pawns
comes alive and between the combined threats of e5 this rook this knight and maybe even the
knight and the queen getting out that way for the cost of one pawn this position is completely fine
for white if not just very clearly better we also have to not forget about the fact that this knight
on b3 is terrible like that night came in with the intention of taking something now it didn't take
anything now it's just kind of like ah crap what do i do here i got nothing nothing i can do so e4
is a great move so kramnik takes takes and says you know what i gotta take this bishop otherwise
this bishop is just going to get activated but now there's another drawback remember that pawn
push that you made you did not make that pawn push with the intention to take the bishop
because now white just has a new target right like white just has a new target which white did
not have a move ago and white is threatening to push and white is threatening to push so kramnik
plays bishop takes g4 attacking the knight now very simple chess here from vivid the knight is
hanging so activate it further and rook b5 is still a threat and e5 is still a threat
so kramnik plays rook b8 that move stops both e5 and rook takes pawn now video plays the move h3
another very good move this is like four or five moves in a row that vivid is playing all
the best moves the bishop now retreats so this is move 19 and video plays e5 98 i should say
move 20. knight had only one move who is better here and why how do you evaluate well obviously
both of these players have watched the video uh during the game uh not they didn't watch the
video during the game i'm saying during the game they already came in with the knowledge of the
video that was recorded in 2021 by gotham chess called four ways to evaluate any chess position
uh please don't get offended that is a joke some people get very offended at my jokes
white is better black is up a pawn which is the first measure of who is better in any given chess
position but white has a safer king white has much more activity and white has a better pawn
structure and more space so why does winning in three of those categories the only thing
that white doesn't have is an extra pawn say how's white's king safe or look at all these weaknesses
you can't think in such an abstract way just because this king is only
kind of touchable on the h8 square and all these pawns are like there whereas i have
all this open space all of black's pieces are on the back rank with the exception of this bishop
so now vidi plays queen e3 activating another piece and he's got intentions to go over here
kramnik plays rook b6 the idea of rook b6 is that he will patrol the sixth rank and in the future
if the queen ever makes it here maybe kramnik will play rook g6 and kind of counter attack so that is
his idea so maybe play rook here somehow trade the night off etc uh after rook b6 another best
move played by vidit you are more than welcome to try to find it pause here if you'd like
vida in the middle of all this just finds the best move d5
why because this activates the queen pressuring there and there
and now you're threatening to play e6 and shut down that entire plan also if your queen ever
lands on c5 it pressures the rook the pawn the rook the pawn and this pawn and escorts the pawns
like you know to school safely so black plays knight to c7 to try to get out of the pressure
vidit plays d6 allowing the knight forward but securing the other square for his knight on d5
kramnik plays rook a6 and there is a new target and this maneuver by kramnik disallows queen to c5
fit it doesn't care he says vlad i understand you were the world champion at some point i understand
you're probably one of the top 10 players of all time you would be in some people's top five rook
f5 once again if you plug this position into the computer and let it think for a little bit
at some point it starts realizing rook to f5 is the only move for white to have any advantage why
why rook f5 well you want to double up right you want to double up your rooks
but if you play rook f2 you have no lateral movement so for example if you play rook f2
you'll never be able to move your bishop and go for the g file so that's number one if rook f3
you know you have lateral movement but you're not stopping queen to g5 so it's all about my
counter play i want to trade queens with you with no queens vid it will not get an attack so easily
he might still kind of fight with his rooks but he would much rather keep his queen on the board
and so rook f2 queen g5 is a problem rook f3 queen g5 there's at least maybe some tactics
here with like knight f6 and everything knight f6 and rook g3 so you know maybe
queen g5 will not happen right away but i'm gonna play king h8 and then try to play queen g5
so for that reason vinit plays this move a lot of people would fear a discovered attack the knight
moving and then the rook hit now if it fitted sees through all the nonsense cranley plays queen h4
still trying to lurk around this these parts but now vida just plays rook f1 he says flat like i
said take my pawn he basically reads the threat and goes that's not scary i'm not scared of that
so rook takes a3 and here we have knight to e7 check king 2h8 rook takes brook takes rook takes
queen h5 trying to hit the rook and go for the back rank what vita just plays
the absolutely glorious final move try to find it if you're thinking rook f8 mate you need a smack
but that is the idea if the knight is protecting the back rank
that means that it cannot move right so how do we guard our rook without moving it
if you said queen f2 i don't disagree but then we have rook a1 check you might go king h2
and then you're gonna get hit with this which was obviously kramnik's idea and because kramnik was
threatening two things rook a1 and queen e5 vidit said okay queen f4 putting the queen in the eye
of danger but rookie one check runs into this and you cannot do this and you cannot do this
and you cannot do this and on queen to f4 a move that literally looks like it hangs a queen
somewhere eric rosen would yell oh no my queen kramnik resigned what a game by vidit i mean how
can you not feature this game in this tournament vidit gained a lot of rating points uh according
to i think i i looked at the uh rating chart uh before i made this video and i'm just gonna double
check right now yeah vivid gains 16 rating points which is the most rating points that he's gained
in like two years uh since since this tournament like before in 2017 he also gained like 16 points
so one of vidi's best tournaments he drew magnus carlson that game took 130 moves he lost a couple
of games as well he lost one to nepo he lost one to rijaba but he beat kramnik he beat mamidyarov
and he beat jordan van forest the uh the up and uh next dutch superstar who recently crossed 2700
so this was one of vidi's best tournaments uh before this event he had dipped just below 2700
but since this event he has not gone down ever again he's now currently 27-26 he hasn't played
in a classical tournament in 2020 since february or march for obvious reasons but uh i look forward
to seeing him compete in classical once again and getting over 27 30 40 50 and who knows maybe i'll
make an update video in the future where he defeats magnus carlsen or fabiana caruana so
i wanted to honor uh vidit as part of the best game series haven't made a video of his best game
yet it's always nice when you can be the world champion if there's any other players you would
like me to cover please do let me know in the comments below and uh if there's a video i haven't
made on a concept that you would like covered let me know about that as well welcome back to
the returning viewers welcome for the first time viewers feel free to browse some of my playlists
i've got courses link is in the description to them and i will see you in the next video