Drama!

ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the Fisher random World Chess Championship in 2022 a friendly reminder of what we are even doing here eight players are currently in Iceland and they are playing in two groups of four the top two will qualify to a semi-final and then there will be a final and they are playing Fisher random which is a type of Chess where well give me a second the back row of pieces is shuffled now you could also argue that all of these pawns are shuffled but I would argue that only the back row

of pieces is shuffled uh and the players uh are Magnus Carlson Hikaru Nakamura Matthias bluebomb and legitimate for the save that is Group B group a ishi Wesley so the defending Fisher random champion of the world I hope I'm pronouncing his name correctly if not listen Icelandic names they're tough all right I only recently now only it took me a while to learn how to say that thing willier National Park I believe is how you say it anyway today's drama was the fact that the champion of the world did not know the rules of chess

Fisher random chess but chess nonetheless let's jump into the games Magnus Carlson is taking on Matthias bluebaum early he plays uh he plays F4 F4 is like the bird opening now you'll notice that the king is all the way over here to Castle short you are gonna have to actually get rid of all four of these pieces so that this King in this Rook can go here and here to Castle this way you're gonna have to move the Rook so that that King can be uh staying in the same position and The Rook can go

over to D1 so it's kind of an interesting situation where the king doesn't move Magnus plays deep vorm and then in this position Magnus doesn't actually develop his Knights yet which is normally what you do but he plays G4 very interesting he's taking space very clear the king is not going to Castle this way right or castle at all he wants to develop his Knight and maybe The Bishop's behind the Pawns blue bomb develops the bishop forces the move out E3 and now here come the knights literally all four of them Just Dance out of

the corners Magnus decided that this approach made sense for him because he would have the pawns out and about ready to attack the Black Knight probably black is also not going to Castle this way but we'll see I mean but you can you can firmly rest assured that since he's pushed all his pawns this way you know Magnus is not a bozo right so Bishop D3 Bishop D3 is a solid move pressuring the night just good to develop the piece rather than have it on its home Square black plays Bishop D7 very solid uh here

you know black could already begin very active operations with a move like Knight C4 but the position it like in Fisher random enemy is just so goofy right even engines can't really properly evaluate anything like in this position stockfish is trying to tell me that A6 is the best move and the idea of A6 is to trade off the light squared Bishop basically stockfish is saying the light squared Bishop for black is kinda terrible and trading it like this would be beneficial for black for instance this exchange would greatly benefit black because black now would

have a bunch of Pawns on light squares would no longer have a light Square Bishop so there would be good replacement and black would be much better as you can see so a couple of things still apply like trading off your worst pieces right so Queen F1 Queen f1's an interesting move basically preventing the Bishop from ever going to B5 but also preparing this idea F5 Magnus is like well if I just sit here you know he's gonna he's gonna do this he's gonna long Castle so let me play the move F5 which is going

to make it a little bit difficult for a blue bomb to actually consolidate his position a blue bomb takes on F5 we just didn't have to do that he could have went Knight E7 or Knight H4 or something um but of course white would have well Knight H4 actually there's Knight H5 I forgot that you know instead of a king on E1 it's a freaking Bishop um so this allows Magnus to get this but blue bombs like I'm a still Castle I don't really you know I'm not really too worried here now there's a lot

of game plans here for white Magnus plays H4 again looking to bully that Knight off the edge of the board now takes the Knight he's actually not concerned with giving up a check he's also not concerned with getting his Knight attacked and then getting H7 taken like Magnus is very deliberately going for a pawn here now if black Miss plays this position and you know plays a little bit too passively then yeah maybe that pawn will be felt I mean a pawn is a pawn even in Fisher random Pawn is upon even in Iceland uh

somehow the value of the pawn does not drop I mean if anything the pawns are more expensive in Iceland just like everything else I once spent like ridiculous amount of money at an Icelandic restaurant yeah I icelanders I don't know how you guys do it uh is that what they're called icelanders like the New York Islanders but icelanders I don't know it's late I just had a big meal I have food coma I also was doing like five six hours of filming today for Content that will be coming out that will remain nameless I I

cannot disclose it uh so I'm tired all right so if I sail I've got a couple of things combined with the food coma uh please forgive me oh and one more thing uh I I re-injured my lower back which I will probably talk about in a separate video I was already thinking to make it so I'm I'm in pain and I'm tired and I have food coma and um yeah so if I say some stuff forgive me Queen F3 what well apparently Magnus didn't like something uh he must have not liked something right that's why

he didn't play this move and apparently there's this move F5 F5 is very interesting the point of F5 is that if white takes why does up two pawns the White's Queen gets trapped remember what Magnus did yesterday to Hikaru hey well that was happening to him Magnus is like all right no problem I'm just gonna consolidate nice and easy maybe I'm gonna Castle long all right Bishop F2 couple of normal moves right A5 is a little bit annoying but there's really nothing there now believe it or not here the engine just says to take this

