 You've scored another point for the women's team today, two out of two, how are you feeling? Feeling great, to be honest I'm still finding my rhythm like in my daily routine with all the jet lag and stuff but I'm happy I'm off to a good start and I'm just hoping to contribute as much as I can to the team. How about today's game, what happened? I think it was it was quite strategical, there was really you know not much going on in the opening and the early middle game but then my opponent started making some concessions to the position and I was trying to in the end I was trying to make some pond storm in the in the king's side and then it went successfully so and he started making mistakes again and here and there so I could convert it to a victory. Okay let's look at a key point in the game. Thank you. So yeah it was it was starting out as a Nimzer, Quincynian type position and I was actually preparing for first move E4 even you know because the players here they don't only have one opening repertoire they have like various so that's why there was some hardship in the preparation but anyway out of 11-12 moves in this position after he played queen d3 so what has an I started queen spawn here and I think what's planned after that is like probably knight e4 trying to make a battery with the queen and the bishop towards my h7 square and I thought in this position like has to do something you know of course my homework is about my bishop on c8 it's not developed yet whether it stays on this diagonal or whether I should make some preparation like a6 b5 bishop b7 but in this position I was trying to clarify the position as soon as I can so that's why I played e5 here and in this position I thought for quite a while okay before I played e5 because there was some idea of sacrificing on a6 this is quite it's looking dangerous but I think if if we continue there was actually nothing much for yeah there was nothing much for white in this position like after queen a6 then h7 knight e4 and I just have to go back with my bishop and then yeah sorry bishop c7 and then if bishop d3 trying to attack my knight on h7 I can just close it with f5 it's like a really nice position for me so and there was also some other variation corresponding to it but in my calculation there was really nothing if white going for this type of sacrifice so that's why he pushed this d5 and then after that it was just pretty much pretty strategical I was trying to consolidate my position with my pieces like okay knight g3 I play a6 not actually wanting to play b5 but okay he played a4 to stop it and then knight g6 yeah I was just you know even though this already middle game I'm trying to develop my pieces although it's like the toss in the opening but yep continue so bishop b3 rook c8 yeah and then yeah rookie one to be honest I thought during the game that black didn't sorry white didn't really have any clear ideas in this position the only idea that white might have is somehow to make the again the battery work but it never happened and the pawn on d5 is just you know blocking the bishop and that was actually the hula idea of playing e5 and then yeah queen a5 I'm just trying to you know play a natural move developing everything improving the pieces and after knight e4 takes takes and then in this position I had I had two options on how to exchange the knight with whether with this bishop or the dark square bishop or the light square bishop and I decided to go with the light light square bishop because I knew this bishop on d6 is a perfect piece to block the pawn and also at some point I had a future idea of pushing all the pawns and then uh this bishop on d6 will be a very dangerous bishop you know with the all this diagonal from b8 to h2 and yeah it happened in the game so bishop f5 a5 a5 and then I took it first bishop takes e4 rook takes e4 and then queen queen d8 yeah and now the idea is very simple I just want to play f5 f5 e4 and that's it so he only had one move here rook g4 to stop f5 but this move is a bit awkward I mean the rook is not perfectly placed it has to be like somewhere on the e file but okay this is this is a desperate measure to stop f5 so I play queen f6 here I'm not too hurry with the f5 because okay it's not possible at the moment but I had I had some other ideas to make it work in the future so after here bishop c3 I think it is also not a mistake because now it allows my knight to have a really good output on f4 and after the queen moves the queen has to keep on this diagonal otherwise I can just move my queen and then and then play f5 in the end so in this position I think it's already strategically waiting for black because I have h5 here and I and whatever you do I just move my queen on h6 and then f5 is unstoppable because I have another additional idea of a fork on e2 so the queen cannot really move it to f5 yes so I think I think in this position already whatever white does it's already winning for me so the game continued with rook e1 and I just oops yeah rook e1 f5 and then queen f4 and then yeah h4 and then just kicking all the pieces away and then e4 so this was the pawnstone that I was talking about and then yeah even if she even if he moves rook e3 I have an idea of queen g3 attacking mate in one or probably you know if g3 I can take on h3 it's just another idea plays itself yeah yeah it will it will be yeah like that so he after e4 took on f4 but this is already just lost I mean I can basically play any other moves yeah this is this very comfortable for black okay thanks very much thank you to round three of the jib chess battle of the sex is 2022 we are here at the garrison library in Gibraltar where we are witnessing one of the most unique and special formats of uh chevon ingan chess that we've seen uh in a long time 10 top grandmasters male playing 10 top female players in a battle for 100 000 pounds the winning team taking home 75 000 pounds it's round three today and so far things have gone very badly for the boys they lost round one by three points they lost round two by three points and they had the white pieces in every game last game uh both sides have either all white or all black meaning that the boys are down six points already and it's only round three uh I'm here with Irina Bulmarga Irina yesterday we saw an absolute dominant display by the women indeed and according to your predictions Matt had men had to win yesterday but the ladies proved stronger once again I was completely wrong I thought the men would win by two points or something like that but the the ladies were just too good some great individual performances um some saves and we've got the results from yesterday yeah let's get that up on the screen let's get those results straight back up uh a bunch of draws um Jovanka Huska could have won her game against Eric Rosen uh that's for sure oh they disappeared again the results there there we go oh this is for today but let's have a look at the results from yesterday here we go uh Irene with the that lovely when you saw people were watching that in the video just now indeed and she had such a great game yes she's the only player on two out of two so far and today uh she will be facing Aziz Hussain who actually lost his game yesterday as we see against Jan Saya Abdu Malik yeah Abdu Malik winning the game she was always in control uh and Gunai Mamadzada after a difficult opening she came back to win with the black pieces against Belial a huge result for her meaning that the ladies are very much in charge let's have a look at the pairings for today right and as said we've seen Irene playing against Hussain um do you think she can keep her 100 score um I think she's got a good chance that's for sure she's playing well she's confident she's got white against Hussain who is uh uh one of the lower rated players but he can still play chess but she's got a great chance today for sure I agree yeah Jan Saya playing Bilal also a great chance here for Jan Saya people would expect the rating favorite uh is she the rating favorite yes I think she is the rating favorite perhaps maybe not actually maybe she's just not but in any case she's playing good chess and Bilal has been a bit um well he's been a bit unstable let's say he's indeed I think he struggles here because he is on zero out of two so far who would have thought yeah indeed Gunai Mamadzada playing great chess as well playing Leandro Chris said Leandro has been the most solid along with Ravi Haria from the men's team so I I don't see Leandro losing today but who knows um oh we've got Ravi Kramling there that should be Pia Kramling against Ravi Haria so we'll adjust that in the break guys don't worry there's a slight spelling mistake but it's Pia Kramling with white against Ravi Haria for me two of the most solid guys in the in this whole tournament actually yeah I agree with you and I think it's uh uh gonna be a strategical battle rather than a tactical one but uh well let's find out there we go and that's been adjusted Marie Sabag against Joseph Gallagher Joe Gallagher nearly beating Marie and was he took yesterday Mr Clearwind was very disappointed Marie has yet to really she's had two draws and she's she hasn't had a long hard fight yet I would say it's been she's been a bit wary um carrying on we've got P uh sorry we've got Marcel Efraimski against Gillian Wallya we've got Olya Gagiri against Balashonka we've got I we've already mentioned Irene Jovanka Husker against Sabina Brunello I believe on this board Sabina will try to score the first the first victory yeah for for the men's team because well Jovanka was having some ups and downs on the previous days let's see how that one will go indeed and just on the screen there we saw Pepe Kania I believe making the first move today Pepe and his firm local to Gibraltar been big sponsors of the Gibraltar Open for years and years and years and are very generously sponsoring this tournament as well so check them out Kania uh here in Gibraltar and now a quick thing on the screen there is a mis a slight well I don't want to say mistake but it it is an we have to correct it Antoinette Stefanova is not playing Eric Rosen Antoinette are unfortunately testing positive for Covid means that she has been sidelined and instead it's Nino Bazziashvili playing Eric Rosen today indeed indeed and some interesting matchups now I thought today looking at these pairings Irina that I think we're going to get more draws than before I think this is going to be a bit more of a a draw drawish kind of day where do you see the decisive results coming from well I believe that Irina will try hard to keep her 100 score against Hussein and I think that Sabino after yesterday's big blunder will try to finally score a win the other games seem unpredictable yeah a lot of unpredictability I will say that if I had to bet on a draw today I think Pierre Kramling against Ravi Hari is going to be super solid affair I don't see any result there except a draw I think Marisa back against Gallagher well you don't know it depends how Joe is feeling today that could be a draw I think Mamadzada Chris will possibly be a draw and then the rest of them are very very up in the air the games have kicked off and so you can see John Saunders there taking some photos he has a really fashionable chest mask he does he has a fashionable chest marks he does I really love it when players wear chest motifs have you got any chess yeah I I've got some nice socks socks there we go good good to have socks nice chest socks I had a chest tie once you know tie but it got lost or it was thrown out one of the two is probably thrown out because it was so ugly there you go that's what happens as you can see also players playing in this wonderful location if this is the first time you've joined us playing at the garrison library one of the oldest buildings in Gibraltar and we spoke yesterday with Jennifer Ballantyne who's the director of this library if you want to hear more about the history of this wonderful building please go and check out the live stream from yesterday where Jennifer very nicely gives us a rundown of of the history and the importance of this building but here they are the chess players and well the games have kicked off so where do you want to go first I'll let you choose Irina which game let's start with the one which we have on the screen with Maria versus Bobby I see it is a bishop b5 chuck in the Sicilian so I guess Maria is going for a slow play today for a more strategical battle um are you a night off player yourself not a night off player but I am a player of this particular system with white I've had a lot of experience with white in all kinds of variations of course the move that um well there are many moves in this position pawn to d4 is a move castling is a move knight to c3 is a move but the move that took the world by storm a few years ago was the move bishop to a4 yeah it looks like a really mysterious one really mysterious idea the idea of this move is that you're um anticipating a6 and if black does go a6 you can now play the move pawn to c4 and prevent black from getting out of this pin with b5 and the other point is that if black plays the move knight f6 here you can actually castle and it looks ridiculous because you're like why can't black just take this pawn well the point is that after the move rookie one hitting the knight knight f6 and d4 white gets a tremendous initiative which can go very very wrong for black very quickly let's just say black took took and played the move e6 standard looking Sicilian moves now there's some kind of knight takes e6 which is absolutely destructive also moves like knight b5 here exists threatening this pawn because on d5 now bishop f4 and oops all of a sudden all of a sudden it's coming on c7 it's just all over very very dangerous system it was the flavor of the month for a while but maria has gone for a more classical way to play because she played the move castles pawn to a6 and bishop to d3 this is another system that i've had tons of experience with this also looks like a strange move but the idea is that when the knight comes out to f6 as played by bobby ching you can now play c3 tuck the bishop back to c2 and then finally go d4 results have been very decent for black though in this system the thing that black has to decide is whether he wants to fianceto the bishop like a dragon bishop or if he wants to play more classically with the bishop on here you can also put the pawn on e5 and actually get structures that resemble a uh a ry lopez or a spanish opening much uh sorry yeah go on i think i seem to recall a game that maria played in this system against haricadrana valley okay uh some time ago and it was a very uh tough theoretical battle and we chanted in a draw with many sacrifices okay i think it was that line with b5 and c4 somehow right not sure how we get there though yeah i mean there are there are there are yeah there's also rookie one b5 and c4 here for example is is actually a common another common move that was introduced by carlsson and nakamura a few years ago so lots of theory here but um they have gone the more traditional route with c3 and bobby has played e6 so keeping the structure fluid and um this also allows him to play for a win if he so chooses um things aren't going to get too dry too quickly so it is going to be an interesting game let's move on to another game uh zhanshaya against bilal let's go there all right wow well we've got action over here that's a winner it's a winner it's a french defense and winner of a variation main line here with e5 and c5 and a3 takes takes 96 96 is already a huge deviation right i played myself with white and i know what the main lines are 97 queen c7 uh something something along those lines where after queen g4 she takes queen g7 it's a very unbalanced position 96 seems like a completely different approach and uh yeah it seems like jhanshaya wasn't ready for it as she fought for uh four minutes before making her move a4 exactly uh so she she basically well she might not she might not have been prepared for it but she might have just been recalling her notes as well right so she this is just so unusual i mean queen c7 and 97 are just the main moves by a country mile 90 percent of games in these winowas are played like this so 96 a4 this is a very useful move to play in these winowas um you gain space for the bishop to come out to a3 a lot of the time which is a very useful diagonal uh and bilal putter stopped at that with the move queen a5 immediately and jhanshaya just played the move bishop to d2 um and uh here you don't win a pawn because i have an attack on the queen yeah i believe that black doesn't really want to take on d4 probably uh he'll gonna wait for white to develop the bishop on d3 and then try to close up the center with c4 sort of winning a tempi uh i know this is uh some um a move which a typical move for black in these structures and then trying to play on the queen side white will probably start an attack on the king side if black castles castles there because black could also play bishop d7 castle long and then try to try to advance on the king side when white castles it's gonna be a very complex battle i believe here and you know i was just speaking to jhanshaya yesterday and she said that uh in kazakhstan if you were following there were some uh some problems i mean uh some political uh meetings and a lot of strange stuff going on so they had the internet cut for 10 days i have no idea okay yeah and the only thing she could do was practice chess and prepare for this tournament wow okay for 10 whole days hey that's not bad yeah i'm wondering what does she have in the sleeve well that's true she might have a lot of her sleeve uh indeed uh before we go to next let's take a full view of the playing hall because we are going to make a quick uh switch here we're going to introduce a very special guest and uh we are we can see here an overview of the playing hall players in full swing and i'm delighted to be joined by victor kania from pfk kanias pkf kania pkf kania i beg your pardon pkf kanias uh one of the sponsors of this tournament but even though we've never met i recognize your name you've been sponsoring for a while haven't you sponsoring since the inception of the of the tournament yeah we're very proud to have this association with this the important home of chess you know in the world not just your the new wimbledon that's the way i like to call it okay i'll start calling it that then as well it's nice um so what do you tell us a bit about your company and for everybody who's watching who might be interested in in what you guys do we are accountants and auditors in Gibraltar but we're not just that i would say i think we provide business solutions and services for everybody that comes into our comes into our client arena okay and we uh we're very proud to be associated with a lot of local firms and we have a long-standing association with a lot of our clients strong client retention the same way that we've been associated with the Gibraltar chess festival for this time a lot of our clients have been uh work have been with us for since inception as well so we're very proud and i think it's uh it was started by my father pepe kania the senior partner at the firm and now it's uh myself one of the partners and daniel delgado who's another partner with us okay um and yeah and we're i would like to say that we are a challenger firm here in Gibraltar and we're very proud of association with the clients that we have there you go that's of interest to you guys of course please do get in touch i'm sure they can google you and yeah absolutely get in line we're everywhere uh so you've been sponsoring the event since the inception you said so where is the love for chess come from or where is the where is the connection there well the connection i think the love for chess like most people in Gibraltar who didn't have a lover for chess before right came from brian callahan who has an infectious attitude about chess and there's no way you can spend some time with him talking about the subject and then not becoming thrilled with it so that's what happened with us that's true and we have uh we've been we've been very lucky to be to have been working for brian um we've been he's been a client of ours with his hotels and his other businesses that he's had in Gibraltar and uh that's uh relationship grew and i'm very proud to call him a friend as well now and the infectiousness to do with the chess festival is uh comes from him but that's not to say it ended there it's just grew from that so let me ask you the key question is everybody do you ever play at home do you get on the phone and play or are you just enjoying watching the commentary from time to time i i i used to play at home on a computer board that would you could play by yourself you could key in the moves right but i got quite frustrated by the fact that i wouldn't win as many games as i started um tell me about it yeah exactly so but uh now it's more i was supposed if i were to play would be on a on like most people like on my smartphone on an app and stuff but uh when i i don't play enough i would imagine but yeah but it's nice to be reminded that i that it's around and this time of the year i think a lot of us here in Gibraltar reconnect with our apps and start playing which is that i'm sure happens everywhere it does now let me tell you something that i've not said anywhere on stream or anything like that one day i'm english but one day i am actually hoping that there uh is uh the formation or the creation of the Gibraltarian chess team or chess federation where they can go and be represented at the olympics or at major championships that would be phenomenal i how do you know much about in this in the general sporting world of let's call it a dribble so because i know you have the football team and i watch the football games sometimes against scotland or whatever uh yeah the result the results should get an equalizing goal in that match which was important at hampton i actually was lucky enough to be there oh you were there okay okay every proud Gibraltarian we support we support other Gibraltarians in whatever team or endeavor that they're in what what else is going on sir have you got like major basketball teams or anything yeah rugby or i mean again i i know it sounds a cliche and everybody from Gibraltar says it but Gibraltar punches above its weight in anything it applies to and i think it's it's just a unique combination of our history and our determination and the kind of people we are and um i think being an underdog also helps because you're always starting from the same position and i can see i can i just to answer the point you raised initially i don't see why not Gibraltar shouldn't be represented in these uh as a federation especially for chest with when there's so much wealth here in terms of knowledge and already already the groundwork is already there i think it's like everything putting it into action but i don't see why not and i and i and i know that it's being taught in schools and and it's and it's like everything i think is about having getting the grass roots movement right and i'm sure that there's there is enough work behind that i personally i'm not involved okay but um i would i would i would imagine that's like everything if soon as people apply themselves to it it will happen it's just a matter of time i don't think i'm sure we'll have we'll be represented i hope so hell if you are i might end up you know i might get a place here and maybe i'll get in there maybe it's because i will no chance lay for England i might try and play for Gibraltar and if i if i could raise a point if i can i mean we're very lucky to be joined here as well by uh ben Friedman who is a bbc uh he's made documentaries for the bbc he's actually here researching um and he's come through well i i've