Thank you so much for the game and for all your amazing content, Danya! I have watched all of your speed run videos, some more than once. Having the opportunity to play a game with you was a great honor and a lot of fun (also a lot of stress to be honest). The blunder at the end was sad, but the complications of that final position were overwhelming for me. Qa4 was not on my radar as an option, and everything else was simply losing. After more than a minute of thinking, I felt the pressure to make a move - and obviously chose a bad one. 😅 Anyway, I am so glad I have this video now and the memory of a very special moment in my personal chess history. Thank you so much again, Danya! And thanks everyone for the nice comments here. I love the positivity of Danya’s community.
Kudos to your play, you made Danya think he reached an objectively losing position during the game, that is no mean feat! Thanks for giving us such an impressive game to learn from. I think I'll be able to learn a lot from this, since I play the Alapin with both sides.
Great game, man! Would you be willing to share the move at which your opening prep ran out? I found myself really wondering that that while watching. Danya kind of said when he wasn't sure of the next move and I'm sure I'm not alone in wondering where that was for you. Again, great game!
@@Blitnock If i had to guess it would probably be around white’s a4 move or a few moves later. Because Be6 prior is not a move a human would make without a guarantee that any immediate tactical possibilities work out in his favour.
@@Blitnock Thank you! I have the Chessable Course Fight Like Magnus: The Sicilian. I haven’t quite finished studying the course, not even halfway through. But I looked through the Alapin chapter. 11. a5 Nd5 are the last moves in the course. I’ve never seen 12. a6 before. But already 10. a4 was new for me and I felt out of theory. For people at my level it’s very unusual to delay e4 for so long.
most of it is actually opening theory. at 2000 people generally know a couple openings really well (not all, of course). very likely daniel just ran into an alapin specialist
@@ponzi_0 "Sexy move" and "Not every piece has to distribute the covid vaccine" come to mind immediately. I'm sure there are some other ones people can point out.
24:18 "You're transferring the character of the advantage" 😅 Sweet chess poetry, and awesome game! The educational quality of these games and your analysis (both during and after the game) is outstanding.
I also loved Danya explaining converting the advantage with exf. Its interesting how he can talk so clearly and play top chess at the same time. Hats down Daniel, youre great
Danya says he got lucky, and it's humble of him to say so, but I'm certain there's more to it than luck. He clearly said his instinct screamed c4 was the correct move even if he made a mistake in concrete calculation. His position was also already clearly better as a result of very precise play. So luck may have played a role, but it certainly wasn't decisive in this case.
@@nimatedAdventures luck is absolutely a thing. you're playing a game where the human brain is literally incapable of concretely calculating the full decision tree. at some point even the best GMs are relying on a combination of concrete tactics, positional understanding, and sheer intuition. when your intuition happens to align with the concrete considerations of the tactics on the board (with best play from both sides, all roads lead to rome & you win), that is skill AND luck.
or like when you lead your opponent down a combination they didn't see, which looks winning for you, but at the end it just so happens they have a tactical resource neither of you saw. that's bad luck for you and good luck for them. sure, it's also bad skill from you. but it's not like luck isn't a thing in chess :)
Oh man, was Danya on fire in this game! Amazing content as usual. Also funny: Move 28: danya blunders his queen!!! Move 31: black resigns. Keep it up and greetings from another daniel from germany! :)
Hey Daniel, thank you for all the great instructive content! Lately I have been intrigued on trying to understand different top players styles. A video series idea I had would be something along the lines of taking some top players and showing analysis on some of their games with the intention of exemplifying the differences in playing styles. For instance, a series that explains Nepos style, a series that explains Dings style, etc... Just an idea! I'm not sure if others would even enjoy this but it seems very interesting to me! Haha Anyway, thanks again for all your hard work, you help my chess immensely. -Robert
Ben finegold has a series like this on his channel if you are interested. It's called something like great players of the past/present. It is a lot like what you describe
That advice of Kotov is awesome, i exhaust myself calculating lines on my opponents turns and really love the idea of general observation on my opponents turn and actual concrete variations on my opponent's
Stunning is right. There are some deep positional ideas in that variation. Way over my head in the sense that it would go horribly wrong if I tried to play that way right now, but really fascinating to hear Danya's explanations. It's incredible that his opponent kept up as well as he did.
"The stronger player is always lucky" seems to apply in this game. I was afraid for Danya at the critical point but the GM brought the game to its logical and brilliant conclusion by the deep Rd8-b8-b7 maneuver. I must say that the lines Danya discusses here (with a2-a4 often a key move) appear much more promising and aggressive than the somewhat passive and much less challenging approach used in ""Squeezing the Sicilian".
