day four of the magnus carlson chess tour finals finished about 20 minutes ago and i'm already
right here in my seat prepared to give you the rundown of the games it was uh hikaru who struck
yesterday to take a 2-1 lead in the overall match today magnus began the first game with the white
pieces and he went back to c4 if you'll remember the last blitz game yesterday he had very serious
winning chances and so he went back to this system with an early d5 from black kind of a reverse
sicilian black rotates the knight back to b6 and magnus plays b3 but b3 is a weird move because it
sometimes means you play bishop b2 but we've seen magnus mix up all the different move orders uh to
throw hikaru off his game ikaro plays f6 this is a very common idea in this structure for black
you run these three pawns directly into this bishop and you say that the bishop has no role
in the position but then it was magnus who played a weird move he played queen c1 and that is what
you get in the opening against magnus carlsen queen c1 looks like it i i don't know i don't
really know what it does uh but what i will say this is that the difference between queen c2
is that the move knight d4 and bishop f5 do not hit the queen so the queen might slide over for
the rook and again he's gonna go for this d4 idea i highly recommend if you're an english
player who plays the double fiance setup that you study these games because they are topical
that's two you know best players in the world that speeches are playing them uh so knight d4 hikaru
jumps in anyway but this is a little bit too risky and really the philosophy that's being broken here
is that he he's trying to fight without developing his full set of pieces uh the same goes for some
of you don't fight with what you've developed already if you're not castled yet try to finish
developing magnus takes and puts the knight on e4 long castles and well opposite side castling
let's go a4 a4 on the board hikaru again goes for this idea to damage the structure and now
a lot of wild tactics break out so magnus plays a5 hitting the knight the knight moves to the center
hikar uh magnus goes knight c5 icaru trades and defends this pawn by playing the move king to
b8 very straightforward magnus continues to attack the a7 pawn very directly uh these pawns have just
been sitting here with their you know their knives drawn both are able to capture each other but it's
you know it's a weird story neither one of them is capturing so b6 obviously magnus takes to open
up his rook and slides the queen back to a3 now finally hikaru makes this trade but the reason
he was not doing it is because in in many ways this just activates the rook for magnus he will
take on e2 and then he will have the open rook so now here the super computer was showing a
line rook c8 rookie 2 rook c7 and it looks really strange like why is this the only way to stabilize
the position because if you don't play rook c8 rook c7 and you play something like this i will
play bishop takes d5 and it's the removing of the guard this bishop looks like it's better than the
knight but the queen cannot take back because of checkmate the queen is playing a defensive role
and the bishop cannot take because the bishop is blocking the rook from entering
and now we have rookie seven and black loses because the queen not just hits a doesn't just
hit a7 it also hits e7 and there's no way to prevent any you know yourself from losing all
this material that is why black has to play the move rook c7 because you patrol like this and
you defend the a7 pawn rook a1 and hiro kikaru suffers unfortunately a devastating sacrificial
blow uh it's kind of a sacrifice not quite because he wins back the piece immediately
but a beautiful attacking move here from magnus the whole thumbnail bishop takes b6 and the house
begins to take a hit uh in the game we got knight b6 the whole point is that if ab6 rookie 7
devastating uh if you take with the knight there is the gorgeous queen a checkmate the bishop is
kind of the whole reason that bishops are better than knights they literally see the opposite side
of the board if they are given the opportunity and so knight b6 was played but here hikaru
buckled down and tried to defend to the best of his ability he got hit with rookie seven he took
a pawn for good measure you cannot take the rook because i will take your rook but bishop takes h3
bringing his second rook to the party magnus brings the queen a little bit closer trade and
queen d1 check not trying to repeat moves we get bishop f1 and now rook d7 so he's trying to just
cover all of the important squares rookie 8 is not a big deal because the rook is like is like
a rubber band here you're going to see that this queen plays such an important role in defending
the rook and fighting off this rook rookie 3 and now h5 it would not be a game between super
gm's if we didn't get h4 h5 at a totally random moment now we get g5 hikar going for counter play
take take rookie seven rook d7 rookie five rook d5 rookie check rook d8 i mean the rook will not
let the rook go they're trying to play tag queen b5 trying to just defend his rook and also play
queen e5 and now again hicary was just was just i mean shape-shifting here in his defense h4 queen
e5 check hiding rookie six setting up a new threat hikaru not afraid h takes g3 again you don't have
bishop a6 because unfortunately you are pinned check run check run to the corner and there's no
more checks so magnus backs up to take on g3 and hikaru brings his knight magnus takes another pawn
but here a very nice defensive resource from black the move knight f4 and knight of four is a problem
uh because you cannot take i excuse me you can't not do anything you have to take uh
because the threat of knight e2 and knight h3 is too strong you have to take and when you take uh