invited him over um he's met with brian and we're considering uh trying to put a documentary together of some form about the chest festival that'll be wonderful and i think the idea of the the battle of the sexes i think has really captured everybody's imagination and i think that i the we were having i'm just i suppose i'm just uh regurgitating what we talked about earlier but uh it's just the idea of the concept of is there a difference and is and how do we measure a difference that's and where are we going towards and i think all those points just which seem they're very easy to say but they're very hard to resolve so i mean we're actually really i think it's a interesting point in a position for the Gibraltar chess festival that again it's asking those really interesting questions and that's why we are we keep we're very proud to keep being associated with sponsors because it's just pioneering step after step after step and it's like i think quite rightly got the reputation it has globally i do definitely follow that well i'd tell you what i've got one last question before i let you go um the boys are getting absolutely slaughtered now i know you said you're tax and accountants services and and consultancy how do you do uh morale lifting services and could you come to the hotel uh around midday because these boys how are they going to get out of this mess they're getting beaten up with white they're getting beaten up with black i think they're in big trouble i think that the i'm not i'm i mean i'm i'm not going to be brave enough to say that this uh to predict a winner at this stage even though it looks like there's there's a clear direction it's a clear clear trend yeah trend forming but i would i would it'd be interesting to see where we're sitting at on the last day that's true but i don't think i can i can raise the morale any further because i just i'm actually quite i think it's uh i might not be rooting on gender lines here yeah i'm actually rooting for the ladies so that's why i i don't i don't know if i i'd want to contribute to that uh that morale boost there we go thank you so much thank you for joining us thank you for your help and your support over the pleasure pleasure all right let's have a look at the where we're at in the playing hall very quickly there they are and there's Brian Callan as you can see uh in uh sporting uh rather may i say slightly i mean that scarf is not my cup of tea we were talking about that the fluorescent green scarf do you have a fluorescent green scarf no good i'm glad i don't have any fluorescent uh things that's excellent i'm glad you don't um and as we can see there the games are uh in full swing thank you so much there to uh to our lovely sponsor victor and his his family and his uh firm sponsoring this i remember when i was playing here i always used to see their logo but i never knew what exactly they did so if you are interested as i say do get in touch uh you'll be able to find them by googling them right back to the chest where should we go irina you can choose a game let's go to another game let's see nino versus eric okay wow so we've got a this is this very tricky name so i have played against it myself it's a very fashionable uh idea to go for uh 95 and f4 right very primitive so i mean just we've gone through that really quickly bishop b4 knight f3 is a very flexible move and now b6 by eric is a very standard move putting the bishop on the long diagonal pawn to e3 okay very modest bishop b7 and bishop d3 again fighting over that e4 square very very standard black now castles i guess there is an argument to be made for an immediate knight e4 and if queen c2 to play f5 this must be a variation somewhere uh yeah i believe it's possible but then white's idea is to play short castle 92 and kick that knight away right so somehow black doesn't have time to bring the knight from b8 to f6 and i believe that's why uh i see black delays that so castles castles are now black challenges in the sense with d5 again very logical um otherwise i guess white has just got a very easy game here uh indeed somehow you know the point of blacks playing b6 before castling was to be ready to meet bishop g5 with h6 bishop h4 and then g5 and actually that is why i don't like so much the move e3 because somehow you take away from yourself this opportunity of developing the bishop there and i can make an argument that white could have waited a bit for black to castle and then develop the bishop to g5 but i guess nino has got another approach here yeah and as you said her approach is very fashionable because after castles castles and now d5 uh nino takes takes and just puts the knight on e5 you know a nice outpost and when that knight is challenged plays the move f4 which is you know when i was growing up they always used to play i'll show you what they always used to play against me they used to play this one where they used to go here and then they're four and then i would play something like this they would put the knight on f3 we would both castle i would go here and then and then they would put the knight on e5 and then they would swing the rook round on me and i could never get rid of that knight because my knight here and i'd inevitably get checkmate it reminds me a bit of that this position but you know actually i believe eric has already uh played an imprecise move because i know that against this plan with f4 black's knight should not develop in any case to d7 oh right okay the best is to swing that bishop back bishop d6 and then try to make c5 and knight c6 work in order to put some pressure on the d4 pawn well with the knight on d7 the problem is that the knight will be struggling to find a good route you know like it's the superfluous piece so both knights are struggling for finding squares and yeah i believe it is a bit a bit imprecise right black might get under a very serious attack here yeah and after c5 it's it's nino's move what do you think she's contemplating is she is she thinking already about the quick rook lift or is she thinking about some move some tricky move like i don't knight here to come into d6 and then try and embarrass this bishop or no knight b5 c takes d4 probably so what what is what is the i don't see a refutation of playing like this there i believe the ideas with queen f3 and queen h3 are a bit more common than bringing the rook towards the same square but i'm not sure if it works right here because maybe black can take on c3 and then play knight to e4 that might be an issue and maybe that is the argument eric's making that the bishop on b4 wants to take on c3 but it also has a downside that white's center will be very solid in that case right i i believe we'll have to to see what what is nino's idea here and i see somebody asking in the chat if we read it yes we are keeping indeed an eye on it so if you have any questions we will be happy to to answer them we do we're going to keep an eye on the youtube chat especially so if you are checking if you are wanting to get in touch please do check in with youtube chat yeah it's going to be an interesting oh we do have a move by nino she does play bishop d2 which is of course a very natural move she wants to take on c3 with the bishop right possibly yeah because if black takes takes and then tries to come in here my guess is that she can think about taking taking and now at least this diagonal is a bit more open i don't know exactly how she would play here it's not completely clear to me yeah because taking on c5 is not an option as black can trade the knight and then the queens will go off the board right yeah something like this and well even this might be slightly better for white but you're never really gonna put huge pressure on black here so i wonder what nino intends to do after takes takes 94 right maybe she wants to go just to ignore that and to go for some queen of three can she do that or will black just play some knight d2f6 yeah that move it looks a little bit strange to me somehow uh queen 2f3 doesn't doesn't feel quite right what would be the other ideas white could try i mean she could take take take take take here queen d1 rook d1 bc5 and rook d7 is that an idea well but then i could play even bishop c6 yeah it's it's probably fine bishop c6 and now if i go rook d6 you go bishop b5 i guess and rook c7 you're just coming here and i guess i just don't have enough here as white yeah no not convinced yeah why should look for some attacking chances but uh that's not gonna be easy to to produce and uh i think we hurried a bit with the move bc2 because it's still not on the board and she played indeed queen of three what happened there sorry i must have misclicked and thought she played it okay well ignore everything we just said because that just didn't happen she played the move queen of three queen 2f3 that makes a lot more sense now i guess the point is that if you take take and put the knight on e4 i can play queen h3 now and you can't move the knight because the h7 pawn it is mate and i'm threatening this knight you can come around here though but then i might start having ideas with but g4 is it really working i think we don't have time for that yeah and it seems so well it's interesting bishop to b2 for example threatening this knight can you can you just play knight to a4 and get away with it no i don't believe that no okay i don't know some bishop bishop a3 let's say you are suddenly really pinned yeah i'm pinned and my my pieces are a little bit it's not it's not the most pleasant of positions let's say it's gonna be messy yeah it's gonna be messy for sure so queen f3 so yeah i kind of expect something like this in 94 and we'll see what we'll see what nina has planned she must have uh something up her sleeve hopefully right okay let's go to uh another game and let's just go to mamadzada against oh and this is a karakan the one which we discussed yesterday with knight to f6 exactly we discussed this so it's a karakan main line uh knight c3 d4 94 knight f6 i think it's called the bronchene actually takes takes c3 bishop d6 bishop d3 castles and queens too and this is what i was mentioning yesterday is that white delays the development of this knight so that after rookie a check you can block with the move 92 and here chrissa plays what looks like a crazy move but is the main move in this position which is to play h5 the pawn is in no danger here it can sometimes go to h4 and actually cut the mobility of this knight uh this is just one check and not very much more end it so white plays bishop b3 and the point is that after 97 you can cast on the queen side and one of black's major ideas in this system is to play knight f8 so even though kings are castled on the opposite side of the board black has got a really really solid defensive structure on the uh on the uh on the king side it's very difficult to break this down actually it looks dangerous but the more you look at this position the more you realize it's not easy yeah and uh just look landro hasn't spent a minute he's still on one hour 30 minutes and gunai has one hour 15 minutes it means that probably landro is still in his preparation especially since he has just played the move knight g6 uh which is uh yeah so let's get well let's get there so uh mama zada tries to leverage her queen she's got a poor majority on on the queen side with c4 taking some squares king b1 is very natural rook c8 now by leandro um so the idea of this move is sometimes black is actually preparing the move b5 in this position let's just say for example white played a move like h3 is that sometimes the move b5 comes and if i take take the point is i don't lose a pawn because i gain an attack on the queen and suddenly i have access to a2 and if you go c5 i'm very happy with black because i move the bishop i'm not sure which square is best let let's just say uh let's just say e7 for the time being and now the d5 square has been given up and sometimes i probably actually allow knight f4 here probably i should go back here something like this and suddenly ideas of queen d5 come or occupying that that square somehow and it looks like a black's attack on the queen side might become faster than white's one precisely precisely yeah so that is uh the reason for rook c8 instead the move uh pawn to a3 was played by mamadzada and nine g6 this is the move uh that you were talking about here right and it was played like i was saying in just six seconds so it might be must be must be preparation right definitely now the point is that after bishop g6 f takes queen takes black can take on c4 and suddenly white is in big trouble yeah absolutely yeah this even though wait what about taking on h5 can i do that it looks a bit strange because white's light squares are very weak after after giving up that that bishop but after all it's a pawn up right absolutely it is a pawn up i don't see i don't see a reason why you can't play like that maybe it is not bishop takes c4 the idea could that be the case it that that when i first looked at this position i thought maybe that's can you play something like queen a5 wow queen a5 now that's a very interesting suggestion threatening bishop f5 check oops and actually this looks very dangerous that's a nice move because you got it you can't even move the king well firstly threatens bishop f5 check now you can take on c4 number one because the h5 pawn is now protected by the queen exactly and on top of that the move bishop takes a3 is also on tap suddenly and if you're not careful here with white you can get mated so i really love this and i think kunai is just obviously far too strong to just fall for for something like that so i wonder maybe this is exploiting this 96 the down sides of the move a3 because perhaps you would love to play a move like b3 in this position over protecting the pawn on c4 but now the pawn on a3 will be hanging exactly yeah a3 might be i i don't know what a3 was actually is the move was it just a bit it was it a bit too hasty is it the main line oh there's there's uh there's an issue here at the board what's what's going on here oh there's the arbiter happening there i have absolutely no idea what's going on there oh i think it is connected to something next to the window i guess oh the window okay so there's a bit of a draft coming in probably or a bit of air a bit much light yeah even though it's quite gloomy here these days and rainy so not sure what's going on but we'll find out and and inform on that a bit later all right let's go to the next game so back against Joe Gallagher and we saw something very similar already in this tournament with uh we once again had a bishop b5 check Sicilian bishop to d7 takes takes and c4 it was Marcel Efroinsky who played this against Eric Rosen knight of 693 g6 and getting this beautiful maroxi bind as it's called in the middle of the board very very solid setup one that is particularly in my experience very difficult for black to play against and Marie plays the more classical way with f3 Marcel played with h3 but f3 is very good protecting the center allowing the bishop to come to e3 and playing like so queen to d3 rook fc8 b3 we're in a theoretical position white has established her two big pawn chains for black the idea is that you want to be able to if you can organize some kind of break either b5 or d5 if you're unable to do that it's very simply just a little bit better for white right and in fact Joe has played b5 wow immediately immediately for this pawn sacrifice is it is it working i know it's a standard move but what is happening there if i just take the pawn well if you take the pawn that's the big question what does Joe want here hmm should be a takes b5 right well you might throw in knight takes d4 but after knight takes d4 bishop takes d4 and now i was thinking that maybe he wants to place the knight on b4 rather than on just trading it because then it might support the rook coming to c2 if the d4 knight goes away so well so what do you want to do here let's say knight before immediately okay knight before queen to d2 i guess queen to d2 okay and now should i take on b5 or will you just take back with the c knight yeah like i'd take with the c knight a c knight e5 sorry knight take knight c5 but the knight on b4 oh sorry i'm sorry you're right you're right yeah i can just take here i have some weird tactics here no it's it's probably not very good it's probably not very good i'm a bit shocked yeah it's this pawn sacrifice i've never seen it yeah i mean i've never seen it here i i i just thought that this this was impossible so c takes b5 let's have a look so c takes b5 okay um usually this idea should be connected with something on the dark long diagonal but the knight from f6 cannot really jump anywhere so what okay maybe just take on b5 and then d5 okay so eight takes so you're assuming so i take here and now d5 trying somehow to open up this long diagonal knight before now now knight before and then knight f takes d5 somehow yeah that could work that could work even this i have no idea knight takes if you take here what can i do here maybe actually maybe this is a problem oh i've got knight f6 check excuse me i'm blundering my queen yes you can't do that if you take here i can just take and if you take take and two pieces crushing here for white i think uh what about knight takes d5 and knight takes d5 and if i go rook ad1 this might simplify actually actually yeah this is gonna you can take take take take take yeah and this is likely to just be equal yeah because you can't easily get down here because i've got also this stuff so probably i can play this move and the point is this will actually lose well maybe not even lose but um probably just to illustrate i mean this is probably just a draw all right with a repetition yeah and actually marie has just taken she has just taken yeah so we're about to find out what had Joe in mind knight e5 well there's your answer hmm so he attacks the queen the queen has to basically go to d2 and what now once again if he takes on b5 and can take knight d2 b5 and then still maybe the d5 i guess i don't see any other follow-up no me neither but after d5 you'll have to be sure oh okay after f4 maybe you have knight to g4 wow what what an interesting and that's it it's on the board look at this this is home cooking by joe gallagher grandmaster in it once years ago uh and knight c6 and marie not surprised in the slightest did she offer a draw yeah she did we saw that on the camera wow really she offered the draw there i missed that oh and we've got a draw and that's that well i don't maybe this is just some line that they've both checked let's have a look at what's going on here we do have a draw knight c6 so what's going on so you're threatening the knight so knight takes knight pawn takes queen takes and now if i take on d5 why is this a draw takes takes and maybe now you can just come in with a move like queen c2 and the claim is that black is too active yes white has got an extra pawn but but black is just too active wow but i am so surprised yeah i'm just surprised as well i am i am surprised that is uh it looks like both players were really well prepared today and perhaps marie wanted uh uh to surprise her opponent with the choice of the bishop five chuck line but joe was really well prepared and i have to say that i will need to study this line for me too if if this works for black and this is immediately equalizing this then this is really good news for the black side of this opening because it was a very straightforward way of playing and if this just equalizes then well then you should be very happy entering this basically so um great stuff and okay both of them have got a quick day at the office these things happen sometimes i believe this is a good result for the man's team because well having black and being slightly uh worse rated a draw should be should be good right i think joe won't be too unhappy with the draw here today he's got black he's not been feeling great he had a tough game yesterday today he's got let's call it a semi rest day and tomorrow he'll have white and he can bounce back so a decent result for the boys i would say yeah and let's move on to the next game the one which we thought would be the most solid one right between pia crumbling and ravi uh haria yeah and it is extremely solid we've got knight of three knight of six and a queen's gambit decline regos in variation i must say that i know nothing about that that's all right neither do i so we're in the same boat queen a4 check it's very solid this move the idea of giving the check is to attack the bishop and provoke the knight to come out to c6 because the knight often isn't that well suited to being on c6 in the queen's pawn openings a lot of the time it likes to come here or black likes to strike in the center with c5 and only then the knight comes out to c6 but to block the c-pawn as russian scoreboys would say is a blunder but white provokes it here with move queen a4 and the justification here however is that white has spent a whole move putting the queen out there in order to do that so black can justify putting the knight there because the queen isn't ideally placed there and in fact after e3 castles white immediately removes the queen because the queen is no longer of any use over there b6 slightly unusual yeah normally black tends to take uh here and after bishop takes a lot of the time black actually removes this bishop here to try and e5 yeah but i believe these positions are considered to be slightly better for white precisely because of that knight placed on c6 in front of of its own pawn yeah exactly and that's basically well the next moves are fairly standard the bishop came here blocking the pin bishop here white now exchanged a pair of pawns and put the bishop on d3 controlling the square rook a8 and pier simply castled and as you said we have one of these positions in this position here i expect to move like bishop f8 by ravi just threatening knight to b4 hitting here what after what happens after a3 yeah and after e3 to try and reorganize because the knight is not that well suited to this position yeah and you see that because the knight is on c6 it somehow um stays in front of the bishop on b7 so black cannot really play 94 a really standard move which uh which he usually likes to resort to so what would be the best route here for black's knight should it go to e7 and then to g6 or do we have uh another possibilities um i believe that knight e7 could be a move right yeah 97 is a move or i was thinking can you ever play the move 94 here it's connected with some tactics because now after knight takes d takes bishop takes but wait there is a point there's a check yeah it doesn't quite work i wanted to try and make knight takes d4 work but unfortunately unfortunately the move bishop takes h7 check ends that dream for for black um yeah i i don't think here any of the tactics really should work so probably a slower approach should be the one uh black the knight on e7 also doesn't make a very strong impression i mean where is it gonna go to g6 it doesn't look too good there i thought maybe black could think about knight a5 here at least he's got some squares to play around with now but what about what about b3 then because c5 will be difficult a difficult move to or won't it be um it's yeah it might still be quite difficult to get in it it depends but wait there is also knight to b5 isn't it in this position yeah with a sort of a double attack on c7 and on a5 and how do you do against it because you really don't want to allow white to take on a5 and ruin black's pawn structure on the queen side can you think about knight c4 here uh-huh so you sacrifice a pawn okay let's see what happens if i take it okay okay queen takes c4 it is just literally a pure pawn sacrifice i've got no solid follow up here whatsoever it's just either yeah i mean it's just uh it's