Awesome teacher, he indeed makes the game appear quite straightforward. However, the vast ocean of knowledge underlying each move cannot be overstated. From the opening he usually knows each “principle idea” & where the game typically will be heading. Therefore, often , in these speedrun games he’s better right out of the opening. And when the principled moves don’t seem to work, he can always shift gear & go into hustle mode. So really it’s almost impossible for him to lose a game against a
Even with a seeming blunder (which it turns out actually was not), how amazing was it that early in the game he said the pawn on a6 could win the game (which it would have if the opponent didn't blunder the bishop). Such good content Danya!
great stuff. interesting line in the alapin, looks much more fun. and now i feel less guilty when winning despite missing something and still having a win by luck.
It's games like this that motivate me to be a better chess player. A masterclass in tempo vs. tactical advantage. I wish it hadn't ended in a blunder, but black played an amazing game. GGs Danya!!
I would love to see more in depth video when you discuss alapin/sicilian from white and black perspective. I found out that many of comments across the video are lack of power after 3ish move 😅 I would be happy to see if possible that kind of analysis from you 😊
Hi Danya,. genuinely curious about this one: you played three consecutive pawn moves on the queenside before developing any pieces on that side of the board. I listened to your positional explanation of why it made sense, but isn't it still breaking the opening ideas of bringing out all of your pieces and not making unnecessary pawn moves? Thanks
Concrete ideas (in this case, tactics from opening theory) trump abstract principles. But only, of course, if the concrete idea is well-calculated, which is the difference between those three pawn moves and a 500-elo player's favorite opening trap gimmick.
As danya stated in the video, the point of rushing the pawn to a6 was not immediately obvious but as we saw in one possibility, the pawn gave him a winning position. Also investing 3 moves where black had to respond back with 2 tempi is not a bad investment. Black couldn’t develop his bishop without repercussions (Qg4 and Bh6 winning the exchange) and the knights were kicked around on less desirable squares. It’s also important to note that previously, trades for reaching an endgame favored black however with the inclusion of this pawn, this suddenly changes to favoring white. In the meantime, black struggles to develop and coordinate his pieces and has to come to terms with the fact that unfavorable trades will be losing for him and getting the trades that he wants will become a much more difficult possibility. By the way, this concept is very abstract and theoretical where it’s difficult even for master level players to grasp.
16:49 That pawn never had a defender. Also, a better way to look at the situation is that it also has no attackers currently nor is it easy to attack in this position. Candidate attackers are the queen and the f pawn. But as will all "undefended" pieces, what is also important is that if not attacked, and as in this position, it takes a move to make an attack, the same move which is basically giving you a move to defend. If you let the opponent simply attack YOU, you can use that time to move your pieces, only when they have a devastating attack which forks your pieces does it matter to take precaution, or when you have no better moves, so you make a down the line useful move.
You especially don't need to keep an eye on it, but make sure you react to threats, surely, cause you may be expecting to trade it for the f pawn, so dead things need no love. They did they murda.
You can look at this game as two people spending their turns. It's only what you can accomplish in a position that is the question. If you are not fishing for errors while playing "solid", you are not trying to win a relatively equal game. The way I learned to win is to make people think that going down the wrong line is good for them. So actually finding positions they are likely to make a mistake in weeds out the noobs from the seen it befores.
It was a bit heartbreaking to see the line I play personally get torn apart like this. BUT! It means I learned a lot about defending this line and inspired a chess study session 😊
We can see how hard is to think like a GM...we need a lot of study and memorization of many positions to read a position like you. Im curious about how you memorized this theory that far.
@@witcher-86 No I'm not kidding. Maybe you should look at the game again. You said black should play A6 after white plays A5. Now you're saying after A4. Which one is it? If you play A6 after white plays A5, axb6 and there goes your knight. The queen has nothing to do with it.
After a4 a6 and if a5 Nd5 that's my point, cause if you allow white to push a6 like in the game black is worse, i learned this the hard way in otb classical
@@witcher-86 if you back up a little bit farther in the video, before he even plays a4, he explains the downside of protecting the b5 Square. If you do that he's going to put a white knight on there and you won't be able to remove it. Don't forget also that black is a minimum of three moves before they can get the Bishop out and four before they can Castle. Playing a5 or a6 delays that even more. I think if you want to prevent all this it has to start earlier. Once the knight is on b6 it's sort of invites this. Because once you move the a pawn, the N is undefended, that invite tactics. You've wasted more precious time that you need to get your king out of the center. And you've given white a dangerous Square to put a knight on. I understand that you don't like that pawn push, but I just pulled it up with the engine and it said black is .38 worse after moving the a pawn. So the engine does consider it an inaccuracy. It actually wants Rd8.
A similar thing happen to me today, my opponent was doing such bad moves but I screwed up the theory, and lost a rook, and I got tilted so I just rage quit but it turned out I shouldnt have since I apparently had a +1 advantage 😔
That is an absolutely fascinating game especially after rook g8. It's unfortunate that black resign after they blunder the bishop, I want to see how the opponent would survive in that seemingly winning position.
Felt like he resigned kind of early after that blunder. Its lost but you still gotta show the conversion there. Probably tilted. I think its common for basic beginner level blunders to happen even at high level when there is so much pressure the whole game.
