 Maxime Vacherlagrav scored a nice win in round 6 of the Gibraltar Masters. The game, very instructive and very nice, but the end very surprising. Watch what happened. Maxime, a couple of solid games, solid results in the last few rounds and now a nice win. Pleased with the way things went today? Yeah, I'm a bit shocked, under-shocked, but we'll come to that later. Because the opening went very well. Nf5 was the move I think is not in my notes. And so I was trying to basically refute it. And I wanted Nx3 first, Nxpx, and to take advantage of the pawn f7, but then there's Bxp7. And Q1, Qg3 is basically nothing. So I stumbled on this idea of h4 and the... This was over the board for you. And the idea is if it doesn't go h5, so for instance it goes Bb5, it seems very logical, then I go g4, Nx7, and h5, and there's no more h5 counterplay. And these positions are supposed to be good for me, and I think basically they are because I can get as much space as I want on the king side. Maxime, we're going to have to ask you to just... Yeah, thank you. Some ideas with h6, g6, Bg5, so... Creating dark square weaknesses. Yeah, so this is better. But after h5, Nx3, Nxpx, you have to stop Ng5. I mean, you cannot stop it, but you have at least to exchange a knight. So Ng5, Bg5, Hg5, and here, Fernando thought for like 45 minutes. Yeah. The thing is, if it goes, for instance, g6, then B3, you have to go Nxc6, Nx7 at some point, which is also why I was taking advantage of this move, Nx5. Now, I probably have to take on e7. For me? Yeah, king takes, and something like Bd3, Qf3, it looks very bad for him. Another big idea is if he goes Qd8, to get immediately some counterplay, then g6 is a killer. Nx, and I don't remember Qc2, Bd3, probably Bd3. So Nx5, you've got e4? Exactly, Nxg5, e4 is... So Qh4, still some of the fights on, but it looks... You can take on, okay, you mean... I could play Bx3, probably, I can start with Qf4 as well, forcing Qg3, then take, take, and... I mean, something, maybe Qx3, maybe e6. It looks very unpleasant for black with no development. It just looks very bad. So Nxc6, which I thought was the only move, so the thing is now he gets... I mean, I don't have time for Bx3, because he goes Nxf5, this I have to avoid. So I took this pawn, even though it's a bit scary to open this file. It's hard for him to get a second piece on this file. The idea is whenever he gets his knight on f5, I will go g4. Right. I mean, at the appropriate time. So f5 would not be an outpost for him. And so after Bx2, now my plan was to exchange queens. So like, if he went Nx87, I would have gone the same, Qb3. So you say your plan was to exchange the queen. Can you explain to us why this was... why you felt a queen trade would benefit you here? Basically, because if his queen gets to the king side, then suddenly there's a lot of things that I should care about, Qh2, Qh4. Whenever I go Bxf3, it's unclear. Sometimes the black's bishop can get to B5. So pawn on g5 is also quite weak, meaning that I should have worked my rook to f6 at some point. And it gets a bit messy. So if I exchange queens, for instance, if I exchange these queens here, I mean, even without this B4, B5 idea, I'll just be dominant. Somehow I'll go Bxd2, Qf2, Qh1. Try to exchange one pair of rooks, and then some are probably at some point before like getting my bishop. And how are you evaluating this position after Qb3? Do you think you're already much better here? Oh, clearly. Clearly better. Another point, of course, if he goes Qd8, then rook f6 clearly, and I cover g5, and now he's never in time to get... The queen to the h-file. Yeah. So I went Qc7, Bd2. I was not happy about Bd2. I think I should have gone Qa3 immediately. The idea is long castle, now I go B4. And Qh8, B5 should be winning. So this is clearly what I should have done in the game. So it looks like I'm very much in control. So Qa3, yeah. Rooking is perfectly safe on f2, so there's really not much... One nice line also is if he goes Qd8, Qa3, it's an important move, rook h1. Take... Take, and now he threatens already this counter play with Qh8. But I take Qg5, Qf8 check, Nd8 is forced, and rook f4. And he doesn't have a check, I threatened something with like rook g4, so should be winning. So your idea of rook f4 is to stop Qh4 check. Yes, and he doesn't have an idea anymore. Nice. But Qb8, and here... So I played Rxc1, Qa3 first, of course, because you cannot go. So I decided to keep the rooks to get for the queen trade, to prepare for the queen trade, and here... This moment here actually, I was looking at the game at this point. There was an idea of bishop b4, this was actually suggested by Adibon, who was here before for an interview. Did you consider this? I didn't like it, so maybe Qd8, and bishop d6, I guess, Qa8, b4, I assume this is the idea. And now, the thing is I was afraid that his queen comes into play. But it's still hard, because bishop d7, you probably have... b5, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, it's totally random, but... Yeah. But you just felt that queen trade would just make things much simpler, you wouldn't have to calculate as much. Yeah. No, I felt that after b4, I crashed through. And actually, it's not that easy. So like, knight b4, and yeah, we're gonna get to the part of the game where I'm shocked. So