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Hello everybody it is jrobi. I wanted to do kind of a fun video series here, get it started
off. I’m going to put these out here once in a while. And it is going to focus on trying
to find the mistakes that Grandmasters have made in the past. And thankfully they make
mistakes, you know, on a fairly regular basis. Obviously not as much as the weaker rated
chess players in the world such as myself. But they definitely make some crucial mistakes
at tournament level play. And that’s good. I think it is healthy for the game and it
keeps things exciting. I think if all the games were perfectly played obviously we’d
end up with nothing but draws. So, you know, from my end of things I think it is healthy
to see Grandmasters make mistakes, and they definitely do. Sometimes they are really huge
mistakes. I was looking at game of Karpov’s and a Queen was completely just dropped. And
I thought that that was very interesting. Like, I mean, you see it on occasion at amateur
level play, but you definitely don’t see it with a high degree of frequency at the
Grandmaster level play. But that being said, the series is going to be called Grandmaster
Chess Blunders: Can you Spot the Mistake? And this game was a very interesting game.
I was kind of browsing through the games of Nigel Short on my site yesterday. And I came
across this game. It was played in 2008 at the Olympiad. And Nigel Short was playing
white and Peter Nielsen was playing black. Now at the time Nigel Short was rated 2642
and Nielsen was rated 2662. So they are both, you know, very strong Grandmasters. And they
reached this position and Nielsen had just played his Knight to G6. Now I’m thinking
that the plan here at the time, you know, if there was a plan, which I’m sure there
was, was that after the Pawn takes the Knight here on G6 the Queen can come in and take
the Knight on E6. And that would kind of give the Queen some options. It would be directly
attacking the Pawn here on G4 and, you know, it would kind of help break things open a
little bit for black and get black out of this cramped position. Because as we can see
here we’ve got all these Pawns of blacks' very close to its home rank. And whites' are
very, you know, they are nicely advanced. So black is in a very cramped position. So
I’m thinking that that’s what the plan was that the Grandmaster had. Now you can
definitely post what you might’ve thought the Grandmaster was thinking. I definitely
don’t claim to be a Grandmaster. But, you know, it seemed that that might seem like
a logical course of events to take place. Unfortunately though however Knight to G6
was a crucial blunder. So what I’d like you to do is pause the video, see if you can
come up with white’s best move to capitalize on black’s mistake here. And see if you
can spot why this was such a devastating blunder. In fact after white’s next move black resigns.
So we definitely go ahead, pause the video, and I’m going to dive into this solution
here. So the Knight was played out to G6 and Nigel Short probably was looking at this as
if a gift had just been given to him, because what he plays here is he plays Pawn captures
Knight on G6. And I’m not sure how long black took a look at this position before
he resigned because, you know, the time isn’t in the PGN file. But I would imagine that
it probably wasn’t too long before black realized that he made a crucial mistake by
offering up that Knight onto G6. And the reason is simply that this Knight cannot be taken.
Now you might have come up with an alternative reason why this Knight can’t be taken. And
actually I posted this position on my blog this morning. And I’ve had a couple of people
respond to the blog post as well as on Twitter to me, that one of the reasons that the Knight
can’t be taken is because after the Queen comes in to take the Knight, white has a brutal
check here on H7. Now that’s going to force the enemy King away to F8 and the resulting
position is about a full Rook worth of material in terms of positional strength. But the kicker
is, is that it is actually not the best move in this position, if the Knight is taken.
Now let’s take a look at it. So once again Nigel Short has just taken the Knight hrtr
onto G6. And let’s suppose that his opponent takes Knight back on E6. Now let’s take
a look at a couple of things. First of all we have this nice Pawn here on G6 now that
is all of a sudden removing these two squares from the enemy King from accessing. More importantly
the Queen is now off at the back rank to defend the King from a check. And that is where the
beauty of the move comes. Simply Queen now to B8 lands the check and it is going to be
mate in one more move. So, for example, Queen comes and hits a check. The only option for
black in this position is to move the Queen to C8 or to E8 both of which fail of course.
Let’s just go to E8 for an example. And here we go with the checkmate. So there’s
a mate in two if that Knight would’ve been taken. So Nigel Short’s opponent probably
realized that he had just given Nigel Short a completely free piece. And in the process
of doing so of course gave him also the game. And that is definitely why Nielsen resigned
after Short took the Knight with the Pawn on G6. And don’t feel too bad if you thought
of the line Queen check here on H7 because, you know, that is definitely a winning line
as well. It is just definitely not as quick as the forced mate if that Knight is taken.
So take care, hope you enjoyed the video and we will see you next time!