you allow a check capturing this bishop and the black king survives somehow there was something
funny that happened in the game magnus did not repeat but in this position went for a very famous
staircase check check check check check check check check check check check okay i'm just gonna
shuffle moves around and the reason he did this is because there's no way to actually bring the rook
to attack the king with the lingering threat of your own king being checkmated in some way
they are repeated hikaru survived let's go to game number two not a lot happened in game number two
i'm not gonna lie to you it was again a spanish and anti-berlin but this time and you will see
today magnus employs the d6 g6 uh spanish and for those of you that play the spanish with black you
can consider adding this weapon to your toolbox very interesting approach that turns the game
into a um king's indian-like position so if you want to draw some inspiration uh kind of a i was
perplexed here from hikaru uh he went for this variation where actually both players really
went for this variation magnus took on e5 uh with the knight inviting a bunch of trades
and there's not much you can do uh the play i mean literally there's not much you can do rooks knight
seven pawns each to be completely honest with you the most destructive moment of the entire game
maybe comes like around move 30 when the players enter a king and pawn end game and if you're a
beginner watching this i want you to try to learn at least something from every game not just that
the berlin is a draw or that the grand masters play h4 h5 i want you to learn that you know
in king and pawn end game space is very important black has more space here which is control of the
squares in the opponent's territory the opponent's territory being the first line horizontally that
is in your opponent's rectangle when you're black this is your rectangle and white gets one to four
and so here you know moves like for example c4 are fine because they keep the king stuck back but a
move like b4 is not fine because you want this to happen but then you get out flanked the king gets
into your territory not to mention that the king could literally also just play a move like this
you will lose pawns and you're not fast enough to get in because these pawns are a sharp fence and
they actually cover every single invasion square from your king whereas king a4 is a problem and so
uh the players just get a fortress here that's what happens so they trade off a bunch of pawns
you cannot cross the middle line anymore and even though there's moves that can happen on
this side they just decided to lock the position and that was that so one and a half half hikaru
now has to take the black pieces once again and we get a gucci piano or a uh joko piano an italian
system uh the main lines of the italian i do not recommend for the beginners because they
are a little bit too crazy here i prefer things like the evans gambit which i will be making a 10
minute openings video on soon as well as just you know there's the max slang attack i think with d4
uh and so on and so forth but all of this is theory so i'm not going to get into the
intricacies of all of these different setups uh but it's kind of insane that all of this had
been played before except right here when magnus played finally the move of theory that was not
the most popular hikaru traded and went for this apon push to sacrifice the pawn and damage
magnus's structure okay so magnus now has doubled eight pawns for the cost
of one pawn out of hikaru's pocket but magnus does have very powerful bishops lined up to hikara's
position now kikaru plays bishop g4 a4 and if i ask you watching right now what's the idea of a4
well i'll tell you the idea is that you free up the a3 square for your bishop
now here is another very instructive move i didn't quite believe in the move that magnus played here
during the game again i am just an international master so if anybody is offended by that please
don't be i just wanted to see him prove his point uh magnus played bishop takes knight
now generally i warn beginners not to make bishop for knight trades so simply uh but here there is
a point and the point is that when you take you now cannot play bishop f5 so i will show
you that once again you've removed a defender of the f5 square in this position white cannot just
go for checkmate because of bishop f5 and so when you take the knight that loses a defender
and now we get queen d3 knight out flanks to h4 and there's all sorts of sacrificing ideas again
right on cue knight takes g6 kaboom attacking like mikhail tal queen d4 hikaru trying to trade the
queens magnus says nope and this is again a lesson for you guys don't trade the queens when you're
attacking 97 check beautiful move if you take queen h7 and queen h8 is made so high replace here
and now knight takes d5 now you guys are gonna say but levy now he traded the queen
yes but the difference is he's up two pawns your attack is now over if the queens are traded but
you've won two pawns uh you are threatening to damage your opponent's structure more and this
knight is also threatening to go to f6 forking the rook and bishop that's the difference listen
i read your comments i saw the i saw the comments yesterday don't trade queens when you're winning
and magnus traded queens uh when you're up when you're attacking i should say and magnus traded
one move later i read your comments don't worry takes on f2 king h2 and here icaru
blunders queen takes f2 check allowing rook f1 looks extremely scary and you know what he missed
he missed in this position and he said this actually we interview him on his twitch channel
right afterward and we actually hypothesized this during the game because we saw the computer line