like, here, rook b7, knight a2, I was trying to find the win. And I saw that... It looks like black should get mated here, because the king is in sort of a tail zone. And I thought I found it with e4, de, so I cannot go rook a7 immediately, because of e3 check, bishop e3. And now, we understand why we played e3 to cover e4 as an escape square. But I saw bishop f4, rook d5, rook c7, a3, and rook c5 check. Wait, you played rook c7 on the board. We actually thought that's a really problem, because he can just go king d4 here. Yes, this is a shocking part. So when I played rook c7, I realized you can just take on d4, and it's not made. I saw bishop e3, and rook c5 was made. But he has king d6 there. So you thought this was made while you were calculating. When we saw this in the live stream, we actually thought that this was entered wrongly or something, because he resigned here. He resigned. He had the same hallucination. So this is the shocking part. And I don't know, but I couldn't find a mate after knight a2. Actually, in this position, bishop e5 is killing for black. Ah, okay. Simplices. Yeah, because I think the idea then you have rook c7, and even rook c7 next. Yeah, yeah, no, clearly. I mean, I just... After he... When you played rook c7, did you realize instantly over the board? I realized after one minute or something, and so I suddenly was deep in thought, and then he surprised me by resigning. A pleasant surprise. And how would you evaluate the position after this? I didn't find more than a draw. Sorry, I still have a draw, but I don't have more than that, I think. Yeah, yeah, no, it was a shocking end of the game. Wow, they normally say that in chess you make your own luck, but here it was just very lucky that... Yeah, but I mean, in general, of course, my position was so good that... Yeah, throughout the game. Yeah, that should have been winning anyway, but yeah, you don't want to have these unpleasant moments over the board, where you realize you've blundered and... But okay, I'll take the win. Of course, I think overall it's kind of deserved that I win this game, but yeah, I'm still shocked. So after he resigned, did you, when you were analyzing at the lobby, did you... Did he realize also instantly or was it only when you went to analyze that it came out that king d4 was a possibility? Yeah, he told him at the end that king d4 was an option, but yeah, he suffered basically the same hallucinations that looks like Rook C5 and Bishop C3 is mating net, and after king d4, there's no net anymore. So this oversight, would you put it on... The battle of the sexes we had last night, it was a late night, do you think that could be the reason for this oversight? No, this kind of oversight, I can only blame myself, and that's what I'll do. All right, but tell us, how did you enjoy last night? And the men's team won 2-1, but the first loss was quite horrendous? Yeah, no, it was very stressful. Then there was this first game where even suffered this hallucination and other ones that Bishop b5 had been played instead of Bishop c4, then after f5 the positions are too bad. Yeah, when he touched his f1, he should have just gone f6, I guess. And so, but yeah, then of course we... You made a comeback. We recovered, we recovered from this, say it moves loss, and I'm proud of the way we fought back. As a captain, you should be, and now we're at the half, we've crossed the half mark here at the tournament. Evaluate your play for us so far? An even. So I've had a couple of nice games with nice calculations, but overall I'm still maybe a bit tired, and in some of the games I've suffered big calculating mistakes, so even in this one, but I can't think of a couple others. So of course, but there's still hope, I mean, I'm still close to the leading pack, and if I manage to get a strong one and maybe less blunders, I do think I will have a shot at winning it. All right, well, before you go, I have to ask you this question, a move like Rooksy 7 when it happens, and then missing it and resigning on the spot for players of your level, or Fernando's level, how, if you have to explain to that very shortly, why that something like that happens, how would you explain it? Well, I think it's because of the scenario also, like you expect like to get mated here, and so like, okay, from my side, it's like, okay, I think I found the mate, and I feel like it should be mate, so I basically don't bother. Once I play E4, I think Rooksy 7. You took three seconds for Rooksy 7 as well, or did you take longer, maybe? A bit longer, but not much. No, basically I was expecting E3 check, which I thought was the only move to prevent mate, and E3 would be 3, Bishop D3 and Rooksy 3, but it's winning, of course, for me. And then, from Fernando's point of view, it's like, okay, he played it, so it must be mate, and you see the mate and you don't bother and King takes D4, looks like it's mate, so you know, these are hallucinations happen. I mean, if it's like a complicated game, and you know, you double edged, you can't really suffer these hallucinations, but here with this King on D5, it's just begging to be mated, but suddenly it escapes. All right, we're gonna let you get some rest. Thank you so much for joining us, Maxime, and we look forward to having you back in our studio. Thank you for your time. Thank you.