ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the road to grandm series uh this is my second over- theboard chess tournament and this is the third round recap of that tournament uh friendly reminder this tournament is uh in New York City it's an I am Norm round robin so it's 10 players Everybody Plays everybody and there are chances to get an international Master Norm now I'm already an international master so I'm just trying to farm I'm trying to win as many games as possible now in the third round I'm actually playing the highest rated player in the entire section and the only Grand Master uh Grandmaster Maxim novic whose rating is 2,49 uh and you may ask why would a guy who's a Grandmaster play in a section where you can get an I am Norm you can ask the same thing about the IM the point is that like to get these Norms people have to play title players and what you do is you invite people to play and Maxim gets to play nine games he gets to try to beat people as well uh and generally they get an appearance fee I don't get an feed because I'm a bum uh no because uh you know my friend is an organizer he had a spot he let me play and um you know you don't do these types of transactions with your friends so you know when you're the one of the top two or three players in the section in sections like this it's not uncommon that people just make draws and 10 moves because they don't really have anything to play for but I wanted to play uh I think he wanted to play too but you always kind of have that in the back of your mind so he played E4 and I played caroan now here's something interesting about this game right so um Maxim plays caroan himself so every game he plays caroan so I'm playing caroan against the caroan guy so we both have played probably tens of thousands of caroan games Maxim and I have single-handedly brought caroan Theory backwards like 10 years no just kidding uh now here's uh here's another funny thing he usually takes or plays Knight C3 but I looked at his games and in recent months especially on ch.com where his account is is just his name so it wasn't really mysterious he's been playing E5 so I actually had a feeling Bishop F5 and H4 the mik tal variation was coming uh H4 is actually in my E4 course so maybe Maxim has studied it uh joking aside the point is to play G4 and Advance on this side of the board now H6 is a move here H5 is a move here um there's a lot of other moves you can play like Queen C7 I've even played A6 which is a very provocative move you basically just try to get your opponent to come here I've played everything here uh and for this game I had prepared H5 Bishop D3 and then here rather than trading which is played in 99% of games there's this move Queen to D7 and this has almost never been played uh it's you know it's not a very powerful surprise weapon I mean it's it's like move five in a caroan right but in a nutshell you're just Defending Your bishop and you're kind of hoping that your opponent plays Knight F3 because then you can can play Bishop G4 so you avoid the trade and you get this pin now my opponent's not stupid he's an experienced Grand Master he's played like Legends of the game I mean if you look at his history like he has played 30 years ago in the former like Soviet Union he was playing like you know stars and he he played in like championships and um we actually did play in uh 2019 in the Czech Republic we played in a blitz tournament so good player not going to play Knight F3 uh and instead of that he plays Knight E2 now here there's a line which goes takes takes and basically black can very quick play for C5 uh you can just like give up this Pawn you you try to win it back he defends it you play Knight C6 he plays F4 you play here and then here and you know there's there's this like long sequence of moves where he puts the bishop here you play Bishop B7 he castles and then you play for this move B6 something along these lines and I remember sitting at the board going yeah but I'm kind of sleepy like I don't I you know maybe I'm misremembering and I gotta give up a pawn and then I gotta like spend the whole middle game trying to get the pawn back and then even even if I you know uh play all the correct moves I'm still a pawn down which is normal in the carocon positions when you know white has these three and you have DNB and pressure but I was like you know I'm just going to play E6 and then I'm going to play C5 on the kns move and that's what I did and then I was like okay I'm going to put the Knight behind the pawn so we're basically playing an advanced French right you look at the structure this is very typical of advanced French meaning E4 E6 D4 D5 E5 C5 uh and I'm going to click to the actual game now right all the pawns are the same except I don't have the bad French Bishop so like it it in theory this should be an improvement for black um he played 9 F3 and here I was really struggling to understand something and and I think this will kind of come with experience I was really struggling to understand like should I take right away point being if I take right away he's got