just it's just a sacrifice and it's probably not very good and meanwhile ravi has played something ravi did play something he played a6 that's also a very uh a very very decent move because it avoids a lot of the lines that we've just looked at actually so uh this makes total sense right and now i believe that white's plan might be to somehow increase the pressure over the c file with let's say rook a2c1 just to make it more difficult for black to reroute the knight from c6 and as we were thinking i believe it's going to be a very complex strategical battle here yeah it is and ravi's still with a few problems to solve but he might now do what they do which is to drop the bishop back now that knight b5 is no longer a problem now knight b4 is in the air so white invests a tempo and now a move like knight to e7 or perhaps dare i say it knight to b8 here to reroute the knight to d7 i don't like it but perhaps there's nothing wrong with it just you know going back to the initial square looks looks a bit ugly but perhaps it's doing the trick maybe it's okay maybe you're just in time to do that and if you are in time then this knight can land on e4 and black can get actually quite promising positions the queen can come to f6 the queen can come to h6 you can build up some initiative here i've had a few games in similar positions with black so it's it's quite interesting so i wonder if that's what ravi wants to wants to do let's go for a very very quick break we are going to have one of the players join us after the break very quickly we've still got nine games ongoing wonder or so far don't go anywhere we'll be right back everybody welcome back we are live round three of the battle of the sexes jib chess tournament 2022 and we are joined by the one and only grandmaster joe gallagher joe the first to finish now you don't often say that with your games because you're not the fastest player in the world are you no i'm pretty slow usually i usually save all my quick movements for an hour one minute left on the clock that's right and you finish quickly today you are black against marie obviously maria very very decent player yeah um and i thought we would quickly go over the game because it was a very interesting game and when i was with arena we hadn't seen your your idea uh we'll get there in a moment um and if it's a good one then it's potentially very important for this whole line so well i hope it i mean i don't know much about it i only looked at it for 10 minutes and i saw a lot of good players played it and right it was that she could play various different different lines so i just thought okay if she does this i'll give us a go and work it out i mean like i saw the computer was then it was okay for black okay and you know carlson vashayla grav and people have played it you know so right they've been playing it recently i'm probably in rapid or blitz i don't know anymore i mean it's all you know computer bases are a mess so yeah i mean i spent a lot of time i didn't even know what my second move was going to be because i saw she played like she played she played like c3 against if night f3 e6 she played c3 against night c6 she played bishop b5 so i just you know my typical prep i can't even decide what my move's going to be so i'm just looking at them all and then like with about half an hour to go i decided okay i'm going to go d6 okay and she went bishop b5 check all right now of course i play all three moves here right so i eventually settled on bishop d7 i mean night d7 is what i recommended when i wrote my book beating the anti-secidivist it's more aggressive and um but they found quite reasonable ways to play against it she's pretty experienced here she's been playing this for 15 years bishop b5 check so i played the solid main line bishop takes queen takes and she played c4 which is okay the one of the two main lines so night f6 this is this sort of g6 yep and um takes takes bishop g7 now she played she's played with um she beat topolov a couple of months ago oh really okay in this variation in this variation so she played with um h3 maybe castles and h3 which is maybe yeah or something like this anyway she won against topolov there's a forced draw i think in that line which she probably allowed topolov to do but he didn't do it obviously and she beat him quite quickly okay but maybe it was a rapid game in capdags but anyway it's still a good result so she didn't go for that she played f3 and i this move all just like quite important to avoid a forced draw a few years ago they were um struggling with white because if they castle yeah castle yeah and now f3 black has a forced draw with rook c8 and after b3 d5 right so there's lots and lots of games in this line so you after e takes d5 knight takes d5 knight takes d5 e6 and bishop h6 is the best try right and then you just take on d5 and this position is just a draw right i mean this is yeah well it's well known i mean there's been like 50 games now right so they have to try and avoid this line which means they play with f3 and bishop e3 first right which is what she did yeah but now the problem is in this line there's a problem with black playing e6 and d5 it's the other way to equalize which is why they didn't play this move order i see okay so um so now if you start now it's just right right position yeah knight c6 so knight c6 yeah castles and now a6 and now in the old days they used to play a4 but then i think there's something with e6 and rook d8 and d5 seems very very equal i mean that's sort of why they avoided this line and went to the other move order before they discovered this draw right of course this is why you play knight f6 on move five and not knight c6 because you have this rook c8 and the old days they used to just start with knight c6 right and they just didn't know the difference right they didn't know the difference and then white could manage to get an edge but anyway so in the game what happened now oh yes you played queen d3 so the main lines are queen are a4 after a4 i think you can just as i said just go e6 they also played queen e2 yeah i can't i couldn't remember something there's something to do with i get some b5 maybe you've got some knight g4 here no i don't mean i know you can i couldn't i i did look at it but as i said i only looked at each line like five ten minutes and actually four doesn't work okay there's something quite reasonable against queen e2 i mean i can't remember ever queen d3 was like the main line recently and then rook to c8 this is like this line it's very sharp very complicated and i managed to look at it for about 15 minutes before the game and i just saw it was being played by quite a lot of top players recently probably in rapid online games i didn't even check that i was in a bit of a rush and it looked fun it looked like i just thought okay computer says it's not too bad it's up my street really i'm not really looking to play for a draw i'm looking to you know and so i thought i'll just do it and well you know i'll have to work things out so after b3 b5 is the point yeah that's the whole point she must take otherwise it's just nothing you know 95 taking the queen which must go back to d2 otherwise the knight on c3 hangs and now d5 and this is basically as far as i got in your breath right i just thought i mean i didn't have time i wasn't sure what i was going to play i just got as far as this and saw lots of good players playing this position and having some fun you know and i saw well i saw there were two main moves but i didn't actually go over the games i saw night c6 always ended in a draw right and she played night six six and offered me a draw right i thought oh i was a bit taken aback and i just thought it'd be a bit rude to decline with black so in the old days i would just said no but nowadays i just think i can't really decline i mean you know i think after night c6 takes pawn takes rook takes i imagine and then probably knight d5 knight d5 ed rook d6 rook d1 and now some maybe rook d8 maybe another move i don't know something like this is probably looks like it's going to all liquidate down isn't it i mean i saw yeah i i know maybe i did actually see the move yeah i saw this position on the computer it said bishop f6 was the best move i didn't go everywhere no after after instead of rook d8 ah bishop f6 he just said i just saw it was saying bishop f6 equal there's other moves as well or queen b7 probably wants to defend e7 and so can we lose the rook oh maybe it wasn't this position there can't be this position or maybe it was queen b7 or something or i can't remember exactly i'm you know that basically feels like you just put all the boys on yeah it was just saying equal right and she so i assumed she knows her stuff and she just did it and off of the draw i mean the main line must be um instead of knight c6 right most of the people were taking on playing um knight takes d5 knight d5 ed and then a takes b and then they were playing something like rook ad1 and now i saw this i didn't actually look at the games but i saw there was queen d5 and b4 and b4 was played like in six games and queen d5 in three games right and i just saw the computer was saying roughly level you know i guess the idea is oh no that doesn't actually b4 like just it's quite a good positional move isn't it there's no rush to take maybe maybe you put in a rook on c3 in some lines and there's you know it's activity so if queen b4 rook a2 it's probably just equal you're gonna you know black is active but i don't i don't you know the separate of the board i suddenly saw all these other lines you know that she can do but right you know but she offered the drawing she suddenly offered me a draw and i thought okay i've looked at this for five minutes this is her main line i mean against d4 i mean you know against one of the main lines against d4 so she should know something about it yeah absolutely i mean but no maybe she's not working too hard either these days i don't know i don't really know i don't know i mean she's a mum now isn't she she's a mum she's got her own chess school yeah it's like i mean she was a very good player when she was younger i mean i think she was like 25 20 30 when she was like 20 yeah so she's obviously not quite as um you know maybe i mean she's a mother as you said you know probably got other priorities in life at the moment absolutely now joe let's very quickly talk before i let you go um the match situation let's say not ideal at the moment you're down six points yeah today you've got black in every game trying to half day away in i think there might be that strategy 79 games to go they should probably know maybe that was the point you know today's a draw for from murray just draw their way to success to the to the extra but i think the match is yeah it's pretty grim really i think you need a bounce back day is it going to be today or is it going to be another day i have no idea i mean i don't know all my team that well to be honest i mean i think we're here as cannon fodder for the girls i think you know it might be true i mean i probably thought you know i'm old and unprofessional that's probably you know i'll be a good candidate but i think once i play a few games i usually i think you'll warm up yeah i think you'll warm up in the middle of my real surprise and yeah i agree a latter half of the tournament yeah in the latter half yeah hopefully it's not too late by then because today well the games are all very interesting i won't go over them with you but um you can have a little look have a little wander around yeah all right thanks very much Joe so there you go ladies and gentlemen a bit of uh that is grandmaster preparation at its finest all right it's not Plaguevsky standard is it it's not Plaguevsky standard five minutes before the game let's have a look at the playing area as we speak let's see the people in in action thank you thanks Joe and meanwhile we will get Irina back into the chair um nine games still in progress nice explanation there by Joe so that line is foolproof it seems um we didn't finish actually going through all the games Irina so should we carry on with our look through and go to uh Efronsky's game against yeah it is a very interesting Sicilian as i see here yeah um yeah and Jillian playing uh effectively a uh a night off sorry a Khan no do you call it the Khan because you know in russian we always call it like a poulsen a poulsen right exactly like a poulsen or a Khan it's it gets uh i think the Khan is the name in western europe for it it could be yeah right but it is slightly unusual the blacks playing very fast with b5 and bishop b7 i think it is supposed to be slightly risky but marcel chose herself an unusual reply to this bishop b7 i believe g3 is not a standard very unusual yeah because you're opening up the diagonal uh you for half a move you're a bit uh misplaced but maybe there's no way to take advantage of it simply you know uh would she play uh what would she play after d5 just wondering could black just try something like that and then bishop takes d5 yeah but i can take take queen f3 at the very least here so it's uh it's not the way for black to even even rug g1 here might be a serious idea with bishop g2 yeah and that's exactly what i was saying that b5 bishop b7 was an unusual way to or not such a popular way to well after knight c3 b5 the main move here is to go bishop d3 with white and then black plays the move the old line at least was to play queen b6 and then white had a choice of where to put this knight exactly i actually had myself this position a few times with the white pieces and uh yeah this would be the typical way uh the game could develop but let's see what was the idea behind g3 yeah so it was it was a3 stopping b4 and then after bishop b7 to go g3 so muscle clearly trying to get a uh a position where she can fianceto the bishop so probably she plays a lot of these fianceto type positions against the nidor for against the khan she's probably one of these you know she likes these particular structures basically so g3 queen to c7 is very natural okay now some natural moves bishop g2 knight f6 and castles all fairly standard d6 m rook e1 also fairly standard bishop e7 and now we see marcel playing a4 which is very very interesting and very thematic white has actually played a3 and a4 which you would think is not that great but i believe she's got a very dangerous idea in that after b4 which is the first move you try and make work i believe she probably no way to play the move no no you think this is too too too what if i just take the knight so takes takes and castle yeah i wanted to try and make this work with knight f5 i'm not sure it does but i i thought i thought i had to give it a look at least and if rook to e8 let me see how i want to do this some bishop g4 or bishop f4 or bishop g5 let's say and i wasn't completely sure uh if this was working it probably doesn't work but you gotta you gotta look at these things yeah perhaps queen queen d8 is it working or is it too passive queen d8 no that loses takes takes bishop f6 and queen g4 and the mate is coming all right probably probably i mean king f8 you run but you you probably don't run for too long for example for our life here queen g7 well maybe i would even play something saucy like bishop h3 just to start eyeing this square so that fritz an interesting idea yeah just to illustrate if black does nothing you can do this and now you can actually play knight takes d6 check and mate on g8 all of these kind of patterns i mean i'm not sure of course the other idea is just to go knight a2 here attacking the pawn and after a5 um some c3 yeah that's that's that's the other main idea or b5 square is very weak or maybe knight b5 yeah exactly i i guess that's the idea i guess that knight d5 here doesn't actually work but you gotta look at these things right okay and that's why i guess uh jillian uh yeah he took took on a4 now she took back with the rook right yeah that makes sense to take back with the rook total sense castles and queen e2 and of course the problem we're playing like this with black is you now leave yourself a very weak pawn here on on a6 so queen to e2 okay the rook came to uh came to c8 also very natural and now very nice move here by marcel dropping the knight back to b3 looking at playing the move knight a5 and winning this bishop so if you're a bit careless here i think like for example a move like 97 i think you can just play knight a5 and if you lose this bishop with black your position gets very difficult you can attack the rook but it's only one move i can come back uh yeah and then there will be definitely some problems over the light long diagonal yeah exactly this a6 pawn is less protected as well so uh so that's why jillian played nice e6 specifically to stop knight a5 and now it's white to play and she's got uh i think a very pleasant version of a Sicilian here but what would be the idea for white here because normally you start something with f4 but it's not i think it's not working so well here does yeah no i it doesn't feel right i mean here is what i would probably just play bishop e3 just to start knight g4 doesn't exist because the queen is there i can then double on the a file in some positions i can then try knight a5 anyways um and just claim that it's more difficult to move here as black hmm right it definitely seems so maybe black should play a5 himself here but then some knight b5s might be in the air gets all very unclear gets very messy but you tend to believe that white is slightly better here basically right i agree and he actually played knight to d7 oh she went bishop f4 bishop f4 is a slightly odd move to my eyes uh yeah i'm not sure i like that move because after knight d7 the knight comes to e5 or okay probably not b6 e5 probably should be should be the place for it and i'm not sure why the bishop is better on f4 than it would be on e3 yeah i i i don't know and it it feels a bit random to me um why the bishop isn't on why why bishop e3 wasn't played uh very very strange okay well we have bishop f4 on the board in 97 and it's over to Marcel and we have a very complex game well let's leave it to the players to to prove what was wrong and what was right and let's move on to the next game which is olgagiri i guess versus balash chonka we haven't checked this one yeah the game started out as a queens gambit accepted one of the old main lines very classical line here and chonka decides to go for a quick a6 b5 and bishop here rather than the main line which is to attack with c5 immediately so a slight sideline here by chonka bishop d3 bishop b7 and now you get to play a4 b4 queen e2 and finally c5 so we get to a more normal um position by the way if you're asking why a4 why would why go a4 because a bit like the other game we've seen you want to provoke black to play b4 because first it disconnects the pawns secondly it also gives up control of the c4 square which is so often used for a knight um also the knight can sometimes sit on b3 right all together somehow the light complex of the squares are somehow weakened for black right exactly so if black doesn't find a way to play c5 quickly then the pawn on c7 might get in trouble and that's precisely why i believe balash played c5 immediately yes exactly so c5 the rook now sits opposite the queen always a good idea knight to d7 blocking and now knight to d2 getting her pieces out bishop to e7 and as we this was saying before now this c4 square is available black castles and e4 by olga gear i like this move very much she's expanding in the center she's perhaps looking to kick this knight away and this bishop can join the party so i like e4 takes and she simply takes back and after knight c5 which looks like a uh a particularly uh dangerous move because you're uncovering this file white now just goes bishop c2 now there's really some threats down here balash plays queen c7 and e5 i love this move by olga gearia it's a very double edged move it's a very double edged move but i love it because you kick the knight away now suddenly you've got clear pastures to the king side on the flip side of course what you do by playing that is you allow this bishop to be opened so it's not completely clear card and now after the move knight to d5 we've reached this position where olga decides to play the move queen g4 oh look at these knights yeah i'm not sure the knight on c4 feels very well because suddenly it has become a tactical weakness it's not protected by any of white's pieces and if black would find some way to go away with the knight from c5 it might become a problem even though queen g4 has a very straightforward idea to just play bishop to h6 which would win an exchange because black would be forced to play g6 and then the rook on f8 is hanging yeah so balash very unstannily played rook fc8 putting additional pressure indirect pressure on c4 and olga did just develop with bishop h6 and now of course we expect the move either bishop f8 or pawn to g6 because now there is no um rook on f8 but i am a bit i think actually g6 is forced because after bishop f8 you've got knight d6 oh that's uh that's an important feature yes and you cannot really take it because the bishop must protect g7 and suddenly black is in big danger here yeah so you're right probably the move g6 will be played and now white has got lots of different ideas yeah it's very interesting do we do something about the knight from c4 because well if it will go away then the point on e5 will be hanging so we cannot really allow that that means that we need somehow to consolidate that knight but we cannot really play b3 because then knight c3 will be an issue but maybe we can and after knight c3 can we just sidestep with rookie one because now i've got a very clear plan with white i want to run my pawn to h5 take and then sacrifice yeah but here i was worried about rook to d8 okay h4 now can i find some tactics here you want to go 94 maybe yeah i was hoping for something like that let's try that one out but maybe i can just take oh now rook take sorry yeah yeah sorry sorry knight to e4 okay i can play rook to d1 let's say i could uh could i go for knight c3 back possibly possibly i mean this this i mean but here for example i would be quite tempted just to to go to get going h5 if you take on d1 i just don't think about it and i take it wait then i've got it so instead of knight free to e4 what if we play bishop to e4 trying to trade these bishops with the same idea that after bishop takes we take on d4 maybe this is better trying to somehow make your attack on the king side less efficient yeah that's a very very logical but now yeah i don't see a way for white to force through again that was you know playing b3 you're right i mean in in general of course you don't want to play b3 because you give up the c3 square so the question is what else would you do what about just the move rook to c1 because now if you take here i can take and i protect the knight and i might be threatening just to come here or just again very quickly go h4 h5 it feels to me like black is very close to being in trouble but i know for sure this is the sort of position where if you put it on the computer it says black is fine 0.00 no yeah there's some defensive mechanisms here right okay well we'll come back to it shall we yeah definitely okay let's go to Irene onto yeah to the only player with two out of two so far yeah Irene so i'll let you flick through that one let's see what we've got going on here okay so it was a real oppas actually a berlin knight f6 short castle knight takes e4 d4 now one of the main lines not going for the end game here d takes e5 knight b5 a4 knight bd4 right so this is the the famous well potentially drawing uh variation exactly because here we've seen a lot of games after 94 queen d4 d6 or d5 let's say d6 e takes queen d6 queen e4 check queen e6 queen d4 oh sorry queen d4 and after