here there is this move bishop f5 the idea being that if you take the queen i take this now you
have a rook hanging a bishop hanging and a knight hanging so you can't do that okay if you take me
i trade queens and let's not forget that the rook is attacking the knight so i take the knight i'm
gonna win this pawn no more attack for white but what was missed was that after bishop f5 magnus
has a check and the queen's still hanging so the queen can come back to c5 but here there is queen
c1 a ridiculous geometric idea which re-rounds the queen to c1 hitting h6 and kuruk f5 is still
a problem and even though this knight is free f5 and and this collapsing is too much and black
is simply lost so hikaru spent a long time here decided that he was going to sacrifice the queen
for oh i should actually back up that is instructive for a checkmate
threat on h5 because this bishop covers the king's escape square but magnus explodes rook takes f7
the idea that if you take queen h7 and you just hunt the king down is what you're trying to do
here something like king e6 queen takes h6 uh king tries to hide you know you play queen g7 the king
tries to hide but uh there is first of all this but you have to be careful not to get hit with
this move uh but there is you know the rook coming bishop b3 g4 all these sorts of ideas and hikaru
may have not liked this so he played a king e8 but magnus very straightforward sacrifices the
queen back to get a winning end game in terms of material brings in the second rook and it
was here icaru called it a day resigns the game and gives magnus a 2-1 lead so now he has the
white pieces in the final round he's got a win we get the exact same berlin setup but this time
we get this position from the opening position with uh a bigger space a big bigger
central space for hikaru but very tough to play this position for a win uh we get bishop
g4 from magnus now hikaru trades the bishop for the night here to damage the structure
but magnus finds a nice idea and a couple moves queen c2 attacking the pawn
and well magnus just says oh you want it so bad have it and the point is that you can't
you you you can take you can take uh you cannot take back if you're playing black
because then you just damage your structure the real idea here is that magnus plays d5
uh and you can't take this because when you take this black takes and even though black
is down upon look at black's activity this queen is beautiful the rooks are connected
white is a few moves away from finishing development and just can't move any pieces
because everything's defending everything else so hicaro played h3 in the game and remember he has
to win so he has to make the position imbalanced but unfortunately it was not to be magnus takes on
e4 brings in the queen tries to trade hikaru goes to a to a4 a6 so that pawn is no longer
a weakness and that you can activate the rook queen b5 offered queen c2 queen trade rejected
and the rest of it was magnus demonstrating that he he is a a very very strong chess player rook d8
bishop e3 brings in the knight bishop g5 attacks the rook but f6 a4 queen c6 and yeah this position
is tough tough is one way to describe it the queen coordinates very well with the active rooks
the pawns are super powerful here and uh white is not fast enough and so i will show you the
final moves or kb1 hikaru invests fully in pushing the b-pawn but magnus too fast down the center of
the board with f4 and e3 when the pawns uh when the when the position is fully set up you really
should look how to maximize your pressure and he does it with the central pawns takes on f2
jumps in with the knight to e3 and if i can criticize magnus for just one moment here
he had one very very very winning move uh he played the very simple pawn takes e3 which
also just gets the job done but he didn't have to recapture actually he could have just played
queen takes a4 the in-between move and i just want to show that not because i criticize magnus
uh or i hate him or something again some of you are very strange those of you who make that claim
but this is an instructive moment for for some of the beginner and intermediate players you can
have an in between move which attacks the rook and leaves both things hanging and if the rook
moves let's say to c1 then you take on e3 that's all but f takes c3 does the job because after all
of this there is the nice move e2 you can take the queen but you lose a rook and i make a new queen
and all the pieces get traded and we have a repetition and with that magnus carlsen won today
with a couple of very nice sacrificial attacks one successful the other ending in a draw but a
convincing win for magnus the overall match is now two to two and tomorrow 10 a.m eastern as always
it's down to the best of three because there is only three more matches remaining the last time
they met in a semi-final and the chessable masters was um was also a best of three so enjoy the show
hope you as always enjoy the recap give the video a thumbs up always love reading your comments make
me laugh i know you guys are on to me you know i pinned some comments uh which are you know hateful
in nature and and derogatory and whatnot but there's also some great links in the description
uh catch some of my other recaps over on that side and if you're new you should know i have playlists
on everything not just recaps i have a chess tips playlist for middle game advice openings playlists
i climb a rating ladder from a thousand and one thing that i will be starting very soon
is an e4 rating climb i'll start at 800 and i will grow my rating just playing e4 and talking
about the games okay hope you enjoy you guys are amazing we're almost at 60 000 subscribers
couldn't be happier thank you all for being here with me and i will see you in the next recap