Chess Grandmaster Accidentally CHEATED_!
Chess Grandmaster Accidentally CHEATED_!
Transcript
00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, when you click on a Gotham Chess YouTube video, you might be looking
00:04 for an amazing chess game played by a grandmaster, or you might be spending your afternoon laughing
00:09 at a video where I catch chess cheaters.
00:13 Well in this video, I am combining this concept into one.
00:17 We are in Riga, in the Riga Technical Institute, there is a massive chess tournament there
00:21 played every year in 2021, a couple of months ago, and our protagonists are two very, very
00:27 strong players, or I suppose one of them is an antagonist and one of them is a protagonist,
00:31 but in this video, a grandmaster accidentally cheated to get a win.
00:36 And you might say, "What the hell are you talking about?
00:38 How do you accidentally cheat?"
00:39 And normally in chess, when you cheat, you relay moves from an engine.
00:44 Well you're about to see that that's not exactly the case.
00:46 Now you might also be a little bit confused why one of these players is not a GM when
00:50 you have FM and IM.
00:51 Well that's because the player has all three grandmaster norms and the rating and is basically
00:57 just waiting for it to be approved.
00:58 So they're a grandmaster.
00:59 Now I'm going to show you the game.
01:00 It's actually a really fascinating game and then we're going to laugh at the moment where
01:03 cheating occurred.
01:04 d4 is played by the FIDE master from Russia and black responds with Nf6, but very quickly
01:11 makes it clear that they actually want to play a pawn to the center with the move d5.
01:16 You don't really need to enter into this by playing Nf6 on the first move, but we have
01:23 a Slav defense and a mainline Slav defense position as early as move 4.
01:29 Black here has many choices.
01:31 Black can play the open Slav with dc4.
01:34 Black can play the semi-Slav, which I don't really know why this is called a semi-Slav.
01:38 It's like a Slav with just like Adidas pants, like not the top, just the pants.
01:47 The semi-Slav is really solid.
01:49 It's a really really good opening.
01:50 Black also has many many other types of Slav iterations.
01:55 The Schlechter and the Shevchenko, I believe.
01:58 And in this game, we do get the A6 Slav.
02:01 Now the point of the A6 Slav is to play b5.
02:03 Like at some point, black just wants to expand on the queen side.
02:06 So that might look something like e3 b5 even.
02:10 I mean I'm pretty sure you can play b5 as early as this position.
02:14 And it's an interesting line.
02:17 It's confrontational.
02:18 It's really interesting, leads to some dynamic play.
02:21 But LaRusas from Lithuania played the move bishop to f5 here, which is a very normal
02:27 developing move.
02:29 Point being that you want to get your light-squared bishop out before you close it up.
02:33 If you wanted to close it up, you can just play the move e6 to play the semi-Slav.
02:38 And there's kind of a tension here between the pawns.
02:40 At some point, one side will probably take.
02:42 White now immediately takes advantage of the bishop departing the c8 square and goes to
02:46 attack the pawn on b7.
02:49 Black really, in my memory, will play b5 here because now you've kind of successfully gotten
02:56 your setup.
02:57 White will take space and get connect4 and chess gets played.
03:00 You know, white tries to spend some time chipping away at this pawn structure here with this
03:04 pawn break a4 because the position is very closed.
03:07 So when a position is closed, both sides are going to try to implement pawn breaks.
03:11 Black's pawn break will try to be in the center in the future with the move e5.
03:14 Maybe black will prepare that with queen, knight, maybe bishop on g7.
03:20 But in this game, Tomas plays rook a7.
03:24 Rook a7 is an extremely solid move.
03:27 It's choosing not to commit too quickly the move b5.
03:31 And yeah, I mean, as completely absurd as this move looks, I mean, it looks awful actually
03:36 optically.
03:38 It's completely fine.
03:39 It's been played thousands of times.
03:41 Very, very normal move.
03:42 And here, Gleb Dudin plays knight to h4.