to take with something let's say he takes with this Knight can I just develop like normal or is this helping him you know I I didn't understand and and I kind of had a feeling you may remember some of my other previous carun games like I also thought like maybe this is good for me because in the long run I actually have a Target right like you clear the Queens you clear some pieces this will be a potential long-term weakness um and so here I I was already con considering taking on D4 but then I was thinking like well if he was afraid of taking with the Knight wouldn't he have gone C3 like wouldn't it have made sense to play C3 so okay let let me not rush I'm going to play Knight C6 he castled and again I'm like should I take on D4 I do this now take on D4 he goes here maybe I play Bishop C5 and play Knight E7 like this this seems very natural all the ideas are kind of flowing but then he's going to develop his Bishop he's going to go here he's going to put his Rooks in the center I was like ah do I really really want to unclog his position I had seen some variations where you kind of line up over here so he goes Bishop G5 here I spent a lot of time because I I calculated this move Knight F5 and I rejected it because I put pressure on his Center but I didn't like takes takes and this move King H2 now the engine thinks I'm stupid and in retrospect uh yeah I suppose looking at this I'm not really sure what I what I overlooked but in a nutshell I will tell you like in a nutshell what my point of King H2 was I was like well if he gets to do this he's going to have a really powerful position as you can see right his King is somehow safe he needs by the way it's important for me to tell you king H2 is important because there's this pin so he cannot play Knight G3 straight away so I thought Knight F5 made no sense I thought it made more sense to go Knight G6 it it it's not accurate it it did not make more sense to go Knight G6 and as you can tell from my time you know I spent 10 minutes and I do have this tendency in the in the second game of the day this is the second game of of the Day Brain just doesn't work and actually if you watch the live stream of this game um I was yawning I I must have yawned 20 times I was so tired but the problem is I can't drink caffeine at 6 p.m. because I'll never sleep so uh it's not easy I mean you know a lot of people do a lot of like difficult labor and difficult jobs in this world and you would think like oh you have to play two long chess games in a day what are you crying about and in in in a sense you are correct but in another sense it is very exhausting um so he went C3 and I and I went to carry out my plan of trading the bishop putting some pressure on the pawn so he goes G3 now here I thought G3 was a symbolic victory for myself because I thought he cannot put his Knight on G3 anymore so I thought oh okay well I'm making progress now let's trade the Bishops and now what I'm going to do is I'm going to bring the Knight back this was my plan so then I can put the Knight on F5 so I've traded his Bishop his Bishop no longer annoys me I mean I even had potentially I was thinking to like long Castle which is kind of deranged but this was you know this was sort of the idea so I went back to E7 the point is he cannot take my Pawn because then I play Knight E5 if he tries to attack my knight I can even play F6 and then I can even begin like you know my own attack I can play like King F7 Knight C6 and and and I can I can move my pieces forward so I thought position is looking pretty good um then he played rookie one and this was a good move the point of Rook one completely going off this file is that he anticipates that this file is going to open up so you know for examp just very drastic example take take like he goes back you know you you see the makings of some problems there's another problem though and the problem is that if I play Knight F5 now taking is actually dangerous for me and you may be like what why is it dangerous well it had he taken in the previous position my knight is still here so my knight can help my other Knight you know I can play like Knight C6 right I can play and the difference is if I put the Knight on F5 and then he takes when we get here this is actually a bad version because my knight is a problem and I don't have a place to put my king if I put my king over here this is always mate so now he starts attacking my knight and I realized this during the game like my plan originally had been here here don't even think about it but then I was like well I can't go here because now he can actually take the pawn which is correct as you can see from the evaluation unfortunately then I panicked uh Panic is the wrong word but I just realized that Knight F5 which had been my plan this whole time is suddenly really dangerous and I need to do something with the pawn here so I thought what could be more natural than just defending it I mean right like what could be more natural but apparently structurally this is a really bad decision I came to realize this during the game like B6 is actually a waste of