The Elevator Blessing || Fabiano Caruana vs Anish Giri || FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026 R9

Hello everyone and welcome to an amazing game from round 9 of this year's Speedeck Candidates tournament. It is Fabiano Coruana versus Anish Giri. They are currently tied for second place and trying to catch up to Djavokir Sindarov who is leading by a two-point margin and it's not going to be easy. But he still has to face Fabiano and Anish who are both tied for second and if both of them beat him could be could be a three-way tie. I mean it's not impossible even though you know it would have to go a really really bad like a really really bad two games for Djavokir but if anyone can do it Fabiano and Anish can do it. So very much looking forward to those encounters and I will also mention what happened in the other games as I might not be covering all of them. So if you don't want to hear that just skip to the game starts part there's actually a time stamp below but Djavokir drew his game to Matias Blubaum. He had a winning position here and no he was winning after the game in the interview he mentioned that you know he's a little bit sad maybe even more than a little bit but it is what it is and some you know people have been saying that he might just go into seven draws like Topalov did in 2005 but you know he wasn't trying to draw by force he just didn't think that there was a win even though it was a little bit weird he was up on the clock and everything but okay I might discuss all of the games that we don't cover like thoroughly and then we check out to the the positions if you guys would enjoy that and also Pragnananda he had a winning position but he missed a very very particular move that probably going to show that again so I'm not going to go too much into it but and yeah he game is still being played as I'm recording this video but yeah let's check it out and also I do have a nice photo of this clash there you have it Anish wielding the black pieces he feels confident after his yesterday's win and he's trying to trying to achieve eye contact but Fabi not interested here Fabi not so happy with his yesterday's game and he just wants to get started so yeah let's check it out Fabiano with white opens with ponte e4 sorry about that and we're gonna have quite a bit of theory going into this one we have ponte e5 knight f3 knight to c6 and bishop to c4 with bishop to c5 and of course not the absolute best move but castle's king side the standard gioco piano knight to f6 with ponte d3 and castle's king side so again the main line of the gioco piano nothing new here we've had this thousands and thousands of times d6 c3 and ponte a5 we have ponte h3 and here we have bishop to e6 again h6 most played bishop to e6 also very popular bishop to b5 with bishop back to a7 and rook to e1 we have knight to e7 sorry about that and ponte d4 again just main line they're not even wasting any time here we have knight to g6 and here a bit of a newer move because here knight to f1 again pretty standard and bishop to e4 preparing to usually play but here we have bishop to d3 and okay knight to h5 remaneuvering the knight to f4 knight to f1 and now knight h to f4 and here again bishop to c2 is uh one move that's uh that's sometimes played here we have knight to g3 by fabiano and now there is only one game where e captures and d4 was played here we have knight captures and d3 by a niche and it is now as of 14 that we have a completely new game so let's see what happens we have queen captures on d3 ponte a4 and now ponte d5 okay all making sense you really limited the mobility of this bishop but you are freeing up this uh this monster bishop on a7 we have bishop back to d7 and bishop to g5 attacking the queen we have ponte f6 and now bishop to e3 countering the strong bishop we bishop captures f captures on e3 you could also capture with the queen but then the knight has the f4 square or you just simply allow ponte f5 capturing with the pawn is just um it makes a lot more sense here ponte f5 you could just capture and i mean there's not much to be done here so after f captures ponte b5 by a niche with ponte b4 by far the best move a captures on b3 al passant a captures and queen to b8 now defending that b pawn ponte c4 we have queen to b6 aligning the queen nicely with the white king and knight to f5 hoping for a captures you can undouble your pawns but of course why would anish do that he plays rook fd8 and knight to read h4 and again believe it or not the best move in the position anish strikes with ponte b4 he creates an outpost on a3 for the rook and he's prepared to play it then he will try to double up on the a file or maybe five will have to capture and then anish gets a nice pass pawn we have king to h2 getting off of this diagonal rook to a3 and rook a to b1 now just adding a defender here and even rook to a2 everyone was expecting uh just a nice doubling of the rooks on the a file but no anish goes for rook to a2 and now we have queen to d1 we have knight captures on h4 knight captures and rook e to a8 now just doubling up on the a file so pretty much all of the moves that make sense so far we didn't really invest all that much time explaining anything because it really does make sense we have a rook to e2 offering a trade of rooks and now anish triples up on the on the a file you can now safely trade on a2 or you can play even rook to a1 maybe maybe you capture and then bring the queen over to a2 so many possibilities for anish all depending on what fabi plays rook to c1 maybe with some ideas of c5 in the future and queen to b6 okay we have knight to f3 and here this is one of the positions that really deserves attention because fabi could just trade let's say captures captures go queen f3 and that's pretty much it not a lot for black to do here because uh what what do you play i mean it's either you're just allowing knight to f5 and then it's already equal or if you try something like rook b2 uh maybe but then you give up the a file to the to the white rook and again the black cannot be too happy about this so that's one way to do it but either fabi missed it or he wanted more than a draw and he played knight to f3 which is still fine playable but his plan is an odd one we have pawn to h6 by anish knight to e1 king to h7 and now rook captures on a2 rook captures and knight to c2 so re-maneuvering the knight all the way from h4 to c2 seems like a brilliant maneuver something vasily vanchuk would even recommend but bishop to e8 by anish now shifting the bishop to g6 to gain control over this diagonal queen to d3 defending the pawn on e4 as well as the e3 pawn and bishop to g6 we have rook to a1 and here anish just played rook captures on