 Hello everybody and welcome to round four of the Jib Chess Battle of the Sexes 2022 Scheveningen tournament one of its kind if you've joined us for the first time you're very welcome two teams boys against girls men against women 10 fantastic players on each team fighting it out for pride glory and of course a hundred thousand pounds in prize money we've seen three absolutely fantastic rounds so far in arena we're hoping for more today yesterday we saw after two really tough rounds for the boys they bounced back in style fantastic day for them will they continue the momentum into today well you know actually my confidence in the women's team was really really high before yesterday and today looking at the pairings I feel a little bit worried actually yeah we'll have a look at the pairings in a moment let's have a look at what happened well we can see that perhaps we can look at the results from yesterday first and then we will look at the pairings here we go we saw Irene against Hussain was a draw Zansaya lost a very complicated game to Bilal in in a complicated French and Gunai Mamadzada lost a well basically a model game by Leandro Precia right Leandro played so well having some novelty in the opening that night G6 was fantastic and then Gunai struggled to find the best plan for white yeah a fantastic game by Leandro yeah great game by Leandro you can see there are a bunch of draws in in the middle and then Eric Rosen getting off to a start of some points on the board win beating Nino Bazziashvili in a again in a in a weird game where it looked as though Nino was doing well out the opening but she lost her way somewhere in the early middle game and Eric managed to take over and converted a better position and Jovanka Huska again you know it looked as though she had a solid ish position and at some point she just lost her way yeah it felt to me like she got maybe a little bit over ambitious because of Sabino's time trouble but Sabino handled very well his nerves yesterday and was very precise when Jovanka blundered yeah so that meant that the boys clawed back four points yesterday meaning that the current total is that the the girls are winning by two and we can see the women 16 points men 14 so the battle is very much on again and the men all have white today so is this going to be a day where they take a lead in the match well judging by the pairings there's a very good chance let's have a look at who we've got today we've got Chonka against Muzichuk uh well Balash is been playing perfectly good chess he's got a chance with white of course today against Maria all right but i think this is one of those games which might actually end with a draw i believe they're both quite solid and won't be willing to take too many risks today now one of my favorite games of today of the round is chrissa against abdu malik two great players zhansaya suffering a tough loss yesterday chrissa obviously with a beautiful win yesterday what do we expect here well you know zhansaya is one of those players who is very high on her fighting spirit and i believe that the loss quite bad loss from yesterday will motivate her to do her best in order to bounce back and i believe this won't be a balanced game but uh judging from how leandro played yesterday i think we'll see a good fight here okay good fight in that game coming up for sure sabino brunello white against nino batia shvili i have to say i've i'm a bit worried for nino in this game uh she had a tough loss yesterday she's black today sabino is well underrated and when he starts to play decent chess he's he's a very tough opponent so i think nino is going to have a tough game today indeed actually i just walked with nino today to the playing hall and she was telling me that sabino is a really good player you know of course i think she was a bit worried about herself as well today but let's see if she can be more solid and perhaps a draw would be a good result for her here i think a draw would be a good result yep joe gallo against pier cramling the two oldest participants in the tournament uh two very experienced grandmasters joe showing us yesterday you know he can still do some decent ish preparation before a game five minutes before finding an idea he's got the white pieces against pier i think joe is going to be very up for this game i think he's going to be excited about playing white yes pier is very solid but joe will be thinking okay she's not too she doesn't play too fast she doesn't play too crazy so i'm gonna have a chance at getting some kind of initiative against her i thought that actually it is the game where the women's team might hope for a win really interesting yeah pier has this very interesting style especially with with the black pieces that she lets the opponent you know uh think that he's a bit better and then wait wait wait for a mistake it's very tricky always to play against her you think you are in control but then suddenly i think joe will have to avoid some real dangers in this game okay belial ballasina against arine succunda now i thought this was the game one of the games at least where there's another one coming but that i think arine has got a chance here belial he's uh he's obviously very strong he's obviously very tactical but he's a bit wild sometimes and arine might be able to take advantage of that today indeed judging from the first three rounds here belial seem to be quite quite unpredictable so we will see how he is going to do today iran very solid so far with a very good performance very good half out of three fantastic yeah eric rosen against olgogiria our interesting matchup two totally different styles eric with the white pieces today it's going to be a an interesting game i have absolutely no idea what to expect but maybe olga is actually going to be quite ambitious today that's my that might be the case and i believe that the most important in this game will be who's going to be better prepared because if eric will will be fine today with his preparation then all will be okay but giriya is really well prepared theoretically player boby ching against marisa bag both of these players been super solid so far boby with the white pieces though he'll try a little bit but he doesn't you know he's not a huge risk taker uh so i think marie has got good chances but also maybe boby is thinking okay today is really an opportunity for me to put some pressure on yeah might be the case especially since marie has the least spent hours in the arena right so maybe she was not feeling great on the first three days and maybe boby will try to seize an opportunity here we're gonna see that indeed let's look at the next game ravi harry against gunai mamadzada another very interesting matchup uh ravi drew yesterday against pier cramling he's playing absolutely fine nothing wrong so far with ravi's chess here and gunai has shown moments of brilliance but we've also seen that gunai can also be outplayed if she's not in the sort of position that she likes she needs to get her kinds of positions and i have to say i think ravi is a very bad opponent for gunai um ravi is uh uh extremely solid he doesn't give many chances and uh if gunai is too optimistic today and i think she could get punished look at her feet she's a bit nervous she's she's she's doing the the tap dance is she she could see yes she was she's very she's dressed very uh very professionally i mean she's very uh how can i say she's very closed so maybe that's a reflection of her mood that she's gonna play a bit more kind of let's say conservative if that's the right word but she's a very professional player you know especially since she's so young it is not something common you see in in the very young generation so i'm very curious how this game will go yeah and to finish off the pairings we've got jillian boilia against yovanka huska uh yovanka really struggling uh she's just hasn't found any rhythm jillian is a really tricky player i think this is another i like if i had to put a guess on it being a decisive result i would say this game i would say that this has got a good chance of ending as a decisive result and he has a favorite hat he's been wearing yes so maybe he has a trick today for for yovanka under it let's see if he will be able to pull it off indeed and the last game uh hussein as is against marsil f roimski what do you think about this one that's gonna be an interesting game i am uh i'm somehow feeling that marcel is very well prepared in the openings at least so far we've seen that she has managed to surprise her opponents yes the first one and uh yeah that's definitely gonna be an interesting game hussein was very solid up to this point playing the berlin with the black pieces he had a very balanced game yesterday against iran so let's see who who will prove better yep and there you have an overview a bird's eye view of the playing hall playing obviously in the garrison library uh we've spoken about the venue a number of times already one of the most important heritage sites in gibraltar was uh constructed in the 18th century um ties obviously to the british empire but also to the mediterranean with lots of important literature here very very nice to be playing here and you can see jennifer valentine in the very very far background uh by the door she is the director of this lovely venue and in the middle we have steven linarez who's currently talking steven has been a fixture for the gibraltar chess congress for years and years i remember seeing him i actually think he's been here pretty much every edition he is uh he's an mp at the gibraltar parliament and is the minister for sport culture heritage youth and perhaps some other uh things as well so a very important role in gibraltar and uh his support and the support of the government is of course extremely welcome and uh we thank him and his colleagues for uh making this great event yeah i mean the support from the local government has just been phenomenal for years and years and years and they're very proud to to host this tournament and um we appreciate their their backing yeah and a little speech there of course we didn't hear that but i'm sure it would have been very nice and now he's going to do the honorary first move and it's actually on eric's uh board eric versus olga let's see what what's gonna be the first let's see what he chooses curious jennifer valentine when she did her first move she deliberately chose the english so she did some