Embrace the Chaos || Fabiano Caruana vs Levon Aronian || The American Cup 2026

Hello everyone and welcome back to the American Cup 2026. This is the Losers Bracket Final. As we've seen in the previous video, or the one before that, the previous one was about Bobby Fisher. Fabiano Coruana lost to Wesley So in the final and he now has to battle it out with Levon Aranyan to see who will face Wesley So today in the Grand Final. In the first two games they traded victories. First Fabi won with white, then Levon won on demand with white, and now we're in tiebreaks. The tiebreaks are played with a three minute time control. Sorry about that, let me just bring up the times. And I believe it's a two second increment, I could be wrong, but yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a two second increment. And yeah, first game ended in a draw and this is the one where everything got decided. So it's a pretty crazy game and it really showcases players' strengths and weaknesses when playing with less time on the clock. So yeah, let's check it out. Fabi with white opens with pawn to d4. We have pawn to d5, c4, e6, knight to c3, and knight to f6. So a standard Queen's Gambit declined, followed by c-captures on d5. This is the most popular way to play. You don't have to capture, but before blitz I would say it's a better choice. We have Bishop g5, c6, and pawn to e3. And now just pawn to h6. Bishop to e7 is the most played move. h6, second most played. And here everyone goes Bishop to h4. It's the most standard reply, and there is nothing wrong with it. It's a perfectly fine move. If you remember in 2020, Magnus Carlsen played a series of four games in the scaling open preliminaries against Alireza Firic. They played this line four times, and Magnus won two of them, and two of them were drawn. But here after h6, Fabi goes Bishop to f4, and this is non-existent in Grandmaster or Master level play, and only a handful of games in the database with the Bishop retreating to f4. So Levon replies with Bishop to f5, doesn't really give it much thought, and pawn to f3. Fabi says that he is preparing pawn to e4, and that he wants to grab the full center. And it is now, as of move 8, that we have a completely new game. Players still with basically full time under clocks. No thinking time was invested. So Knight b7, and pawn to g4, Bishop to h7, and pawn to h4. Fabi really giving Levon something to think about, as you have to be ready for pawn to g5. So we have Knight to b6, clearing the d7 square for the f6 Knight, and Bishop to d3. And now you should just probably capture, and then go Bishop to d6, and everything is perfectly fine. But here we have Knight to c4, and Fabi has to decide whether to trade on h7, or to trade on c4, or to maybe just defend the b2 pawn. So those are the three options. Fabi decides to give up the Bishop pair, to grab the full center, decapitrize, and pawn to e4. But now Levon strikes on the Queen side. We have pawn to b5, Queen to d2, and now b4 would be a bit premature. If you go b4 right away, then the Knight comes to e2, and not much for Black here. The Knight will be remaneuvered to g3, then to f5, and this will be an excellent position for White. So here, okay, Queen to b6 makes sense. You want to bring the Rook to d8, put pressure on that d4 pawn. Knight to g to e2, and Rook to d8. Okay, so for the moment, the d4 pawn is defended. Nothing to worry about there. Pawn to g5. We have Knight to h5, attacking the Bishop, and now g captures on h6. This is the best possible way for Fabi to continue. g captures, and now Bishop captures on h6. We have Bishop to e7, and Bishop to g5, followed by pawn to f6. So Levon was forced to weaken his position a little bit, and he's down a pawn, but he managed to, you know, create some chaos on the board, and that's what you should go for against Fabi, I would say, with little time on the clock. We have Bishop to e3, and pawn to b4, now chasing away the Knight. Knight to d1, and pawn to f5. Your king is in the center of the board, but so is Fabi's, so that's the way Levon plays. We have Knight to f2, adding a defender here, f captures, Knight captures, and now Knight to f6, offering a trade of Knights, and Knight to g3. We have Knight to d5. Here, c5, it's a very nice move, but very, very hard to calculate. And it definitely makes sense to put more pressure on that d4 pawn, but after captures, which also looks very nice, you have to play Queen to e6, and now it's very hard for White to find moves here. Next, Black will trade on e4, and just a very nice position. But okay, it's a, you know, three-minute blitz. Knight to d5 was played, also makes perfect sense. Bishop to g5, and now pawn to c3. Levon just wants to open up lines of attack towards Fabi's king. b captures, b captures, we have Queen to e2, and now even Queen to b2. You could also capture on b4, but Levon wants to have as much chaos on the board as possible. And you can trade here, nothing wrong with that, you just put the Rook on b1, and everything is fine. Although it looks a little bit weird with that Bishop on h7, and with so little time on the clock, better not, you know, think about that. So King f2 by Fabi, and now again, Levon can strike with c2, but he decides to trade. We have captures, captures, pawn to c2, and now pawn to a3. Fabi plays this move to free up the a2 square for the Rook, also take away the b4 square from the Knight, and that's not the greatest of ideas. We have Rook to b8, and now we have Bishop captures on e7, King captures on e7, and you somehow have to deal with this c2 pawn. And