Pawn both guys here are just somehow missed this move like apparently there's nothing there's just Apple you can play all the way down to A3 I'm just gonna play B3 or B4 neither one of these things is scary uh you don't also don't even have to do anything yeah I mean both guys just missed that a pawn is hanging on H7 and you know we have A4 just making it obvious that if you Castle you're gonna be under Fire but again where is the attack exactly like I don't just beef up okay anyway Magnus doesn't

like something here about the position and seeing as though he is about to very much have his position over there under attack be Castle short what he pushed all his pawns and he Castle short yeah apparently the coordination of Black's pieces is insufficient to actually launch a meaningful attack and I think when he did this blue bomb completely malfunctioned like he was unable to gain his composure at all because after this uh he took his Pawn on A2 and Magnus played this Nifty move B3 basically offering up yet another sacrifice of a pawn but where

the a file would now be seized and the queen here would just basically run out of squares uh black would need to sacrifice here hoping for Rook A2 and then white has Rook F4 black has Rook F4 and then taking this yeah blue bomb doesn't find that he does this instead but now the black queen is just trapped it's just trapped a couple moves later he does in fact sacrifice a few pieces and try to take on C3 but uh Magnus gets back in time and he has a queen for a rook the only thing

that black has is this Pawn if that pawn survives it's going to be a serious problem for white problem is that that pawn literally dies immediately and he pushes it a little bit too quickly apparently blue bomb just has to sit here a little bit and wait like Bishop B4 uh but he gets his pieces in a little bit too fast gets the Knight removed from the defense with Bishop E1 and Magnus picks up a nice win so Magnus started the day strong and today's pairings were really weird because the guys played each other twice

so blue bomb played Magnus the whole day better save played Hikaru the whole day very strange day now you will notice that uh starting position is the same so they play the same position both white and with black uh this game between FedEx and he and uh Nakamura was just as just a barn burner um you'll remember the last game also began with F4 so it's just kind of interesting to compare the openings uh Magnus went for a dark Square setup in this game we have like a French defense by Hikaru and then we get

Hikaru lashing out very early with the move F5 and then G5 essentially seizing control of the initiative right now Bishop H5 look at this move not taking back on G5 first guaranteeing an exchange and now Queen G5 and black has a good position black has more space on the king side uh black will at some point decide what's gonna happen here um otherwise it's relatively balanced game now pieces get developed and now for the sake of look at the gallop Knight D4 and Knight B5 and he's posing problems to Hikaru Knight A7 is check Knight

C7 is the winning of a very serious Pawn suddenly the only thing that black has is to turn this game into chaos by sacrificing the right to Castle that is a devastating setback hikaru's King is now absolutely stuck alright so Hikaru covers up and tries to kick out fatasev's Knight and essentially what Hikaru is saying here is losing the a pawn doesn't matter because your a pawn is weak and you're still a couple of moves away from being Castle yourself because if you Castle right now I'm gonna create some counter play so we have rookie

four by white C5 by Hikaru cutting the connection here between the bishop queen and the Knight over here uh the knight uh doesn't have to move though it can get defended and fetta say of Dances with his Rook 2a5 look at this rookie one rookie 4 Rook A4 Rook A5 like a Tetris game now Knight C4 is essentially the offer of a draw right thatasev is not going to take a draw sacrifices the knight in the on A7 and takes on C5 so phariseev has sacrificed material but Hikaru here finds an exceptional move the only

move okay the only move here to not be worse by black just incredible move King to C8 the point of King C8 is that if you had played Bishop C5 in this position okay I have Rook C5 and I'm forking your queen and your knight but the move King C8 kind of puts a stop to a lot of what white wants why let's say move H3 is played well then black is going to play like Rook A2 and there's just a pin there's just a pin like the threat of white was to play Bishop B6