research and now steven is is it the epon or e4 that looks like a sensible move let's do some bets now will it be a karakan or a ruilopas because i know these are the two favorite openings in olga's repertoire oh okay i'm gonna say karakan for olga today that's what i think a karakan actually let's talk let's do a let's do a let's play a game here because we haven't actually done any predictions overall so today what do you think i think the final score will be oh i really hope that the ladies will bounce back and i'm going for a plus one for the ladies team plus one a modest but uh but an important win you know momentum is everything in life arena i'm going for plus three for the guys oh wow i'm going for a solid plus three putting them on plus one overall um before the well it's sorry it's not the rest days that we've got one more round and then the rest day so tomorrow will be round five but i'm saying the the boys will win by three games today the games are going to kick off any minute and uh of course we want to hear from you guys we have got the youtube chat open we've also got twitch chat so maybe we'll flick between both we've got a yeah we've got a few more we've got a bit more engagement on the twitch chat at the moment so we will look out for your your messages please keep them appropriate please do not uh be silly and please please please avoid spam no politics no religion this is not a politics show this is a chess broadcast we want to hear about chess right and your opinions on the games and the players that's it and we actually see a caracan but in a different game oh in the game between balash against musichuk maria we do and in the game that you said oh she did go e5 you were right okay she went with e5 in in the eric rosen games i hope that my predictions will go as well as my guess in this particular game let's hope so all right um i guess what we'll do is let's go and have a bird's eye view a full view of this game here with eric rosen let's get the full screen i want to see how quickly eric is playing oh he did he played in italy he played the juco juco piano no it's very fashionable this day sexually exactly and we can see yeah it's played pretty much all the time at top level against well not all the time but it's kind of i would say it's dominated top level chess for the past few years now and i think it's clear that it's overtaken the rylopers or the spanish opening as the main weapon for elite players so it's no surprise and of course these players as well naturally very much inclined to playing this and we'll see what eric does but in the meantime um i am delighted to introduce uh steven linarez uh thank you steven you're the minister for housing employment youth sport and perhaps some other things i might have no no no no no no now you used to be that's a lot of culture as well and heritage so a lot of things yes a lot okay well i reckon i know we've never actually properly spoken but i recognize you because you've been have you been at the tournament every year since the inception not quite i mean but i have been since we came into government okay because we had it in fact chess was one of the things that we even wrote into our manifesto right that we would support the chess tournament that brian can and started many years ago right and that it was one of the things that as if we got into government that we would fully support and we have done that since we've come in so what's going on at the moment in with chess and is there still a big chess in schools project happening in Gibraltar is there still a big chess um let's call it effort here in Gibraltar yes there there has been and especially the last five years okay we've had we had steward conquest who was the the chess person here in Gibraltar but chess is one of those as a school teacher i can tell you is one of those that are very popular within with children because you get all the children that might like sports in general or arts and all that but chess comes across although i know it is a sport and it's a sport but but it's one of those that children tend to quite like playing you know and it's very popular no it is very popular and this event is very popular what do you think about the format this year last year when you came it's or rather when you when since you've you've been in government you've been watching the tournament it's been an an invitational let's say an open tournament where people playing but this year it's men against women um it's uh there's a fun element to it it's not meant to be uh some kind of uh there's no political uh sort of element to this it's just a bit of fun well how do you see it do you like the idea of it i i love the idea because uh like i said i used to be a school teacher before i want a PE teacher and i've studied quite a lot about sports and and you know the difference between men and women in sports and uh you get sports now even i was commenting before that even the darts now have women and that is has been a very sort of like macho sports darts where you go to the pub yeah yeah men play it and not women and but now it's leveling up and i think in chess even more because we've had we've had and brian again has been the instigator of pushing the women into our open tournament right and the he had the idea many years ago put in the battle of the sexes yeah which was a very much of a fun that was a fun evening wasn't it absolutely you put a boxing ring in the middle of the of the hall yeah and you and it was fast quick there were women in one side the men in the other and it was a very much of a fun thing but this here i think it's more it is still a fun thing but i think it could develop into a study of you know who a neurological study of who has brains for what well i mean judging by the performances so far it's clear that the the women are you know they were dominating yesterday they had a bit of a hiccup they still have the lead who do you think was going to win it yeah i don't you don't want to get it i mean i don't know and i'll tell you why because i haven't been in the tournament i don't understand chess that much to say who would win it i mean again i was asking about whether the women and the men are the same ranking or at a similar level they are yeah and if they are you know i mean who knows i mean it's it's one of these things that is is refreshing to see yes let's put it that way it's very refreshing to see a tournament in which the men and the women are exactly at the same level and they can compete you know outrightly equality in in the whole of the tournament and it's great to see yeah it is and it's it's really also thanks to you and government for you know helping to make this happen under such difficult circumstances globally to get we've got 20 nations here represented that's that's unbelievable all continents of the world asia america africa i mean it's amazing yeah let's hope so goodness me it has been it's been a tough few years for everybody i think everybody is ready to go back to living living like we were so uh yeah i mean what can i say thank you so much for for just uh you know your continual support and Gibraltar support it's it's absolutely wonderful and may this and the tournaments continue long into the future thank you thank you let's have a look at the playing hall again and then we'll uh get to the games all righty so we can see that eric rosen playing oligogery and we've got a slightly uh unusual position i'm going to try and get see what happened there and erics played a line which well i say it's unusual it's not that unusual it's a line that i've experimented with with before and we'll get that on the screen now so it's actually i've also been on both sides here in this position and i know it can be quite tricky even though it is widely played these days yeah i think players like gawain jones have played this um this is the standard italian position here and most of the time if you look at the top level games they play the quiet italian with d3 get castled and try to play like that but of course in the old days when we learned the italian it was to try and go d4 in one go because if you can achieve this center without any issues you're going to have a nice position and after e takes d4 the main line for years and years and years was just capturing back but it was shown that the move bishop b4 check and this you know we've got romantic variations where things can go crazy but in all lines here black is doing okay so eric rosin played the more fashionable way of this system which is to play the move pawn to e5 so and uh division took an in-between move basically before capturing back and oops sorry knight e4 is a move i beg your pardon but olga plays them the classic reply the classic reply d5 hitting the bishop the classic reply in the most unclassic position yeah exactly yeah exactly and here it would be a mistake to take on f6 because after this it looks as though oh i can take all these pawns but actually what ends up happening is the two bishops here for black the open board means that whites king is in big danger and if black can ever play the move pawns at e3 establishing a protected pass pawn white is in trouble so all top white players know that you can't really take on f6 you have to now pin the knight the knight moves into e4 and now you take back on the d4 square so you've won your pawn back and this is where olga now plays the move bishop to b6 now that is not the only move in the position the move bishop b4 check is also fairly well known which leads to different variations you can block with the bishop or with the knight but bishop to b6 also been played a lot um can still be considered a main line the bishop and the knight of course pressurizes point and black basically wants to play a very quick bishop g4 putting maximum pressure on d4 and sometimes black just wants to castle let's go and play f6 very quickly trying to break and undermine this center and if you don't know what you're doing here with white things can go get out of hand very very quickly so but the same goes for black actually also for black yeah it's a quite risky position from the strategical point of view because many times when black plays f6 if we have time to capture on c6 and force black to take back with the pawn then we have a forever strong spot on e5 it's it's a very interesting position and there were so many games of top players here i'm curious which line is erie going to