there are many ways you can do that, you can just ignore it, like Rook ag1, you can put the Rook on c1, that's perfectly fine, as Rooks do belong behind and in front of passed pawns sometimes. But Fabi played Rook to a2, makes sense as he already played pawn to a3, but this is now a problem. Believe it or not, and I found this very hard to believe, but Fabi's King is actually in danger of being checkmated. It doesn't seem like there are any pieces surrounding it, but chess is sometimes funny like that. So the question is, what did Fabi miss here? He has eight seconds on the clock, so we cannot blame him, but we can blame you if you don't pause the video and solve this position. So there you go, while I give you a couple of seconds. It all has to do with chasing away the King to the King side, believe it or not. Bishop captures on e4, you open up lines of attack towards the White King, and I know it sounds weird, I told you you have to checkmate and then you started giving up pieces, but that's the way to do it. And now Rook hdf8 check, and the problem is, well everything's a problem here, the problem is if you go down the board, then your face would Rb1 check, and you blundered that Rook on h1, so that is not an option. So King to g3, or King to g2, doesn't really matter, and now Rook to b3 check. And look at this, all of a sudden the pieces are surrounding that White King. And the question is, what is Fabi to do? He played King to g4, which is a sub-optimal defense. I will show you the proper defense and how Black still can break through. It's hard to say if Lavon would make it with so little time on the clock, but Lavon thrives in chaos, I believe he would. And the idea is Knight e3 check, King h2, and now Knight to g4 with check, King to g1, and now Rook b to f3. That's the key move, you have to give up the c2 pawn, and now it doesn't really matter what White plays, but let's say you capture the pawn. Now you give a check, Rook f1 check, King g2, Knight e3 check with a fork, but you're not really interested in the Rook, King h2, and now Rook a to f2 with check, King h3, Rook f3 check, King h2, Rook 1 to f2 check, King to g1, and now a wonderful Rook to g2 checkmate. So that is the cleanest and the fastest way to do it. But Fabi went King to g4, and like I said, this is a bit of a sub-optimal defense, and here Lavon goes Knight to e3 check. But just for fun, do you see there's a forced checkmate here? It's a mate in 7, also a nice little tactic for you to solve. How would you checkmate the White king here? It's Rook to g8 check. I know it's not the most flashy move, but you know, sometimes even that will suffice. You only have f8 and h5 squares to go to, and it doesn't matter where you go to. King to h5, Knight to f6 with check, King to h6, and now comes the key move, one that was really, really difficult to find. You have to free up the g3 square for your Rook, and that's it. That is accomplished by promoting the pawn to a Queen. You sacrifice the Queen, Knight captures, and Rook beats the g3, and there is no defense. Rook to g6 will be checkmate, regardless of what White does on the next move. Even if you play something like this, then the other Rook can accomplish checkmate. And mates like these, with little time on the Knight and King staring at each other with one square apart, the Knight covers these two squares, so a Rook in front of the King will be checkmate. It's very important to know. But okay, King g4, Lavon played Knight to e3 check, we have King to g5, and now Rook to f2. Again, five seconds on the clock, he doesn't have really time to look for checkmates. We have Knight to c1, as the Knight was in danger of being captured, and now Rook to b5 with check. We have Pawn to e5, and now Rook to b8, preparing to finish the mating net around the White King. We have Pawn to h5, Rook to g8 with check, King to h6, and here Rook to f7. And he was in this position on move 40 that Fabiano Caruana resigned the game, as there is nothing more to be done here. Knight to f5 will be checkmate, and even if you stop that, let's say you play Rook to f1 to somehow prolong the agony, you can then give a Knight to g4 checkmate. So both Knight to f5 and Knight to g4 will be checkmates, there's no way to get out of this. So yeah, it seems that while Fabi is an unstoppable force in classical, when it comes to rapid and blitz against players who are this good, and the former 2800s, and are able to create something in every game they play, like Levon Aronyan, he sometimes will struggle a bit. But yeah, Levon takes down Fabiano Caruana in the Losers Bracket Final, and he will meet Wesley So today in the Grand Final of the American Cup 2026. One classical game today, one tomorrow, and we'll see how it goes. Very much looking forward to those games, both Wesley and Levon are incredibly creative players, and I imagine those games will be a spectacle to watch. So yeah, that's the game. Hope you guys enjoyed a tough break for Fabi, but you know, he will have more time to prepare for the candidates if he's not playing in the Grand Final, so you know, there's that. I would like to thank Miloš Konečević, Vincent Luden, Oli Kahneman, Bogdan Kalmak, and Darren Tseng-Skarsborough for a contribution to my channel. Thank you a lot, I really appreciate it. As usual, you can check two of my previous videos here. Thank you all for watching, and I will see you soon, continuing to check up on your wonderful suggestions, and whatever else happens in the chess world. Thank you all, I will see you soon, and have an excellent rest of your day.