First Clash Against the Maestro || Vincent vs MVL || Super Chess Classic Romania 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to round four of the Super Chess Romania Classic Tournament 2026. We have a very very nice game between Vincent Keimer and Maxime Vacher-Lagrave. We both know these players are incredible. They can do, you know, pretty much anything against anyone. And Vincent, he's currently 2759, so he's in impeccable form. MBL lost a little bit of you know, he can play a brilliancy even if he loses, but it's definitely going to be a brilliancy. And last year, if you remember, MBL almost won the tournament. It was a three-way tiebreak between MBL, Alireza, and Pragnananda. In the end, Pragnananda won. But that brings me to what I actually wanted to say. I don't know if you've heard, Alireza did not show up today for his game against Fabiana Caruana, so Fabi was without an opponent today. And some of you have been saying that it is because he lost two games in a row, and now he just doesn't want to play the tournament. But the official reason is that he is sick or ill, and that he might return the next day. We'll see what happens, but in in case it doesn't happen, in case he just abandons the tournament, the two games that he lost are erased from the tournament. Not in the sense that we're not gonna remember them or see the moves, or no, that remains, but the actual scores are removed by the players who have defeated Alireza and will not count for the final standing. So in this tournament, it will be possible only to reach eight points, not nine points. So it is a little bit odd every time that happens, and especially for the players that actually beat him, you feel very about that, but you know, it is what it is. We'll see what happens tomorrow. Which brings us to this game. German Bobby Fischer versus the greatest NIDARF player in the world. Let's check it out, as that is exactly what they will play, the NIDARF Sicilian. So Vincent opens with pawn to e4, we have pawn to c5, knight f3, and pawn to d6. We have d4, captures, captures, knight f6, knight to c3, and pawn to a6. NBL goes for the NIDARF Sicilian, and this is the first time ever that Vincent is playing against NBL's NIDARF Sicilian. Not against the NIDARF he played thousands and thousands of games against the NIDARF, but against NBL playing the NIDARF. This is the first time for Vincent, and everyone wondered what weapon will he choose, because we know against the NIDARF any move you make here is a great move, except pawn to b4. Like, it's not terrible, but it's not great. But f3, this is the seventh most popular continuation. Sometimes it can transpose into other openings, but usually it is just countered with pawn to e5. If black for some reason went to g6, then you can play bishop to e3, and you're back in the NIDARF Sicilian. But e5 is the proper way to contest this, and that is what NBL goes for. We have knight b3, bishop to e6, and now bishop to e3. We have bishop to e7, and queen to d2, followed by pawn to h5. Here, castles and knight bd7 are the most played. h5 is the third most popular, but still hundreds of games in the database, and of course they both notice. You can see by the situation on the clock that they're just blitzing out moves. And here we already reach a territory that can be considered a bit more rare, because castles and the knight d5 are just standard moves here. We have bishop to e2 by Vincent, knight bd7, and now knight to d5. We have captress on d5, e-captress, and queen to c7. So the standard NIDARF stuff we now actually have transposed into the English attack after a couple of moves with the standard setup. And here we have pawn to c4. Okay, stopping b5, we have pawn to a5, now with the idea of maybe dislodging the knight with a4 at some point. And now, very rare territory, a4 and rook to c1 are some of the moves that have been played here. We have rook to d1 by Vincent. This is how he wants to challenge MVL. And let's see how long MVL takes at the counter rook to d1. He decided to play pawn to h4, which is the top move recommended by the engine, but it took him some 10 minutes. So it's hard to say if it's actually preparation, or maybe he went to the toilet and, you know, just spent 10 minutes there. But we'll see by the other moves. And there is a game where b6 was played. This is now a new move, so it is now, as of move 14, that we have a completely new game. And this is now original territory. We have castles kingside by Vincent, castles by MVL, and the rook f to e1. Okay, we have knight to h5. And here, with this move, you can see that MVL already burned some 20 minutes, almost getting here. The way you could play this, and it's by far the top line recommended by the engine, is to play a4. And, you know, when you have a position like this, maybe you don't think about such moves right away. Everyone thinks about a4. It's the first move you think of. But what the engine really loves is that once the knight moves back, it doesn't really matter where you go, to go bishop back to d8. And again, it's a very inhuman move to make, but the point is that after, let's say, knight remaneuvers back in the game, you will bring the queen back to c8. And now you want to play bishop to a5. This is one way that you could play this position. But okay, MVL goes knight h5, he goes for the more human approach, f5, f4, go for the attack. We have knight to c1, and now pawn to f5. We have b3 and pawn to b6. So both players consolidating a little bit, mostly MVL pushing on the king side. We have bishop to d3, and queen to d8. It's time to remaneuver the queen into the game via the e8 square, and then go, of course, not there, but to g6. Knight to e2, and now queen to e8. We have bishop to c2, with ideas of maybe queen d3 at some point, and queen to g6. Now it looks a little bit weird, but it's perfectly fine for the moment. King h1, and now rook a to c8. Okay, so how are you playing this position? MVL goes knight g1, we have knight to c5, and now knight to h3. We have bishop to f6, and it doesn't seem like there are all that many ways that you can push for something here with either color, but it would seem that white is better here. Now you could maybe consider striking with b4 right away, but MVL wants to prepare it first. He first shifts both of the