choose because i remember um there is bishop b3 here somehow one of the most fashionable moves lately and then after bishop g4 sorry oh we are not in which position so after bishop b6 uh it was knight c3 played short castle yes uh yeah and here i was telling about bishop b3 then bishop g4 h3 bishop h5 queen c2 now there's a lot of theory involved here and there have been some developments i believe we're all gonna see a very well prepared eric but i'm not sure why is he taking so much time here because he should be still uh still in his preparation it's the main line for black after yeah it is the main line and bishop e3 as you said bishop g4 has been played oops countless times at top level and there are lots of games i don't know if there's any sideline here that we can consider but let's check in with back with that a bit while big in a while because i see some absolute craziness on the board just out of my now i told you before the round arena that i felt like uh the game between bill ellen iran could get out of hand and that's exactly what's going on because i see pawns all over the place exactly let's have a look so the game started out d4 knight f6 c4 e6 knight c6 started out very classically with the nimzo indian and g4 this is like uh my my dear of style right exactly it's because he just played this g4 move in a slightly different position against a c panko and yeah he played it here actually in it before after the nimzo what is that i've never seen it either mamba jarov just played this in vaikansi the tata still tournament which is going on at the moment the super tournament in holland he got a very interesting position against the ac panko and now bill ell has taken it one step further playing the move g4 here now you might all be asking well what's the idea why is this even moved possible why can't i just take well the idea for white is that you can go e4 hitting the knight and now the knight's got a bit of a difficult decision it normally comes back and even in this position things can get uh just brainstorming here completely out of control for example why can push further black can come in and i wonder if you can play the move queen g4 that's the idea because after knight c3 you've got the intermediate a free move you've got a three i was even thinking bishop d2 no i was i i i mean you can play bishop d2 that's one of the ideas for sure i was even thinking can we be so crazy and take here allow this take on g7 rook f8 but after you've got queen e7 but oh sorry you can go you can go um bishop g5 here wow and that actually just wins f6 f6 and now i can just do anything taking is just winning unbelievable it is so funny looking after rook takes f6 it takes f6 and the pawn is just promoting there is no way to stop it or it's made in one exactly it's just over so i think that's what bilal might have prepared again that that's not necessarily forced because after let's say takes king d1 black can now take a time out to protect this pawn but again it's not easy for example if you castle i fly out with bishop h6 threatening mate and if you go g6 here probably now i can kick the bishop with tempo rook c1 the bishop goes back and now i'm not even interested in winning material i'm just gonna play h4 h5 put the bishop on d3 and try and check mate black and it's it's all very dangerous stuff and it is very unpleasant to face this kind of novelties during the game because then you feel like you should punish your opponent for being so bold you know yeah but that is when you might go wrong actually because normally you should just forget about this move or not get over emotional and try to try to just follow the chess principles and i believe that's exactly what iran's trying to do here yeah i agree so after g4 she plays very principally as you said normally an attack on the flank should be met by an attack in the center so this is the most principled move apart from taking the pawn d5 and now bilal just said okay i'll attack the bishop takes takes i'm still not unhappy if you take it because i'm still gonna do my e4 stuff so iran just decided to take on c4 instead and now queen a4 check by bilal hitting the king hitting the pawn and he's just not interested in this pawn now at all for example after bishop d7 queen takes e4 now black could just take a pawn here and bilal is basically saying i just don't care i'm gonna use this g file maybe he just wants to play the move knight f3 followed by rook g1 here but wait what if i play first bishop c6 instead of knight g4 isn't white in big trouble here no knight f3 and still with the same idea yeah just just you take i'm gonna go rook g1 and i'm gonna claim that i'm perfectly active and i'm gonna win back on g7 and uh no problems whatsoever basically that's a very unbalanced position and it looks like bilal really wants to use that momentum they've got yesterday right i believe so yeah and i think he's really uh very motivated for today's game as you can see so i expect fireworks there let's move on to another game and where should we go next well i can see oh well jillian's game has got very exciting against yovanka huska jillian with the white pieces yovanka with black yovanka playing the caracan which is her opening she wrote a book on it a very good book um and she plays uh jillian who plays the move knight c3 yeah knight c3 e6 and g4 now this opening here which i can't remember the name of this line was the first ever line i learned against the caracan yeah in fact if you look at the mega database on chess base i think my first ever game is in this position on the database against james born probably 96 or 97 or something like that it was a fantastic game actually isn't it a bit strategically risking because placing the knight in front of the pawn seems so like it's not the most natural thing to do it is risky but it's also just a very uh basically concrete line either it works or it doesn't and after bishops g6 the idea is to play knight g2 this was the the line that i learned for years um and it may be called the bayonet attack uh judging by uh some comments there in youtube the knight comes to e2 to come to f4 and the idea is for white is to play h4 knight f4 and give this bishop a headache because h5 is a threat c5 and h4 anyway is the main line and now black has got two ideas you either play h6 or you play h5 giving the bishop room yovanka plays h5 and now knight f4 anyway and one of the key interesting ideas it already looks like things are getting out of hand for black here because what do you do about this bishop on on g6 well interestingly after the move um here black can play the move bishop h7 now this looks impossible because white can take a pawn here on h5 and you said well white has won a pawn but his center is very fragile he's very overextended exactly and yovanka plays knight c6 quickly she's still in book and if you don't know this very well with white things can get out of control very very quickly because black is actually extremely solid yes you've you've sacrificed a pawn but imagine you're able to get castled on the queen side and if this knight ever removes itself there's always going to be action against this pawn here on h4 and the center is close to collapsing as well so i hope jillion is very booked up here because if not it doesn't look so by you know by the time on the clock it it looks as though he might he might not be and if that is the case then uh he's gonna have to be very very sharp today because things can get completely out of completely out of control very quickly here i've been on some on the end of some very bad losses in this particular variation so yovanka seems to know her stuff so that's going to be very very interesting to see and so far none of the games are boring what what a fighting day it seems no yeah no no no boring games the calmest game so far i can see out the corner of my eye is between i believe afro a freud skin who's saying aziz will go through this very quickly it's a semi tarash right it is a semi tarash so this move here semi tarash and knight takes d5 so i've seen that dudai really likes this opening for black and he's played it a few times in the tata steel and it seems like black is absolutely fine here yeah it's a very concrete opening you allow white to build this big center but black has got a very solid structure he's also able to exchange some pieces off the board and we get this position here which is kind of the starting position of the modern uh semi tarash black has got this queen side majority white has got the center uh but black is just so incredibly solid that it's very difficult to get something here so white plays bishop c4 this is normal knight to d7 castles and b6 black again logically puts the bishop on the long diagonal rook d1 and rook e1 putting the pieces in the middle this has been played hundreds of times at top level recently the bishop comes back to b3 and now rook to e8 h3 and knight of six very very very standard stuff this is i believe just the same position from the game was it i'm not sure who was it with white but i'm certain that dudai had it with black pieces and at some point the rook came to e7 and it was that piece sacrifice do you remember it against vidit i can't remember that game actually yeah it was a very interesting game okay and dudai was very well prepared he gave the two pieces for a rook and a pawn but then white's coordination was not great and vidit actually struggled a little bit to to force a draw so i'm curious is really um Marcel so well prepared here because it seems like she's got one hour 36 on her clock well this is like a standard position i mean knight of six is also very common and basically here white tends to bring the queen out to f4 it was exactly what happened in that game and that was the point of the move h3 that you cannot times retreat the queen to h2 correct after knight h5 the queen can come back and in fact a repetition like this is not out of the question i mean it's out of the question here because i just don't think these players will play like that but at top level you've you've often seen um something like this maybe here white can go queen e5 to save some time but there are all kinds of things there are lots of ding games there are lots of carlsson games so we'll see but that's a relatively i would say uh well modern and classical position uh i like the chances for the ladies team in this game actually okay well i'm not sure i mean white