time it's not a good move it weakens the light squares and if anything the pawn should be on A6 which is normal followed by B5 like this is the real way to play the structure so I play this move B6 and let me tell you below 2,000 it is not possible to explain why this is a bad move it's just not possible um I mean it what could be more natural again like the point is simply to play Knight F5 and for this Pawn to always be protected but the thing is B6 on its own is very weakening uh it weakens a lot of complexes over here and like I said if you ever play A6 now B6 is weak whereas if you had played A6 with the pawn on B7 you could play B5 and it would never be weak so he played Rook D1 and finally I was sitting here and this is where I made a big mistake um I was really struggling to to come up with a plan again if I play Knight F5 I thought he takes if I take he plays Knight F4 and I was just thinking where's my king going like I can no longer go this way I can't go this way because I lose the pawn okay I'm going to play G6 easy and then I was like no it's not easy at all okay I just locked the position no because now he has E4 so at the very least he starts targeting my weaknesses I start protecting my weaknesses suddenly I'm just losing a pawn which is why the move B6 was bad because in the long run I don't want the pawn on C5 what I needed to do was to take and I didn't do this because I thought well why would I well why but yeah just take and I mean he can't move his Knight it would have been much better to trade and if we do this at least get the Knight off the board and then the Knight is not a problem and then I play Knight F5 and he can stop me from castling but I have moves like Queen E7 even maybe not Queen E7 fine Rook C8 but I played B6 and then at this point this is still the best move So the plan is the same remember the plan all the way back in the beginning the plan was still I can take on D4 I can take the pawn on D4 and I waited too long and finally here which was my last moment I was like why would I take on D4 if I already played B6 so I played B6 with the point of I'm gonna move my knight so that if he takes me this is protected how would I possibly follow like I why would I play B6 and then take on D4 why would I take on D4 with the inclusion of him bringing another piece to help defend so I couldn't bring myself to take on D4 I just like it not because of ego but because I thought it was illogical so I did what I thought was logical which turned out to be really bad which is this I basically said okay I'm going to lock the position so he can't break through all right we're going to we're going to buckle down we're going to we're going to shutter the the you know the hurricane windows and we're going to do this this is how we're going to play the position we are locking everything he's got one Pawn break that may or may not work this is what we're going to do he went Knight F4 I play G6 he went Knight G2 potentially going here and at this point I'm down 23 minutes on the clock and I'm worse now the position is plus one um it's plus one because he has a space advantage and because he kind of has the game is in White's hands uh it's not up to me like white can choose to do nothing here the game will end in a draw uh I cannot choose to do nothing I have to defend right he plays B3 now I thought it was really dumb of me to take I thought why would I take that just gives him another front of attack right so now he's going to try to attack me on two sides of the board I'm not really calling the shots here I mean he's very well protected so he played B3 and I went Rook C8 because I thought me getting a rook there is a win then he snuck past my Pawn he played Rook B1 and again the computer wants to take which just I can't even fathom maybe it's explainable maybe it's you know something like this just disallowing these pawns to move forward but in the game I just played Knight G8 and I came up with this plan to play Knight G8 Knight H6 Knight G4 I thought this was pretty smart it's not smart I I I you will see B4 I was like why is he locking the position so here I wanted to play Queen A4 but if you've been following this tournament you know that in multiple games at this point I've have gotten my queen into really stupid situation so I was thinking like you know Rook A1 Queen C2 you know I was like I'm going to like trade the Queens I mean I was like all right I played B4 I followed through with my plan you will notice also he's playing very quickly I mean he's playing very fast like look he he spent some time on B3 but then he quickly played Rook B1 he quickly played B4 quickly played B5 right and then he played A4 again I thought go here you know sneak around but then I thought I think I'm going to get my my queen trapped so I'm glad I didn't do this so A4 and I still have no idea what he's trying to do so so I just Castle which is kind of funny Castle on the 24th move 15 minutes versus 39 plays Rook A1 I play Rook B8 because I thought his idea was to go A5 Rook B was stupid should have played Rook a to prepare quick counterplay