queen d6 a draw right but hussain avoided it he played d5 and now after c3 bishop to e7 white played f4 it seems like a very unusual position for for a berlin right it is yeah it is i believe i've never seen this one before and hussain played immediately f6 trying to challenge white's central pawn interesting also makes i mean it's interesting i again i i don't know this variation like you i've got absolutely no idea but what about e takes f6 because it it looks very natural black has to take back let's say knight c6 b takes rookie one check what would black have played here because bishop e7 would run into trouble after queen e2 and now there are big problems over the e file black cannot castle and if not black has to play king of seven then it's it's really strange you don't see often the king running away like that on the 13th move yeah but at the same time it makes a lot of sense right because here for example this check does nothing you can just block with g6 and then put the bishop on f5 and you're doing all right so you have to play something like bishop e3 and now black can castle by hand via the move rookie eight and now if you give the check i can just slide back and the position is probably fine for black all right so a very original way i would say i've handling the anti-berlin or absolutely uh yeah but uh i really chose bishop e3 instead of taking on f6 now castle knight takes c6 b takes a knight to d2 bringing the knight towards a three i guess f takes f takes bishop of five knight b3 queen to e8 was played very very natural way for black right 94 and now queen g6 was played i believe right and this is the position we've got on the board right now how do we assess it i must say that i'm not a fan of it for white oh really okay i think it's probably balanced uh i don't like that pononi five it seems uh a little bit weak so for example if you take on f5 now i can take back and if you take again queen takes a five the pawn is already hanging and you cannot really play a move like bishop d4 because c5 is coming and i'm just winning the pawn on e5 so what should white do otherwise because if you allow me then i would love to play bishop e4 and start creating threats against white king i think arene has mishandled this position could be i really don't like that pononi five i'm a bit worried and we see that she's got her head in the hands yeah and uh yeah very well played by hussain today yeah so far i mean it looks as though uh hussain has played pretty decently i mean he lost yesterday to uh gensai in a in a difficult game but it feels as though there should be a way for arene to not be doing too badly here but you're right i can't i can't see that way just at the moment so some practical issues there for arene let's continue and our last game of the day that we haven't checked into yet yvanga who's against abinah brunello we were speaking before the round arena and we were saying how this was basically a really important game for sabino especially because he's had a terrible start lost the first should have lost yesterday uh he could have won as well he could have won as well he had some winning chances until he blundered terribly and if we see it correctly uh his clock shows 34 minutes that means that he's taken a lot of time to get to this position yes um well go through it very very very very quickly it was a slav uh miran with a very quiet variation so both sides getting their pieces out and an exchange of bishops here and sabino apparently settling for a very very quiet game and now night h4 by yvanka i guess the first interesting move no moves before then we're actually interesting but exactly somehow white is taking advantage of the fact that black's queen is still on a3 so you cannot really play c5 because the queen will will get trapped there right so black will have to spend some time on moving the queen back at some point and meanwhile white might try some e4 i don't know well she didn't she didn't she didn't go for e4 she went for knight e2 this move what does she want to do here i'm a bit puzzled by this move to be honest because i believed that e4 was the typical plan somehow trying to play against black's passive and closed bishop on b7 but perhaps it was not working right away otherwise she would have played it i guess what would happen after e4 just take on e4 yeah knight takes e4 and now if you take i might capture back with the bishop and the pawn on c6 is hanging yeah but it's one of those where if you take i take take and well i feel as though black should never be worse here for example um let's say i take well for a start rook c8 already you already you have to analyze because you might you might be pinned d5 knight takes d5 might exist all right and if not that then at the very least their ideas like takes takes for start rook takes d4 might be okay i gotta be a little bit careful because i'm a bit worried about check but now i've actually got queen f8 now that i see it out the corner of my eye yeah so perhaps knight f5 first knight f5 yeah and a little bit of initiative yeah yeah yeah yeah this is this is annoying so you're right so i mean here i i thought maybe i could go queen b4 hitting the rook and the pawn that's a nice move but you can go knight f3 perhaps things are getting a bit out of hand yeah rook takes d4 queen c8 check king h7 queen f5 check king back and now again i just lacking half a move here aren't i as as white probably unless for example no i i can't uh yeah it looks i mean there are all kinds of weird things in this position hey free wow yeah trying to distract the queen i put the queen here to cover this square oh this is a nice trick yeah and there is no good way of answering to that because after queen a5 you've got to be four exactly yeah so all kinds of stuff like that could could happen so yeah e4 is definitely conceptually critical but knight e2 was played by but if i could get this move feels really not right to me i have to say i'm not i'm not a fan of this move at all basically and look Sabina has just played knight to f8 yeah and knight to f8 also very natural move planning to come to e6 in a lot of variations and to to improve that knight so what is that knight from e2 doing where is it heading i have no idea is it g3 because knight f4 cannot really be played because of g5 right i think i'm doing fine over there you mean knight f4 g5 yeah i i i don't think you can allow allow this so where does it want to go to g3 but it feels like she's she's she wants to put the same knight on f5 but i don't get it i don't get the idea to be honest me neither very very strange yeah uh none of less i see that yovanka has a huge advantage on the clock yeah she does more than 30 minutes Sabina took a lot of time to get to this position he's Sabina he's obviously lacking a bit of confidence at the moment you know he's he's had a rough start and when you when you when you start to doubt yourself and play badly you you tend to double check exactly you double check you triple check and you can eat up a lot of time so it doesn't surprise me actually and yovanka is actually quite a fast player in general i mean having played yovanka many times in my life i can tell you she's she's not a slow player whatsoever so it's not so surprising to me um right perhaps this is what she was trying to achieve with the knight e2 maneuver actually to make sabino um spend even more time guessing what is the right plan no because when uh you are down to seconds you tend to blunder and that happened a lot during yesterday's um round and actually sabino himself blundered very badly and mr win and nearly lost that game he was saved only by by miracle i would say that's true yeah all right all right yeah let's let's keep an eye on that one and let's let's go back to one of the other games i'm gonna let you choose irina i don't know if you can see all the small screens there or something that looks interesting and i'm very curious about gunai's game against leandro okay uh because we've seen this move uh which you are suggesting uh in a bit different a bit of a different position but anyway uh this b5 with the idea that after c takes c takes would follow and then the rook would be opened yeah let's let's look at that in a moment i just want to point out this was the last time we left the position and i mentioned to you that yeah we we thought that this wouldn't work and here gunai spent 28 minutes on the move atree which is a long that is a long think uh in the opening so she plays atree she couldn't find something better and now h4 is very thematic trying to lock these pawns down it's not in every opening that you see this though where you move pawns in front of your king in order to stop white gaining space but it makes a lot of sense and after f4 threatening the move f5 she now replied f5 sorry he replied sorry f5 immediately which is look at that the bishop on e3 is again a tactical weakness i really like the concept of that and you know what i call a tactical weakness what a piece which is not protected enough time so if i have one more piece which is attacking it then it means it's a tactical weakness yep i agree i agree all right and uh what now well what now is uh she retreated the bishop back to c1 because it was unprotected and we saw this move b5 which is just a very very very typical move in the caracan in the main lines in these structures fighting for that d5 square fighting for the light squares and after c5 it's on leandro and the question is well the f5 pawn is never under attack right so let's say i move this bishop to again i'm this is where he's having a thing because all four retreat squares are actually it's not clear to me which is the best square i think bishop b7 might be quite interesting to bring it towards f6 yeah trying to put some extra pressure on the d4 pawn and then the knight might come to d5 or perhaps even the queen because then the matron a2 would be threatened who knows yeah i like bishop e7 bishop f6 then knight e7 to d5 i like that maneuver it seems to me like it is not the dream position for white in desperation no and also just uh well hold on bishop e7 runs into bishop takes f5 sorry you can't put the bishop on e7 um the whole point is you need to keep this file open so if i go bishop f8 now you can't take because talking of loose pieces this hangs so i think actually bishop e7 isn't the move uh bishop also this way is possible because you keep a bit of pressure on the weak f4 pawn so bishop b8 also makes actually a lot of sense here and it's one of those positions again i i i don't have a good feel for what's going on but i must say that let's see he put it he put it on c7 right that's the other way oh and look at that he has an extra half hour on the clock but i must say that guna is uh playing very well with low time on the clock so we saw it yesterday when she outplayed bilal in time trouble so she must not be underestimated but it looks like she will struggle a bit to find um some counterplay here where should be white playing i'm not sure really difficult position i have to say i don't love white's position um um i would take black here in a in an over the board game for sure i want to what if i try some rook a oh actually rook h2e1 is it a move yeah i was i was thinking actually with this rook but let's say rook h2e1 now you're threatening to take and if i move like queen to d5 i thought i had knight c3 exactly somehow and if i take you're running into a discovery with the move like bishop takes f5 right exactly so not queen to d5 and if i play the move knight to e7 could i try something like g4 that's exactly what i was thinking g4 and after takes i can now take here and suddenly i've i've opened up some lines against the king i actually really like it yeah maybe that should be the idea for white to play for maybe after queen d5 knight c3 can black consider trying to exchange queens with queen b3 does this work it might only if you're not running in some sort of d5 i could run into d5 here that's it's actually a very a very serious move isn't it takes and takes now the problem is that the b5 pawn will be hanging i like that move a lot yep so we can't play queen d5 i don't think that's possible yeah a very double double edged position and it is exactly the kind of tricky tactical position which gunai enjoys enjoys the most and i believe we will see a very exciting battle here yeah i agree all right um where should we move on to let's look at eric rosin's game playing black against nino batziashvili wow that has happened since the last time we've checked this position yeah we checked it around here queen to f3 now rook e8 and indeed the queen did come to h3 and eric went this route for defense with knight f8 nino attacked the rook bishop b5 rookie seven and bishop to d2 eric kicked and now the bishop found another way back into the game via c2 i have some bad news for our viewers oh what's happened i played this position a very similar one myself recently in slovenia and i got completely crushed with the black pieces my rook was exactly on e7 and i realized during the game that rookie eight wasn't a move to be played because the rook on e7 is struggling right and actually black is not having here enough counterplay and i'm afraid eric might be in big trouble really okay and we see also that he's uh down on the clock let's check what they played next rook yeah so roots are c8 and now a classy little move here by nino bishop to e1 yeah that's precisely why that rook is struggling on the e-file because now after bishop h4 that pin will become very very unpleasant yeah and eric tried to resolve it directly he took here took here e takes d4 and then the move knight to e4 by eric rosen um i guess the idea of this is if bishop h4 i think he wants to play the ugly looking but now logical move f6 and now actually things get a bit out of control because the c3 pawn is oh sorry i'm blundering c3 no i'm not but here for sure after f6 on the next move i can take on c3 and that's no good so this is the the position and actually nino has played a move the move rook to d1 and yeah can black play something like f6 here trying to get rid of that knight or is it or oh no i was thinking maybe some rook e4 might work but black is doing fine there probably or is bishop takes it for you mean oh sorry there it's a bishop on e1 yeah it's a bishop yeah maybe f6 is working then yeah yeah why is what's wrong with this move what's her idea because she played rook d1 so there must be an idea because f6 is maybe she wanted something like bishop takes e4 d takes and d5 um because then i mean before black played f6 because after bishop d5 rook d5 and the rook on c4 but it's black's move yeah indeed but i mean that probably that was her threat okay f6 is on the board so we're gonna find out what nino wants to do here yeah indeed well could we consider sacrificing that for sure we can consider sacrificing it for sure maybe some no but bishop h4 is dropping the pawn on c3 i think maybe what she's thinking no maybe not i originally i wanted to take take and play d5 but it doesn't work because i take on e5 and if i go here you have queen b6 check oh yeah that's an unpleasant intermediate move so what else maybe some bishop b3 instead of bishop takes e4 with the idea of taking ah but again why do i always confuse that bishop on e1 with the rook it's a bishop it's a bishop yeah i don't i don't know it's can it be that nino has misplayed these past few moves and she's just got a bit too comfortable thinking that she's uh that she's doing okay might be might be the case because it looked very promising for white and suddenly i don't see any way to continue the attack over black's king okay let's say that i go away with the knight knight where to g4 probably yeah let's say knight to g4 it looks so weird though to have all of your pieces like this you know yeah but for now black cannot really play a five because then i will be heading back to e5 i guess and while the knight is very nice over there but probably black can play something something different like maybe even rook e to c7 trying to put some extra pressure on the c3 pawn and now the knight on f8 actually is a good piece because it's protecting h7 so i can easily take on c3 on the next move if white doesn't protect that yes very yeah it's it's it's a strange one actually uh eric apparently according to the youtube chat minus 0.8 on stock fish and i can believe it it feels as though nino's knight and position isn't quite working yeah perhaps she was a bit superficial attacking uh black's king and now it looks like eric is doing absolutely fine and i see somebody asking in the chat if the players can receive gm norms in this tournament and i believe that they can must be able to yeah i mean there are grandmasters on both sides of the of the of the isle and 20 nations represented or 21 represented at this tournament so you've got the number of flags you've got the ratings you've got the elo average which is 2450 ish exactly yeah so actually that should be more than enough oh well of course all you need is uh so actually some points no i think that six and a half out of nine will get you a norm here even six out of nine will get you a norm possibly because if the elo average is 2450 to get a 2600 performance you need plus three 50 points per per plus 50 elo rating points performance per plus one i think so 150 points will be 2600 so i think six is close to a grandmaster norm and six and a half is definitely a grandmaster i see yeah so that means that for example iran already on two out of two i mean if she has a good day to day against hussein if she doesn't lose at least she still has great chances and there are a lot of players in this tournament that are only international masters on both sides for example uh uh you've got marcel and jillian you've got balash chonka uh olga gearia i believe is not a grandmaster also gunay gunay is uh is an international master she's i don't know if she's got any grandmaster norms but uh and you've anchor so plenty of international masters and 94 yeah 94 on the board yeah what about you lorenz do you have gem norms i do apparently um couple two gem norms uh need to get back to playing at some point but with uh with lots of things going on in my life i haven't really had the the opportunity to play again what about you i don't have any gem norms i wasn't even close to that unfortunately i think my best rating performances were around 25 50 25 60 so yeah i'm it's definitely my dream to become a gem that's actually what keeps me going that's really great well i i wish you all the luck with that it's not an easy journey i mean becoming a grandmaster is uh unless you're a super duper genius young talent who can just play chess eight hours a day and do nothing else it's it's hard it's hard and you know i find it's so shocking that this uh indian guys yeah have so many young gems it's unbelievable and the youngest one is only 12 years old yeah how could that be at 12 years old it's ridiculous i had like 2000 evil yeah exactly well they're just um they eat breathe and sleep chess they get up they do chess they have lunch they do chess they go to bed they do chess and they just do chess chess chess and they do it all the time and then if they're talented as well some of them can become a grandmaster it's it's truly uh truly amazing yeah well now i believe that the only challenge for eric will be to not to go into time trouble because we've seen quite a few promising positions for him in the previous rounds and he struggled to convert them exactly when going low on time and um he will have to be careful about that well it's not a winning position yet he's a bit better perhaps if he's 0.8 so i think he's uh he's probably well he's he's got a good chance at least all right let's check another game maybe maria versus bobby yep let's go there and uh wow it is an end game already uh where did we leave the players here i think we left pretty much yeah around the start actually so take us through the moves here so rookie one rookie one b5 bishop to c2 yeah bishop b7 d4 all very natural for white here bishop to e7 bishop g5 wow and now a very nice and aggressive plan by bobby wow h6 bishop h4 and g5 yeah really aggressive not necessary at all but aggressive and we like to see it yeah exactly wow unexpected bishop g3 knight to h5 do you think it can really work because it seems like black is still a bit behind with that development the king is still stuck on e8 i don't believe i mean it feels a bit too optimistic but let's see what happened he took on c5 she took on c5 d takes c5 now makes sense um and bishop d6 yeah that was exactly the move i first thought of because now after bishop d6 queen takes d6 it looks like black has some trouble over the dark squares and perhaps that's why bobby played queen to b6 exactly yeah now maria decided to trade the queens i'm not sure if uh this is right what do you think oh but perhaps what else does she have i i don't see another idea she she probably does have to take queens off here i don't see a good a good retreat because if you play a move like i don't know queen where do you actually want to put the queen because if you put it on d2 you block this knight if you come all the way back it doesn't really leave a an impression here black has got lots of moves you can play knight f4 you can play rook d8 even long castle even long castles i mean this this move is is not ridiculous knight d2 now you can play knight f4 for example follow up with c4 and i feel the pressure here is white i i i don't i don't i don't know i mean again long long castles might not be necessary but it's it's just a flavor so i think she actually has to trade queens and wants to and can now complete development with knight bd2 rook d8 and now knight b3 is a is a is an interesting idea the point being that the knight has got two squares two jumpy squares and after knight a4 she can go knight a5 and after bishop a8 she can now take the the knight off which she does and b takes a4 and she would have had to have assessed this position and i have to say it looks pretty good for white i mean i was gonna say that it looks pretty good for black really yes really you know i like the point of having that d3 square potentially for my knight maybe i can bring it over by knight a4 knight d3 trying to somehow put some pressure on b2 i can play rook b8 at some point perhaps for white the idea would be to play a move like b3 trying to open up the a file because that pawn on a6 is a bit a bit weak but i might should i take a3 runs into knight c4 and the pawn will be lost so perhaps i can't play that but maybe you can ignore it because i don't think b takes a4 is such a big threat somehow all right exactly i can just go knight f4 yeah i'm not a huge fan of b3 i have to say the move that comes to mind here is actually the move knight e5 do you want to play knight c6 or well i just for a start you can't connect easily now because king e7 runs into knight c6 and the other idea is i keep some control over d3 and also i might just want to put the pawn on f3 and try and try and block this bishop on the long diagonal what about a move like f6 yeah you can go f6 and now if i go knight to c4 then i was thinking that maybe your knight on a5 is a little bit stuck let's say knight a4 knight a4 now i really can go rook d1 because there's some knight e6 and king e7 yeah and now something like i don't know f3 it's it's it's a complicated one yeah perhaps you could try then some knight b6 exactly that's what i want yeah yeah if i get rid of that bishop then knight c6 check comes and things can happen right so yeah very interesting position here perhaps black will be able to somehow oh it's not the position we've got yeah yeah maybe black will have to attack somehow on the king side with g4 and try to do something there but it will take a long time i'm very curious how this