MAGNUS CARLSEN 4 000 ELO

Ladies and gentlemen, this video is being recorded on September 2nd, 2023, and two things in the world are still true. Number one, I am still very handsome. And number two, Magnus Carlsen is the best chess player on the entire planet. And in today's video, I'm going to share with you a few games that he has played recently in an online tournament against other top players, where he has gotten the job done in literally every way. And the incredible thing about these games is that he's beating young players, older players with tremendous experience. He's beating them in the opening. He's beating them from better positions, worse positions, playing good defense, playing in the endgame, playing in the middle game. And this video will encapsulate the magic of Magnus. I got nothing else to say. That was the introduction. I hope it was a good one. I hope you're having a great weekend if you're lucky enough to watch this in early September. I hope you're having a good Labor Day weekend if you're watching this in the future. Hopefully, Magnus Carlsen is still the best chess player in the world. Hopefully, I'm still extremely handsome. And hopefully, you had a good weekend on September 2nd and 3rd in 2023. Okay, Magnus Carlsen's three opponents, Amin Tabatabai from Iran, the number two ranked Iranian chess player in the world, Fabiano Caruana, a guy that he played the World Chess Championship against, and Ali Reza Firuja. Magnus Carlsen played three exceptional players, perennial top five players, and Amin Tabatabai is like 20 or 25th rated in the world. Let's see how Magnus gets it done all across the board. All right, throw me up on the smart TV, put me on a little ledge in the shower, you know, watch me while you code or go on a walk. Can you even watch chess videos without watching the chess board? I don't know, whatever. Anyway, first game against Amin, Magnus plays e4, and he wins. Next game. No, but seriously, it really is that simple sometimes. e5 played by Amin, and we have a Spanish. Magnus has played this on both sides, and nowadays, guys are either playing the Italian or the Spanish. Magnus does, in fact, go for the Spanish. a6, kicking out the bishop, knight to f6. And now, normally, people here are castling and leaving this pawn to be captured. That's just one of the ways to play. Magnus plays the other way to play, which is pawn to d3. Pawn to d3 has just a slightly different approach, because normally, you want to play c3, d4 right away. If you play pawn to d3 right away, you're kind of limiting that plan. That plan is probably not going to happen until much later. The game is going to take an entirely different flavor. Pawn to c3, setting this up anyway and getting the bishop out of danger, but not putting the bishop on c2. Actually, Magnus puts the bishop on b3, targeting this pawn. Amin plays d6. So, Amin does not castle. He does this. Magnus now plays a very provocative move, which is bishop to g5. Now, you may ask, how is that provocative in the slightest? Because I will just kick out your bishop. I don't understand. Well, the point is, white is trying to bait black into playing g5. However, g5 would be a lot better if you were castled, because then creating an attack on your king over here would make a lot of sense. And there are many lines where actually black even still castles and still continues to launch these pawns. But you will notice Magnus has not castled. And Magnus is doing this in a way where, again, he's playing possum a little bit. He's like, are you going to play g5? What are you going to do? If you don't play g5, what are you going to do? Because it's kind of difficult for black to develop. Black can't play d5 because of the pin. If black plays bishop e6, then after something like take and take, he will have some weaknesses. Also, white can just ignore that and play castles or a4. So, g5 is now played by Amin. Now, when I tell you this move decides the game, I mean, it's not a spoiler. Magnus is going to win every game in this video. That's why I made this video. But that move literally decides the game. So, every time you move something in chess, you've got to think, what does it do and what does it not do, right? That pawn move goes up, hits the dark squares, but now the light squares are weak, right? That pawn is also advanced, so it could be targeted by my pawns, and then I could potentially create some sort of attack. This sacrifice doesn't work unless you're actually getting in there with meaningful pressure. You're not. If your opponent is an idiot, you know, and allows you to play knight d5 or queen f3, obviously the knight doesn't move like that, but I'm just saying. Then, obviously, it will work. Bishop g3. Whoa, skipped ahead. You didn't see anything. No spoilers. I mean, you already know Magnus won, but how did he do it? Okay, light squares. First, Magnus attacks the queen side. He chops down the queen side a little bit, has the open file, and now, before he even castles, he routes the knight to the center, fighting for those light squares, which were created by the move g5. When I tell you his play just is otherworldly, but looks so simple when you watch it, watch. So, take, take. Now, that little exchange, that small exchange, what did it do? Well, black no longer has the dark squared