but again the game is sort of slipping out of my control right I 15 minutes he has 308 he playing very fast clearly taking over the game so I'm not really like I'm not my head's not really in it right so I play Rook B8 here comes the wakeup call Queen F4 and at this point I realize I really messed up because he's going to get F3 G4 which is going to force me to shove my pieces all the way back and I have no play and I suddenly start realizing oh it's much worse than it seems because when I had locked the position up I thought I'm going to lock it up and defend it Queen F4 is a huge problem so 15 minutes on the clock this is coming straight down and I'm like oh man all right well time to defend this position I guess I played King h8 came up with this idea computer hates it I thought this was pretty smart the point is I'm going to bring my knight back here I'm going to put my knight where my king was like this to get out of the way of the queen and then when he goes G4 I'm going to play Knight G7 now the engine doesn't like this the engine thinks that now I'm totally suffocating and it's going to slowly win the game but the top engine move here from the computer is Queen C1 which I don't think I don't know I mean I I I don't I don't get it the point is then to play like Knight F4 it's not even still clear what the plan is like Queen E8 and now the plan is to play King H1 and like if I just keep shuffling Queen C2 and basically he he crashes through on F7 like so I I I need to always monitor uh the position now it's findable I suppose but I think he was looking for a forcing way through so here I played Queen E8 and here he played Knight F4 Knight H6 Rook A2 this is on the way so if I do nothing he's going to play Rook G2 he's going to take on H5 and the game will end because he's going to you know Checkmate me that's it I take with the Knight he's going to take with the Knight and queen G7 is a mate I can go here but he has Knight G5 Knight G7 this type of stuff Rook A2 11 minutes versus 32 position slowly spinning out of control um now I have played my last few moves pretty quickly so once I realized that the position was bad I quickly played King h8 Knight G8 Knight G7 and I set up this defensive wall I play Queen E8 to put pressure on these two pawns and also kind of X-ray defend this if necessary potentially look for an F6 counter break and when he went here I played this move I didn't even think about it I thought maybe 40 seconds the point is I have to move I have 11 minutes if I spend half my time here working out the complications of everything I will now have six minutes for the rest of the game this is a this is just a a maturation uh as a chess player I knew the position was really bad Gotham 1.0 would have been really like mad at himself and annoyed but I was just kind of like I'm getting outplayed I'm worse game's not over A6 now if he goes all in I'm going to take now I don't think I can take on B5 but I might be able to and the point is that I'm not going to take back but rather I'm going to jump in the way and I'm going to block him I can probably even do it with this Knight so he can't come forward so he has something to think about now and he spent 15 minutes he really didn't like this move and I realized as he was sitting there he had been playing quickly confidently taking over the game and I realized A6 is is is problematic point being I'm going to go Rook A8 which is why my Rook should have been there in the first place by the way as you can see I wasted a lot of time in this game because I was unsure about the position um but because it's a closed position you kind of have this luxury of being able to maneuver and sort of you know fix your mistakes point is that I'm going to take this and then this is this next Pawn is hanging so it's not so simple now he played Rook B1 I took on B5 notice I'm not going below 11 minutes I'm not going below 11 minutes so I'm playing every move really fast he plays Rook back to B4 now it's 11 versus 15 I will remind you the game was 33-1 and I was much worse now suddenly he has two Rooks committed to this side of the board defending so that's like a huge shift and on top of that if I ever manage to break through and get to his King his attack POS some serious weaknesses to his own King his King doesn't have shelter anymore so play this move Rook A5 again not going below 11 minutes I play this move very quickly the point of Rook A5 is to play B5 the point is to prepare the move B5 and if we start if if this happens he has no Advantage at all uh also I think I can even wow the computer wants to sack the queen for the two Rooks that's pretty gangster and then like bring the second Rook that's pretty cool um so played Rook A5 and he played Rook B2 it's now 14 he's only up two and a half minutes so game is completely back uh I take on A4 he takes on B6 I was a little bit annoyed at myself here actually I I thought like maybe I should have gone for B5 quicker the thing is if we trade a pair of Rooks he has almost nothing he has almost nothing one Rook is not not going to cause any problems here