welcome ladies and gentlemen to this absolutely amazing chess game that i'm excited to share with
all of you it's 1993 and we are currently in saint petersburg russia with the white pieces
we have grigori serper and with the black pieces joanna's nikolaitis a grand master
from greece multiple time representative of the greek national team in the olympiad
now serper was a finisher in the top four of the world junior championships in 1988
finishing among the greats like evancho gelfand and joel lattier so definitely no slouch uh and
we kick things off with c4 g6 and now white plays the move e4 so what begins with an english opening
black pretty clearly just commits himself to putting the bishop on g7 so we have e4 bishop
g7 d4 and now d6 white takes full control of the center with three pawns and develops a knight now
we have transpose from an english opening back to a king's indian defense now black plays the
move knight to f6 now here white's got a million different things that they can play that means
pawn up that means bishop out or there you know the g5 or this bishop or this knight whatever
but sarah better plays a move knight e2 now if you just look at that move that move like it
looks like it doesn't make any sense i mean why would you block your bishop why would you block
your queen i mean i guess you're reinforcing this knight well if that move shocks you this next move
is really gonna shock you now white plays the move knight g3 and it's like i don't understand why
wouldn't you just go to a three-in-one move why would you take you know what i mean like how does
that make any sense that's doing two loops around the parking lot but taking the adjacent parking
spot to the one that was available well chess is a kind of game where we have a lot of different
branches in the opening and every single way that you play as long as there's no clear drawback
has a very specific set of plans afterward and so after white plays the next move bishop to e2
well you're basically leaving the fact that you can play f4 in the future and this knight
pressures an entirely different set of squares than it would on the square f3 and for the cost of
making one extra move it's actually not so bad now black plays a6 very non-confrontational
black is basically setting up the uh the spikes on the sixth rank here uh there are many other
variations of the king's indian where e5 or c5 or even b5 get played but more on that later because
after bishop e3 one pawn crossed the middle rank and then the other pawn on the other side of the
board across the middle rank so basically nicolai just wanted to play h4 basically punishing set
but saying bro i don't understand like what are you doing here why is this knight on g3 you're
gonna have to drop it back but you know again more on this later we'll see what happens and
the general rule of thumb on b5 and the king's indian defense is you don't really want to
take because i understand you can and it's a fair trade but at an elementary level not all you know
at an elementary level i should say fair trade is fine i always tell this to students if it's 1-1
consider doing it but the truth is that this transformation of the pawn structure
helps black a lot more because black activates the rook and just expands without really much
kind of doubt of their position but with white playing c5 now white has locked the structure
and if this pawn wanders in this knight will move and this pawn's kind of like a loner you know you
kind of wander in the wrong part of town getting out it's going to be difficult because number one
pawns don't go backwards just in case you didn't know and number two i mean you're surrounded by
all the enemy pieces right so in this position after c5 we had a trade and that isolates the c
pawn completely on its own now granted it's difficult to attack in fact if you could find
a way in this position to safely attack that pawn note i said safely i will give you a lot of money
and the truth is that you can't because if you said bishop here or queen here that pawn will
just take back but it is a target and black plays the move queen c7 getting out of the way with the
queen castles that pawn comes forward and this just looks like i mean this just looks terrible
it looks like oh my god what is serpent doing he's the worst player of all time like what why did
he put a knight on h1 voluntarily well here's the truth ladies and gentlemen this night as the game
progresses will rotate around and this is a very serious over commitment of the position by black
like black is really throwing haymakers and what happens when two guys are throwing haymakers
someone's gonna get knocked out all right that's just how it works and so in this
position you can lie display this move knight to f8 this move serves two purposes number one the
bishop is activated i said two purposes and then oh i did stick up two fingers i thought
sorry it's tough being a chess youtuber you can't really count very well
so first of all he opens up the lightsword bishop and second of all he wants to rotate his knight to
e6 because frankly if he moved it to f6 it would never go anywhere right and we need to go places
in life so sometimes you need to take a step back to go two squares forward sometimes you get chess
on this channel sometimes you get life advice well the move knight to f8 a retreating move backward
allowed sierper to have a thing and he was looking at the position like all right everything's good
now we both have seven pawns so that means i'm looking for pawn breaks and frankly any pawn break
that i try to make on this side doesn't really work in my favor now what about on this side
well i can play the move a4 now if my opponent takes i'm very happy because now they've got
two weaknesses and this transformation allows me to jump in with my knight pick off these two
pawns before the guy is going to get castled or bring his knife forward in any of that business
but what happens if the guy just completely ignores me well if he ignores me then i take
and then i open up this so i'm getting to him before he able he's able to get settled but what
about a4b4 and minitus hanging well this isn't very good i can't move forward i gotta go back oh