bishop, okay? White has double pawns, but this pawn fights for the squares that other pawn can't fight for, so they're actually doing a very nice job. That pawn's not guarded, but it could be very easily guarded, so a move like knight g4 doesn't really do a whole lot, although it is a reasonable move. Also, the f-file is open when white castles, so when white castles and moves the knight, the f-file is going to be put to use. Castles, castles. Amin tries to counterattack on the a-file. Magnus chops it down, and when I told you that the move g5 literally decides this game, and that was not an exaggeration, I meant knight to h4. Good lord. The entire purpose of the move g5 is to prevent any of white's pieces from going to the h4 square. Because of h4 for white, black shuts it down like this. This man literally plays the move that black's entire position, position, is set up to counter. Knight to h4. Why? Because you can't take it. Because of this. That entire file, which was just opened because of Magnus's entire idea, which was played, this entire idea was played to take advantage of the light squares that Amin weakened with the move g5. I mean, when I tell you that every move so logically and effortlessly flows from the previous one, weakening the black queen side, making him spend time trying to do something over there, knight to h4, and very slowly we are just going to remove the defense of the f5 square. And now we play what's called a Zwischenzug because we don't want to take the bishop back yet. Now we do. Now it's permanent pressure. Permanent pressure over here. King h7, and now we play h4 because the knight has already gotten in. The knight is already in the party. Okay? So, rook g8, take, take. Now you may ask, why did Amin not play hg? Because I guess he was worried about the h file. He didn't like that his king was so weak. So instead of that, he did this, and I got news for you. Something arrives on the h4 square. Now Magnus throws that knight back, plays queen f3 and d4, and just absolutely bulldozes this man. I mean, just marches him straight down the board. Knight slides back to attack. Knight now reroutes to the h5 square. Here comes e5, going straight down the middle. By the way, you will notice that the knight is hanging over here. Knight e7, now pawn to e6. A lethal move, baiting black into a fork. Magnus cleaning up, and it's just a matter of time, and it really was not much of a matter of time, because Magnus defends his king. Rook e3, plays c4, plays c5. Rook f3 is winning material, and he wins the game with a fork on the queen and the pawn on h6, and Amin resigned. When I tell you that this game was literally decided by a pawn move on move 10 because of the way Magnus played this positionally, I was not exaggerating. Now, all right, that's great. Now, how is Magnus going to get this done against the number two ranked chess player in the world, his longtime rival? They played a world chess championship match against each other. You are not prepared for this opening by Magnus Carlsen. Magnus plays what's called the Norwegian Rat, which is fitting, by the way. That's kind of a fitting name. They didn't name it after him. It's just been called that. Technically, the Norwegian Rat is e4, g6, d4, knight f6. Technically. To bait the knight and put it over here and sometimes even put the knight on g7. I'm not joking. This is a real thing. I don't know why it's called the Norwegian Rat. I don't know if Magnus got involved with the mafia, got caught, ratted him out to the government. I don't know. I don't know why they called it the Norwegian Rat. Maybe this knight is supposed to be a rat. Are rats big in Norway? They're very big in New York, both literally and metaphorically. Like, they're everywhere. Just after you're done watching this video, go watch a video of a rat eating pizza on the New York City subway. I mean, they're smarter than like half of Americans, probably. Anyway, Magnus plays a modified Norwegian Rat and Fabiano plays a four-pawn setup. The fact that Magnus gets to play stuff like this and gets away with it. If you play like this, you're going to lose in like 12 moves. Okay. How does Magnus win this game? The last game, we saw positional pressure taking advantage of just one square on the board for the entire game. How does Magnus do it against an experienced veteran like Fabiano? Well, by the way, there's a glitch with Fabiano's time. Why is the clock not moving? Was it moving last game? All right. Can I refresh? Will it move? All right. It looks like it's going to move this game. Outstanding. Okay. That was really weird. I guess it was showing there. I don't know what it was showing. Anyway, Magnus plays the Norwegian Rat, trades the queens, and we get this position. Okay. How's he going to win this? Right. Queenless middle game. Obviously, white has a very powerful wall of pawns, but Magnus has four pieces developed and Fabiano has literally none. So, I think F4 was a slightly wrong plan for this opening, or Fabi had to speed it up because deceptively, as stupid as this looks, the pressure is actually building quite a lot. So, and he's developing some pieces. So, g3, trade, knight c6, and now bishop f5. He's gotten every piece out. Long castles. Provocative opening. Poorly taken advantage of by the white side. Magnus has