but two Rooks and this was very smart by him two Rooks will now two Rooks can both defend the king and Counterattack me and I was a little bit annoyed at myself that I allowed this my original intention at this point was to play Rook A1 force him forward and play something like Rook C1 but the truth is I I'm not the one calling the shots here like again the momentum of the game has shifted so you would think oh just go attack his King but I do have to remember I had to sit there and and tell myself buddy you have one active piece he has five every piece he has is good and he has shelter and he's going to play Rook B8 maybe or Rook B7 he's the attack is not over the momentum feels like it's shifting but it's a little bit superficial so I played this move Rook A3 I thought Rook A3 was a smart move it is a smart move the engine defense here is obsurd the engine defense here is to abandon the gon I don't think that's findable to abandon the G pawn and not just abandon the G Pawn it's to stop protecting C1 uh C3 and go here to create a triple barrier you Chuck these Pawn so you Chuck both of these pawns and you Chuck this pawn and you just try to go to B8 and you win here because of Queen G6 so the idea was to escort The Rook to B8 and hit the G6 Pawn I mean I don't think Queen E1 Queen B1 is findable uh I think it's much more natural to play what he did which is to bring his Knight back and again at this point I'm like okay here's my queen and so my intention here was to play Queen D1 and Rook A1 so I'm getting my queen and my Rook to his first rank which is very very very scary for him but the game is still on and here he surprised me he played Queen F4 and there's actually a spoiler here because this stupid interface does this um he played Queen F4 and here's the thing about in chess you can offer a draw what you're supposed to do you're supposed to make a move offer a draw and press the clock he played the move pressed the clock and then a minute later he offered me a draw technically I think it's against the rules but like I'm not I'm not a teacher's pet but that's a bad sign if a guy makes a move looks at his move for a minute and is like oh I offer a draw those of you who don't have tournament experience generally that means they blundered something now I didn't think he blundered anything Queen F4 is a very annoying move the the idea basically of Queen F4 is like okay is to like sacrifice the Knight and then you know take on H6 is to play play Rook B8 and I realized here I don't I don't have a Checkmate if I play Queen D1 and he goes King F2 I mean where's my mate he's just going right here his King is is shell and there's a really annoying line here which is Queen let's say F1 King E3 Knight F5 doesn't work it looks like I'm mating him but he's going to sacrifice his Queen his Queen sacrifices for the Knight and then he makes me he mates me because his Knight is protecting every important Square so once I saw this I was like okay I'm going to take this draw now there was one more thing I could have done which is Queen D1 and maybe Queen H1 which is what he showed me after the game but he told me I wasn't sure who was better here anymore and I didn't want to risk it okay fair you know he didn't want to risk it fine but actually the engine prefers white so I guess he was afraid of this he was afraid of you know the attack which I mean I don't blame him it it does look very scary and it's never too late to blunder Checkmate you know what I mean like he's gonna he's going to get mated here um but the truth is if he had held his nerve a little bit better he may might have won the game because I'm not I'm I'm not playing for a win here but what had happened was I totally flipped the table psychologically not actually I didn't flip the table but from from 11 versus 3233 I turned it into you know what was it at the end like 9 versus 14 15 and all the momentum coming in here and uh he kind of got spooked by the Counterattack and and he offered me a draw because he he he wanted to preserve at least half a point which which kind of makes sense but um I also had to battle my own ego here you know I really wanted to play Queen D1 I like I mean I understood he didn't like his position but I had to be like honest with myself I I don't think I have anything and I didn't I mean it's symbolic but but I'm I'm I'm not mating the guy I mean there is no mate here which is kind of insane that he can just hide on H3 and there's just no mate like everything is covered I mean chess is such a stupid game sometimes um but a draw and I'm proud of my character development in this game because I feel like uh previous version of myself would have absolutely lost it so two and a half out of three uh tough games I mean really tough games I'd like to play a few games in this event now which will be a bit more smooth sailing but not easy everybody's strong uh and uh you know we keep going two and a half out of three I'm up six points I'm 2354 now up 32 points since returning to competitive chess 12 games 32 points uh and I'll see you all for round number four get out of here