03:46 And like again, to the untrained eye, this move breaks kind of all principles that you're
03:52 supposed to teach beginners.
03:53 Like don't move your pieces twice in the opening.
03:57 Don't move your queen out, etc., etc.
04:00 But this move makes sense because black has a very difficult decision now.
04:03 You're really not going to give up the bishop for the knight because that just doesn't make
04:06 any sense.
04:08 You want to preserve the bishop pair.
04:09 You don't want to just give white two bishops.
04:11 The bishop will come out here, pressure the center, and black doesn't get anything good
04:15 for giving up the bishop pair.
04:17 Believe it or not, actually, potentially the best move here is just to bring the bishop
04:20 all the way back and sort of argue that this knight is stupidly placed.
04:25 But LaRussa here played bishop e6.
04:28 And in the postgame interview, he said, you know, in many positions where the knight goes
04:32 to h4 and the slav defends, the bishop actually sort of slides back.
04:36 I mean, like I said, you can slide it all the way back, but he chooses to slide it back
04:39 in a way that he pressures the center.
04:41 And this knight is sort of offside.
04:43 However, you're also saying that, you know, black's position is also slightly bad because
04:48 they're breaking certain principles like putting bishops in front of center pawns, which you're
04:52 just not really supposed to do.
04:54 And now, Dudin plays a fascinating move.
04:56 So of course, yes, he can play like natural developing stuff.
04:59 He can take some space.
05:01 But he chooses to blow up the center.
05:03 And he chooses to blow up the center for tactical reasons.
05:07 So if black does not take, black will get completely overrun.
05:11 So he takes, takes, takes, and now Be3.
05:16 Be3 is good.
05:17 Qe3 is also very strong.
05:18 The threat of Qe3 is you're first of all attacking this, but you're targeting the rook.
05:23 So just a ludicrous example of a move, for example, there is this.
05:28 And black loses because it's a double attack.
05:31 It's a discovered attack on the rook in the corner.
05:33 Qe3 is a very, very, very sneaky move.
05:35 It is setting up a threat.
05:37 Black of course would not fall for this.
05:38 But Qe3 is a possibility.
05:40 Dudin plays it in a slightly different way.
05:42 So what do we have going on?
05:44 Well, black's development is really hindered by his own pawns.
05:48 The pawns stand in the way of like natural piece movement.
05:51 The piece stands in the way of pawn movement.
05:53 So black's position is totally like a mess.
05:56 However, black is up a pawn, which you can't really like just discredit.
06:00 Black does have an extra pawn.
06:02 White's knight is sort of stranded on the edge of the board.
06:05 But visually, white's position is very strong, admittedly.
06:08 Yes, the bishop on e3 is quite strong.
06:13 The center is strong.
06:15 Castling here is going to be an option.
06:17 So now we have Qa5 checked.
06:20 The point of Qa5 is that you're trying to send white backwards a little bit.
06:24 See, if white goes for a queen trade, for example, being down a pawn and now trading
06:28 pieces just doesn't make much sense.
06:30 So this forces white to play Bd2 so as not to lose the right to castle.
06:35 And now the queen goes back to c7.
06:37 He could go back to d8, but he doesn't want to repeat moves.
06:40 Like he, you know, he's trying to play for a win.
06:42 So Qc7.
06:44 Now again, in this position, white can play Qe3.
06:47 Qe3 is a very good move and it threatens d5.
06:50 It forces Ra8.
06:53 And LaRussa thought that his opponent was going to do something like this and play Qh4,
06:58 Qe3, where white is just better.
07:00 White is now no longer down a pawn and still has all the benefits of the position that
07:03 he had when he was down the pawn, except now he's not down the pawn and therefore it's
07:08 a good thing.
07:09 His position is quite good.
07:10 However, Dudin plays d5.
07:12 So he's trying to punish whatever LaRussa is doing in this position, right?
07:17 He's trying to just say like, "Yo man, I mean, this is ridiculous the way you're playing.
07:20 I have to punish you.
