Never Create a Permanent Weakness! || Peter Leko vs Arjun Erigaisi | 46th FIDE Chess Olympiad 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to another incredible game from the match Hungary versus India from the final round of the FIDE chess olympiad while Rihard Rapport and Pregnananda are brawling it out on board one. Here on board two we have a very special treat, former world championship challenger Peter Leko faces Arjan Eregeisi and it was back in 2004 when Peter Leko challenged Vladimir Kramnik for the title of world champion. The match ended 7-7 and Leko missed his chance to become a world champion. Arjan was one year old at the time that game or that match was played so now Leko no longer playing that competitively but you can see he's still almost 2700. He's still an elite player and he can take down pretty much anyone. He mostly does commentary but whenever his country needs him he will rise up to the occasion so always a pleasure to check out any of his games. You remember when he played Fabiano Caruana in Bundesliga a couple of years ago and he absolutely crushed him with the black pieces that A6 move in the in the Queen's Gambit declined. So yeah let's see what Arjan can do with the black pieces here against Peter Leko. And Arjan having a pretty much a spectacular tournament other than that round one loss to Prinlau Havirapap but you've seen that game if you haven't check it out I have it on it's a real masterpiece by Prinlau Havirapap. Okay Peter with white opens with pawn to e4 we have e5 knight f3 knight to c6 and bishop to b5. We have the Ruy Lopez and Arjan goes for bishop to c5. This is the classical defense against the Ruy Lopez. Castles king side Leko already burned some eight minutes here saying that okay maybe I did not expect the bishop to c5 right away. d6 we have pawn to c3 and pawn to a6 challenging the bishop. And now here Leko spends again some 15 minutes probably deciding between captures and going back because you can capture something like b captures pawn to d4. We have a trade here and then the bishop goes to b6 and then you just continue development so pretty pretty standard position. But instead he played bishop to a4. Maybe as this is a team event maybe Leko is so experienced that he's just waiting to see what happens on the other boards first before he decides where he goes for a more drawish line or a more you know competitive line that offers more chances. Maybe that's the reason he would do it because I don't think Leko would spend 15 minutes in such a position otherwise. But okay bishop to g4. We have h3 bishop to h5 and pawn to d3. Knight e7 and bishop to e3. And there are a couple games where bishop captures on e3 was played here. We have castles king side by Arjun and it is now as of move nine that we have a completely new game. Knight b to d2 from Leko and king to h8. Nicely unpinning so you can maybe strike with pawn to f5. We have queen to e2 and pawn to f6. So you know keep it solid that maybe f5 will be played later on. Rook a to d1 by Leko and now bishop to a7 followed by bishop captures rook captures and queen e3. Putting pressure on the rook. The rook goes back and we finally have a trade. Bishop captures on c6. Knight captures and now everyone including your uncle would probably just play a pawn to d4 here. But no we have pawn to c4. Leko says he doesn't mind the d4 square being occupied by the knight. He wants to have full control over the d5 square and maybe later on even plant a knight there on d5. Maybe then comes to e3 maybe f5. So he wants this to be a slow positional battle. But after queen to d7 we have something quite the opposite. Now you would expect something like rook b1 and b4 maybe just rook c1. He goes pawn to g4 attacks the bishop and now Arjun played bishop to f7 and as soon as he saw this pawn to g4 move he realized well not realized I mean this is an instant trigger for him that e4 and g4 are played. That means f4 can be occupied by a knight and it cannot be kicked away. So the idea of course now is knight e7 knight g6 and knight to f4 and that could be a bit of a problem for Leko. So he strikes with d4 right away but now Arjun goes pawn to h5 as this will now be an attacking game. We have pawn to d5, knight e7. This goes right into Arjun's plan. Knight to h2 and now knight to g6. We have pawn to b3 and knight to f4 and now when you see this position with this knight on f4 and this knight on h2 it's hard not to prefer black here. Knight to b1. Okay we have pawn to g5, knight to c3 and now king to g7. We have knight e2 trying to get rid of the knight and h captures on g4. We have h captures and now rook to h8 to which Leko replies by simply capturing the knight on f4. So you have gotten rid of the knight. It took you some five moves but the position is still not that great because Arjun will not play e captures he plays g captures on f4. Queen to e2 adding a defender here and now just pawn to c6. You could also maybe just double up here or pretty much there are many moves that black could go for here but Arjun goes for pawn to c6. He wants to open up the c-file and then maybe even use the c-file to go for the attack. We have pawn to f3. Leko now tends to the g-pawn and we have rook to h3. Rook to f2. The problem is you cannot hide your king over to the queen side because as soon as the king goes to f2 you would capture the knight. The knight really can't move anywhere so your king is kind of stuck on the king side. So he tries a rook f2 and now maybe you could march your king over to the queen side but now queen c7. Arjun says all right we're going to open up the c-file. I can also prevent your king from going queen side if I want to. Rook g2 and now again you could capture and take full control over the c-file. Arjun brings the rooks over to the h-file. And the engine prefers captures and bringing the rook to the c-file but even this looks like there's nothing to play here. So you should capture and prevent black from capturing but Leko goes queen to f2 and now Arjun of course captures. We have c-captures. King to g6. And usually going forward with your king so deep in your opponent's half of the board isn't really the way to go. But here Leko created a shield that Arjun can use to shield himself because nothing