is still very very solid uh white really has to go very very crazy here if he's going to uh if he's going to lose these positions he wants to to be solid today yeah i think he's just in general quite a solid player i just don't think he's looking to beat everybody at at any cost at any moment i think he's just naturally plays a berlin with black he's playing this with white it's clear his style is is not an all-in style so we'll see if he gets something or we'll see how that one develops let's go to another game and i see out the corner my sabina brunello against nina batziashvili uh this one is weird let's have a look so it went d4 d5 i have a story about this line the move a six what's your story all right so after white played c5 in this position we actually lost oh painful memories okay we lost the most important match in the bundesliga when in this exact position our player lela evakeshvili chose this line with c5 against very young and unexperienced players so i guess she just wanted to surprise her and the game continued with b6 c takes b6 and now lela was probably expecting c takes b6 with you know a very long game where she could try to press her and so on but c5 followed and suddenly white has some troubles in the center and this can go wrong very easily because lela's a very strong player a grandmaster and oh it was a tough game to watch actually i'm sure yeah because now the structure has changed blacks got a bit more energy i mean it's not the end of the world for white at all of course the move c5 itself is a very uncommon move in these queens gambit declines i mean just to put things into perspective if nine of six this move here would be laughed at but wait and now i realize you know that nino is actually our teammate in uh and she's the teammate of lela so i'm sure that she knows she knows about it yeah indeed but in general i i mean the the concept of going c5 is can only be justified if black has played a6 you can't play c5 in a normal uh queens gambit declined because black can immediately go b6 and if you take then he black takes here has got the a file and is ready to play c5 and is doing well so this move can only be justified after a6 but even after a6 i mean for me it's stylistically not what i would do here i understand the idea of a6 is to be able to for example if white goes here there's an argument that black can now take and after e4 you might just be able to protect all your pieces with b5 and be a pawn up but for example the move c takes d5 feels like to me probably still the the best move but black's claim is that after e takes d5 you don't have a very decent way to develop this bishop because you can't pin a knight because there's no knight's pin and i guess if the bishop goes to f4 you can go knight f6 bishop d6 or you can maybe play c6 bishop d6 and be very solid and i know carlson has tried this a few times with black as well so c5 is very interesting and and nino reacted with a classic response as well pawn to e5 immediately taking advantage of the fact that bishop takes c5 is in the air if d takes e5 i guess you don't take on c5 immediately you know what it looks like this position it somehow reminds me of the of the french it's like a reversed french yeah it is actually it is especially after e5 e3 we could actually have a french but with this move included c5 or c4 yeah well it's actually a move which which has its own idea drank to somehow not allow the bishop to d6 but then on the other hand now that the center is closed well i guess that black will try to close up the center even more with means like e4 and then she could even play f5 could she it's possible i mean the game went knight f sorry knight c6 knight f3 by brunello and now she could go absolutely go e4 here and after and she did yeah and she did and after knight d2 to play f5 and we we have a very weird reversed french and i kind of like it for black i have to say with the the fact that there's no tension now on this pawn for me means everything and black can develop quite an initiative here on the queen side knight f6 bishop the bishop can come to you seven castles and then you're you can always look for f4 moves here but you know i'm so excited to see so many interesting games today it looks like all the players are up for a big fight yes and we're gonna have a lot of fun today i agree all right let's let's go to another game then where should we go next should we go to Joe Gallagher and against pia kramlin because Joe yeah he's he's got the sort of position he likes he plays an open Sicilian so we have a paulson as you said or a time expert on that she has played it all her life i'm very curious what has job prepared here i might use it at some point myself huh yeah well let's see Joe plays very classically with the bishops on e2 and e3 knight f6 queen d2 bishop e7 and f4 again very classical castles and now Joe has got actually a bit of a decision to make a bit f4 is already a little bit you know a committal move because if you want to aim for an english attack then you want the pawn on f3 well there was no reason to put it here but you could go g4 immediately you know with the pawn on f4 the pawn on e4 might be having a bit of a trouble at some point it's not what i'm used to in these positions actually it's very aggressive it's very aggressive i guess Joe had also looked at this before the game because after castles white is not obliged to castle on the queen side Joe clearly states his intentions by doing that because white could just castle king side there is a very important difference here the queen is on d2 yes and that is not exactly i believe the greatest move in all these types of positions with the short castle because many times the queen actually wants to go to e1 and then to g3 and the queen on d2 is not doing much i believe that would be a good version of the cheveningen for black i tend to agree with you i think i think it would be which is why joe said well this is my idea which is to castle on the long side and now pier took on d4 which is a very standard move again the problem black has is that after a move like bishop d7 sometimes white can just remove this knight either to b3 or to f3 probably to b3 and now g4 g5 comes in this knight is gonna the black pieces are just a bit kind of exactly yeah the bishop doesn't want to be on d7 in these lines because as i said the point on e4 should be challenged and that black can achieve by bringing the bishop to the other diagonal to b7 right exactly which is why then white castled and now pier took on d4 joe took back with the queen and pier played the very natural sicilian move knight to d7 putting the knight on on a better square allowing it to come out here sometimes preparing the move e5 as well but joe after a seven minutes think here decided let's go for it with h4 now i have to say i would take white all day in these positions i i think we're just quite a lot faster here with white with our with our attack the idea of h4 is sometimes to run this pawn sometimes it's to run both pawns and then play g6 where you force the opening of lines there is a problem with this position you know what i don't like here for white uh yeah go on because okay let's assume i play bishop f6 now taking on d6 probably isn't an option right because i can just take on c3 or is it well i think there are positions where white could allow that i think this is very much an option taking on d6 because if you take c3 yeah it takes takes queen a5 is yeah and now if i go queen b4 queen to c7 again or ah you you want to trap my queen well i will trap your queen if you let me bishop c4 actually traps the queen it's not a5 actually uh yeah the queen isn't trapped suddenly but at the very least i can get a very pleasant position with white after let's say queen b3 if you give the check i just move and the queen is trapped so you have to take and then c takes and then c takes and your position is really bad here with black i'm going bishop b5 next and and the position is bad but let's check queen c7 because this is a very strange structure i mean white is definitely having some problems on the queen side but can really back uh black use that i think this is very bad for black really yeah my instinct tells me that the lack of the dark square bishop the fact that you're not mobilized on the back i want to be very fast with b5 and then say bishop b7 eight b6 how do you attack me on the king side well okay let's say i go h5 so you already wanted to play h6 i believe yeah hmm maybe e5 here yeah it's just too slow arena i mean i go h6 i don't think it's that bad i would say if we we we don't use an engine ladies and gentlemen uh pretty much ever if i click that engine button i will say that the engine will say this is winning for white really yeah like plus two and a half three should we try okay let's give it a try let's give it a go yeah plus two you're right i'm very surprised because i'm playing these positions with white and it is something i'm always afraid of that maybe if i spoil my pawn structure on the king side i might get in trouble no i think i think this position these positions you're just too slow here with black i've already got a pawn on h6 you don't have the dark square bishop it's already a very very very unpleasant spot here for for black and yeah the computer just thinks it's winning for white i don't think you can play i don't think you can play bishop f6 here i just think it's a little bit too slow i think the one of the key ideas in this well of course you can go b5 uh immediately here but then you could just carry on with h5 now yeah exactly so i i wonder whether black is thinking about the move e5 e5 yeah that's what about the d5 square yeah sure but but the claim is i also get the e5 square for my knight so for example after f takes e5 knight takes e5 um knight d5 knight d5 i guess again the question is i i'm just not in time here with black i would love to go bishop e6 and take but i'm too slow so e5 also just doesn't work here i'm actually very concerned for pia so let's say she plays b5 which is the more natural move and let's say i just the problem here is that the queen from d4 protects very well the b4 square and we don't even need to use that tampion playing a3 right um yeah it's it's a very interesting idea by white yeah i think this is a very very dangerous position for black and i think joe feels very comfortable as well and pia doesn't look that comfortable to