four pieces developed and an advantage from 10 moves. This is not going to be a matter of exploiting one square. This is going to be, I bluffed in the opening. You did not punish me. Now I'm going to punish you. Knight d4, threatening a fork. Shocking, but the number two ranked player in the world sees that. Now the best move, f6. In positions, you have to decide if you're going to be playing with your pieces or with your pawns. Where are the pawn breaks in the position and who do they benefit? This benefits black because this exchange would open up the e file, which would be fatal for white. So, black, white cannot allow that. White has to go here. Now, Magnus turning the screw tighter. Pinning this to this. Fabiano goes here. Now, a sophisticated approach. Taking with the bishop. Normally, taking a bishop and giving it away for a knight is bad, but in this case, you keep your knight in the center of the board and there's tactics all over the place. Fabiano now takes Magnus' dummy, stupid Norwegian rat on h5 and leaves Magnus with doubled isolated h pawns. Double flank h pawns, but Magnus immediately uses those stupid pawns for an attack. He is a master at utilizing every piece on the board. He plays rook f8 and he plays rook f5. Simultaneously defending his center. Defending this pawn. Creating the opportunity to double and an idea to go here and slide in over there. A very multi-purpose move. Bobby plays rook f2 and now here comes Magnus h4 and Magnus building that clock lead. The big clock lead. Four and a half minutes. This is big. His time advantage is bigger than the amount of time that Fabiano has on the clock. Take. Now, we see the justification of putting the rook on f5. Rook e5. Slowly, methodically, and Magnus is very, very good at timing when the position simplifies. When it's time to remove all the pieces from the board. Not all of us are very good at that. You could get better at that if you get my end games master class. I'm just saying. You should at least try the free sample of it. How to transition middle games into end games to guarantee that you have a high winning percentage. Rook f7. Magnus Carlsen took my end games master class for legal reasons. I have no evidence of this. Take, take. Rook f5 check. Now, we're going to have a mass exchange. He trades the rooks. He trades the other pair of rooks and now he just plays bishop d4 and we got this end game. Five pawns versus four. Magnus has a passed pawn. This is not a passed pawn. These two cancel out. He's going to try to win this end game. Bobby plays knight b5. Magnus, very simple approach. He's a customer of the end master class for legal reasons. I have no evidence of this and he plays a king walk to the opposite end of the board. He chucks his c7 pawn for a temporary moment. Magnus runs the king to the other side of the board creating a massive winning chance for himself. Now, he goes after that pawn and if that pawn tries to save itself, he gets the better pawn. The one that splits the structure which is even worse for white. So, b3. He wins this pawn. He advances his flank pawn because knight e7 leads to knight c1 and then the outside passed pawn which you can also learn about in the end games master class. His king active harassing e5 pushing everybody. Oh, what a nice move. Giving up the pawn. Knight b3. Understanding peace activity. Understanding the utilization of the pawns and the creation of the outside passed pawns. Understanding the activity of the king versus this one. The most instructive moment of this game was how he literally swapped every piece off the board and before he did anything else, he walked the king to the g4 square because he somehow knew that that is all he needed to win. For a brief moment, he could have a spot where he's four pawns versus four pawns but the activity of the black pieces, the creation of the past pawns will win him the game and that is exactly what he did. And for the last two games, this is Magnus Carlsen's toughest test in all likelihood. Magnus Carlsen famously claimed that if Alireza Firuja won the he would stick around to defend the world chess championship. If you don't know that, that's what he did. He said Alireza is probably the only person that I would stick around and play the world chess championship against. So anytime they play, it's always a pleasure to watch because that was the touted man. Alireza is the fastest ever chess player to reach 2800 elo by age. He beat Magnus Carlsen's record. Magnus plays e4. We have c5. So let's summarize also real quick. Literal positional masterclass taking advantage of a weakened square and a weakened piece, right? Second game, provocative opening, taking over the middle game, beautiful simplification, expert level endgame understanding. He didn't need the endgame understanding versus, I mean, he just won. Okay. Now, Alireza plays into an open Sicilian. So does Magnus. Now we have a Nydorf. Now, provocative opening, not as probably bad as Norwegian Rat. I mean, Norwegian Rat is not like losing. Nydorf in this position, so many different main lines. Magnus plays Rg1. That is a goofy looking move. That looks like you dragged your mouse to go move a piece and you accidentally moved your rook to g1. Now white can't castle. But rook to g1 over time has been proven to be a completely