07:21 I have to break forward in the center rather than just sort of playing the maneuvering
07:25 move and punishing the pieces in that fashion."
07:28 So here, if you take on d5, you're just going to run into trouble because I'll take, I'll
07:32 go Qe3, I'll go here, and all your pieces get pushed back.
07:36 So Bishop back to c8.
07:38 This is move 12 by black.
07:41 This like, if you just look at this position, I'm not trying to insult anybody.
07:45 I'm just saying, if you told me a1,000 was playing this with black, I'd be like, "Honestly,
07:49 that kind of makes sense."
07:52 Even though black is playing like all the best moves and dealing very well with white's
07:54 pressure.
07:55 It's just the position looks hilarious.
07:58 White's position also looks hilarious, but at least looks like slightly more sophisticated.
08:03 But the thing is, because white is sort of overextending, at some point, black is going
08:07 to crack back at the center, clear out all the pressure, and just be fine.
08:13 So Dunyan plays Qe3.
08:15 Again, he's not going to take because that just helps black develop.
08:19 You have absolutely no need to allow your opponent to get a knight into the game.
08:23 The pawns are restricting the movement of the black pieces, right?
08:25 So he plays Qe3, rook goes back to a8.
08:27 And how ridiculous does this look on move 13?
08:29 I mean, black just has absolutely no development, right?
08:33 And now another tense moment.
08:34 You know, he can just win the pawn back.
08:36 I suppose he didn't like that the knight is arriving, and now black is getting back into
08:41 the game.
08:42 Black is going to play g6, bishop g7.
08:43 Like, you see the importance of development?
08:45 That is what black needs.
08:46 The knight in the game, the pawn, the bishop, get the king to safety.
08:49 And then black is going to be fine.
08:51 So to kind of restrict the development of black, Dunyan plays Bc3 to activate on this
08:55 very nice diagonal.
08:56 He has a very nice space advantage.
08:58 He controls a lot of squares on his opponent's side of the board.
09:01 The problem is that because Laurus has barely developed his pieces, he has no real weaknesses.
09:08 You know, weaknesses in chess come when you overextend or when you abandon a side of the
09:11 board or something.
09:12 But he hasn't really moved anything, so he's not really weak.
09:15 And he's just going to have to be precise to untangle.
09:18 So he plays Nd7.
09:19 And again, we have a moment.
09:20 You know, maybe white should play long castle here just to clear the king out to the side
09:24 of the board, get him out of the center, and then crack the center open with something
09:28 like f3, you know, a well-timed pawn break.
09:31 If black takes on f3, then white just steamrolls here.
09:35 Rook, queen, pawn down the middle.
09:38 Black is now officially beyond the point of salvation.
09:41 Whereas originally black was worse but was dealing with the pressure, now you're getting
09:45 overrun.
09:46 Of course, we also throw in a terrible move by black.
09:49 But points dance.
09:51 And Dunyan could play long castle.
09:53 He chooses though to play Rd1.
09:54 I mean, what are you going to do?
09:56 In chess, you have to make decisions.
09:58 And there's a lot of decent-looking decisions here.
10:01 So now we have Nf6, Be2, and the final move, e6.
10:06 And black is ready to just crack out.
10:09 That's not even a saying.
10:11 To crack down on the center, develop the dark-squared bishop, maybe castle.
10:15 We'll see what happens.
10:16 Position is very, very spicy right now.
10:18 So Dunyan takes on f6.
10:19 He takes on f6 in order to damage the structure.
10:23 So now we have some isolated pawns, clump of pawns in the middle.
10:26 And probably black is going to struggle to castle this way because all the pieces are
10:29 right there.
10:30 He takes on e4.
10:31 He allows a check.
10:33 And he slides his king over one square.
10:35 However, because Dunyan did not castle this way, now his king is also kind of stranded.
10:39 It is extremely safe.
10:42 But it's kind of difficult to figure out what to do with it.
10:45 And maybe it will not be safe in the long run.
10:47 And here, LaRusso plays Qe5.