check and win the Queen by playing King C8 you completely neutralize the white position and look at Hikaru sack his Knight on D2 to hunt out the king if this there is this with a fork so the white king takes a walk now attacked on D2 neither side able to Castle the king runs out to E3 Bishop C5 Knight C5 a trade and kikaru's pawn has snuck in one square away from promotion look at this and Hikaru takes on A2 Hikaru is in the clear here he is now playing for a win but a nice

job here by phariseev trading off the Knight just in time and sending us down to a three on three end game now of course still opportunities for both parties right kings are active White's King goes hunting both pawns fall now the pawns are running h-pond is running up the board hikaru's b-pawn is running up the board look at how deep that is Pawn gets but Hikaru keeping an eye on that pawn on H7 and he takes on H6 we get an end game and uh it takes 60 moves of action but the players trade everything

and breathe a sigh of relief what a fun game of back and forth action This was um now the next setup that Hikaru and fedes have played featured a king on the other side like in the earliest setup that they played the King was on one side and didn't have to move if long Castle happened but if short Castle happened the king did have to move well later in the day Hikaru and fedes have played a position where one Rook can move this way but then to Castle that way you would need to clear out

quite a bit of material and this King doesn't have to move short Castle right so Hikaru plays F4 in this game with his Bishop in the corner you can be willing to bet there it is both guys activate their Corner Bishop we have B4 Hikaru trying to crawl up the board there and now he closes up his King very complicated game already early on they just fantastically complicated game apparently black prefers uh White prefers sorry stockfish prefers black here okay now as I said in some Fisher random positions the computer will like black if white

plays inaccurately it's really hard to understand what inaccurately really means in fisherandom which is why it's so fascinating now fatasev begins reigning Haymakers on the queen side and he apparently has a much better position I mean apparently the computer really loves the fact uh that White's Bishop is just absolutely stuffed uh the Knight is forced back to being passive and now here the computer gives the move H5 which I just don't even understand at all there is no serious attack here at all but maybe The Rook is coming in yeah but fatasev is a human

so he attacks in the center instead okay we have takes takes a trade there and now kikaru sacrifices his C Pawn what a courageous C Pawn walking directly into the fire it can be taken by three different things and yet it's the only logical continuation for white because white needs to activate the dark squared Bishop so Hikaru sacrifices a pawn for this now he is able to Castle short and he does now white has two Rooks barreling down the f-file and the position doesn't look that bad at all Queen G3 is on the way G7

look at this a total turnaround in this game better say of covering up all right Hikaru activating all of his pieces phariseev looking to fight back with that H5 Rook H6 idea but it's a little bit too late the clamp has come in the g-pawn can't move Bishop C7 and now E4 a nice idea looking to get that Knight to D5 oh my goodness all of the initiative is on hikaru's side he gets rid of the Knight he puts his Knight on D5 this is a four and a half point nine now Rook G6 Queen

E3 Hikaru solid where is the Breakthrough Rook takes H5 uh oh uh oh The Rook is getting closer the queen is getting closer the queen infiltrates Queen H7 is literally made in one Rook F7 Queen slides into the back rank Rook D7 and Hikaru here finds the incredible Rook takes a five he's broken in with all his pieces he is now threatening all sorts of devastating nonsense with Knight F6 Rook G5 Rook G6 Rook AJ Queen d8 not not in that order he doesn't get six moves in a row but a save doesn't know what

to do apparently the only move here that saves her to save is Rook takes H4 the idea of this move is to sacrifice the rook and play King to G7 that's so ridiculous that a say of sacrifices his C Pawn now Hikaru is winning if he finds Rook fh5 just an unbelievable move with the idea to give a check and give a mate and if Rook H5 and you take the queen is hanging on E6 Rook fh5 Hikaru misses it Hikaru takes the pawn on C3 and now Rook takes D5 Hikaru takes on D5 with

the pawn queen B6 black is threatening this black is threatening to get in over here if you're not careful white to play and win Hikaru doesn't find it he plays Rook to G5 and offers a draw and he offers a draw because after a take take the bishop cannot take the pawn but the queen gets down and it's just Perpetual check King G2 Queen E4 and uh Hikaru decided to call it a day here uh because it was going to be a 30 move Perpetual check but white is winning white is winning in this position

if he finds the utterly incredible King to G2 King to G2 allows the check but tries to escape to H3 and when the queen wanders off Black's King is left absolutely defenseless and its Checkmate in a few moves King G2 is an unbelievable move and if black had found King G7 in this position then Rook G5 this is so incredible it's not that the bishop can take the Rook there's mate in the corner of the board Queen h8 and Rook H7 Hikaru had to find King G2 and then Rook G5 but he misses it and