but wait i can in fact move forward ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show first things first
he sacrifices his knight for one pawn now you're gonna say gotham why didn't he take with the queen
attacking the rook well dear viewer who clearly was wondering this sometimes in chess you play
a move where you take something and you attack another piece and it looks good because you took
something and you attack another piece but then at that point you don't just stop there you go
what are they gonna do i mean are they just gonna let me take the rook and if you're
below a thousand there is a like 35 chance that they don't even see that now if you're
above that and the higher you go the higher chance they move the rook and the queen and
the pawn are not going to do damage together actually it's beneficial to take with the pawn
because then the pawns are connected so these pawns are passed which means they have a
lot they're not blocked by any enemy pawns going to the other side trying to become
queens or rooks or bishops or knights um but they're also together that's really good having
a friend is nice and if you don't have one i'll be your friend and so will this entire community
but pawns together oh very powerful so f5 nikolita says this is the only pawn that hasn't been pushed
and i am a firm believer in pushing pawns and also trapping my opponent's bishop in
the center of the board but now d6 attacking the queen the queen moves and okay probably
nikolai has played queen c6 says all right i did something to these pawns called blockading now
serpe is on some sort of narcotics i don't know what he's doing he's hallucinating that he's got
some sort of initiative here there's no way he can break through this position and sepper said
how do i need to play to get into a gotham chess youtube video 28 years into the future and he
played the move bishop to b5 there we go bishop number two piece number two has been sacrificed
and you have to take it because otherwise your queen is pinned and now we have takes takes
two problems number one queen is hanging number two queen guards the rook
and this is hanging so for example let's say black just says i don't want you to take my rook
well white now will go here and there are three friends walking together and let me
tell you something you thought two pawns back to like linked together like this was
bad wait till there's three all right then they're seriously rowdy they're gonna destroy everything
and something like this might happen and i mean yeah like now you got the the dragon there
no we don't want this so the guy says all right i gotta take the bishop i gotta sack my rook and let
me just go back and attack now of course uh just cause something is under attack doesn't mean you
have to move it you can also protect it right as long as the value is there so sampler activates
the only piece that hasn't gotten into the game and on the next move his bishop is trapped
he says i don't care i've already sacrificed one bishop in one night what's another bishop
and the thing is in this position if he actually got his bishop taken
he has an absolutely beautiful move now he could just take back and the the thing is
that the rooks are so dominant that black can't do anything but who needs slow moves that's not
what gotham chess likes to feature here he would have played queen d5 which sacrifices a queen for
free except for the fact that it doesn't because the queen's guarding the bishop and that's mate
you ever learned ladder mate you should because whoever thought you
would get ladder mate in a position where you're down a queen and a bajillion pieces
i know right but for that reason eucalydus did not take on e3 instead he said knight d7 all
right stupid now your pieces are blocked oh so much you do about nothing i'm gonna castle short
i'm gonna get consolidated and here serpas said all right i've already sacked a knight a bishop
i tried to give him one more bishop i don't know why he's looking at his watch to decide this but
you know i do these things on the fly so bear with me so he says what's a rook rook takes c8 i mean i
might as well i mean the guy's gonna get canceled if i don't do it all right queen c8 now what
oh yeah you want a castle queen d5 only move which prevents you from castling because castling your
king into danger is illegal so now black is at a moment where he is only up two points of material
which is astounding by the way because white has literally sacrificed the house
but now he takes one more bishop i mean might as well right up five points
and you're also attacking the knight now a normal person here plays the move knight to d3 and slowly
begins expanding in the into the position but grigori serper is beyond uh normal humanity he
clearly values none of his pieces it's basically like when the pharaoh uh dueled against raphael
in the darts and atlantis uh saga of yu-gi-oh my yu-gi-oh fans will know what i'm talking about and
literally every other human watching this will go levy can you just shut up and talk about the board
and i will so server plays queen to e6 check and the king moves and you say oh well he's so good
i mean yeah but what about his last night another piece which is getting shot across on the catapult
and now potentially the most important move of the game you're gonna say what what he's
in check like it's he can't make the guy he's in check and i and i know and he doesn't take this is
something known as an umbrella pawn i actually have to give credit to robert hess grandmaster
robert hess for that term often times when your opponents are trying to shatter your king's safety
taking the pawn that they provide can oftentimes lead to a counter-attack and in this case it
would have led to literally a loss like black would have gotten enough time to create counter
play and win the game so he hides behind his opponent's pawn as scary as that looks he's
not afraid of knight to g3 because he just takes and queen f7 is threatened so black plays queen e8
and now well obviously you can't trade queen so here serper said
i've sacrificed enough but not quite enough rook f7 because if you don't take my rook
