I Played Chess in the Most Unexpected Place

I have played chess in many places in my life, but never ever did I dream that I would play chess inside an aquarium. In this video, I am playing a professional chess tournament next to hundreds of fishes and I'm going to be facing a grandmaster. His name is Lev Yankelevich, plays for Germany. Funnily enough, they put the wrong rating next to him in the tournament and so it said that he had zero rating. If it wasn't for the fact that he told me he was a GM and I literally went on a great boat trip with him and other GMs the day before to watch live seals, which by the way, the seals were so cute. It's my new favorite animal. I would have been shocked. I would have thought his rating was zero, which would make no sense because he plays incredibly well and he's a grandmaster. Anyways, the game started a little bit crazily, to be fair. I mean, of course it started with me going d4 and knight f6, but the position that was about to arise was going to be completely crazy. I was feeling very confident in this game because I just played a great game against one of Norway's best chess players ever, Ariantari. And so now I thought, you know what, if I can play great against one grandmaster, I can play great against two grandmasters. So I was feeling good and confident and this game was going to be pretty crazy, like I said. So anyways, everything is starting off quite normally. He's going b6 here. This is what we call a Nimso Indian in chess. I decided to go big and take that center, but now he played c5 and I started to think a little bit because I thought d5 looks like the most natural move in the world. It's just the move that I would play in any Blitz game. Also, now my favorite fish, the big long fish, started swimming next to me and I saw it. I started thinking, wait Anna, what if you play e5? That looked really interesting because there would be ideas of me being able to go queen e4. So I decided to go for this move e5 and now he started thinking. So I was really excited about this and I was happy that I hadn't spent too much time. As you can see, I'm both threatening his knight, but I'm also opening up the square on e4 for my queen to go to. So now he was spending quite a bit of time thinking and I was able to enjoy looking at what the fish were up to. Like I said, there were so many different fishes here. It was so cool. I was hoping one of the fishes would stop to look at the chess game, but they didn't for now. So he took this pawn on d4 and I quickly realized I have to take his knight. He took my pawn and now my plan was to take with the pawn. So I took with the pawn to threaten his bishop, but I realized that now he's able to take the pawn on f6 with the queen and I'm not able to take the bishop then because then my rook is hanging. So at first I thought, oh I'm winning a pawn, but then I quickly realized here that I'm not and that's what he did. So I started nodding and I was like, okay, I'm gonna pretend like I have everything under control, but I still really liked my position and I also still knew that there were some really good chances here for me. So it felt like everything was kind of hanging. I had to move my rook somewhere. I had to put my rook in some square, but I wasn't sure what square was the best and I was looking at if there were any tactics. Like could I go knight g5 and threaten checkmate? There were all kinds of things going on here. Should I go bishop d3 to threaten first the pawn on h7? Should I go queen e4 right now? What happens if I go queen e4? Thus I was thinking about a lot. Queen e4, wait a second. I decided to go bishop d3 because it made sense to me to just develop a piece to try to castle as quickly as possible. So I'm threatening now to take his pawn on h7. I started thinking, wait, can he just like give me that pawn or something? Can he go bishop b7 and sacrifice the pawn on h7? I started thinking about this, but yeah, I wasn't sure if that was anything for me to be scared of. Our times were getting very close, so this game was about to get even crazier. I was really excited about that because I was playing a grandmaster and I was the underdog and I love being the underdog. I love playing someone that's better than me because I just feel like I have nothing to lose and I have everything to win and I get very competitive. I really want to win. So that's how I was feeling right now. It was just like pure happiness right now. Now I had more time than him as well, so I could feel like I was pressuring him. I could feel that he wasn't 100% happy with his position. He went h6 simply to offend his pawn and I knew, okay, let's just go castles. Why not just go castles? Let's just do it. So I went castles. Now I'm threatening his bishop. The bishop has to move and then I thought, all right, let's threaten the rook. So he went d5. It's the only move to save his rook and I took that pawn and it's so far. Well, the engine says it's an equal position. However, on the board, it's a bit of a crazy position to be fair. I thought here that I was just better because I was going to be able to win that pawn and sure, I had maybe like a kind of bad c-pawn, but I was going to win that pawn and I was very happy about that. Although, of course, it's now equal pawns because I did lose a pawn in the opening, but I was just happy that I was getting back that pawn. So he