uh he and Pharisee have fought to four draws today so they played four games against each other white black uh alternating the setups and they had four very hard fought draws now um and I have another amazing game for you which is the game between uh not your back Abdul satorov and uh jorvar gretarsen uh gratarsen is the Icelandic wild card and he's in a very tough group I mean he's in a group with the world champion of Fisher random the world rapid champion and janipomishi the world championship Contender now nadir Beck yesterday had a

good day but you know you had a good day one what maybe you slept well did you sleep well on the second day is he still gonna bring the fight to agritarsen let's have a look norger Beck gets his Queen out early and puts it on A4 now he is looking to trade off the light squared Bishops so that the queen can stand comfortably on A4 and not be bothered then he takes the entire center now what guitaristen has been doing quite a bit is a little bit of time wasting in the opening like he's

this is not bad but yesterday he got into a little bit of trouble against Wesley uh when he when he took his time right he took his time a little bit too long and the same is happening in this game he's playing Knight E4 he's playing multiple moves with both pieces but it's okay in fact it's actually working like his position is kind of fun Queen goes back to C2 and now to F4 and we have a total tangle here I mean black actually dominating not only is black dominating kirvana is just better not your

back did not do a good job here and seeing as the danger is incoming with Rook takes C4 not your back does what anybody sensible would do which is not just sit there uh and speaking of which how many Queen moves did Notre pack make a lot so don't make a lot of moves with the same piece touch your back decides all right I gotta start some sort of attack alright so D5 just like Hikaru did to activate this bishop remember hikaru's idea C4 to launch a big attack yeah he does the same thing now

gret arson plays F6 d-e-d-e and is like kid I don't know who you think you're playing but uh you have no attack all right you got nothing castles Bishop G4 not your back attacks the pawn on E6 who's going to defend it while the queen kratarsen has built up a -3 advantage against the world rapid champion and the leader of group a could this be the comeback that we are all hoping for or maybe expecting let's find out Knight F4 all right black kicks out the bishop back no tear back has gone off the deep

end he hasn't even castled my man plays Knight takes G7 and Rook C2 is minus five for gratars completely winning win D3 black now has the option here to play very calmly Pawn takes Bishop just the free Bishop what white wanted in this position was to get the Knight out from E6 and maybe go for some sort of mate right just stripping the King open but black has not black is safe there is absolutely no attack here you can always put something directly in the way but here seeing the opportunity near the white king we

have Knight takes F2 from gratarsan essentially looking to totally refute the white position Rook F2 Rook F2 King F2 black is completely winning Knight jumps into E4 the king is just stranded in the center of the board now again gretarsen can just take the bishop free Bishop second time in a row white can go Knight takes E6 ain't nothing there all right ain't nothing there now granted here black really should play quickly you know because if black just plays a random move after Knight E6 like A6 or something uh yeah that attack can actually be

very substantial I will take your rook and then I will Checkmate you so um yeah you gotta Play Bishop B7 Bishop A6 cretarsen instead of that is like well you know what I'm gonna do before I take the bush I want to play this obvious like easy move just attacking the queen right that's an easy move now the queen will move let's say here and then I will take the bishop or I will play Rook D2 and I am completely winning alright not you're back it's time to resign now not your back does not have

the eval bar you do so you're probably going ah there's a plot twist Rook d8 but what's the blunder the blunder is danger levels gratitis needs to subscribe to Gotham chess on YouTube because not your back does and not your back knows about danger levels and you know what not your back knows he knows that what's worth more than a queen you you're worth more than a queen but you know what else is worth more than a queen not just the king but also a queen Knight takes F5 cold-blooded the Knight takes the pawn that

should have taken the bishop and now if this there is 97 totally winning the game but it's even worse than that if you take on F5 I now have a line of attack to your king and this is horrible because you have no cover you have absolutely no cover if you go to f8 thinking that you're gonna survive I have check I hunt your king over here and I hunt your king out into the open let me tell you right now this King should not be here that King should have been home so not your

back finds all the accurate moves under pressure hides his King in the center of the board he blocks a check with a check he blocks a check with a check and flips the script and here comes the bashing Bishop F5 Queen F5 Knight takes E4 another check with the bishop in the corner and not your back is in the driver's seat he look at this another danger level Rook takes there is this this and Nod your back sails out of danger the king runs out of all of the attacks look at how many times you