10:50 He still has basically not developed four of his six pieces.
10:54 They're just standing there on their home squares.
10:57 And he goes for a trade of queens.
10:59 Why?
11:00 Because he's hoping for some sort of potential endgame where he will have the bishop pair.
11:05 He's hoping for f5, e4, take some pawn space.
11:10 Just so you understand, f5.
11:11 The position looks nice.
11:12 He takes some space.
11:13 e4, get his bishops in the game in the future, connect his rooks.
11:16 And if you trade queens, you're not really going to feel the fact that you are in a situation
11:20 where you're lacking development.
11:22 If you want to stop your opponent from attacking you, you can bribe them, but you can also
11:26 trade queens.
11:27 He apparently afterward had said that he had kind of underestimated this position.
11:32 He thought this position was still pretty decent for white.
11:35 But his opponent chooses not to trade queens, instead opting to rotate the queen over and
11:41 attack the queen side.
11:42 The problem with that is that you can't actually take on b7.
11:50 Because rook b8, and then rook b2, and you actually just cannot stop yourself from getting
11:56 destroyed.
11:57 Like for example, rook e1, the knight is hanging, and that's mate.
12:01 And not only is it mate, it's actually unstoppable mate.
12:04 Nothing in white's position can stop the mate.
12:07 Nothing.
12:08 So that's bad.
12:09 Don't get mated.
12:10 You can only delay mate for a little bit.
12:12 So yeah, after d takes e6 in the game, because not queen takes b7, we have bishop e6, knight
12:21 f3 attacking the queen, the queen slides back, the white queen slides over to attack the
12:26 f6 pawn, the queen defends it.
12:28 Now we have a3, and we are trying to play the move b4.
12:32 Black has a few ways of dealing with this, but he chooses to play the move a5, so that
12:35 b4 is just simply impossible.
12:38 And if you're wondering where this accidental cheating happened, because your attention
12:43 span is slowly drying up, well, here we go.
12:47 In this position, white plays rook e1 to kind of put some pressure on the bishop, the queen,
12:52 and the king.
12:53 And the idea also can be to play knight d4, and it's not easy for black to play rook d8,
12:59 because a5 is potentially hanging.
13:02 And so in this position, after the move rook to e1, black played a4 to move the knight
13:08 out of the way, sorry, the knight, the pawn out of the way of the queen.
13:12 The white knight jumped to d4, and in this position on the live broadcast, there was
13:19 just nonsense moves, like bishop g4 hanging the bishop, and queen f3 hanging the queen.
13:26 Which means that something went wrong with the transmission.
13:28 Well, that's because after knight to d4, black castled queenside in the game, which is illegal,
13:39 because a long, long time ago, black played rook a7, rook a8.
13:44 If you remember correctly, after queen b3, rook a7 was played.
13:48 And in the game, both players completely forgot about this.
13:53 Black illegally castled long.
13:55 Now normally what would happen is the king would be forced to move.
13:59 So it would be touch move, because you touched the king.
14:02 So black could theoretically castle short, and luckily not lose the game on the spot.
14:06 And this was 100% an accident, because this was the reaction of Tomas when he gave his
14:15 interview after the game.
14:17 It was absolutely hilarious clip.
14:18 Check this out.
14:19 Yeah, I mean, just absolutely hilarious moment.
14:49 And I think his opponent was in low time, so he was sort of just locked in and didn't
14:53 even notice.
14:54 And yeah, the game continued with black playing long castles.
14:58 I had to edit a new chess.com board for this, because it just wouldn't let me do it otherwise.
15:04 So this is the position, a completely illegal position that both players have agreed to.
15:08 I've never seen something like this in grandmaster level play.
15:11 Sometimes my own students have done this by accident.
15:13 You know, like I'm analyzing their game after they played it in a tournament.
15:17 They're rated 600, though, and they're like, oh, here I castle.
15:20 Then I'm like, you can't.
15:21 You're in check.
15:22 Or, you know, kids will just play an entire game with both players being in check.