reasonable move and the idea is to just play g4. So for example, if black plays Nc6, white plays g4 and g5. And I mean, somehow this is a real thing. Alireza thinks for a bit, plays h5. Clearly from the time spend, I think he was slightly not prepared for this move because there are many critical lines and I think h5 is actually not one of them because it gives the g5 square. Hey, remember in game one how his opponent played a move that gave him access to a square? This move gives him access to the g5 square because before black would play h6. So that's exactly what Magnus does. You give him a square. He's going to go to that square. He's going to ask you, do you really want to give me this square for the long term? Black plays g6 and Bg7 and Magnus castles long. Attacking possibilities over there. If black castles, it's probably just borderline admitting that you are going to get checkmated. So Alireza plays Qc7. b5 makes a couple of preparations and when Magnus commits the rook away from the attack, that's when Alireza decides to castle. But Magnus can win games with provocative openings. He can win them in the endgame. He can win them positionally. He can also absolutely, when necessary and called upon, slaughter you. f4. Nc5 by Firuja. Magnus removes the knight from the game. This is an example of when a bishop for a knight trade actually is fine because it's giving access to the d5 square and it's removing a defender of the king. If black takes like this, black will have a permanent weakness. But if black takes like this, it's probably going to be even worse because Nd5 is going to butcher this. You're going to lose another defender of the king and then f5 and Qh6. So it's all bad. Alireza has to go here. Now Magnus plays f5. This bishop is dead. It's not going to go here. It's not going to go here. It's just standing around. The only thing that it's doing is playing defense. You can play Bh6. I will go here. I will start hammering against the f-pawn. Now here comes Magnus with Nd5. Nb3. Nice idea. Take. Take. Zxg6 to take on g6. Weakening the e6 square. Fg, ed. Now the knight will arrive on e6. The rook will arrive on the shores. The white pawns over here will still break this apart. Black is in dire straits. Look at that absolute god of a knight. This is a master class of combining attacking chess with positional chess. Using the attack to secure a long-term advantage. Attacks don't have to end in mate. They don't have to. The black position required defense. But to require the defense against the incoming attack, you had to give away the access to the knight. But I got news for you. Sometimes in dominant positions, attacks are still possible. Pawn to g4. You got nothing to lose. That pawn is guarding the king. If you allow me to take you, I mean now I got the file and I got the diagonal, right? Now you're just dead lost. So what do you have to do? You got to take. But here I come with the rook. And you can't play f5 because knight g5 is a fork. Queen f2. He plays f5 now. But now rook g4 anyway. You can't take because the pawn has been to the queen. Magnus slowly advancing. Alireza tries to create counterplay. But Magnus is too fast. Look at the cannons pointed at the bishop on the h6 square. Alireza now has to strike back with a minute on the clock versus nine. Nine minutes on the clock. Now six, but 40 seconds for black. Rook f1. What a move. What a move. You take the rook. But in doing so, you remove the defense of the f5 pawn. Now you are going to lose your queen. And it's a lot worse than that. You have two rooks for it. h3. A sophisticated move. If you take, the attack continues against the king. Alireza goes here. Tries to shield himself with his rook. But he loses a pawn. That pawn's a passer. White's king is completely safe. And once that pawn reaches a certain point on the board, Alireza will resign. And that is exactly what happened in this position. The pawn cannot be stopped without sacrifice. King will hide on b3. What a game. Magnus in this game uses better knowledge of an opening sideline to get the square on the board. Exactly what he did against the Minta Batebe. But now we are introduced to a new concept which is aggressive attacking Magnus. Combining it with simplification. Just like he did against Fabiano. Into a positional master class. And then he goes back to hammering away with the attack. But he can also get it done in ways like this. In this game, Magnus played a Sicilian Taimanov. Queen c7. And he played this move h5. Now as far as I know, you can play h5 without a knight on f6. Or you have to do this slightly differently. But suddenly, after knight to b5, Magnus was in deep trouble. Deep trouble. This is a sacrifice where the four-piece pressure on the black position is near fatal. Queen to b6, rather queen to b8, bishop to b6, threatens to win the entire game. For example, pawn to h4 attacking the queen, queen to b3, bishop c7, knight c7, unstoppable. You win the game. So Magnus finds himself on the receiving end of an opening bomb. Now he has to buckle down and play good defense. Two-way players in sports like basketball, right? Knight takes e4. Spends nearly four and a half minutes on that move. He hits the queen so that now this is less lethal because the queen is e3. Now Magnus finds the best move again. Rook take. You