protects you like your opponent's pawns. You cannot go through them. So queen to c2 offering a trade of queens and queen to b6. With check we have queen to f2 and now queen to a5. Arjun not in any rush to trade queens. We have rook to c1 and king to g5. Arjun just improves the position of his king. We have rook to c2, queen to b5 and now queen to e2 offering a queen trade, queen b6 check, queen to f2 and now even queen to e3. And you might think okay if Arjun is attacking us let's get the strongest piece off the board but it would not help you because whatever you do let's say it doesn't matter. Bishop to b5 you're happy to offer a rook trade and even if you decline you can just go e2. And there's no move that white can make here. Whatever you play like pawn to e4, bishop to d3, that's it. And the black king has a very clear way of finishing the game. So after queen e3 we have rook to e2 forcing the trade to happen on f2 but now queen c1 check. We have rook to e1, queen to c3 and rook to e2. We have bishop to e8 now preparing to bring the bishop into the attack as well. Rook to c2 and now queen e3. We have rook to e2 and queen to d3. Arjun doesn't mind repeating a little bit. He reached move 40. He has time and he will find a way to win this if it's possible. We have rook to d2, queen b5 and rook to c2 followed by bishop to b7 now. Rook to c3 and we have queen to b4 attacking the rook. Rook c4 and queen to a5. Rook back to c2 and now comes bishop to b5. So slowly but surely Arjun is making progress here. Rook to c1 and rook 3 back to h7. King to h1 and now comes queen to a3 attacking the rook. We have queen to d2 defending and now pawn to a5. King g1, we have bishop to a6. Queen to c3 and now pawn to b6. Okay we have queen to b2 offering a queen trade and queen b4. Arjun again declines. Queen d2 offering a queen trade. Arjun again declines. We have queen d1 and now Arjun strikes with pawn to a4 trying to mess up the pawn structure and later on you can pick up those pawns. So b captures on a4. Queen b4 and now we have rook to f2. Now comes queen to a3 and here we have king to h1 and there is a very painful for Leko way Arjun can end this game. But there are so many good moves here that it doesn't really matter. But just for fun, can you see the move? It's really an instant resignation type of move. So the move is of course bishop to e2. Look at this beauty. The queen is stuck guarding the rook on c1 and if the rook captures then the queen no longer covers the f3 pawn nor does the knight as it's pinned on the h file. And now you can just play queen captures on f3 check and after king to g1 you will go queen g3 check and after rook g2 you will play queen captures on g2. You will sacrifice your queen and after king captures rook captures on h2 with check and now you have to give back the queen and then you're just gonna be in a completely lost rook pawn endgame. And if king f3 of course rook h3 will be checkmate. So after king to h1 that was an option but queen to e3 was played and now how do you reply to this? The rook is hanging. We have rook c2 c2 defending the rook. Now comes rook to h3. Again too much pressure for Leko to handle. He tries queen c1 maybe he can get the queens off the board and Arjen says sure but let's do it my way. Bishop to d3 and now you cannot trade queens because if you do then again this is just resigned territory. So rook c2 d2 now comes again there are so many great moves here. I will show one of them. Rook captures on f3 is again hilarious because after rook captures queen captures on f3 king g1 queen e3 check and now king to h1 is met with bishop captures on e4 and that's just it. Rook to g2 has to be played and then you pick up the queen on c1 but with checkmate. So after rook c2 d2 Arjen went for the other really wonderful line. Rook captures on h2 with check rook captures on h2 and now queen captures on f3 check king to g1 and here queen e3 check was played and it was in this position on move 64 that Peter Leko resigned the game as there is nothing more to be done here. So a draw draws on board one and board three but a victory for India on board two which meant that India almost defeated Hungary but as we've seen Gukesh lost on board four to Gleb. It was you know the dancing knights of Gleb. What a game. Do check it out if you haven't. It's really been a while since I've seen a game like that and yeah here you resign because there's no move. King g2 will be met with queen g3 check and then king h1 again bishop captures on e4 but now rook g2 you will simply play queen captures on h2 with checkmate as the rook on the g2 square is pinned. So yeah really amazing stuff from everyone. This Olympiad has been really a treat. Really enjoyed so many days of classical chess. I wish we could have another one. I wish it was a quadruple round robin event but yeah I mean everyone's just too busy. There's no way that it could have lasted longer even though we all wish it could but yeah I'm going to show you the standings one more time. Some of you may have missed it in the previous video. These are the final standings. Uzbekistan takes first place with 20 points. India with 18 second. A little bit better than Germany with 18. At least that's I haven't seen the official announcement but everyone's been saying it so I guess it's true and then we have with 17 points USA, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Hungary and now Hungary also finishing very strong with 16. We have China, France, Spain, Ukraine, England and with 15 Turkey, Poland, Iran, Netherlands and so on and so on. So incredible event. Uzbekistan did have that slip against Germany but one slip was not enough to keep them from first place. They win first place and yeah really really wonderful event. Incredible games. Everyone playing beautiful chess. I'm going to check out if there are some more nice games I can show you and of course if you have them just recommend it in the comment section. I will happily show it. So I really hope you enjoyed it. I would like to thank Ivan Sterling, Checkmate Canvas, Derk van Moerik, Bjorn Bartel and Philip Salen 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 as the Olympiad has now finished. Thank you all. I will see you soon and have an excellent rest of your day.