me so yeah h4 what about i have another idea okay knight c5 here i still want to make that bishop f6 happen but in a better version okay h5 bishop f6 now e5 ah you have e5 that's not working no no oh and we have we have a result already and uh we didn't even look at the game let's quickly look at what happened this is uh chong against musichuk i thought i actually i think i said this one was going to be quite a solid one yeah yeah i i had a feeling this is such a quick draw yeah to draw so quickly it's kind of unusual but let's see we had a two knights karakan one of the the old main line okay white has got the two bishops but the bishops aren't really working so well uh 9 a4 bishop d6 and d4 okay so white trying to open the position for his bishops but black very solid white still probably has a small edge here and now chonga plays what looks like a very strange move to my yeah indeed rook i sorry i beg your pardon he played rook to d1 why does he not play the move pawn to c4 here the idea very good question yeah the idea being that the knight can now come back to c3 with the pawn on c4 which is what you want and after knight of six you can play for example queen e2 perhaps knight of five knight of five rook d1 and just castle yeah but white must be slightly better here with the two bishops in space advantage uh can play pretty much any any move here i mean it's do you have some problems with the d4 pawn no yes but i don't know i don't know b3 uh i kind of want to go a3 b4 bishop b2 yeah that would be that would be a possibility but then i could also play a5 these positions are not so easy if black would have a bishop on on c8 and white would have a knight on f3 i would definitely agree that white white is better but here we have traded a pair of light pieces i think black has uh just enough here yeah could be the case as i say i'm i'm not uh i'm not saying it's yeah it doesn't feel bad for black but i could have uh yeah i mean you can play on here that's the point and he played rook d1 immediately and this allowed blacks play a very nice move queen a5 now the knight kind of has to come back to c3 and now you hit the queen and now you can exchange queens i think this has been a really a nice uh sequence and now after queen takes a five ballash offered the drawer maria took it which is um not surprising because yeah after knight takes a five black really isn't hoping for much white it's just so solid here ballash exactly and quite a good result with the black pieces to secure a draw against uh an opponent which was doing fine in this tournament he had not lost the game right yeah absolutely ballash hasn't he's been one of the more solid guys for the guys so uh and indeed here the draw offers are not forbidden so there are no 30 or 14 moves rule indeed all right so one result let's continue going through the games now where haven't we been yet uh it feels like we haven't been to chrissa against abdo malik actually and we certainly haven't chrissa with white plays the oh and this is actually john says favorite opening the grunfeld yes the grunfeld very very very dangerous opening um of course white has got many ways to immediately make a draw if he wants but uh chrissa not interested and plays a very modern variation with h4 you can do this here you can do this here there are lots of ways to to play h4 but the idea of this move is that you are tempting h5 where you would distract the knight away from d5 and if black now takes the pawn white's able to get the big center with e4 and then try and recapture this pawn here so h5 as a reaction is very natural the downside to that is you give up control over the g5 square by either a knight or a bishop landing and that's what chrissa did bishop to g5 and now john says plays the absolutely typical grunfeld response which is to play the move d takes here on sorry sorry d takes c4 is not the move c5 i beg your pardon is the move attacking the center this move c5 makes the grunfeld work uh but chrissa just took queen to a5 and now c takes d5 now what's really interesting is this idea of the double pawn sacrifice happens in a different line without the inclusion of h4 h5 i have to say that i know nothing about the grunfeld unfortunately well this idea does happen a lot and my initial thought is that this actually the inclusion of h4 h5 benefits white in this particular uh in this particular line because a lot of the time 94 is a threat and sometimes this bishop is a bit vulnerable on g5 but now with the added protection we don't have to worry about it so for the moment uh white is two pawns up and chrissa just says i ain't worried about knight knight b to d7 hitting hitting the pawn on c5 and what is the idea if i play c6 yeah if you go c6 i guess she just wants to take take and play some knight c5 i guess is there really enough compensation for the two pawns here perhaps black wants something like knight f to e4 it's a point yeah nine if 94 is coming next there's even some 94 and then knight a4 for example let's say white played let's just say white played a standard move like e3 94 and let's say you played rook c1 this is already a bit ugly because i can take yeah but i just wanted to illustrate i mean black can get the whole army on this c3 square so somehow white's king might struggle to to get to safety right that's the whole point of this line i guess in fact here i fully expect i don't well that's not true i i don't know what the best move here is for leandro actually the move queen a4 is looks interesting to my eyes yeah just to get rid of that pin now of course black can win a pawn back by takes takes and takes but now at least i'm holding on to this pawn and i can play for example castles on the queen side guarding this pawn more gaining tempo on this night and you are not getting that pawn back anytime soon no so what about the move queen a4 yeah it it definitely looks interesting can i know queen c7 can't be good or could it no it's it could it could be it could be queen c7 could be a move here maybe i could just play knight or knight oh this is so messy because knight b5 queen c5 rook c1 it means that i'm just winning the rook from a8 so i have to go with the queen somewhere else is this what you mean yeah ah because i'm doing this yeah exactly so the queen will have to go somewhere else then it's then it's gone very wrong yeah this this is going wrong for black getting pushed back then it means that black has to has to trade queens now well yeah i mean queen d8 would be a terrible move to make no well i don't know maybe that is the move that she wants to make but and what after c6 knight oh yeah knight c5 i can take check and make a queen i don't know yeah i'm a bit i'm a bit concerned like what do you do against queen a4 here exactly yeah very very good move i believe strange one yeah i again intuitively feels like things might get you know things could get out of hand here for for shansai she's she's one of those players you know which uh i think she's a she's a confidence player as well i think uh if things start to go a bit badly she she can sometimes lose the thread of it but i've never i've never seen her actually losing a few games in a row you know right well and i would be very surprised to see her getting oh and we we have queen a4 on the board do we i believe or or don't no that's just my analysis right that's just my analysis we don't have it just yet it will be interesting to see how the game will develop if leandra makes this move i think it's it might be just the best and if queen takes c5 here this was the move that i i was trying to make e4 yeah e4 or e3 i wasn't sure i just wanted to protect because e4 or g4 is a bit annoying queen yeah but i feel as though a little bit yeah it feels as though black is all right i i much prefer e3 here just uh keeping some control over and i cannot take the pun on now you can take on d5 of course sorry now you can take on d5 yeah so that's the idea isn't it queen a4 queen takes c5 that's that's her idea there must have been an idea and and that must be it yes what about bishop e3 here i don't like it i just have a very simplistic approach a1 knight b5 bishop f4 and try to win some material a materialistic world it might be good though knight b5 i have no squares for this queen huh yeah and you know worst case scenario on a7 is also hanging i could get very greedy there but after queen d8 there's some knight takes d5 coming d6 i just but but you know what i just castle and things can get very unpleasant for white here because i might win an exchange but that might not be enough now yeah knight c7 here for example uh my point was that after rook b8 i have bishop takes a7 yeah it feels like the king is still stuck in the center for white but but maybe you can't do much about it well let's say i take you take i take hitting the knight knight b5 i guess yeah now i just need to start playing very actively let's say i i can't go let's say i go knight g4 hitting this guy knight b2 d4 okay knight c6 i play or bishop d7 knight c6 i don't know something smells fishy here or queen b6 it's one of those ones where again i've got very bad memories of of being on the white side of of these positions giving winning the exchange but getting checkmated it isn't i mean it's all very uh what's the word i'm looking for um forcing concrete so it's just a case of is liandro going to calculate it or not and like he doesn't really have a choice he has to calculate it and it's interesting that both players are out of book uh judging by uh by the clock uh we might see again just a street fight yeah we could we could very well do indeed yeah we could do indeed but i really like the idea behind queen a4 even though queen c5 yeah seems to be the right way to to continue with black there all right let's uh let's carry on uh and where else haven't we been to bobby ching against marisa bag is not a game we've looked at yet let's have a look at this one uh this was a slav solid moran okay very solid as predicted very standard opening it looks very similar to what was on the board between uh yovanka and sabino yesterday but sabino chose a different plan he continued with queen a7 he should pay free i believe yeah a bit earlier i think he did this yeah but this time marie plays the very natural c5 trying to break out in the center c takes d5 and now after c takes d4 to play the move rook takes d4 and what's the idea after knight takes d5 very good question it cannot