went knight d6, which was the move, the only move he could do to save his rook and I now had to come up with my next plan. I went knight d4, which I thought was a really cool move, but it's not great, I think, because I was just able to lose a pawn there. I think I should have gone something like c4 or something like this just to activate my bishop. I think that would have been way better. C4 was definitely, I think. Looking back at this now, even without looking at the computer, I think c4 before was the move. But anyways, now I had to come up with a new plan and we both only had 28 seconds and now it felt like my position was crumbling a little bit because I was going to end up with a really bad bishop versus his good bishop, but I decided therefore to go c4 now because I thought I have to activate my bishop. So I went queen e4. I was trying somehow to just get a little bit of play. Once again, I think I should have gone bishop c3 at some point. I think I should have tried to activate my dark squared bishop. I went queen g4. I was trying to get some counter play towards the king. We were both very low on time here, but the game that looks in a certain way now is about to look very different in the end game. So I'm excited to show you that. But yeah, so rook d8, he was threatening my pawn. I started feeling a bit sad like, oh what is my pawn gonna do? Am I just gonna lose my pawn? I had to go queen c4, but I realized there was just no way for me to long-term wise save that pawn and that made me a little bit sad. So I thought, okay, the next thing is that I just have to try to get as much counter play as possible. I need to activate my rooks and I need to just get counter play. He was also going to be able to get counter play though, which was of course a bit of a problem. I went bishop b4. Now he went a5 threatening my bishop and I wasn't sure where to go. Bishop a3, of course that was a terrible place for my bishop to be in. I started feeling a bit hopeless because I was like, what am I doing? Where is my bishop going? I made a move with two, well, three seconds on the clock. Bishop e7, the fishes kept swimming like nothing without feeling the stress that we had with only having a few seconds on the clock. I was able to save that f-pawn. I was trying to activate my other rook, but then I realized that, okay, where am I going with my rook and my other rook and bishop? I went king d2 threatening his rook. I only had two seconds on the clock. I made a move with one second on the clock. Bishop g3. I was now trying to play as fast as I could. He went rook d2. I went back. He was pushing that pawn. I went h4. I was trying to get some counter play there. Anything. And then in this position, he went rook c2. I went check. Someone stood in front of the camera, but it was okay. And then I went bishop e5. And now he went bishop d4 and I won a piece. I won a piece. And now I knew that I was probably going to be able to save it. However, I was feeling very stressed because of the time, but I won a piece and was a piece up against a grandmaster in the same game. But in this position, I went bishop d6, which is apparently a huge mistake. And I didn't know. I only had a few seconds left and a few pawns were falling apart. And I got a bit nervous now. And there are so many people watching. Like you can't see, but there were so many people watching. And now he almost blundered because I was almost able to go rook g7. And here we had to trade rooks. And this position, I wasn't sure how it was, but yeah, the engine says that it's losing. He had to just come up with the plan. I was just kind of going back and forth. He went h5, takes, takes. The problem is that he just has like a few too many pawns, but I was able to take the f6 pawn and then the king got up. And I knew that if his g pawn was gone, this was an easy draw. But the problem was that my king would maybe be forced to move too far away. And now his king is coming in. If I don't let his king come in, it's an easy draw. But because his king is coming in, it's, it's, yeah, very difficult. And after b2, there was nothing I could do. And here I was in a lost position. I made another move with the second, but here I ended up resigning. But this was such a crazy game where I started having a great position. Then I kind of fumbled. And then I won a piece and a nice tactic in the end against the grandmaster, but it wasn't so clear because of all of his pawns. And then it ended up being with me losing. But it was really exciting. And we talked quite a long time after the game about the, about the moves. And he was super friendly. And, you know, even like after the games, like he was so friendly. He was always asking me how I was doing. There were also seals in the backyard, kind of of the aquarium and penguins. Um, even I didn't get to see them, but, but yeah, he was like, Anna, you need to go see the seals. So he was super friendly. So thank you so much love for this game. And also thank you so much Olesund because this was played in the beautiful city of Olesund in Norway for creating this incredible chess tournament. It was such a pleasure to participate there. And I vlogged from this whole day will be coming out soon as well. So thank you so much for watching and have a beautiful, beautiful day. And let me know what you thought about the game in the comments. Oh, and please subscribe. Bye.