15:26 That's just what they do.
15:27 And then at some point they go, oh, crap.
15:28 All right, well, I'm just going to move out of check, and then the game will continue.
15:32 So the game continues, and the evaluation of this position after this illegal move is
15:36 still balanced, but now black is actually creating some threats.
15:40 And remember a long time ago, I told you that because white never committed his king safely,
15:44 this king is going to potentially come under fire.
15:46 Let's also not forget that black does have a time advantage.
15:48 So white is, you know, white is in serious time trouble.
15:53 So here we have knight takes e6.
15:56 Queen takes e6, played by LaRusso.
15:58 He's trying to look at queen f5 opportunities, maybe rook coming down this way.
16:02 And we see the problem.
16:03 I mean, you're just too slow.
16:04 You played g3.
16:05 The queen is going to slide in here.
16:08 Dudin is still going for queen f5.
16:10 He's, you know, he's still trying to create some sort of attack here.
16:13 A very nice move.
16:15 Look at that.
16:16 Understanding there is no actual danger here.
16:18 Don't worry about one move checks.
16:19 The king just slides up and the bishop blocks.
16:22 But also the bishop is not hanging because of this absolutely beautiful counter shot.
16:26 Kabam!
16:27 Kabam!
16:28 Boom!
16:29 Boom!
16:30 Well, that move's not a boom.
16:31 That's like the only move.
16:32 And then mate.
16:33 Queen takes e2.
16:34 Beautiful move from him with these threats.
16:38 White plays g3 to not get back ranked.
16:41 And now we have the queen sliding in and a nice here.
16:43 This is called a rook lift.
16:44 So you're like looking to swarm this king with every piece.
16:48 This doesn't quite work.
16:50 That looks like it works, but it doesn't.
16:52 This is not a mate because the queen protects.
16:55 So we have rook e5, which is known as a rook lift when you bring the rook up and try to
16:59 slide it over.
17:01 It defends and you're threatening this stuff.
17:03 So here Dudin plays bishop to g4, sacrificing the bishop with a check and wins back temporary
17:10 material.
17:11 Rook d1 would just lead to king g2.
17:13 It's probably still winning.
17:15 No, it is winning, but the game ends with LaRusso's playing queen f3, swarming this
17:20 king and you cannot prevent rook d1.
17:24 It's just game over and white resigned because well, I mean his king and rook died together
17:29 happily ever after here in the corner of the board while the queen was doing some sort
17:33 of empty hunting on that side.
17:36 So a really fascinating game, which admittedly did have a very, very tense opening battle
17:43 where white played a super interesting pawn sacrifice to get the swarming lead in development,
17:48 but black just hung back, absorbed the pressure as best that he could, and when his opponent
17:54 didn't play the most critical response, he was able to crack the center open with a pawn
17:59 break, not liquidating it too quickly.
18:02 And yeah, I mean queen trade to avoid further attack and the second that he got an opportunity
18:09 to castle illegally and then win the game, he did it.
18:12 No, I'm just kidding.
18:13 The second that he got an opportunity to consolidate, he ultimately led the game with a decisive
18:17 attack back on his opponent, but that was absolutely hilarious.
18:22 And I'm going to end this video just by saying that, you know, I'm sure LaRusso is a very
18:28 nice guy.
18:29 I'm sure he did not intend to cheat, but this is just such a rarity that two guys with a
18:35 combined rating of, you know, almost 5,000, no one batted an eye.
18:42 No one batted an eye.
18:43 And yeah, it's just shocking that we can see stuff like this.
18:48 Online this way, you would never get away with it because online, you can't castle when
18:51 it's illegal.
18:52 But well, anyway, figured I would share this game with all of you.
18:57 Pick up the Slav Defense if you like it and let me know in the comments if there's any
19:03 sort of videos that you'd like to see or any sort of experiences with illegal moves.
19:08 Peace out.
19:09 I'll see you in the next video.
19:10 Get out of here.
19:10 here.