really be no rook g4 cannot work because of knight f6 knight 7 to f6 but then why put the rook on d4 yeah this is uh this is an interesting one struggling to find it is so interesting that all the games today are so tactically complicated wow maybe maybe just queens d2 yeah i thought about it but i did not like some bishop c5 bishop c5 and then where well bishop c5 i can take and after bishop d4 you've got the intermediate queen d4 yeah and i win okay knight d5 bishop d5 i can take back yeah and now i can i mean i've got rook d5 or rook g4 for example rook g4 knight f6 yeah i mean i don't believe this for why i i never like putting the rook here i think it's probably too much it looks very strange yeah i was trying to justify this exchange sacrifice but that's not really working knight f6 probably doesn't work queen f5 i believe everything is fine here for black even a move like bishop is seven don't know very passive one yeah gotta be a little careful here with black queen c7 bishop d3 g6 huh knight g5 i knight g5 queen c2 is but i've got even h6 because after bishop f6 i have h but then you have rook d no you don't i don't but i mean i can take back and then i've got two pawns but just to illustrate uh without this rook d1 if i go knight g5 here threatening this um what is what is the difference after h6 there's a slight difference uh oh the bishop on b2 looks nice but can you really if i take i take on g5 i got rook d1 i guess queen c7 but i could ah okay okay no i will not just queen c7 but now hold on i mean it's not there are things in this position bishop d3 g6 bishop f6 bishop f6 queen f6 rook d8 or something oops even even queen c3 maybe first but yeah i mean but white isn't risking anything right here he's got two pawns right yeah probably not risking anything thinking of one king e2 i think it's a bit over optimistic yeah it might it might be over optimistic to do this i didn't play good for a blitz game but yeah right uh okay a knight takes d5 i believe is on the board so we're gonna find out from uh from bobby chang is he is he planning to do something like this uh probably not knowing his style but we'll see now uh is there another game ravi harrier did with oh yeah let's check this one right how is gina ima mazada doing today e4 c5 knight c3 a6 well quite an unorthodox way of uh playing the sicilian the closed sicilian well a6 is one of the fashionable moves but definitely not the main line um actually gina is a knight of players so perhaps that's why she started with a6 still hoping for a knight of 3d6 and just posing to the main lines right let's see what happened yeah g3 and now d6 so i mean ravi didn't allow her to get her knight off so this is one of the move orders where you do that so g3 a6 sorry d6 bishop g2 knight f6 and knight f3 okay so ravi just playing um you know a typical line and now e5 yeah interesting taking advantage of the fact that gunai has not developed a knight to c6 so he gets a slightly imbalanced pawn structure knight takes e5 castles and a4 this is a very clever way of playing by ravi and queen c7 knight c4 i really love what he's done here and i think gunai actually has to be a bit careful here she's got a worse version of a line uh which uh comes about via this move order yeah which uh has actually been played in gibraltar i remember seeing a few games i think uh nakamura played this against gelfand years ago vaguely remember uh and it feels as though white has got a fantastic version of that very line the knight sits beautifully here on c4 the pawn on a4 stopping well i mean there's the long that this bishop has enormous pressure down here and the problem black has is for a start sometimes a5 knight into b6 comes exactly so you have to sometimes put the knight there but when you put the knight there white just goes d3 and then suddenly the move bishop f4 is coming and you never really want to block with e5 let's just say black plays a move like h6 the problem is you never really i mean here you probably do play e5 but the point is that you start to give up some squares here in the middle of the board it's a very interesting line indeed i really like what ravi has done and i'm actually a bit concerned for gunai here not because her position is objectively very very bad it's just very unpleasant to play this position i've had this with black white is risking absolutely zero and he as i say he's got a better version than the main line uh from this variation after four e5 and the problem is i don't have even time to bring the bishop to c6 because for example after bishop d7 there is a5 and after bishop c6 there might be even knight b6 even this you might survive because rook a7 followed by knight bd7 actually kicks the knight perhaps this is but after bishop d7 i'm going to go d3 and bishop c6 and bishop f4 queen where to put that queen you can't yeah you have to go back to d8 and now i've got a few ideas some interesting ideas um you're trying to make something work yeah it doesn't work i really in an ideal world would love to take this yeah bishop g2 yeah and if i could get this i'm really happy with white because i've got all these weaknesses but of course but unfortunately you have the intermezzo bishop g2 and then then this is really nothing for white but something doesn't feel right here i gained all this tempo like now i can go a5 for example i have to take yeah take take yeah now i will have to play knight b2 d7 i guess yeah because if you put the knight on c6 this really is awkward to put the rook on a7 here but could i play maybe is knight fd7 just a bad move i really want the other knight to come to c6 yeah knight fd7 i don't think it's a bad move at all but maybe i can just start getting you know some decent piece activity 94 knight c6 maybe a move like h4 or knight d6 maybe just even a move like c3 it feels as though white has got lots of options this knight on c4 is just gorgeous maybe just c3 or something c3 but i like that i've managed to to trade those bishops because my bishop on c8 was a very sad piece no it was it was but still still that will have some problems to solve definitely it's a bit sad it's a bit annoying this position so i expect gunai to uh to actually have some serious practical problems in her game now i believe we've actually uh seen all the games so far at least briefly um so what we're gonna do is we're gonna go for our first break uh we'll be back in just a few minutes it's round four of battle of the sexes one result so far very quick draw between chonka and musy chuck nine games still going on all very very different positions very exciting positions in many of them so we'll be right back don't go anywhere see you in a few minutes welcome back to round four of battle of the sex is here live from the garrison library in Gibraltar we are in the heat of battle one result a quick draw before the break chonka against musy chuck not really much to say they're very solid game both players clearly were not in the mood for a big fight meaning we've got nine games still ongoing and in the break arena you were saying that you felt that erine was in potentially big trouble against bilal yeah apparently this g4 move gave her some headache and let's check the position she's got now i really uh all right let's we can go from yeah so we last left it at queen a4 check okay arine blocked with the night we were looking at bishop d7 but she blocked with the knight queen takes pawn and she just refused to take this pawn right she she just didn't want to take it um so she played queen d5 trying to simplify the position get the queens off you'll you force the queen trade and now she took back with the pawn maybe some argument for knight takes d5 bishop d2 and e5 that looks like a very nice sequence actually yeah right even though it takes d5 also looks quite logical because now after g5 there is 94 hitting the pawn on c3 and there might be some trouble there so bilal played the strange looking move f3 wow what a what a strange way to play the opening in this game so strange this move is just i mean he's protecting the pawn and stopping 94 that's his argument it's very strange but i i kind of like it somehow but arine's reaction looks just a little bit flat i would say yeah because this bishop d7 now takes back from the knight an important square and then potentially after g5 where would that knight go uh exactly so there's some g5 but i mean okay bilal played bishop f4 hitting the pawn she castled queenside and now e3 so she's bilal is basically saying okay i'm going to play bishop d3 king d2 knight e2 h4 h5 press there put a rook here if i have sorry not on b4 but on the rook on the on the b line and say black doesn't have that many decent ideas maybe one idea is to try and seek some squares here with the knight but it's not many ideas and arine decides to go h5 immediately i really don't like this i hate this move i think this is because at least after g5 black had the idea of playing knight to h5 somehow winning that that bishop but now the pawn has taken away the square from the knight yeah and the knight has to go back to e8 and now after bishop d3 her idea was to redeploy it via d6 but but that bishop on d7 would feel much better now on e6 because you could capture them back with the rook on d6 now we see that somehow black's pieces are not feeling comfortable and now with these doubled pawns on d6 and d5 it is definitely white who has quite a significant advantage i believe yeah it's one of those interesting ones because i mean maybe they're not as bad as they look because black has got two files that she can work with to hit some pawns but i do agree it looks just a little bit i don't know it looks it it looks 92 she played h4 which strategically i like i like putting this pawn here because white would love to put the pawn on h4 and the knight on f4 fixing the pawn on a light square so she played h4 which i like knight to f4 and knight to e7 protecting the pawn and now a4 almost certainly trying to go a5 gaining space and now Irene plays another move strategically which i don't mind but at the same time i see the dangers with it which is that you leave the b file very very weak so for example if king d2 yeah king d2 is like almost certainly going to be played rook h to b1 and then maybe bishop to b5 you know what's the problem here black hasn't got any counter play because the knight must stay on e7 and protect the d5 pawn so you cannot really use that semi-opened e