game will develop yeah as i say i think i take white ever so slightly but i think for sure yeah chances chances for both sides let's go back to Jean Syre's game because this got this this can get very wild again won't go through i think we should just go from here because so much has happened it would it would actually take a while to look at before so let's just join the position this is Jean Syre Abdelmalik playing Bilal Bilasin and it is in the center it's still it still did not castle and it probably won't do so in the near future yeah but uh you are material up here is white i mean you've got what is it two four six two four you're a pawn up pawn up two bishops if you stabilize here with white you tend to believe that white should be doing well and she just played knight of three which i like just bringing the knight to a natural natural place and you can play bishop d3 next and i don't play c4 here c4 here or maybe you don't like this move no but i mean at the same time the more i look at it i i don't hate it i don't hate it because i do need a response here and it's not easy to suggest a move my point was that white won't really go for short castle like bishop d2 short castle what would then the queen on h2 do well for the moment it's out of the game but it can come back it's not fixed out of the game there are also some rook g4 ideas for black bishop g2 rook g4 yeah it's getting completely crazy now i know that in these kind of positions white has to somehow try and make g4 happen but it is not happening here right yeah i'm very curious what bilal will come up with after knight of three it seems like he's got at least a promising position yeah he's got the initiative he has sacrificed a pawn for it but let's see if he will be able to use this this time which he's ahead with the development and if he can get some threats against white's king absolutely i agree very very interesting indeed okay what we're gonna do is we're gonna we're gonna go for a very very quick break wait wait we have one more result we have a result what happened Olga oh wow what the hell they agreed a draw in this position here let's bring it up very quickly because it's very very interesting indeed yeah it was that position where we thought that white is having some interesting chances against black's king black did play g6 and then so it was yeah it went sort of g so queen g so it went g6 queen to g3 b3 and bishop to b1 and Olga offered a draw here clearly and Balazs Chonka accepted probably they were just both thinking that this position is just too too wild yeah too double edged like both sides can win both sides can make big mistakes and clearly they were not in the mood to to fight it out here it wasn't a must win situation i think if i i think it's a better result for for Chonka than it is for Olga because um i i still feel as though this position if i had to take a color would be white so Balazs has been one of the better performers for the for the guys and Olga also performing very well so a bit like in the Joe Gallagher game it feels so exactly and i guess so we might have the opportunity to ask the players themselves what they thought maybe we can get Olga here or Balazs yeah that would be that would be great so let's see if we can do that um we're three sorry two hours into the round uh eight games remaining plenty of action on the board we'll be back in just a few minutes don't go anywhere it's heating up in round three of battle of the sexes jib chest 2022 we're in the studio with Marie Sebac who's just drawn a game with Joe Gallagher can you tell me something about the tell us something about the game i don't know what to play this morning and finally i choose my variation that i played uh a lot of time and he prepared for this game so after it was true because uh it was just a theoretical game and some game like Maxim Vachelangra, Karoana, all through with this novelty with b5 and d5 so it's a Sicilian um bishop b5 variation yeah yeah and i play a lot of time bishop b5 right and did you know that Joe played this line yes i know but uh i didn't i didn't think i would prepare for this line because it's very dangerous but you know this line and i was i was not very happy with with my position right so you decided to bail out you did you offer the draw yeah you did yeah yeah how if you played him many times before uh no it's my first time i play with uh Joseph and it was my second time in the Gibraltar all right okay okay let's have a look at the game okay Marie we're looking at the position after 13 b3 yeah and what happened next uh now i played many times this position and i have very good results but i don't like this move because it's true and i don't know what to do if you've seen this idea before and all game with this move is draw so yeah see yeah now it's because you change and change 25 and now i play just this and it would be all the all pieces would be changed yeah and it would be draw yeah so you just think it's level after this and there's no opportunity is there any opportunity for black to play on there we're expecting him to accept the draw i don't know i think it's many games are drawing this position they are like five or six games and it's all it's a draw all right so it's a drawing line this is what we should all be trying to play to get draws against grandmasters is it yeah but maybe i have to change my variation and don't know because i right i did not expect that he would play b5 yeah okay this is round three of battle of the sex is gib chest 2022 we're in the heat of battle in round three we've had two results two draws so far eight games remaining and all kinds of possibilities in the air very very very unbalanced games no dull games on any of the boards actually they're all absolute fire so arena where should we go first where should we check out let's check the game between gunai and landro yeah because it seems like it's a very interesting position here we've got castling on different side of the board and well let's see who will be faster with that tech i really like the move which was just played by landro yeah if we could see it yeah exactly this last move a five is so nice because black wants to play b4 try to open up white's king even more this actually involves pawn sacrifice because the phone on h4 was hanging but you don't really want to take it because the queen isn't doing much on h4 and after blacks let's say queen h4 before it is already looking really really bad for for white because when the knight goes away we could play queen d5 and then queen a2 will be coming right exactly and queen to a2 as you say and yeah here a good piece of advice would would be really precious for white i believe and a move like b4 by white would it really be possible this it looks a little loose 8xb4 8xb4 maybe maybe not 95 now but well let's just say i put the rook on a8 i don't need to rush i guess because if you take on h4 now i can probably take on d4 definitely and queen takes b4 check is is in the air and i i agree with you i think good night for the first time is in major major difficulties she's got 14 minutes left as well that's that's really not a lot of time for 18 moves in such a position do you know what i was thinking yes could we try something like d5 for white trying to somehow close up at least that diagonal even with the price of of a pawn d5 would it be the way to solve the threats against white's white's king because now you cannot take with the pawn the pawn on b5 is hanging so you have to take back with a piece okay let's with a knight maybe i can do something here yeah the problem is that knight takes d5 runs again into that queen takes and the mate on a2 is coming so we shouldn't be doing that even bishop takes right doesn't doesn't well here at least you have sorry you have queen takes h4 yeah but you're right queen takes d5 and i have some major problems down here maybe there is another move after black's knight takes d5 what could we try here not seeing that actually don't see it maybe 92 wow that's so so unbelievable this concept you give up the pawn you allow the knight to sit on d5 and then play 92 i i can't believe it yeah somehow sure no i sure sure i i know you're trying yeah i no i get it doesn't feel like d5 is the move it could just be bad for black yeah you know it could just sorry for white sorry it could just be very very bad for white um i don't know the computer evaluation of course everybody at home remember we're not using a computer so for sure we're making lots of mistakes but we're trying to give you a bit of a human perspective on how these games are are running um yeah so do you have a better suggestion for for white here is it really the the honest answer is uh i'm sure you know i hated white's position from this from basically a3 uh i find these positions extremely difficult to play and good night you can see on the video as well she's oh she's done only 12 minutes yeah she is yeah and it's only move 21 it means that she has to make 19 more moves to reach the time control so less than one minute per move and the position is definitely not an easy one yeah 11 and a half minutes now and um just just extremely extremely difficult uh to to manage here uh oh night 82 that's a sad move yeah that's a sad move to play so what's the idea so if i go queen d5 she wants to come back to she yeah yeah mm-hmm and now after queen b3 i have bishop c2 and you are managing to uh to survive it to survive but the knight now on a2 is so is so offside so what about b4 yeah and if i take take back okay let's say i take and rook b8 what is going on here i don't know knight a6 let's say knight a6 now you want to go queen d5 do you and try and mate me does this work yeah i could try it should we try queen a2 check king c2 but i don't see mate the king is running queen b3 king d2 yeah i don't see mate here queen b4 wait king a2 and maybe some discovered stuff here no i don't have it no especially if the king comes to g1 it's going to be it's going to be very very unpleasant so the straightforward way to play it doesn't work mm-hmm what else could black do after knight a2 or do you still believe in this position uh in this position which one knight a2 yeah i don't have just played in the game knight a2 in the in the game uh knight a2 oh let's have a look so here so b4 is possible for sure what i was thinking what about knight d5 so knight d5 queen takes h4 i guess is her idea you could go knight d5 queen takes h4 and now b4 for example yeah now b3 is an unpleasant threat potentially it's a it's an unpleasant threat yes yes somehow i cannot really see why it's counterplay it feels like black has just free a free attack yeah it does feel like that um 12 minutes left for kunai and she she's not enjoying herself that's for sure definitely and i guess it is the first game from today's round where we see that the ladies are in trouble i think so i think so i mean eric rosen apparently also has a great position so let's go there is this the bounce back date for the boys this is his gay his position against nino batsy ashfili and yeah something went wrong for nino in this game her pieces aren't really cooperating eric playing what looks like a pretty decent play on the queen side a5 by eric he's seven minutes down or something on the clock here but wait i have an idea what if white plays knight to e3 attacking d5 and maybe wanting to jump on f5 in some in some cases how do we deal with that it's a very good question i hadn't seen that move that is a tough move to face actually is queen d7 yeah queen d7 but yeah it's really yeah i mean tough one to say because i'm threatening so queen d7 and now because actually if swapping the queens of the board it will probably favor black right because there cannot be any attacks anymore probably and c3 will still be a weakness and if knight of five and that's what i was trying to calculate knight of five exactly now exactly what now after knight of five i was thinking that maybe even rook e6 is a move it doesn't look so natural but i want to bring it over to c6 and maybe try very weird but you're right i don't i don't see a way for white to uh this bishop is really not performing in this game is it it's really kind of making white's job difficult indeed and she's gonna play 93 there you go she's playing that yeah um yeah it seems like eric has a very very promising position but nino is a very very tricky defender and uh you know i have noticed that in her games she likes to put that smart traps so i guess that will be the thing for eric to keep an eye on but anyway it is a bit difficult to put many traps here right it really is yeah yeah somehow the bishop on e1 is very strange looking yeah it's i i don't like it at all this bishop on e1 but you're right 93 i mean but nino somehow she does quite well in these positions i don't know she i feel like eric is slightly on the back foot here i feel like nino's got chances still in this game uh do you mean chances uh to to win yeah yeah i believe nino's i mean i i'm saying there are enough pieces on the board and eric has also shown that he can lose control a little bit later in the game so it'll be interesting uh to see for sure indeed all right let's go to another game uh let's go to uh maybe john sire's game john sire well we've seen yeah well yeah i mean this got completely crazy wow king d1 was just played yeah what a move the king decided to run to the other flank yeah well she can't castle and the king can't just sit there so after queen c7 she's just gone king d1 but of course and also the knight the pawn on e5 was was hanging i don't like this move what is happening oh wait i was thinking about queen a5 trying to get the a4 pawn but then perhaps there is some sifu could it be it could be uh no this is this this is still still unclear after knight b4 no or probably wow i don't know oh yeah it's just a mess it's just total mess um is there anything else that black can that black can play here well well taking on e5 isn't really an option because then the rook on g4 will be attacked i was thinking but maybe you can think about it i'm just sacrificing just sacrifice exchange and now actually you're attacking here but maybe i have something like a four yeah but then g3 is very weak i don't know a move like queen a4 let's say and now i'm threatening here i've got this it doesn't look so nice i've got this oh don bishop takes a4 is a huge threat here actually yeah can he just can he just take i'm not sure but you know what this is i think the danger in these kind of positions that sometimes you feel like your advantage is so big and you want to somehow find a direct way right to the win and then if you start sacrificing material without seeing exactly how you win that is where your opponent might get a chance because long term it still looks like white doesn't really have a good way to somehow untangle the pieces so um yeah it feels like it's gone wrong for shanzai that's for sure it feels the queen is obviously misplaced on h2 and her pieces don't make too much sense so yeah she's definitely in trouble and you know this is the first round as you said where the boys are actually kind of in at least a few games but what i'm worried about here is bilal's time because i see he is down to 17 minutes that's okay that's enough one minute per move yeah that's okay that's that's not too that's gunai is in in more serious and he he wants to play the queen a5 he does play your move queen a5 so after c4 then he is gonna play some night before move like you said and try and make this as much of a dogfight as possible right my feeling is that it's one of the most interesting games of the match yeah for sure absolutely can get very wild well we'll come back to that one let us go to another game let's let us go actually to the ravi harry again we haven't checked in pia crambling against ravi harry and we'll take it here and ravi has actually established a position i was closed you know i was talking about it a while ago where you managed to get this knight on on e4 a3 the bishop came back to d6 b4 and your move might be it yeah i mean it's very logical to reroute the knight to d7 and if you've got time to do it why not so knight to e2 knight d7 okay g6 and okay this move c6 was i guess this was a kind of necessary ravi thought because um i guess there was some issue maybe some 95 idea by white oh yeah perhaps and then the point on c7 might be hanging so you wanted to over protect it and now we just decided to go with the h pawn which i i actually like very much knight gf1 and 94 occupying bishop b2 and h4 taking over the initiative i really like how black has handled this position but but pia plays h3 every wow sorry f3 and now on knight takes d2 is forced to play queen takes d2 and now that bishop on b2 it is so sad it is a sad bishop but it's it can still get back into the game uh what is ravi's idea here well i would consider playing f f5 actually yeah i think that's i think that's actually on his mind it's a bit loose but it might be okay yeah somehow probably white cannot really play anymore on the queen side so white idea must be to play rookie one and then e4 and that's why i thought that f5 would somehow prevent that from happening ravi also with 17 minutes or is that 11 minutes 17 minutes 17 yeah so what's he gonna do here we will see a lot of interesting time troubles today i think so yeah i think we're gonna have a lot of a lot of nasty moments in time trouble today indeed i see somebody in the chat is saying that this library seems to be very cold indeed it is a little bit chilly here but i believe that the positions we've got on the board are heating up the atmosphere no they are it is chilly i mean where we are compensating i can tell you it is very cold here i mean it is i mean one of the coldest settings i've i've compensated in but thankfully the chest is hot so uh yeah look he played night of six he didn't want to commit to f5 yeah f5 is a serious commitment you weaken yourself forever and he's also saying look i'm just not not ready to take those no exactly and now if queen f2 threatening this pawn perhaps night h5 exactly night h5 and now white can't go e4 but then you give up the f4 square and things again are getting very very complex very very quickly yeah a lot of a lot of interesting games today and it looks like man's team is in control yeah even though they have today all black pieces i agree so rookie one was played yeah rookie one by pier is also uh yeah and you see the problem is now that whenever i go away with the night i have to consider e4 that's why i wanted to play f5 i'm not sure bringing the knight towards f6 was the best move how should black improve here not easy because if i play c5 then i open up white's bad bishop on b2 so it's not something i want to do on the other hand my bishop on b7 is not fantastic uh either yeah i wanted to try and play the move bishop c8 but you go e4 here i think he is gonna play a move no he changed his mind he was hovering over the board he was waiting yeah and he does go night h5 yeah this is this is of course very logical so he's not worried about e4 right i think he's just saying when you go e4 i can either go bishop f4 or maybe even knight f4 probably have to analyze both but bishop f4 yeah i like bishop f4 because after knight f4 i have some e5 right exactly and i'm getting even this is not completely clear maybe probably is takes and takes is actually a double attack on the queen very unusual all right almost like a double check except because it's a double attack yeah and you win so it's um but i guess white has to play e4 because if not what else well you can continue to do nothing wait yeah work c1 what is pia going to but i don't love it i don't love it i don't know we'll see we'll see we'll come back to that one let's quickly check in with yavanka huska because yavanka uh against sabina we were saying how this was a bit of a a weird one and now we've got a bit more of a simplified position this night managed to work its way to a what looks like a good outpost here yeah but sabina is in terrible pressure on the clock he's got only four minutes left for the remaining 17 moves that's that's very little yeah that's according to our clock is it but we'll we'll double check that because i'm not sometimes the clocks are slightly off because it also says yavanka has no time oh right so we'll double check the time situation but let's have a look at the the actual position on the on the board and the position is i would say uh black is doing very well yeah because well now if you go away with the bishop to f1 let's say you have to consider 94 and yeah after knight takes e4 i can take back with the pawn and somehow my bishop suddenly has a longer diagonal me yeah i believe that sabina is not in danger here do you think he's going to win this one today no i think it will probably be a draw still be a draw okay yeah it seems like everything is so it's almost symmetrical you know like the pawn structure is exactly the same only the pieces are placed differently but black can even play bishop a6 at some point trying to trade that bishop from the other side here it's not yeah it's not stupid but i feel like with the some weaknesses i feel a bit uneasy here as white yeah probably white should be a bit careful here not to get into some sort of trouble but i think i think the slight and look we have all the times here we go yeah and it's not four minutes it's 10 minutes sabina's guard and it should be should be enough for him uh in this position yeah it's more than enough with 30 seconds bonus on move 24 so he's not in any serious time difficulty i would say uh somebody wants to see yovanka joining us here of course we would love to see her hopefully she will do fine today and we can see her later on yeah all right another game here i'm looking that looks very uh it's the nino game we've had a look at that let's go back to irine we haven't seen that in a while yeah sure it seemed like she was a bit uneasy with her position there but now what is going on now looks looks good for irine does it not what if i take on d5 here what's this i take if you take can i take or is rook before hussein's idea here a rook before and then after queen f2 let's say for d2 yeah queen d2 d2 all right no queen d2 queen b6 oops that's why i wanted that very nice yeah but here rook takes f4 oh wow that's a nice tactic very nice very nice yeah excellent excellent so this is the trap hussein has set now my next question to you is does this make any sense the answer is probably no isn't it queen takes yeah and king h h7 or h8 i'm not sure doesn't yeah doesn't doesn't feel like enough okay rook b8 that's a classy little move and he took 17 minutes to make it yeah it could be a great move though it's always good to spend 17 minutes and play a great move then play spend 17 minutes and then blunder your queen you know i've actually noticed that whenever i take a longer time to make a move it's usually bad yeah that's actually there is there they have studied that that statistically if you take too long you you end up eventually making a wrong move and that there's a lot to be said for your intuition and and and trying to make that work um but of course some positions are just so tough but yeah not an easy position here for Irene you're right not a not an easy position yeah the idea probably is that black wants to play a rook before anyway um because then it will again be a double attack on c4 and on a4 yeah i'm not still not sure that why it has solved all the issues of the position here somehow i'm also worried about the king and the queen being on the same diagonal perhaps we can just play king h1 right just to make sure we don't get into those checks which we've just seen earlier right yeah also makes uh makes sense but feels a little slow to me i i'm not in love with this move somehow but yeah it could be could be but