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Hello everybody, it's jrobi! We are going to
be taking a look at Candidates Chess 2014, day
5. The day was a series of draws for the most part, and some of them were pretty interesting
to look at, so I recommend that you check the
official tournament site and play through the
games to check them out. In this video we will be covering today's only win in which
Mr. Svidler playing the white pieces took on Mr.
Topalov playing the black pieces. Once again we had some interesting moves played by both
players, but even with some questionable moves it was an exciting game leading up to an
unfortunate blunder that settled the matter over the board. I want to look at this game
from the black perspective today to cover some
interesting points, so let's get started here. The game opens up with pawn to E4, and we
actually get into a Ruy Lopez opening here which is awesome! I am going to flip through
the first few moves here until the action starts. Right to about here -- yes there we
go. And I wanted to stop and talk about the question of "should I take" or "should I look
for something better". And quite often, even in my own chess learning, the instinct when
I first started and even well into my 1400
1500's is just to take what your opponent offers up. This unfortunately is not a good
way to play, because if you take what they offer all the time, you are always playing
to their plan. So if there's a big point in this
video today, always look for something better! That can be taking if necessary of course,
sometimes you don't have a choice, or it can be counter-attacking and making your opponent
make a decision instead based off of something that you have come up with, the plan you have
devised! So let's see how the action takes place here, and how that relates to this
question, with Mr. Svidler and Mr. Topalov! So Mr. Svidler has just thrust his D pawn
up to D4, attacking the dark square Bishop. Now,
a lot of new chess players and people learning the game might be like, "Oh my gosh, my piece
is getting attacked I better do something! Maybe I should take that pawn!" Well, look
what happens here. That's not good, right? We are just giving white a really strong
center in the process so obviously white would love for us to do something like that! So
that is not a good idea. So how about this? Mr. Topalov just takes now on E4, says "Okay
you are attacking my dark square Bishop, I am
going to attack your Knight! What are you going to do about that?!" From here the game
progresses now white captures now on E5. So if we just go back a move -- I know I have
a lot of pictures there -- here is the pawn
here, takes the pawn. So now he is saying "Well okay, I am attacking your Knight too!"
So we have a pawn attacking Svidler's Knight, we have a pawn attacking Topalov's Knight.
We also have an open Queen file here. Well the
first move Topalov plays is, instead of worrying about any of these Knights, he just
takes the Queen now. Once the Queen is recaptured, now Topalov comes in and takes
the Knight on F3. And Mr. Svidler takes the
Knight now on F6. And interestingly enough, there was a -- I am just going to flip through
the next few moves here. This is what it ended up looking like after this series of
exchanges here. And you know black's got doubled pawns, it is -- oops I went one too
far -- it is not going to be a huge liability as the game progresses. Obviously you want
to try and avoid doubled pawns if you can. But
if it is not going to seriously hurt your position it is okay. But this didn't actually
have to happen. If we go back, let's see here now -- if I go back too -- after the capture
here -- right here -- yeah, so Mr. Topalov also had an opportunity to do something a
little bit different here. He could have played -- where did it go here -- no sorry,
before the Knight capture. Sorry I am just working with my notes here. So, after the
Rook takes Queen, Mr. Topalov also had an option of playing Bishop takes on F2 with
check! Now if that doesn't totally mess everything up here for planning, I don't know
what would! The positional strength that results from this, if we just flip through
a couple of logical looking moves, is we get
into a position - there's a nice fork of the King and the Rook, where the positional
strength is relatively the same of what resulted in the game, but we do not have
doubled up pawns here. So it was an interesting line that I saw when I was
analyzing the game that I thought looked -- you know, it was something worth mentioning
because it tied into the whole point that I am
talking about. You know, should you immediately take looking for the captures
that are the most obvious or should you look for
something a little bit different? Now even if, after Bishop takes, let's say the King
does not go to F1, and instead takes the dark square Bishop, well it just results in a
position like this. So once again, we have a
white King exposed, we have our pawns on the H, G, and F totally together, totally fine.