a1 here in this position everyone was already celebrating for anish because uh rook to b2 is just winning and they thought okay fabi gave him a chance he will find it but he didn't and it's very hard to figure out why because the white has so many options that white can play but let's say you just go rook a8 because that's the move that most people would go for you you can just kick the rook either back or or whatever doesn't really matter and let's say after rook to f8 you will go queen to a6 and uh yeah queen a2 and that's pretty much it the knight will be attacked then the g2 pawn will come under fire and at some point the queen will have to help out to defend then you just capture and it's just not going to be possible to defend all of the threats but after rook to a1 anish just traded on a1 rook captures we have knight captures and on to c5 and here it's still a perfectly fine position for fabi but fabi now blunders the game because d captures on c6 alpha song has to be played and the trick is that after queen captures you will play knight to c2 go after the pawn and after bishop captures you still capture and that's pretty much it however you play this it's still going to be a draw and if bishop captures then i mean okay it's now five points each bishop versus knight this will be a draw but fabi played king to g3 and now fabi sorry anish is winning because after queen to a7 or queen to a5 can be played queen to a6 doesn't really matter you put pressure on the knight comes with tempo queen to b1 and now pawn to h5 and there just aren't any moves here for fabiano because the queen has to guard the knight the knight can't really move you only have the c2 square but then you go under d for pawn so he could defend the pawn with the king and that's exactly what he will do but after king to f3 and pawn to h4 king to g4 now comes queen to e7 and anish shifts all of the attention to the king side and the problem for fabi is there's no way out and to give you an example let's say you play king f3 what's black's threat let's make a move the idea is at queen e8 now you can't really bring the queen to d1 to try and infiltrate because the the bishop and queen are covering that if you try something like queen e1 that also doesn't work because now you just give a check and not a lot of squares for the for the white king king f2 queen g6 is coming and now after king f1 queen captures an e4 and that's it king g1 bishop to g6 and that that will be it not not a lot of not a lot of good moves here so that's one way to do it but fabi played queen to d3 he started that particular idea but now anish strikes like a hawk he plays pawn to f5 i could have asked you to pause the video here but i feel it would be a bit too difficult so i'm actually going to do it a move later f5 and now the problem is if you go king f3 this just wins the queen so obviously that's not happening so after f5 we have e captures on f5 and now what do you play there's only one move that wins the game for anish and uh well try and find it while i give you a couple of seconds believe it or not it is king to h6 that is the only move that wins the game and unfortunately for fabi there is nothing more to be done here and he was in this position on move 44 or rather 43 that fabiano caruana resigned the game as there is nothing more to be done here so two losses in a row for fabi but two wins in a row for anish and this means a lot for the standings uh but before we check it out we could explore why it's so well if you capture the bishop which is pretty much the the only move that makes sense then comes e4 and that's it the queen has to move wherever the queen moves it's queen g5 checkmate uh the pawns now doing excellent work here or rather the the black pawn is doing excellent work here and after king h6 you could also try running away king f3 but again e4 check and now you can capture with the queen but here comes bishop to h5 check and that's it king to f4 queen to f5 queen to g5 will be checkmate so incredible stuff from anish but also just a couple of really really weird decisions from fabi uh going back all the way to move four i mean if you have this position and you're you're planning on losing with white you might as well go for i mean uh so the the first word decision but there were some other ones as well and in the end anish just finishes it off with a brilliant king to h6 we'll even give this a double exclamation mark and i've mentioned in the previous video that i've met anish in cyprus uh in an elevator and ever since that encounter he's been winning all of the games like it was just a magical encounter there's no other way to put it and yeah we can show up show the standings even though hikaru and andres benko are still playing but they are currently last in the standings i will update it probably will show another game but yeah here are the standings so there you have it the javoker leading with seven points anish now in second place with five and a half so it's no longer a two uh two point lead it's a one and a half point lead and javoker still has to face anish and faviano so it's going to be interesting until the very end regardless of what anyone else says and i'm going to show you the proper standings once hikaru and andre finish and then we're going to discuss it again but it won't really matter for the for the top of the standings and here's uh the video of that final moment where anish played king to h6 so let's check it out only winning move actually king h6 or at least the blue arrow appears this is study like king h6 threatening mate bishop h5 is checkmate and fabiano was really funny uh fabi knew it was going to happen but he still allows for the possibility that it doesn't happen and then as soon as he saw the direction uh at which anisha's hand was going uh you know you can just see he lost all hope and even when anish played it he still checked like he knows it's lost but he will still check you know one last time so of course he doesn't resign in a maybe a salvageable position but yeah brilliant stuff by anish you know fabi gave him a chance and he took it unlike sindarov and unlike pragnananda anish would like to have his full point and we'll see maybe maybe there will be a decisive result in the hikaru is penko game but we'll wait for the next video to check out that one yeah really hope i would like to thank oscar nissen adam tomchak uh marvin van ark simon device and paul hinamund for your 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 uh thank you all i will see you soon and have an excellent rest of your day and have you seen the new documentary on netflix regarding magnus and hans uh very much interested in your opinion on the updated version see you soon