it's it is a difficult position for ian you can see also by the body language that she's not very comfortable here so we'll wait and see what she does um in the i mean jan sire has given up the a4 pawn let's quickly go there so jan sire has just given up the a4 pawn which probably means that she is in a really bad position but she has the pair of bishops or does it not mean anything 91 so she just voluntarily gave it up kicked the knight back and went here but the problem is that the white king is in danger and uh black has got a past a pawn yeah indeed now a very a very tough moment for jan sire she but at least she's got the pawn on g4 so now maybe she can try to i don't know to get to get those pawns going i was thinking oh get the pawns going okay how do we do that maybe some no i was hoping to make g5 g6 work trying to create a past pawn but i believe it doesn't work here probably after g5 i can just get my knight back on a five right yeah you've got to be careful also you've got to have an answer to queen a1 check bishops c1 queen takes c3 and then taking on e5 but this is probably not exactly what black wants because you open up the position and maybe you give white a bit of initiative but no it's it's uh this one is uh very very tough because um you know they're on move 25 let's have a look at the time so bilal has 13 minutes on side 26 minutes even 26 minutes here is really not a lot of time because it's just you have to calculate so precisely and the moves definitely don't come intuitively also here for example just again ideas like rook takes g4 do exist i'll put a ridiculous move on the board like here i'm not saying black would ever do this but you you've got to think about it you know these exchange sacrifices winning a pawn and then trying to win this pawn and trying to to make your life easier i have an idea for white okay may i play knight d post she played something what what did she do there queen g3 okay i mean that smooth makes well she has protected the c3 pawn so that now after queen a1 bishops c1 there are no worries about it yeah what is bilal going to do here it feels like we need to open up the position um is d4 a possibility definitely a possibility definitely because of course white doesn't want to take on d4 as after knight takes d4 everything starts to be hanging no yeah exactly and if white plays c4 instead then again the knight may jump somewhere but at least there white might have some queen b3 so i'm not sure black has oh and he just played it what did he do he did play d4 yeah that's a nice spot yeah i like d4 i think this move feels this move feels correct to me she has to play c4 i believe c4 and then okay hope for some queen b3 at some point maybe not immediately maybe first f4 protective 5 and then queen b3 if white manages to trade off the queens then the game might turn around yeah no i mean if the queens come off i think white's laughing because this uh queen side um sorry this king side pawn majority is going to be very very dangerous indeed uh sin louis chess club in the chat let's go eric of course eric has also done tons of great work for the sin louis chess club shout out to them uh i believe even eric's dad is in the chat can i get confirmation of that i think i saw that somewhere or maybe somebody's trolling but i don't know um a lot of eric's supporters we'll quickly go back to his position because it was very interesting against nino he's just played b4 and yeah nino in uh some kind of trouble here wait wait what 95 doesn't work here 95 95 95 if i take bishop takes rook takes again i miss that it's the bishop only one and not the it's not a rook you what it is the first time already uh yeah yeah okay sorry for that no worries no worries okay so b4 uh goodness oh and eric is already up on the clock yeah he's up yeah nino's burned a lot of time she spent 32 minutes on her previous move because it was a very difficult position and nino not enjoying herself you can see it in her face she's she's having a hard time here and it's not an easy position because no moves again come intuitively like what are you supposed to do the plan on c3 is hanging so perhaps i should move again the knight but bringing it again to a five seems and if i just move somewhere i don't know rook d7 yeah yeah the disconnect along the back here is is really really serious isn't it well at least now the plan on c3 is protected so oh wait can i play bishop a4 bishop a4 the answer is yes you probably can uh so i've got to be a little bit careful she's probably gonna go knight f5 isn't she yeah but then you can also consider rook f7 ah rook f7 why not such a weird place for the rook but it it might be okay she's about to move so let's keep an eye on her so yeah the problem is that why it still doesn't have a way to connect the rooks and then it means that the pawn on c3 will be forever weak right yeah it it looks like the ladies are in big trouble today i don't see any game where white i mean where white because all ladies have white today i don't see one game where white is better and look she has just played knight f5 as we as we thought yeah knight f5 that looked i mean you got to do something and why not knight f5 and now eric does have a little a little issue here with this rook um yeah trading pieces wouldn't be good for black i believe because white is struggling to find good squares for them so that's why i don't like the idea of playing rook d7 but you know on the other hand after rook d7 bishop a4 i could go now rook f7 right i was thinking that like but does it make a is it better to have the bishop on a4 maybe it is because it's no longer pressuring the d5 pawn exactly oh but he has rook e8 okay so knight f5 rook e8 what about bishop a4 now bishop a4 and rook e6 rook e6 yeah with a similar idea to what you've been uh promoting here i don't see how white is gonna trap or try to trap black here it seems like eric is doing great today oh has uh maria musichuk fallen for a tactic here or what's going on we last picked it up up about around here and in fact maria did play the move that i was thinking 95 castles in f3 so i don't like the move castle yeah it's weird and and but but bobby played a3 and now she just took which makes some sense i mean i guess she wanted to go b3 originally but was annoyed at some combination of rook d2 and knight f4 i don't know or maybe rook d2 immediately and if you come with the knight to go here and just claim that this trade is good for black getting rid of these pawns so she took the knight came to f4 and now rook d1 just runs into 92 check isn't this really good for black because well obviously the pawn on c3 is hanging right right so you've got to move the king let's say king f2 you to play knight takes c3 and now actually i can see this is all the board no no 97 i was afraid that 97 might be an issue but it's not rook c1 i mean you're so it's very unlucky that this doesn't work for black but what do you do about the knight on c3 where does it well i mean it has it it had oops sorry knight a4 is knight a4 is the absolute minimum but then i can play rook c4 and get back the c5 pawn rook c4 but i give check rook e2 rook e2 it's a clever move yeah the bishop on a8 is absolutely dead that's the only yeah that's the problem yeah that that is a problem rook c1 maybe maria has just handled this well and i've just optically it looked like she couldn't do this of course if i was black if i could play f7 f5 even then i just take it's not the end of the world right yeah it looks like i believe i like maria's position more yeah i would take white here yeah i don't blame you yeah you cannot take really the pawn on a2 because after rook c2 it's trapped knight b5 knight b5 could it be the move doesn't doesn't feel like it could be but then i have a4 and then when the knight goes away to the d4 or d6 square we can then take on c5 yeah but maybe here you can have some some f5 idea could it be yeah but we can just take that's the point it just doesn't do anything i see white king is just very very safe yeah maria actually this is this is this looks all right for maria the more i look at it the more i don't don't mind it at all um very very quickly want to point out that in yeah in uh mama zada's game we have this position so a light squared bishop has left the board for another light squared bishop but now it looks as though leandro has got total domination bad bishop bad knight weak squares everywhere weak pawns everywhere if we look at you know these guys here isn't this just a dream position for black rookie four can come you can double yeah it is indeed and it looks like it's even difficult to find anything good in white's position what is there good nothing is good no everything is bad about white's position weaker king weaker pieces weaker prospects and gunai with about five minutes left as well and i like the fact that leandro is keeping the pressure on 14 minutes um sorry 14 moves five minutes is tough oh could be could be seeing gunai's first loss it wouldn't surprise me one bit if we saw a loss there and we see in the chat that eric is winning now according to stock fish it's minus five they say wow okay so there's been a there's been a blunder of sorts so rook e eight happened a four is the shred now and the bishop on the three is gone this is very nice eric rosin very nice queen d7 hitting the knight and if the knight moves back you can play a four and trap the bishop and that is really all she wrote oh that's all over then yeah that is actually all over there's also just no move here because you're hitting the knight and there's no decent knight move and a four just traps the bishop under any circumstance and nino unfortunately for her i think the realization has set in and a really nice game by eric rosin i mean he he he played kind of it was all it was all a bit weird but it kind of worked out for him i mean right nino she i mean it was this move bishop e one maybe that got her into trouble and it was really around this moment move 17 that eric started to take control of the game uh playing very nice 94 it was as i say around here where he didn't look back and now queen d7 is a nice move is just all she wrote i mean nino won't uh she won't drag this out unnecessarily because it's just too much a piece is just a piece with no real attack and yeah yeah all right yeah let's let's try to find a game where where the ladies are doing fine please i feel disappointed today where the ladies are doing fine well i have to say i uh i've got some bad news i don't see any game where i like the ladies position only the maria game which we've just seen where white was fine but um not more than that let's look at f for him scheme maybe this one oh yeah we haven't checked this one in a long time oh well i mean this could be all right uh yeah definitely it looks like the point on a six is hanging for now so black will have to do something about it hmm oh yeah the position has a very unusual character here yeah i was still checking uh the video to see what nino played uh yeah yeah she played queen g4 it's quite interesting so she played just to go back there she she played uh queen g4 which is a little trap because after a four now you can take on a four and you're distracting the queen away from g7 but eric being the trickster and swindler that he is he will have seen that already there is a big problem with this move with queen g4 bishop c8 exactly that's the move that i was i was thinking that's just actually you know bishop a4 is probably the only chance to continue the game because otherwise you don't continue and i mean yeah you couldn't continue but even here i can throw in this intermediate move possibly but i think a normal person would just take but actually hold on this is not this is not a stupid move at all so friend here yeah looking uh looking bad for white but nino is trying to find the last tricks here to confuse eric let's see if he's gonna figure out uh straightforward way to win very quickly people in the chat are asking why it's called it schreven england or cheven england or however you want to call it tournament uh those are the special tournaments which are team tournaments and uh yeah when you all play one color i think at the same time uh and you play everybody else from the opposing team yeah i think uh i was gonna say that when you uh it's an all player versus all player tournament i believe that call that call is cheven england yeah especially in a team format yeah exactly because you can get round robins which are individuals but this this is you know 10 players on one team 10 plain 10 players on a on another team okay let's get back to Marcel's game um because i think we have looked at it the least today yes yes yes um okay what is going on here no idea it seems like white is doing fine mm-hmm bishop b7 was played yeah it is this type of hedgehog somehow structures where um black is looking for a breakthrough so ideas like d5 should probably be in the air but not here because here you can just take take bishop takes d5 and all is fine so black struggles a little bit to find the breakthrough i believe in this game yeah i i i'm not buying blacks because the only thing is these knights are a bit weird for white i'm not and she's on on that note she just moved one to a much better position on e3 yeah the knight might go to c4 put some pressure on the d6 spawn i don't really see a plan for black no that that is the problem maybe no but that is very risky i was thinking to try something like g6 and bishop g7 trying to put some pressure on c3 but then f5 might be coming yeah f5 might be coming d6 as we go i don't love that um it's very difficult to come up with a plan for black here very difficult what about some knight a seven knight b5 but then i'm running into c4 he went knight e7 he went knight e7 so he wants to meet knight c4 with d5 probably probably yes yeah no actually d5 might be a threat because even if we sacrifice the pawn we open up the position the pawn on c3 by the way is hanging now yes um yeah i like that actually yeah a nice move a really nice move perhaps queen d2 should be played now to protect the pawn and if i go d5 anyway yeah that's a good question it takes but then the d7 knight will be hanging in the end i believe yeah but i was thinking that there's some rookie to check things can get very out of hand king h1 and in the worst case you can just go knight f6 here with black and uh this position probably is not worse for black queen f3 rook c8 yeah it suddenly looks good for black yeah you've got to be in you've got to be very careful with white indeed i really love this 97 move julian has made and oh wow look at myself up in a chair yeah uh getting nice and uh comfy the tension is there a lot of tension yeah it might be it might be one of the only boards where where the lady still got chances no because otherwise it looks like it's somehow one sided today yeah it's it is one so let's go back to shansai this is a fascinating position wow rookie three but that move is not a move that fills me with confidence why can't i just take very good question oh my it looks like shansaya oh is in huge trouble here but but look she's not at the board yeah she's saying okay it is your job to find now the best way meanwhile i will have a tea wait for your clock to tick down and who knows maybe she will still get a chance but what's the idea if i take she wants to go queen a three or something yeah i think so but if i take take c3 bishop f4 i suppose we need to protect probably that 95 bishop g3 yeah but feels like it's at least the points are not moving for now you know feels like it's getting out of control yeah i don't love this position of course but let's imagine i play night it's my move and i play 93 here that if you go for c4 i can go knight c5 maybe i can still hope for some chances here yeah it's still not not completely clear she spent 24 minutes on rook h3 apparently which is shocking to me i didn't think she had so much time on a clock so that's slightly strange but what he did take so let's see her idea no definitely queen a3 coming but then you might play queen b5 oh yeah that's also possible that's a really nice move actually queen b5 rook b3 sorry oh wow oh you still are alive but knight b4 now i can start taking on a7 yeah very very nice trick okay so that means that black has to trade queens here right probably has to trade queens yeah but i'm not loving it i believe that black should have tried to figure out a way to to keep the queens on the board because look at white's king it's definitely a relief to have them traded yeah i believe that bill l might might have some problems here trying to convert his advantage and he does take so it takes takes and i guess well maybe not see hold on e5 is hanging as well excuse me ah e5 rook a7 yeah but even this like 95 rook a7 knight c6 no there's a big problem with oh wait instead of rook a7 we have f4 what's this knight takes g4 bishop c4 really can't i do that no you just play 95 you can do it but i i mean 95 or something and now rook takes a7 okay no no harm at all bishop takes h5 um my point there was hanging rook h7 knight f6 check oops and if you go rook a8 i can just go king b7 rook g8 and knight f6 also uh winning is it probably bishop e2 take king takes yeah it opens up it's more than enough right so perhaps black has to take yeah i mean i think he can just take on e5 probably takes takes a knight c6 rook h7 knight g4 like this yeah maybe this one is a better version because we've got the h7 point without losing h5 no yeah but some part of me also says that he might not do this some part of me says he might just play the solid way but i think whatever way he plays zhan say is in some some trouble definitely let's check Irene's game we haven't seen it in a while and it was very interesting because Hussein played this rook bit but wait now the rook is back on the f file already um what is going on here Irene hasn't made much progress that's for sure she's kind of standing still and waiting for black to show where does he want to break through right exactly and how how do we continue with black here it looks like white has enough not to be worried well taking on d5 of course shouldn't be an option because then after c takes d5 there will be c5 and suddenly black will be able to move his pawns so white doesn't have to touch the c the c pawn rook d7 played so the threat is to go c5 and then d4 oh but wait then the bishop will be stuck on b4 no it's okay it's okay yeah it's okay there it aids the the pawn and it's not stuck forever it can always come all right so what should what should i random not not clear i would love to trade the bishops but i don't see don't see a good way for doing that yeah c5 is definitely a big threat maybe oh i have an idea maybe rook d1 and after c5 i want to take on d5 with the pawn and take on a6 how is this one probably yeah probably decent ish for white i guess even here like rook d5 it's a weird position but yeah i would love to play something yeah like rook a fun but i don't have time because your deep pawn is running no i don't like it i don't like it what else tricky don't know tricky position well i feel like crying today why is that i was cheering so up for the ladies team i was so happy how things were going on every day i mean every day today's in a row the ladies won with plus three and today suddenly it feels like they are just collapsing i don't know there is only one sort of decent position we see for the ladies and it is in the game of maria versus bobby right yes but there might be another one i mean yuvanka huska oh no we looked at that one there's a game that i'm i don't know maybe it is this one here well here the only hope is for sabina to go very long time i believe i think yuvanka is is yuvanka alone time um we don't see it but i see i see two figures uh they're on her clock and i think i see only one on sabinos okay so bishop f1 so what's going on here very good question oh black should be really careful about the eight frank because let's just imagine some knight g4 knight takes g4 would be just mate after rook eight king h7 then knight somewhere right so the back rank is a little bit weak for black yeah sabino sabino has played something oh 94 night e4 now we're getting a really spicy position okay i'm secretly hoping that uh that he will blunder something is it really bad for me to say that okay i mean you're you're supporting the girls i completely understand but 94 i think he's kind of in focus today and i feel like this is actually a very difficult position for yuvanka can we see how much time yuvanka has um no but this eight frank is definitely an issue yes maybe she can find a way to exploit that well now probably 92 oh she's got she's got 10 minutes he's only got two minutes so for 14 moves yeah that's that's not a lot of time indeed and what did she what did you say yes 94 look at this trickster trickster central hitting the queen and obviously if you take i take here and suddenly black's position falls apart yeah back rank issues perhaps so you have to go with the queen but wait is my so maybe queen b4 why not queen b4 then the rook on c3 looks a bit trapped now well i am attacking your i mean maybe not but just to illustrate like you you can also run into tactics right so after queen b4 what could i play can you think about rook takes e4 here let's say d takes and i'll queen takes e4 or what was the idea no i'm thinking for white rook takes e4 d takes e4 queen takes e4 i hit the knight and i've got 97 check winning the bishop bishop takes a five bishop takes a five let's say i play you must take on a five i believe no i'm not completely but let's say i play queen takes a five and now i've got rook c1 what queen of queen f4 i've got 93 no you can just return with the knight yeah not good uh okay so what else bishop a five queen a five okay let's just go back with the knight somewhere the question is where this runs into d5 i guess that's the point yeah so an ag6 let's say okay if i just start running d5 okay i have to put rook on c1 yeah rook d1 now maybe d7 d7 feels wrong here but uh you're right i uh i could give a check and then d7 queen e7 oh no this doesn't work i win the pawn but wait there were moves already played yeah there were loads of moves let's let's just go there so what whoa what happened he played rook takes c4 what's this well he wants to take the knight on f5 ah he gets two pieces of course yeah this is the solution bishop takes a five oh and it seems like it was just a blunderer by white i'm not sure the pawn on f2 is hanging after queen takes a two how do we deal with that oh yeah there's actually no way to stop this move oh yeah queen takes a two is just really the end of the game isn't it and i was so happy about this knight c4 resource but apparently we've just missed this yeah queen takes a two on the board and yovanka suddenly actually totally lost oh no yovanka totally lost all of a sudden incredible yeah wow that went that went bad real quick for yovanka yeah yeah there's just nothing to do queen takes f2 is just effectively a mating threat this is just one check down the back queenie eight king h7 is just one check if you take here i take check king h2 well just any move uh yeah any move is queen g3 is good enough queen g3 knight h3 knight h2 all kinds of check mates that the piece is swarming you don't even have to calculate yeah queen takes a two just might be might be the end actually so it looks as though yovanka is going down but that means that the ladies are in even bigger trouble you could lose by four today yeah you could lose by four today let's have a look at um i must say it is the situation is completely unexpected because well women had all whites today i thought uh they will put some pressure on on the men's team but apparently we've got over optimistic and by we i mean we ladies do you often get over optimistic