file and on the c file you cannot do much because my king from d2 will be protecting very well that pawn even at some point i might consider after bringing the king to d2 and the rook h to c1 let's say i might even consider playing c4 somehow helping you to get rid of that pawn but then attacking very very nasty on f7 that will be a difficult a difficult position to hold for black i believe yeah i i i have to say i mean i i do believe white should be somewhat better here especially after king i mean king d2 is not really a move you spend a lot of time on here is white it's it's the most natural it's the most obvious and i don't see why you wouldn't play this move quickly and he's just played it of course and do you see a plan for black here i struggle to find any counter play what could be black side i don't is the honest answer i don't see a plan here for black i really don't perhaps i would prefer my king to be not on c8 but somewhere on a7 no even on c8 okay just ideally speaking and then placing a rook on a8 one on b8 and trying to make b5 happen and then argue that that pawn might do something but with the king on c8 i don't see any counter play at all for black yeah i don't either i i'm very pessimistic here because all of these plans just take so long and uh this is uh yeah this is uh this is a difficult position Irene also down half an hour on the clock right she's gonna need she's gonna need a bit of uh oh she's about to play a move bishop i was gonna suggest this move but you know just trying to free the knight but still it is not easy to find a better place for it but you know now white can even consider at times a move like g6 trying to you know make even more of black spawns weak i don't know if you want to go g6 here exactly yeah i mean it's certainly a move um because my idea was that after f takes i could take with the bishop and then you are left with not a great bishop against a great knight who will attack all the pawns and also the pawn on g7 becomes a target and if you play f6 then e6 is weak right it is a very sad position i am afraid for g6 could be a good move here g6 could be a really good move here yeah because this bishop i mean this bishop performs one role which is to to defend a pawn but it's obviously a very sad bishop here you know how they call this bishop in russian they call it a pawn they call it a pawn right exactly exactly yeah that's that's that's the feeling i get here um let's check another game and hope that iran will be able to survive this one okay where should we go let's go to back to joe gallega against pier cramlin yeah that was a very exciting game it seems like joe is uh trying to build up an attack on on black skink and meanwhile pier has also tried to repair the b4 move yeah so she played b5 which i felt was the move that she wanted to play joe correctly plays h5 trying to play h6 as we've learned from the engines this is really what you want to do and pier stops it with h6 but the problem with this move is you now create a hook with this move in other words white can now push the pawn to g5 and there's no way you can avoid files being open so here joe uh plays king b1 but why not g4 immediately i believe that was the move i was concerned about i thought that pier might try e5 here and the difference between this and the the very one of the variations we looked at before was that the pawn is now on h5 so after takes takes knight d5 black no longer has sorry black no longer has a problem because maybe the move bishop g5 exists here now i'm not saying that this is amazing either but at least there's some control over the dark squares here right fair fair i like i like this e5 idea so joe played king to b1 a prophylactical move um yeah king to b1 and now uh pier yeah so the king of course now if the any bishop g5 comes there's never checks or anything like that pier now played rook b8 which is also a very standard move forcing trying to force b4 and now joe moved the bishop out the way in order to meet b4 with knight e2 i assume i think he wants maybe not maybe he does want to move it to a4 still with the idea queen a5 b3 yeah this looks actually like a sort of french you know do you remember those lines with bishop to e7 and then the knight goes to a4 even sometimes but yeah i mean this looks more like a typical Sicilian i mean this this is this this kind of position has been played a lot in because it can't quite be a french because this pawn is on d6 right so no i was just imagining a pawn on d5 and one on e5 and then right yeah yeah if we had d5 e5 suddenly we would have some french but this one here again i've unless black can play knight c5 uh takes takes this might be acceptable for black actually actually black might already be in full control yeah exactly so bishop f3 so b4 is critical and i actually do believe joe wants to play knight e2 and the idea between behind knight e2 is that well the knight is actually very well placed firstly if this queen ever leaves d4 it can come to d4 and then c6 as a square but it also has a defensive idea insofar as the knight can come to c1 it protects a2 and sometimes comes out to b3 hitting a queen on a5 so the knight is actually very flexible another idea would also be to play queen d2 and then the queen no longer stays you know in that e5 lines under the fret and actually the knight can come to d4 exactly that's what that's one of the ones i mentioned is that this knight can come to d4 and white's plan is very simple so he's reorganized briefly and now he's got one clear idea which is just to push this g pawn up the board uh if if black does nothing or maybe retreats and then push the g pawn up the board but black could also start to already an attack now because b4 is on the board maybe some a5 a4 maybe some ideas so a5 g4 a4 i'm gonna go g5 because that's just there's nothing better for me to do than take i believe on g5 here probably not and now so the question is let's let's try h6 there's so much to calculate here i should consider i believe bishop f6 bishop f6 bishop f6 probably i'm still going to be happy taking on d6 right because if you now try b3 i can always block everything like this e5 might be coming it's a very a very complicated and risky position for both sides actually both are playing for a win and any result is possible in this game a very very sharp very sharp yeah okay should we go somewhere else let's let's take a look at another game where let's check eric's game versus Olga okay because that was a very interesting line of the italian he indeed played bishop e3 like we thought bishop g4 h3 bishop h5 yeah that's all theory knight takes c3 take f6 there were a lot of games here already played bishop e2 to protect the knight and knight a5 is all logical looking at this square and knight into e5 this has also been played a lot bishop takes e2 queen takes e2 and again very classic c5 push here by olga girya i'm a bit puzzled by the fact that eric took quite some time for some of his moves and especially for 95 bishop e3 do you think do you think he actually did not know this position or was he trying to to make olga think that i'm not really sure actually maybe he was just trying to to remember some notes or yeah i'm not really sure i have a feeling he knew it all right what was then played so castles c takes d4 c takes d4 so olga okay they both have isolated pawns queen e6 and now f4 by eric consolidating the knight on e5 and knight c4 by olga girya very very logical move indeed and rook 81 and this is the position we have on the board what's your take on it i have a feeling that things can go very bad for black very quickly if if if she's not precise so let's just say for example she played a move like rook to c8 yeah a very logical one by the way now my my concern for black is what do you do against a move like bishop to c1 bishop to c1 yeah and my idea is i want to put the king on h1 and then i want to just start running my queens my king side majority like this and try and try and mate you basically should i try no i think it's too early to try and exchange sacrifice in your style with 95 then rook c1 maybe not maybe i mean it's and also bishop c1 might be the wrong order because this might be actually okay and rook takes c1 again it's you know black can't be expecting too much from something like this well if i would have a luft with black like say the move on h6 or g6 yeah then i would be happy with this position otherwise i think it's still a bit premature to do that yeah okay but what is what is actually your plan after let's say i play you want to take oh no i don't i i just want to play a move like h6 or g6 i'm not sure which one to choose well you choose let's say h6 all right okay i'll go king h1 i know knight takes e5 but now you give me an additional opportunity of taking this right right right that's exactly why you went away with the king yeah and in fact it makes me think that if you do just pass here after rook a c8 or rook a d8 or something i'm actually play yeah i'm tempted to start with king h1 here yeah that's that's i believe a good decision also i have an additional option of moving the bishop back to g1 in this line which could be very useful actually to have additional protection so probably king h1 uh yeah definitely then it means that that knight is untouchable what if i bring it to d6 96 yeah that's that's that's oops that's what i was thinking you could perhaps play the move 96 looks uh looks very good actually looks like a really good move uh maybe i still go g4 let's try 94 yeah queen g2 you want to play f5 right but your knight is very strong here and i'm very exposed with white some rook c3 rook c3 i'm not convinced that this is good for me neither yeah yeah it's not an easy position to assess it's very imbalanced and like you said it could go wrong but actually i think for both players so they should be very accurate here yeah somehow white has got this nice looking knight on e5 but the e4 square like you said is also weak so i really like this idea of bringing the knight to d6 yeah i like that idea a lot i think that's a very very good idea all right yeah i mean it's just one of those positions which i expect this to to to get even more complicated over the next few moves and then we will reach a critical moment in this uh in this middle game and uh we'll see what we'll see what happens let's go back to uh well let's go to yavanka huska actually that that is getting very hot so we