can try to trap my queen, but this is mate. And if you take my knight, I play f5. And suddenly, where do you put your queen? If you go back, I got here. The king slides out. I'm going to trade. And at the end of this sequence, I'm going to drop back. Queen is now always threatening to come down that file. So king b1. And now Magnus plays rook a4. After dipping in, he dips out, defends the knight in the center of the board. Remember, black is up a piece. White sacked the piece to get this attack. Here comes Ali Reza, knight c7. The best move is actually, according to the computer, to sack the queen. Magnus says no thank you. King to e7. King to e7. And now the best move for white is queen b3, attacking the rook. And it's actually very difficult to defend. Black might go here to try to deflect the bishop away from the defense of the knight. If queen a4, knight d1, white has knight b5 and various attacks on the king and bishop c7, again trapping the queen. But Ali Reza under pressure plays rook d4. He's down to three minutes on the clock. And suddenly, in this absolute circus, this whirlwind of chess, rook d4 and Magnus just plays pawn to f6. He gives up the knight in the center completely. Why? Because taking it loses time. And now black is able to build a central construction and give the king an escape tunnel to f7. And now when the dust has settled, this is a side of Magnus that we have not yet seen in this video. Defensive prowess. Finding near only moves in a position to not lose the game. Now Magnus says that's all. Are you done? Because it's my turn now. I'm a pawn up. I'm up five minutes. Let me get my bishop out. You could take this, but I'm going to get that. So you get the knight out. I get my knight out too. You're going to take my bishop, Ali Reza? What are you going to do? I'm going to get my queen out, then my bishop, and then my rook. So Ali Reza goes here. Here comes Magnus just developing his pieces. Perusia now down under a minute. Same like he did against Fabiano. Here's that h-pawn. Same exact approach. Using that h-pawn as a weapon, but this time he's got the h-file. This time he's got the diagonal. Take, take. We're going to an endgame. Master of simplification. We are going to an endgame. I'm up five minutes and a pawn. It doesn't matter that it's minus 0.5. I attack your queen. Ali Reza rotates. Knight comes back to the center. Now I'm bringing out my queen. You give me a check. No problem. I'm safe. Oh, so scary. Counter-attack. Look at me just playing defense. Sliding the bishop. Now we're going to trade bishops. Here we go. More pieces off the board for white, and he's got nine seconds. It's just a matter of time. f5. Aggressive. I don't got to take. Queen g1. I'm winning this pawn. Two pawns up now. In comes the knight. We drop back. Simple. You take this. Fork. You take this. No problem. And when it's all said and done, I'm up two pawns. White has four seconds on the clock. Aggressive. Doesn't matter. Saves the king. Queen a6. And now we trade. I'm happy making this trade. The less pieces that white has, the less chances he has in the endgame. Centralizing. Playing defense. King d7. Simplification into a winning endgame. And let me just push my pawns. He can't stop me. My queen guards everybody. You can give me a few more checks. I'll give you a few more checks. And I'm just going with my pawns. Effortless. Absolutely effortless. This game definitely required effort. But queen b2, queen b4. Pawns. Bishop can't even. Has absolutely no role in the game. The black king walks among the pawns. And Ali Reza plays queen h2 and just resigns. Because g3, king g5. I mean it's just a matter of time. He got it done in this video in so many different ways. In this game, it was a defensive masterclass. Fighting back from what was an opening assault. Many players would have suffered here. He takes in the center. Gets in and out with the rook. Ridiculous circus. Plays king e7. Safeguards his king. And pours it on in the endgame. In the first game that they played, so many elements of the game that were combined. Opening. Attacking into positional play. Re-attacking. And then winning the queen versus two rooks position. The list goes on and on. Provocative opening. Fantastic middle game transition into an endgame. And he literally won the first game because of a square. I hope you enjoyed this video. I like making these because they're so fun. Just watching him play. You sit here going, damn, I'm inspired. Then you go to the chess.com pool and you lose three games in a row. Which I will be doing right now. Hope you enjoyed this video. If you made it this far, let me just, but don't, but hold on. Don't click on anything in the sidebar. Just give me like 30 seconds. 13 and a half thousand pre-orders for how to win at chess. Incredible stuff. If you've already gotten a copy, I appreciate you very much. If you still haven't, if it gets to 15,000, it drops as a New York times bestseller, which is incredible. It's still about 40 days away from release, 50 days away. If you're in the UK, there's a link in the description to get it for 25% off. And it's also available in Spanish now. It's also going to be available in the Czech Republic, in Germany, in Poland now. So super exciting times. That's all. Endgame is a masterclass as well. Get out of here.