have to cover up he has to cover up get to run his King into the middle cover one check cover two checks cover three checks The Rook Knight and Bishop all blocking the attack and it takes 38 moves but noisierbeck wins in the most shocking of ways and gretarsen still struggling against the field now folks I saved the best for last when I wanted to show you how a world champion did not know the rules or rather thought he knew them or something allow me to demonstrate so this is the same setup that we just

saw we actually see a very similar approach by both sides uh activating their Corner Bishops D6 and a A5 A3 so a lot of Queen side dancing uh in this setup um and by the way you'll notice that the engine already thinks black is better so Bishop F6 E3 and a lot of central tension Right Wesley occupies a very nice spot in the center there disallowing natural white development we have C takes D6 C takes D6 and this capture and a couple moves later we have the capture on B4 now position is better for white

why is the position better for white uh well it was better for black for a little bit but it seems like Wesley kind of misplayed like Bishop F6 maybe wasn't the right approach it allowed white to get too much of a central presence and even though white has this Pawn sorry black has this annoying Pawn white is sort of able to play around it White's Knights are not subjected to develop like this they can go like this and just get out of the way and the bishop is actually biting its own Pawn right so seems

like uh Jan has done a nice job here out maneuvering Wesley's blockade um but yeah I mean you give this position a couple more moves black shirt Castle White will probably play Rook C1 or Rook B1 and then white will castle and we will go have a big battle on the queen side where Jan will try to convert an advantage that's what you would think would happen after this Pawn trade right well not yet Wesley decides to activate his bishop and trade light squared Bishops with young no problem Knight F5 the move Knight F5 actually

doesn't have a threat okay uh you cannot take this you cannot go here you cannot take this there's no threat it's just a good move now if black overreacts and weakens this there is a threat Knight here Knight here sacrificing the Knight for Queen F6 um but apparently just playing a very calm H5 here which is I don't know if you consider that calm it's actually very reasonable the idea being that the king could actually be kind of safe in certain situations on H7 uh and uh then The Rook can come this way and the

pawn will go to G6 Wesley's got a good position now Wesley decides to get aggressive with his Rook first okay fine Jan plays the move Knight G3 very interesting move basically gambiting the pawn on D2 because he wants to play Knight E4 and if Knight E4 he has made okay we get it Yan we see you Queen C8 Queen C8 teams up with the rook and this is on the way but what exactly is the idea when you do this like why did Wesley give away the pawn on D6 Wesley could have played Rook C4

or queen f8 apparently and then he would have still played that idea well Wesley had a plan Wesley's plan after Knight takes D6 was to play this move and attack the Knight but what about the back rank what about check Wesley thought in this position he could do this Wesley thought he could castle out of check keep in mind in regular chess this would never happen but castling is moving your king and your Rook if you look up Define castling chess castling is a special rule that allows your king to move two spaces to its

right or left while The Rook that sits on one side will do the we'll do its kind of according move but the king's not moving so a lot of people thought this was this is just a rook move so you would just block the check because that is how you would Castle okay like for example in this position as I already showed you this is how you Castle but your king doesn't move in the animation here the king kind of does a little swivel kind of maybe not even so Wesley just thought that this check

would be blocked with a rook hop but it doesn't and since he can't do that he has to go here and lose his Knight so Wesley loses I don't even understand did Wesley lose by a legal move because he actually played the move castles here um yeah a shocking game and the shocking end to the day uh Wesley did defeat Jan uh in a in a very very long game like 110 move game but after two days of action keep in mind that every time you win a mini match you gain two points so every

player has now played Four matches which means you are eligible for eight points right after four matches your scores after two days are not your back Abdul sator of winning group a convincingly right now he has eight points uh tomorrow either Yan or Wesley is not going to make it to the playoffs gretarsen having a rough time but I mean that's life when you are the you know the lowest seed and it's a group of death over there uh Magnus and Hikaru up top in their respective groups uh group I should say for the save

is very close uh but he's gonna have to pull off a big win tomorrow um otherwise it's just not gonna work out he's gonna have to beat Magnus in a match and blue bomb obviously struggling so teresia has a chance to either kick out Hikaru or Carlson uh and uh in the other group Wesley or Jan will be the second qualified fire because not your back is just Unstoppable right now I hope you're enjoying uh there have been some fun games people don't know the rules that's everything we want in a world championship and I

will see you for day number three tomorrow get out of here