yes this is one of my problems do you personally you get it very optimistic yeah yeah i do okay even during during my games you know sometimes i overestimate my positions i get carried away and then i miss something okay we're not the only one unfortunately yeah this so this game on the board yovanka is uh is in big trouble let's go to uh back to the mamadzada game because it looked as though she was suffering forever and i mean what is this uh liandra is just playing uh a uh a kind of masterpiece game he's won the pawn on a four he protects the pawn on c6 so he's now is he a pawn up no no material is equal no he is a pawn up uh but it's doubled no f1 no is it oh two four sorry you're right he he is a pawn up you're right sorry yeah he's a pawn up with all the squares and this is a really horrible position for for for gunai and do you know how they say that uh he's got a pawn up and this compensation a better position yeah exactly i believe unfortunately that's the situation in this game yeah that's that's that's probably gonna be losing for uh for gunai she's probably gonna lose yovanka is almost certainly gonna lose let's go to pier cramling because things got very hot there and spicy g3 i mean pier also suddenly looks as though ravi i say it looks as though ravi is doing well but it's not completely clear yeah it is and c5 ravi harrier going for gold c5 what is this well what is his plan after b take c5 let's check it out so takes takes um d takes i guess if you take does he want to go d4 possibly and open up this diagonal for the bishop looks very dangerous yeah there might be the case that even bishop b3 might be a threat at some point yeah because you can't take here because i take take take take and take yeah and pia just took b take c5 so we might actually yeah let's have a look let's have a look on the board oh ravi might be playing a great game as well so bc5 i'm assuming he's gonna take back but wait after blacks b take c5 i'm not forced to take that pawn i can play something like king h1 for example here uh yeah trying to win the f for bishop but you never win it right i i can always park it on c1 so i take and i play bishop c1 and here i can i cannot take because of d4 yeah that is very unpleasant yeah what about what about f4 here oh no fear oh what to do no fear might be good i mean in the worst case i can give check king oh you want to move the king g2 king g2 something else was played no that was in the in the other game king g2 and now if i worst case also okay let um you want to take on d4 right i think so let's say i take take take let's say you take okay and now i've always got this as a as a backup what about a move bishop c8 oh bishop c8 that's that might be a that might be a great move then maybe some even though i'm not sure yeah but then bishop h3 queen d1 yeah all right let's leave it to the players to figure that out and let's check how how Eric's doing did he managed to win that piece there well he's got an extra queen so hold on he's got a queen for what's it queen to he's got a queen oh it's a weird one he's got a queen two rooks in a night against two rooks a night he's got queen for two bishops yeah which should be enough yeah but it might be tricky to convert i remember one game of mine versus alina kashlenskaya when it looked like i was totally winning and then suddenly this sacrifice followed and then i had a clean queen versus two bishops and only pawns right left on the board but she had a past pawn and i just didn't find anything better than a perpetual so of course it is not the case here because there are no past pawns but none of this he should he should be careful yeah but here rook e2 is coming yeah i i don't think it's one of those cases where he needs to be too careful here i mean he's got a lot of ideas even though rook e2 i can just take takes he takes before he took on c3 yeah you take on c3 that's completely fine let's say bishop takes c3 and as you say rook e2 here makes sense knight g6 makes sense but the point on d5 is hanging or or you can't find that no i don't mind i take on f4 i start creating serious threats queen g6 yeah i don't i don't mind oh and we have a result here and it's a draw it's a draw so it was between uh Irene and Aziz i think that's a pretty decent result for Irene yeah they managed to find a way where they couldn't make progress either of them so yeah exactly uh and Nina just took on c3 with the rook uh rook takes c3 yeah it looks like the ladies are having a nightmare day yeah i i guess just 96 is is the move most players play here uh rook e2 runs into rook g3 you could take this rook bishop by the way this is probably a good move probably and take here and then take here but why but well because you just take some pieces but you're right why why would i do this it's probably still winning but not necessary um yeah i i actually likes your 96 moves better because you've read the knight f4 yeah yeah he's probably gonna do it knight e6 similar idea maybe even better because it also attacks on d4 exactly yeah it looks like Eric's got things under control here uh let's check Maria's game because it was one of the only ones where we felt white was doing oh but it is just a draw probably should just be a draw here i mean it's very difficult to to win this position with white and it's uh yeah yeah the extra pawn counts for nothing because it's doubled you cannot really use it in any way the only idea to try and make advantage out of it is to somehow bring the rook to the b file play for a five and rook b6 yeah there is uh i don't believe that is uh gonna happen no dive i i i have faith that bobby chen is gonna hold this position through uh just being a decent player so i think yeah we can go to another game let's go back to uh jan sire i was gonna suggest the same thing wow look at this position what an absolute mess of a position but it looks it looks bad for jan sire i mean she's got these pass pawns though it's it's a weird why can't she take here that's a question hmm uh night uh are we not seeing something maybe night see night see seven bishop page three no page three maybe here just some bishop e4 all right but i have 91 i'm still yeah you're fighting or trying or trying to win i i don't know i've absolutely i have no idea whether they think they're better well it's one of those positions where you after all she's played g6 where after the game you ask yourself was i better am i winning am i am i playing for a draw what what is going on here well at least uh she has a direct uh idea here she wants to take only six plays play g7 and then queen you know if i go here she might have night h4 just preparing bishop takes e6 but well even night see seven is all right here if i don't find anything better yeah still the true qanay three do you remember that yesterday it was actually uh jan sire who trapped her opponent through qanay yes yes and now she's got her rook trapped on a three yeah yeah you're right and uh did something happen no no well h6 g6 h6 g6 has happened so we've got this position on the board and bilal has to make only two moves to reach the time control and get the extra 30 minutes night what 97 okay might be a good move because you're attacking the knight if g7 i go rook g8 yeah basically wait is playing with the rook down here it cannot be good right probably black is totally winning yeah with this rook locked out it's actually a rook down you're right it's it has to be bad for bad for jan sire and the bishop once you won is also not doing uh yeah too much honor to to white's position and we have a result oh yobanka just resigned yep yep no surprise yobanka losing the position looked so solid and then she really went went on to take some risks she thought that sabino being being down on his clock gives her some chances but he handled very well his his nerves today yeah and here it is the first the first point for the men's team today and it was brought but by none other than teams captain exactly okay night night h4 now by jan sire but she played that in a way that looked like a kind of defeat defeated jan sire and i wonder if you can just go rook h8 now as black because g7 yeah you because g7 you can just take yeah probably probably rook h8 is just winning on the spot yeah he played it oh yeah jan sire i don't think she's gonna make the time control here actually it's just it's just game the the rook and the bishop have just been locked locked out very nice preparation by bilal i must say this night c6 was quite interesting and it seems that it has thrown it has thrown off jan sire of her preparation and she didn't handle well the position she played knight f3 so now you can do lots of things here is black you can give check on h1 i would go for the check and if knight e1 you've got lots of moves you can just take this is probably also winning but you don't need this you really don't need to do that that's really not clever you just you just take the pawn here yeah first take on g6 and if bishop takes g6 bishop f3 is made beautiful yeah yeah no it's over rook h1 is is really elementary stuff and the other point is of course the king can't move because you just lose the bishop so bilal will play rook h1 it's just tactics 101 he's got you know from one point i'm really a bit sad about how the match went on but from another point of view i believe that this will give this whole match and the battle some extra tension now that the man will probably win today's today's round that will mean that the ladies will have to to somehow focus and try to try to find their best form again and look at that we have another result marcelle finished her game against jillian and it was a draw yeah it was a draw yeah so it looks like all the games where i fought the ladies have some chances are ending in a draw and it seems that no one no one will be able to win from the ladies team yeah i don't think today we get a we get a win anywhere i think uh well just quickly gunai mama zada queen queen d3 played she's holding on at least um queen d3 oh look at that knight c3 is oh you but bishop takes paul takes paul takes yeah this this is crushing well uh no uh yeah because queen takes now you have bishop takes d4 very nice and she's down to 15 seconds yeah that's a lovely tactic no that's that's that's it yeah that's that's resigns six seconds she just has to try something yeah what a tough day for the ladies she took on c3 yeah bishop takes c3 with just two seconds on the clock b takes c3 d4 falls and yeah and if you go b3 you can just take with the rook as well it's just it's just it's just immediately over really nice game by criss though classic i'm sad don't be sad there's plenty more games to go yeah but it was so nice it felt so good that the women were winning uh round after round and now suddenly they are going down and with such a big score i'm not sure is it minus five we're gonna see um one two three okay minus four definitely for now and two more games still unclear i mean yeah so sabina one uh ravi aharia is oof that's a really tricky end game that's that's one that's gonna be there uh we're gonna be seeing that one for a while i think it is an improvement oh maybe it's a draw or did they are they talking about getting to move 40 oh yeah oh i don't know what's going on yeah i think ravi is not sure if he's reached move 40 oh yeah bishop c3 d4 bishop b4 it's definitely move 40 so we have moved 40 here and and now they're playing i mean this is again one where pierce got zero winning chances because even without this deep horn the three versus two even with the three minor pieces you feel that uh black you have to be a bit careful about the knight won't be free though no bishop d5 no no no all right but if i play bishop c4 okay for but even there you can call it a one it looks strange but it's still fine yeah it's i don't believe that i don't believe that ravi is worse so they've reached move 40 uh liandro uh well c takes b2 on the board now and gunai has resigned so uh i'm unlucky for gunai but big result for liandro krissa nino nino nino nino is what's going on in nino's game h3 rook a rook a8 and uh nino's still totally losing eric fully dominating here nino with 14 seconds left she plays uh rook a8 bishop b5 but hopeless position rook takes a2 is good yeah it looks really really lost it's just it's just a queen for two bishops it's just not really too much to to do he's gonna take one a2 it's just not even uh a subject and i don't expect nino to survive the night before night before but this is uh okay the rook is protected so you can just you can still just uh do anything you want here rook b2 for example bishop takes a8 queen takes still completely winning probably exist 93 yeah but whatever yeah of course of course uh black is winning here but uh this the material difference i mean yeah the material difference i mean i'm certainly not playing it that well it feels like eric should should win here um regardless uh yeah right feels like eric should win all right so eric i think still in in controls liandro is one billel is uh completely winning oh he played rook takes f2 oh what is that hold on a second rook takes a2 knight before rook takes f2 also very it's actually it's actually a very clever way because now if white recaptures back rook b8 will happen with uh with a very nasty yeah that's true that's very clever actually well done eric yep that's clever very good one and i expect nino will resign soon either on this move or on the next one yeah that's that's not survivable uh billel i mean they did reach move 40 here rook g1 is on the board i mean it's just completely over for uh i think she resigned yeah she resigned so that's another one by sedas they're dropping like flies bobby chang is gonna hold this ending as well i mean maria has put the king on g4 but just yeah e5 runs into f5 check so you can't do anything so it's going to be a draw and that will leave the game peer-crammling against raviharia that one we might uh be seeing for another hour or so so that one is going to happen i think this is a good moment for us to um to take a quick break and after the break we are going to have another competitor in the hot seat and i think erina will have a chat with her uh a disappointing day for the ladies so far i thought today was going to be you know they've all got wide they're all playing well it's gone completely against uh what i thought would happen they are suffering a huge set back today all the boy is going to get back five points and make it nearly a level score it might be might be the case unfortunately could be the case we'll see after the break we'll be back in just a few minutes uh welcome everyone we are back with uh the captain of the men's team grandmaster sabino brunello who just scored the first victory today over yavanka huska uh congratulations thank you thank you good to be here how was how was your game today uh it was very unclear i think we maneuvered around for a very long time i thought the position was more or less balanced i guess um which is the moment you felt was the first critical one um okay we here we are just developing our pieces so basically move 10 when she played bishop d3 now all right the position is a bit more defined she was blitzing so probably she was still sort of in preparation uh i don't find that this is especially challenging it's just more or less equal i guess i came up with this plan queen e7 bishop a3 um i don't know listen we had a question here after rook e1 bishop takes take take um rook c1 rook d8 queen c2 h6 c takes e takes what if white would have played e4 was it a good move um yes it's a very logical move what did you do it's a hard question i'm i'm not sure how to play exactly uh okay i guess taking only four might be logical knight takes yeah and here may be c5 i mean i would have to go back and calculate again i just assess the position as playable and rather interesting i have c5 immediately i have knight d5's options i have obviously a passive rook e8 if things go right for me i mean i kind of wanted her to open up the position so we would have a more unbalanced structure and actually i was not expecting her to play e4 really because even though it's a critical move i felt like she doesn't want to to open up the position so quickly now yeah she wanted to keep solid i think in this phase of the game and uh that's why she took on d5 as well she has many options okay and it's very hard to say uh there are all very important interesting knight h4 is very complex it makes a lot of sense uh right and you played rook f2 e8 yeah and here we were a bit puzzled by the move knight to e2 uh we were trying to make e4 work but as you said i don't think she wanted to create weaknesses quite simply so um yeah knight e2 is actually a good move as far as i understand um yeah and here uh you played knight knight f8 right knight f8 yes and here came h3 h3 yeah maybe i was also a bit low on time so she wanted to keep everything you know as undefined as possible so i would spend more time on my clock right knight is six now yeah knight f3 back and now c5 yes i thought it's a good time to try and play for some initiative it's probably just equalizing uh so where did you think uh that uh things went wrong for white things i don't think they've gone wrong for white right now she has a completely fine position as far as i as far as i see eight yeah the point is the bishop on d3 is a bit stronger than the bishop on b7 and it's practically a bit tricky it's a bit of an unusual position so queen b1 was a good move again c takes d4 yes i didn't have much of an alternative um i was actually a bit worried that she might try and take with the knight on d4 which is a very solid option just trading more material which makes it harder for me to play for a win it's not really an attempt to achieve much for white i guess but i think the position should be like a plus over equal maybe yeah yeah i i agree uh so rook takes c8 happened rook takes c8 he takes d4 and actually i was very happy with this knight f4 this is what i was looking for uh so this is now sharp uh i don't think black is better but at least there's a lot of play i have the c file i have some tactical tricks maybe it's a very dangerous position if white gets let's say a knight on e5 she might consider sacrificing on f7 in some lines some bishop g6 kind of tactics knight f5 is entering so it's a very double edge position where as white one can also imagine winning the game in a few moves uh so knight f5 was played yes rook c3 yes which i felt was a very nice initiative move here i was worried that uh you might get in trouble on the last rank but apparently you had things under control right you never know but in control is a bit too much i've been blundering a lot recently so uh as recently as yesterday so uh you can never be sure but i thought that my activity on the third rank and on the c file was much more important of course i can have a move like rook c7 which is also decent or but i felt okay i should activate my rook and and okay here shortly after knight e5 bishop c8 yes this was a very tough decision i have so many options it feels like i might have some temporary initiative but i didn't manage to work it out and i would be very curious of what the engine yeah we have only only our own brains perspective here and uh we thought we thought that black is doing fine like i said the only thing we were worried was last rank but uh yeah that knight from f6 control it very well here if you imagine a knight jumping on e4 yeah it's really unusual we both have like four knights in the center i mean yeah right that would be yes i mean normally knight on f4 is fantastic and so is a knight on f5 i mean all of them are exactly where they dream of and well still one of us should have an advantage or maybe it's equal and we can't both be better right but instead you chose the safer option right bishop c8 yeah i thought this was very tricky actually on 93 i was intending to play bishop e6 ah somehow covering the e5 yeah and my point is the most natural move is bishop f5 this is what she was looking for and i was really hoping she will fall for knight e2 now knight e2 yeah it's a funny move but it works tactically because of the first rank yeah after rook e2 you have rook c1 winning the queen right and let's say if she goes king h2 i can now take on d4 knight takes d4 wow i have stability i have everything now yeah this this was a nice trap yes i thought so but of course she doesn't need to play like this yeah she played bishop f1 and now after knight e4 i actually thought bishop f1 was a mistake because it's a passive move and 94 i thought was very pleasant yeah it is very logical and then when we saw knight c4 i got so excited here i thought that well maybe it's that tactics which works especially she has a fantastic point because queen f8 seems to be winning on the spot and what is wrong with it it's knight d6 knight d6 yes i'm not sure which of the two maybe both are fine i will say the other one sorry the other one all right let's try knight f2 d6 and i think i'm losing control in the center i might be totally wrong but i think this is what she was looking for why is not necessarily better i mean i can take a plain knight bishop e6 or bishop d7 uh i must be okay the point being that if queen d6 then rook e8 made yes that is that is the problem so you are saying bishop d7 here yeah it's probably still okay but yeah yeah all right let's let's move back so i guess this is what she was looking for but rook c4 seems to be winning right yeah i think knight c4 was just a blunder on her part um here b takes b takes c4 followed yeah yes maybe taking on h6 as i see you wrote down during your life commentary looks looks like a better right it's still not not a good idea to to give out material take take and you still have the two pieces for the rook right right yeah i think it's good enough in any case i mean bishop f5 and i wasn't very concerned here it was quite obviously blunder okay so here after b takes um you took on f5 yeah and now she blundered again queen b5 yeah and after queen a2 there is no good way of protecting f2 she had to give up some more material rook takes e4 bishop takes and it was only a matter of time when she resigned in a few moves so congratulations for your first win and what do you think of your team's performance today yeah it's a very nice surprise of course we would not imagine winning for zero today which seems to be the score um well some games are still in progress so who knows uh but it's a fantastic day and of course we've we needed a win for for the mood you know and for the scoring the time on the yeah uh did you did you have any special meeting discussing the team strategy how did you cheer up the guys after uh no i didn't do anything actually it's okay i'm already responsible for my game really and everyone has uh did amazing i especially love this carocan game by uh by landry yeah he played a fantastic style yes very impressive all right so now you are back back in the game and what do you think about tomorrow well i think we have the white pieces and we are much more happy and we see life you know in a happier way so yes we were of course very upset i mean we we didn't feel we deserved to win that uh to lose that many games in the previous rounds and we clearly felt we can do better and um happy today we managed to yeah indeed prove that we can play some good games and uh at least put up a fight and yeah yeah very very well congratulations on the nice win also uh i hope that we will see more interesting games in the uh upcoming days and uh we will leave now sabina to have to have a rest and let's check the remaining games we didn't know we're here we're live this is uh the finale of today is round round three of battle of the sexes yeah it's not the finale of the tournament because there are loads more games but it's finale finale of today and