with your queen i will take your queen so you have to now i go there remember those
two pawns yeah well your king can't escape so i have to block and now just beautiful move
d7 this happens sometimes with rooks like this or queens like this where you attack and protect
at the same time he protect he attack but most importantly he eats snack and now the queen's
hanging and this queen is defended so black has to go king f7 black could also theoretically take
and allow a new queen and go king f7 but now we have this we have this this queen b7 rookie 7
pawn to c6 look at that he offers another queen for sacrifice that's a promotion and
the sacrifice of a new queen because both of these pieces cannot protect the promotion of the pawn
if i asked you in this position what is white's biggest asset if you said the queen you would be
naive it's not it's not the queen because the queen cannot win a battle against these three
pieces it's the pawn the pawn is the difference maker ultimately and by the way that's the pawn
that he pushed originally now of course black doesn't take black plays e4 the idea of e4 is
that you want to bring your bishop to stop the pawn from moving forward but white is just going
to push again right so now we have e3 and in this position it's actually kind of funny if sarper had
just made a queen he loses the game because e2 check and even though he has two queens the king
is the problem and now that umbrella pawn comes back to bite because black promotes and it's made
even if the rook is pinned theoretically it's still serving the defensive role so serper had to
take a moment here and just pause and go all right well i can't blunder mate i mean then i won't end
up in a gotham chess youtube video 20 years into the future so let me give a check and the king's
gonna move and let me give another check now the king goes back now here he did something called
repeating so he made the time control that was the 40th move now the time control in chess is
you make it to the 40th move in a long game you get bonus time for the remainder of the game if
you play three minute or 10 minute or one minute chest that's not the case but long games sometimes
you do this because if you make a critical decision on move 39 with no time on the clock
you're gonna regret it right so if you have a chance to repeat and get that extra time and think
and now he sacrifices his next queen and ladies and gentlemen the third queen appears for white
i mean grigori serpent has a harem or something it's an inappropriate joke i apologize to any
parents watching with kids you'll have to explain what that means to them bishop h6 and now the
only hope remaining for the rest of the game is e2 and some sort of promotion and serper plays check
check to get the king on the right kind of complex that he needs so the king goes to d8
we have check again and he doesn't go for this and he doesn't go for this and he doesn't go for this
he goes for the meat of the position and he hits both pieces and here we have pawn to
e2 check one last desperate attempt which pawn do you take ladies and gentlemen 50 50 chance
some of you definitely said take this pawn because gotham said not to take this pawn
no i said not to take that pawn in the last position
right just because i said that 20 moves ago the positions completely changed
you have to think about what they will do and if you go here they will go here and
all of a sudden your beautiful masterpiece that you've painted for 47 moves goes down the drain
you hang your queen after a beautiful game how many of us have done that then you want to throw
your computer out a window or yourself or both in either order and so sarah played
this king capture and here we have bishop to e3 a nice little trick to try to deflect the king away
and you still can't take but the final move of the game the king returns to its rightful home
serpent knew that it was game over so he played king to e1 because he knew that nikolai just would
resign in this position and they would begin setting up the board to its standard position
i'm joking he had literally no other move he plays king 2e1 and nicolitis resigned and with that
mr gregory serper as he his name was kind of americanized as he moved to the united states
later they call him greg serper now uh won an absolutely brilliant game and what to say this
was uh i'm this was voted like you know top five top six like attacking game of you know the 1990s
or something by some polls and just an absolutely unbelievable game the guy sacrificed over i mean
technically if you want to count every single sacrifice over 40 points of material granted a few
of those moves were kind of immediate promotions which were oh not that immediate promotion but a
couple moves prior one of his you know like this one is not quite but listen dramatic effect i
gotta say something crazy so you click on it and then you get quality content in the video now
serper actually went on to do incredible things in chess this game was already a masterpiece but like
i said he was a world junior champion he moved to the united states in 1996 he immediately won
the world open which is one of the if not the most prestigious open tournament in the united states
uh fantastic event and he competed for the u.s championship actually making it to the finals
uh before losing to boris gulco or so sarah pernow uh is i believe 50 or 51 years old as of
april 1st 2021. uh he's a frequent contributor to chess.com so you can feel free to check out
like some of the stuff that he writes on chess.com but man what a game what a game i mean people have
sacrificed material in chess before and there's few things more flashy in chess than sacrificing
material to deliver something beautiful but wow uh sacrificing literally your entire army is pretty
rare while anticipating that opponent's counter and shutting it down um ladies and gentlemen
as always it's an absolute pleasure making these videos for you if there's a game that i haven't
covered yet do let me know in the comments below i do go through them i do read them and subscribe
if you haven't already feel free to check out some of my courses link is in the description and
until uh next time i'll see you in the next video