And it is a decent position. I think actually black's even up a pawn in this position. So
a move like Bishop takes, if you analyze it
in your games while you are playing, it might
work out actually pretty interestingly for you! And it might help you push towards your
plan! But nonetheless, that wasn't played in
the game. It's fine, what was played in the game worked out well also. Another thing I
found interesting from this position here is
that Mr. Svidler found the strongest move, Bishop to E4. And did not take that pawn on
F3. Now if we go back a move, one of the first instincts of beginning chess players,
even myself when I started, and maybe even now, like I don't know I have to continue
my rated game library here and get to showing
you guys my progression and things that I am
learning, but might have been just -- you know
-- on instinct to just take here. Well unfortunately, that basic instinct leads to
a world of hurt as black just seizes the
momentum here and look at that position that results from there! So, just taking the pawn
obviously wasn't a good move! However, Mr. Svidler found the strongest move, which was
Bishop to E4. And, you know this pawn here on
F3 is going to be there for quite awhile. Black is still up a pawn in this position,
but it is not going to be a huge liability for
Mr. Svidler as the game progresses. So let's
continue on here. I am just going to flip through the next few moves. I want to keep
the video relatively short here. So we have some jockeying around. You know, Mr. Svidler
is playing quite well. So is Mr. Topalov here. And we get to this position, and Bishop
captures Knight on A3. Now in the game Mr. Svidler recaptured the Bishop on A3 with his
pawn. Let's go back a move though. Go ahead and pause the video, and look for something
better! Try to find something better in this position that you can do before you take that
Bishop on A3. Okay, so I am just going to show you what it is now, hopefully you have
paused the video by now. But take a look at this. Bishop takes pawn on H7. You know,
what are we doing? Well, we are telling black basically that "Yeah you have just taken my
Knight but I can take your Rook!" So you know black obviously does not want to lose a Rook
in this position, so you could see a move like
Rook over to H8 attacking the light square Bishop. But what do we have here? Well we
just have a nice little check! So the King has to move, and now we take the Bishop on
A3! And we have got that pawn back! So it was
an interesting option. Now Mr. Svidler didn't
play that, Mr. Svidler decided to take the Bishop first. So you know, it could have been
a little bit of an inaccuracy on his part, maybe he just didn't see that on the board
at the time, but I thought it was definitely
worth mentioning considering what we have been
talking about. So anyway play continued now. Just going to continue flipping through some
moves. You know, positional jockeying around here by the players. And we get to this point
here. Now we just had a Bishop check here on
E4. And this was unfortunately Topalov's first of a few mistakes here. Mr. Topalov
elected to play King to A6. And, in the process, he lit that Rook up on D4 like you
wouldn't believe! Now that Rook can come down, it can get behind that King, it can
contribute to an attack on that King! We have got these beautiful Bishops here on E3 and
E4, and this is just not going to work out very
well for black in the position. And we will see that as the game progresses. But if we
go back a move, this move would have stopped
all of that. King to C8. Now this Rook, not as
scary. So play could have followed check here. King goes back to B7. The Rook does
try to come down in this position but now we
have a pawn capture here on G4. Recapture, and now the light square Bishop gets into
the action, comes down now to C4. And you know,
black is going to be able to hold its own from
this point. Unfortunately, however, that wasn't played by Mr. Topalov, he did elect
to play King to A6, and now we get into a series
of moves and you are going to see this Rook come down like a champ and it's just going
to start tearing into the position. These
Bishops are going to be working and coordinating with the Rook to launch an attack
against the black position. And it's just not
pretty. Material starts to drop off the board, and we have a series of moves here
with the Rooks. And I am just flipping through
these moves because we are going to get to the
last major blunder of Mr. Topalov here when we
get to this position right here. so what happened was Mr. Svidler brought the Rook
back to D4, offering up the Rook trade. In this
position, the best move for black is just to
take that Rook and deal with this. Which could result in a position where you get to
something like this. And it's not super clear what is going to go on here, obviously white's
probably going to win the game with the huge pawn majority. You know, it wasn't really
a good move either way I guess from what can
be said, but Mr. Topalov decided to take the
pawn here on C3 instead. And unfortunately this
was an even worse mistake, because after here this pawn that just got pushed to H6 is going
to be monstrous! And there is a reason why the title of this video is titled the way
it is because a lot of times in this game we
see beautiful coordination of Rooks and Bishops.
And we are going to see a very, very nice little move here coming up from Mr. Svidler.
So we get to this position here. Mr. Topalov tries to play King up to F7 to stop this pawn,
but watch this move right here. Beautiful. Look at that! Bishop to D8, completely
cutting that Rook off of any type of hopes of
protecting the H8 square for promotion. And, the coordination of Rooks and Bishops in this
game were beautiful! So this is actually where the game ended. From here there are
no good moves for black. For example if tries
King to G6, well we just promote and it's not
pretty there. If he tries something like Rook to C4, it's still not pretty. There is no
-- pretty positions for black here at all. And
if the game were to progress, well what happens is we still get a promotion and black
just has to delay the inevitable checkmate. So it was a really interesting game. I really
enjoyed going over it and I hope that you found some use from what I was talking about
for, you know, not just taking right away but
actually looking for something else, something better in the position before you go ahead
and take that capture. So take care! I hope you
enjoyed the video, and we will see you next time!