it's been a route the women who got off to an amazing start crushing round one crushing round two have been blown out the water today making it a very very exciting match once again so far the men are up four games with two games to go and we can see there's some of the results on the screen eric rosen winning a nice game against nino sabino as you've just seen winning a nice game liandra chris are probably with game of the day in my opinion just a gorgeous uh you know uh a model game a model game in how to play this bronchine caracan and bilal also just being more tactical than jantzai who lost away and with two games to go it's not the end of the bloodbath potentially because in the game between pier cramling and ravie harrier i was in the lobby just now when you were or the players resting section or snack section and i was talking with nino who was very upset and i said does ravie harrier have any chances here and she said no um do you disagree with that maybe i don't disagree i mean should be a draw yeah it should be because there are only three pawns left on the board for each side and i don't imagine it going wrong right uh ravie has just played the move knight e3 ah is that uh that's a tacit draw for oh okay yeah i believe so now after knight takes e3 d takes e3 bishop takes e3 oh and it is a draw and ravie actually offered a draw already okay that answers that question that's the winner so that's a draw and actually that means we're probably gonna wrap up very quickly on the assumption well i mean maria musy took for some reason is is is she risking anything here after rook a5 because i don't i don't get it really um if i take on e4 you take on a6 yeah oh sorry rook takes them sorry oh hold on a little glitch a little glitch one second uh well that's annoying uh actually yeah we see that maria is looking never mind the other way uh probably she realizes now that it's gonna be a draw yeah it seems like uh it seems like uh she doesn't see chances here for her to to go on she doesn't look that excited about this position does she let's be honest i mean and also he only has one move right which is to take this pawn on e4 i thought uh isn't there also some rook d6 no he's he's gonna take she's gonna take i assume well maybe she'll throw in king f3 actually that might that might be all right yeah she actually throws in king f3 i think this move is fine and he has to move the rook somewhere now and then she's gonna take on a6 yeah i mean this just has got you know this this should be a draw it's two versus one on one side with the a pawns no this just has to be a draw there's just too little yeah there is not much to hope for here because now um black will also have a passed pawn eventually and it will probably uh end up pretty soon in a draw i believe king f3 okay now something like do we play f5 or should we go rook c4 i think uh he went f5 which is five yeah there is no way uh no way here for white to to win this game i believe yeah now rook takes a6 should be played i believe yeah so rook takes a6 so f5 let's have a look rook takes a6 and here again if black just wants to make a draw you can take if black is being super optimistic can you play g4 check and try and fix this pawn but you are not going to get it king f2 so there is no reason i believe to do that no i don't think there's any reason i think you just take the pawn take uh you can play any move here rook sorry king king f6 or king f7 even with the idea to play e5 at some point exactly trade pawns and then if white uh it doesn't matter actually how many pawns you put on the a file even if you have seven pawns rook against rook it's just a draw exactly yeah this should be a relatively straightforward draw now i think i don't think i don't think either player are very uh enthusiastic about continuing here right yeah what what a bad day for the ladies and what a day for for the man's team i didn't believe that will happen you know i had i mean honestly if you would have said before today that the ladies would lose 4-0 all with white i would say you are crazy but uh no it it was just nothing worked for them today none of the games there wasn't even a game which at some moment looked very promising they were just in pretty bad positions i mean Irene maybe slightly Marcel maybe okay she plays fxg5 this is a but it's also a draw king takes g5 rook a6 yeah it should be a draw it's a weird decision to go for this though like if i go e5 here rook a8 yeah rook a8 rook c4 and checks you just check sure no i i believe this is yeah this just has oh yeah this is a this is probably how the game will end i believe um well but it's i understand it's a draw but i don't understand the why the why yeah why why she takes here i wasn't there wasn't there something more simple i mean okay it's probably probably is a draw but you do give black a pass pawn uh i think i think it's a draw anyway she really looks a little bit she looks bored yes but she shouldn't be bored because there's still stuff to calculate here rook a6 can you go okay worst case scenario after e5 i can just play rook a5 yeah there is no way you make progress oh yeah that's a good move that's a good i like that that's a really nice move because rook a1 i go king f2 right right and here i come back and it's just uh it's just silk swung sorry not silk swung it's just well some kind of mutual silk swung right because by the way you can't allow uh you can't play a4 because now king g4 and you start to risk again actually it's still a draw even here like rook a8 it's probably still a draw yeah because you start the checks from behind exactly and the king has no good way of making it anywhere safe exactly yeah i think there will be a draw agreement shortly rook a6 i see that the chat really wants uh uh eric for an interview oh eric for an interview huh yeah i i don't know if eric is still oops is still here if he is we'll we'll we'll get him in here nope he's gone i think most people have gone already to celebrate this first sweet victory yeah to celebrate champagne the lot maybe some english cider possibly also yeah um okay king f6 so this i mean this game is it's still in play isn't it i mean yeah but yeah he played king f6 it's strange because if you wanted to make a draw straight away you just play five no yeah maybe can he be can he be optimistic at all i don't i don't think so even you know even if we take off the a pawns it is still a draw a theoretical draw of course there might be some challenges but on this level on the gem level it is a pretty easy draw so with two pawns on the a file black cannot really hope to win this game um if we count material black is after all a pawn up uh i mean a pawn down so yeah it should be a draw maybe they are already thinking what to order for dinner what do you think i don't know about that i mean what what yeah i mean there's new nose below the hotel they do a lot of good italian uh there's the main restaurant in the hotel but i don't know i mean i'm kind of surprised with how maria has has played this like i felt like she could have made a draw a lot earlier but okay let's just say she plays a move like i don't know rook b6 but why rook b6 then i just want to play like rook c4 rook b3 or something but even this is a bit passive isn't it i'm losing a pawn here all right but here e5 e4 might become well anyway it will be draw i don't yeah because i can go g4 yeah like here i can go g4 that's the point that's what i want to try and play uh yeah and then this is just an immediate draw right you know by the way i have some intel information about last night's dinner okay because sabino did a very tricky thing what did he do he sat at the woman's table uh so all the ladies like pia was there gina okay uh who else jansaya and mino actually most of the ladies who lost today you know oh right you think he put something in their drink i don't know but you know at some point he told maria that he believes that she always looks uh sad oh and maria was really surprised by it and we were trying to figure out uh was it a special strategy i should have asked sabino about that yeah yeah maybe it was a special a special strategy actually it's uh it's a little probably a little cheeky to do that a little cheeky to say that to throw her off but uh she is now of course uh in uh they have still a lot of time on their clocks um 18 minutes against 14 minutes yeah of course they can take uh they can take take their time but uh this game will not gonna end i mean it's 80 to end the draw but i i have seen only 80 you think it's more than 80 percent i think it's 99 no it's never 99 i mean it's going wrong no 99 is too high 80 is is solid um we had a question by protest boy in the chat that says if this is a draw what are the team standing so basically the boys would have won four games today so the girls will be up two overall so it'll be uh 30 games played right 30 games so it means 16 16 14 exactly very very close and we must say that actually uh it doesn't matter uh the how to say how many matches one team wins right uh overall it matters how many points they score exactly so even if men let's say win one match less but they score more victories than uh they are winning overall right they score one ah you mean in terms of rounds yeah yeah it doesn't matter if if the men lost six rounds uh by five and a half four and a half and then one uh four rounds by ten zero they they win the match right so it's just that the number of points at the end exactly that matters yeah and uh i guess that the women's team will have to try to get back to it tomorrow and it won't get easier because today they actually lost with this high score having all whites and tomorrow there will be all blacks well we thought today all the boys having all blacks would be a disaster for them so maybe it's just one of those tournaments where colors are not that important possibly but because it's been so surprising because yesterday the women won convincingly with black today the men with black so it's been a weird couple of days in that sense and also i must say that today uh men won with plus four and that's the biggest margin so far yeah uh the women's team won two times by plus three so uh yeah good us to them yeah indeed well we still got one game and this game i mean it depends how optimistic bobby chang wants to be she just goes a four okay so she's just she just says okay rook c4 what's her idea not sure because that point cannot really move as uh maybe she just wants to put the rook on a eight and go a five a six and put the rook at the end maybe she wants to go rook a rook a eight but the king can now come on e five right so let's say i go king e five a five let's say i give a check i now give another check and i take this pawn and i go a six ah yeah this is this is also i think a simplest way of making a draw yeah indeed should be yeah and we got something ah he just gave a check immediately so a four rook c4 with a five yeah a five rook c3 check and there might even be a repetition straight away here you can go king f4 no but king f4 runs into trouble after rook a three now yeah you put yourself in zugswang do you okay yeah you do you do you do yeah she goes king g2 yeah well spotted king g2 okay he's gonna give the check now on c2 there's no other no other move that makes sense because you want to take the pawn with check so he's gonna give the check she will go back takes and then her plan is to put the rook on a eight push the pawn to the end but well you know actually i start looking at this position and uh it's not so straightforward i don't understand why she uh she allowed it because now let's say king g5 yeah a six a rook a three check yep king f2 king g4 okay um you might might get a seven e5 right yeah that's the problem i'm not loving it king g2 rook a two check and king f3 king h3 and the point is if you go king e3 now i finally have rookie eight wait i have an idea okay rook a one rook a one no threats i'll go king g2 and now i cannot really play yeah i cannot really i think this is the construction that she wants something along these lines where she has this and if the king ever leaves the defense of of this pawn on only five that's weird it won't let me yeah we have rookie eight always and if you defend this pawn with let's say rook a five it doesn't really matter because i still go rookie eight right at the right moment yeah but uh i don't know why was it necessary because it feels like uh why it should be precise here already now yeah but i think it's all right basically i think i think she is being just she's just finding a a very direct way to force the draw basically yeah probably yeah i mean yeah this is this this is this just has to be a draw what would you do in this kind of a position would you offer a draw or just no no you've got to play it out i mean black has got no risk so you just have to play it out but i expect that they won't uh spend uh too much time on it basically okay so rook takes a two now rookie eight will follow rookie eight yeah and he will go king e five i'm pretty sure because there's no other move yeah this is the only hope to make progress for black well he can start with rook a three okay rookie just setting up a little trap king a four is okay three to provoking a four for e five mate that that has happened a few times before yeah no he's i mean the professional move is to go king e five i i do expect king e five right and then she's just going to push to the end and what a day what a day i'm just trying to think is there any is there any other construction let's say she could check let's say the point is you can't even pass very well here so what i was trying to do is let's say i did this and put the rook here does it make a difference yeah i just just just could never make progress here yeah because you cannot really go with the king to the d or f file as turn a check will follow and a queen so right yeah probably the most challenging line is the one which we've seen before the one where the king goes to a tree we might we might actually see it on the board yeah we could see something something like that on this board for sure um for sure we could see something just waiting for maria just doesn't look interested in this game for about half an hour she's just she's just like come on i think that she feels like she's missed some chances in this game because uh yeah those two knights looked indeed quite nice and the bishop on a eight was a bit limited but by white's chain of pawns yeah maybe maybe she's thinking what did go wrong here for her yeah not not not really sure um okay i mean the game is still still in battle right i mean so what actually where's the position after rook a eight black uh black is thinking so king okay right yeah so he's got 16 minutes so i mean he could spend some time here to see if he can find a construction he's thinking he's looking up he's thinking is there a construction here um i think if you go with the king king e five a six rook a three check king f two king e four a sorry sorry you have to go king g two i beg your pardon yeah that's actually kind of critical oh well draw agreement there you go not even a try there yeah and uh it's it is just a draw and they're just too good to mess that up so um there you have it no wins for the for the girls today uh a great day for the boys right and um a very unexpected fire now anything can happen if we imagine that the men's team repeats today's performance the ladies will be in trouble yeah the men with the they've got the momentum now going into round four tomorrow with the white pieces let's have a look at the results if we can put them on the screen those are the results from today uh draw Irene Sukunda against Hussain Aziz abdu Malik lost with white Mamadzada lost with white pier draw Marese bag draw that was the first draw against Joe Gallagher very early Maria just finished now Olga Giria also an early draw in a actually a completely crazy position they agree to draw um same with Marcel Fromsky I mean they they agreed to draw in a crazy position not willing to fight Nino had a disaster today against Eric and Yovanka yeah she just couldn't uh stabilize so that means four critical wins for the boys today and that is the standings as things are after round three women up 16 to 14 only two points in it a massive massive clawback today by the men still six more rounds and still plenty of ups and downs and drama and that's going to be it for us from tonight from the studio here today we'll be back same time tomorrow round four uh the men will have the white pieces are we going to see a bit of a momentum shift today might be the start it's going to be close can't wait see you all tomorrow same time same place take care see you tomorrow okay welcome to the studio Balash drew today with um uh Olga Giria and I believe she sprang a surprise on you in the opening is that correct well I think I tried to sprang the spring the first surprise but it backfired I never played the Queen's Gambit accepted but I know that she's a very good theoretician so at all cost I wanted to avoid the preparation but it turned out that I went for a line that she and her team analyzed two years ago and she remembered basically all the details up to to one point I think she misplayed the move order one move before the end because there would have been an amazing tactic and uh actually I think I managed to avoid some pitfalls and found the best continuation but had she played had she played the the best move order then it would have been really hard for me to to avoid the further coming ones sounds fascinating let's have a look at the game okay okay Balash we've got a position here white's just played queen to g4 threatening bishop h6 tell us something about the position well as I have mentioned already I managed to step into some amazing preparation by by Olga and of course obviously the strategy is bishop h6 uh threatening mate and then I have to give up the exchange so it makes sense to pre-empt the dfa square either for bishop f8 or then to put g6 uh first I wanted to play rook fd8 because it it feels there more natural uh but then actually it gives white sorry can you move back yeah thank you so rook rook d8 then it okay why why why does it do it no okay okay never mind so maybe try okay okay thank you so it gives white time and let's say bishop h6 g6 yeah and either h4 I think or white gets a lot of time to stabilize it rook rook c1 and all these maneuvers with knight d7 uh doesn't really work because I think let's say there is knight e6 oh wow and the queen c4 is not working because rook is not on c8 if I were in time to take on c4 then then that's fine and if takes then okay I guess bishop g6 and next move bishop a7 bishop f7 everything is is threatened so through d8 it gives too much time and even some h4 a slow maneuver is possible and the other option I checked was like it's drastic measure to play f5 because if white takes then I'm more or less happy because okay I don't say I'm too happy but uh king a8 and white cannot take because some rook a through q1 backring mate and my bishop come to life and okay I think I have some compensation still my king is quite weak uh but uh she mentioned that uh what I was afraid of that if f5 then just queen g3 and uh the pawn on e6 three minutes really weak so I cannot really move my knight there are it's a pictures position but uh wise knights are more uh threatening so I played rook fc8 so yeah yeah at the point is that okay bishop a6 it's natural sorry uh bishop a6 yeah okay if bishop a8 I would do it with uh rook on d8 because now 906 is I think like game over okay very close to that yeah so I play g6 and this is critical position because okay it makes sense I say e white either plays h4 but then I think I'm in time to do 97 because if 96 now I can take on c4 and if h5 I think I I can take because if I take on c4 then there is taking on g6 but I think I defend everything after a g a g I can take uh everything and king a g8 and there is no mate and actually after rook g8 it is me who can start yeah I start attacking so okay queen g3 uh and instead rook c1 would have been uh the best move order as told by Viola because the point is that if I play 97 now uh which okay there is bishop f6 computer move but uh I wouldn't have found it I think uh sorry it's uh this is a queen g3 I this one I still spotted because the point is that now the point is defended 96 is threatening uh because there is no 95 intermezzo and if I take the knight which I intended to do as uh as a last measure then bishop b3 traps uh my my queen and I was going to sacrifice it and then okay some wow some bishop f8 bishop g7 trying to set up some sort of blockade but I didn't have uh high hopes with that it was like a drastic measure so instead of uh in rook c1 97 oh this this position yeah and then queen g3 and then Olga told me that bishop f6 is only move everything else is like plus one I don't say I would have found it and the point is that if white takes like bishop g6 therefore uh the knight is defended that's why it's important that bishop g6 is included but I can take this one and if 96 it's important I take with this knight because if 96 I take on c1 let's let's show and bishop d5 and it's plus equal either white wins or or I can make a draw and but then uh she mixed up the move order with this queen g3 queen g3 and yeah I was aware that if knight 97 probably rook c1 it leads to the same so I played b3 and with the point that if knight takes b4 then I gain a crucial tempo with uh I'm sorry I'm sorry can I go on to show one more variation because there is one more another tactic I found but I'm not sure it it works so everything is hanging and somehow my pieces come to life and there is no mating threat so let's say white starts taking pieces if I take on a1 then 96 and my knight is trapped and rook is hanging so I fought queen c4 rook c1 and my big idea was knight d4 and I think I win an exchange in all in every move order because my next move okay I can pre-move knight d2 in online games as well and uh okay she takes knight e2 I take the queen I take on c4 and even if she steps out she steps out knight e2 still and this leads to the same so that was my plan so of course she played bishop b1 instead and off her draw uh to be honest I offered draw I think at move 15 because as the hungry and sane goes never lose a game before without offering the draw so I tried and then she offered draw I was 50 minutes behind on clock so and still I didn't see what to do for sure because well if if she doesn't offer draw I I don't feel that something is critical but on online engine still still shows that rook d8 is only move that holds the position everything else is plus one and I was going to sacrifice a pawn with knight e4 right yeah you can go on for one more minute sorry where do I go to the bishop b1 final position yeah oh sorry there yeah no problem yeah so there is knight b4 tactic but probably okay it doesn't work because of 96 so I I tried to play knight if I was most probably going to play this queen c4 and the point is that if rook c1 I can take on a4 with the pawn on b4 I'm forced to play queen e6 sorry queen a2 and with the queen on e2 there would be some 96 and bishop g6 tactics as always but now I'm in contact with the bishop so because of the x-ray and white cannot take so 94 so instead she should take on a b3 instead of rook c1 this one yeah some reason down here it doesn't like can we go by the arrows okay some problem yeah we we agreed that after queen takes b3 I either take or play rook b1st and have some positional compensation based on the weaknesses on the queen side I don't know what the engine will show because we haven't checked this one I would have been reasonably happy to get this instead of the queen sacrifice because I feel that I have good drawing chances but it is what it is okay well thank you very much thank you