to the right. He plays rook f1, rook f to e8, and now rook d to e1. We have queen to h7, and only now pawn to a3. Preparing pawn to b4, and here MVL plays something rather interesting. He plays a4, provoking b4. And you have to play b4, b captures on a4. It doesn't just look weird, it's not even, you know, it just doesn't do all that much. b4, however, is a very strong move. And now MVL lands the knight on b3, but Vincent will not capture this knight. It seems like a great move because you can do something like this, and then even capture the pawn. The problem arises when e4 is played, and now all of a sudden black's position comes alive completely. This pawn will now be a defended passed pawn already on the second rank, and you have to choose. Do you want to allow captures on f3, or do you want to allow captures on c4? So let's say you play c5, and then e captures on f3. How do you recapture? g captures already looks weird, and if Rook captures, then you can even play b2. And if Rook back to f1, you can even play pawn to f4. Now the queen is guarding the queening square even. So it would be extremely double-edged, and Vincent is not up for it. He could just go Qd3, that is certainly the best square for the queen, but he decides to go Qe2 first, I guess maybe with some ideas of the position opening up, or maybe if e4 is played and captures, then the knight could be a little bit vulnerable. But after Bd8, he remaneuvers the queen back to d3, where the queen belongs. And now, a very hard position for MBL. You should just part with this pawn, allow captures, captures, and captures, and shift the attention over to the f-file. And, you know, try and make something happen. But he tries to make something happen right away, and starts with pawn to e4. And now the position is just objectively winning for Vincent. It's only a matter of how to actually do it. And I'm sure, you know, looking at this position, you're only considering one move, and that is to capture on e4. And you would be correct. f captures on e4. Now, f captures can be played, but it doesn't really give black anything. You will still move the queen to e2, you will have the c4 pawn defended, and there still is the problem of the knight not being able to return to the game. So it's only a matter of time before white captures and then wins that pawn. So here, we have rook captures on e4. MBL tries at least something to make it happen. He's now threatening the c4 pawn, but bishop to g1. Vincent says you can have it. I don't want that. And I'm also going to capture on e4 now. So everything is hanging here for you. The b3, the e4. What do you play here? And indeed, there's really nothing to play for here. MBL played rook c captures on c4, but now you will see just how lost the position is for MBL, to the point where I found this actually hard to believe. Rook captures on e4, and now you can't capture with the f pawn, because the rook is hanging. So you have to capture with the rook, and now look at this disgustingly beautiful move. Qb5. What's the idea behind it? Well, you were attacking the rook here, and the rook would love to remain somewhere around here, but if you move the rook from the e-file, this is just mate in one. So that will not happen. If you go something like Re5, it seems like okay, that can be played. But then Qd7, you go after the bishop. If the bishop moves, you just capture on f5. So everything falls apart for black. So MBL tries Qg6, one last attempt at getting some sort of a game. Everything is defended. He doesn't mind giving up an exchange. He is MBL after all, and he guards that e8 square now with the queen as well. But now bishop captures on e4, we have f captures, and the bishop returns to e3, the so-called English bishop. We have bishop to f6, and now queen captures on a4. Vincent just grabs a pawn and says, okay, I'm ready to have dinner. MBL says, all right, I'm going to play one more move, plays Nd4. You know, there are many ways you could win this game. I'm going to show you a fun one, and then I'm going to show you what Vincent played, which is also a lot of fun. But you can win it by just capturing that knight. It's very simple. You capture, and after bishop captures, you go Qa8+, and that's it. No moves for black. Kh7, you go Rf8, you threaten mate-in-one, and whatever black plays, let's say Qg4, you just go for the checkmate. Rh8+, Kg6, Qd8+, Kf5, or whatever, and now Qd6 will be checkmate. So that's one way to do it. Vincent did it even faster. He played Rook captures on f6, and he was in this position. Unmoved 38, that Maxime Vachier-Lagrave resigned the game, as there is nothing more to be done here. He removed the defender of the knight, so the knight is now hanging, and the queen is hanging as well. And if you capture with the queen to defend the knight, then this knight is undefended, and Vincent had Qe8++ planned, and then after the king moves, you will also capture this knight. But it's not that you're just going to lose that, you're also getting checkmated. After Kg8, Qd8+, Kh7, Ng5+, Kh6, Qh8+, and that's it. Only one move, Kg6, and now Qh7 will be a mate-in-one. So yeah, this was one of the nicest ways anyone ever defeated MBL. When he plays the knight, Rf8, it was just spectacular. He used a bit of a sideline, you know, not too big, but yeah, it was very interesting, this Rd1 move. I mean, it has been played in one weird game, but that's pretty much it, and that was enough to throw MBL off guard. And MBL played energetic chess, he played, you know, the way he usually does. Vincent is just strong, as I say, the German Bobby Fischer. So yeah, we'll see what happens with Alireza, I will keep you guys informed. I could show you the standings, but they're not very relevant until we know will Alireza come back or not, because it will affect the standings quite drastically. So you know, we'll see when round 5 starts, will he reappear or not, and then we're gonna, you know, have to deal with the standings as they are. So yeah, I really hope you enjoyed it. I would like to thank Piano724, Malik Kandula, Henry Tan, Robert Poundy, and Apanare 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, but mostly covering the Super Chess Classic Romania tournament until it finishes. Thank you all, I will see you soon, and have an excellent rest of your day.