last saw it here after knight c6 and now jillian decides to pin the knight with bishop b5 yavanka protects with 97 she spent 10 minutes on this move and now bishop g5 so another pin yeah pinning all over the place makes lots of sense queen to c7 by yavanka makes a lot of sense as well and now just f4 by jillian i like how she i like how he's playing i have to say it's it's nice i was gonna save the other way actually oh you don't like this move i'm a bit afraid of that bishop on g5 i mean it's fine i'm sure that it won't get in trouble there because you have such a good control over f6 but then how is it gonna get to the game i mean well it's in the game let's assume i take on d4 c takes d4 queen d4 i have to take and yeah i'm not even sure but okay knight c6 yeah i guess you take with the knight here and let's say i now go queen which queen let's queen d2 d4 i might get so let's go queen f2 d4 also is actually this is a problem d4 is a problem here this is this is this is actually because i can't go night e4 because you got a bishop yeah and i have to put the knight some okay so hold on a second it's a cd4 yeah the bishop on g5 looks nice but i'm not sure it is actually you know i would prefer it on e3 in this position actually you know even though black will be doing all right i believe i i really like how yavanka handled this position i think white is risking a bit you want to make a sacrifice i bet you are looking for one i am six is not working so far no no what i was thinking i was thinking of something absolutely insane which i i looked at it the first line i was like oh no that's okay and then the second time i looked at it i thought it's not good i i'm not a hundred percent sure so i'll put it on the board anyway queen 64 a6 now what if i i just say okay so we assume that the pawn on c2 is untouchable yeah well i mean i'm never if you take i'm very happy to your play rook c1 yeah i i just don't care if you want that pawn have it but what i'm trying to do here is i'm trying to find a way where uh i hate this position for white to be honest you know i i'm gonna suggest a move here it might make a few people switch off the tree can i do this is that oh i see your point all right yeah if that is working white is fine but let's check it a takes b5 take i have a few options here yeah i i don't believe it's working the idea of course is that if you take my queen i take your queen check and then i take the rook and i'm doing pretty well here with white because i have an escape square and i'm attacking the knight but my problem is that i think you can just go queen a5 and now when i go 96 king d7 i'm very worried that you're getting in a counts resident no i mean it's nonsense yeah you cannot really attack my king with the bishop on g5 and knight h5 if my king goes to the other flank right right so then what is what's his idea i had another sacrifice idea which is ridiculous you ready for this one queen c5 yeah this this has to be the most ridiculous of them all but it's a move i have to at least but you are aware that i can just jump away with yeah i that's the move that i was afraid of but then i thought oh maybe there's some value in taking now and now when i take with the pawn you just retreat queen somewhere and i say oh i'm attacking your knight and actually actually this looks quite okay for white because i can play bishop g6 and you will be in big trouble really if you don't find any other tactics because g takes f5 b takes bishop takes h5 i continue to dislike the bishop on g5 yeah but no this is all right for white really yeah yeah i'm sure this is okay like takes takes i don't know castles my bishop is a great piece it stops you castling it performs a job it can't if i just play something like bishop g6 and my idea is to play queen a7 and actually trade queens wow i don't think well i mean i am a pawn up here right yeah but the bishop on g5 you no this bishop's fine he's he's he's absolutely fine in this position how will it get back to the game because i'm controlling f5 i'm controlling h5 and then i want to play c5 d4 something like that i'm i'm not sure i mean the move itself queen c5 i i just don't trust maybe there's another queen may maybe i can go queen a4 that's the most uh normal here so you want me to make a rook move in order to not be able to castle later right that's that's probably the point that's one one idea let's say yeah so rook c8 and now actually this is ah this this must be the best move because now now really i don't think that this is oops now i really don't think the bishop is on pre so let's say i now but i i don't have a good because if i castle i run into queen b6 check and if i castle queenside i run into some mates so i don't actually have a a good square for this for this king yeah ideally if the king castle queenside you're only live once yeah right we should try this okay so um should i take and then 86 is coming yeah if you take i take and i'm lucky that i'm attacking the queen you move the queen to let's say b6 a5 five yeah queen to a5 96 check king d7 king d7 and now this is a much better version than before because i mean i always have the rook as backup like i'm not sure that this position is much worse for white at all like let's say takes takes it wouldn't surprise me that this is okay for white and that's the absolute minimum and the absolute maximum is that no i i can't really move the queen yeah i don't think i don't think so either i mean look i would be surprised that this position is much worse white i would say this is probably like for example here f5 just as an example and if ef5 rook takes d5 check and i win the night but i have bishop f5 i believe yeah bishop f5 but even this is some i've got some tricks here maybe i don't actually no maybe i maybe i can't go f5 i can go nig3 and f5 i mean i'm i'm curious what the comp says here and it says it's only slightly better for black so that's that was my feeling as well but i'm i'm very i i'm gonna cheat just here because um i want to know what to do against a6 and it's saying yeah it's not giving anything uh concrete which means then that that white is a bit i mean it's unclear right it's giving it as pretty much equal yeah but i believe it's easier to go wrong with white here because black has just to make some natural moves and with white you have to find some fireworks to justify all this a bit strange pieces even though white has a pawn for that yeah exactly exactly i mean it's it's it's you know i think of all the i've had so many horror shows in these positions i remember a game where i got killed by daniel fridman with white in a similar structure and you know you overextend and you get punished um so yeah i mean this this this position can go all three ways basically right let's go check another game yep which one do we go to oh let's check john sire's game it was a very interesting groom felt right oh yeah it was so we last saw it after ah he played queen d2 so we were looking at queen a4 again i'm very curious what the correct move is and it's not queen a4 so that was c6 is one of the most sweet and queen d4 which i didn't consider okay okay so queen d4 apparently but no leandro played queen d2 blocking the pin knight takes c5 and rook c1 playing like this castles and e3 okay so very solid but feels like it should be good for a genso i rook d8 bishop c4 and now she just plays the move pawn to a6 preparing b5 and i have to say i think this opening has has gone pretty badly for leandro all right i think b5 is coming and then b4 and then 94 and the floodgates i have a question here is knight e4 a terrible move instead of a6 no after a6 yeah because after all i'm still a pawn up right if i manage to trade queens i'm not sure if black gets back the pawn there because the e7 pawn will be hanging so queen d2 knight e takes d2 do you take on d5 but b2 it gets a bit complicated so you want to say you win here oh but wait there's 93 it's not working yeah it's not working correct it's not working okay then b5 is an unpleasant threat and then b4 will be coming and the pawn on d5 might just might just fall exactly yeah it should do something immediately here i think knight d4 is the move that comes to mind here knight d4 yeah because i'm planning to meet b5 with knight c6 yeah nice one that feels like a stabilizing move what about a move like e something e6 or e5 i'm not sure is it bad oh it feels feels very risky i mean i'm very i'm pinning myself yeah like even in the worst case scenario if i castle let's say and you take and i play bishop e2 i'm kind of i mean i'm not even saying i would do this but i think that the transition is favorable yeah i yeah i don't i don't like there's something about e6 but what else then yeah good question because you really don't allow me to play b5 the move which i so much wanted to play how else do i try to get my pawn back 94 is not working because you just take and you're a piece up yeah i don't know i don't know actually i think 94 might just be a good move and you want to just castle and finish the development and then claim that you're just a central pawn yeah and also i have other plans of playing a3 b4 exactly so this position there might be an unpleasant problem for black to solve here if if lander plays 94 i believe oh but he's uh is he down on clock quite quite a bit or yeah he's down a little bit on the clock i don't think it's much 20 minutes or something like that but it's only move 13 and he has 39 minutes on the clock right yeah he plays quite a slow rhythm i mean we saw that as well uh i think yesterday he's not the fastest player in the world right all right interesting let's see what happens in in this one um let's have a look at uh marcellus game against uh aziz because it was that semi-tarash and things have progressed a lot since we since we left let's just take it from this position uh we have uh well material is still equal but white managed to get this past d pawn which is both a strength and a weakness in these positions but wait there is also an important thing that white managed to block the b6 and the a5 pawns yeah somehow now it is clear that only white is playing for for something i believe no because black cannot really advance with the pawns while i can definitely do so with my d pawn so trading a pair of rooks should be favorable for for black i believe no probably in general because otherwise i can have some ideas with d6 and then i discovered check bishop takes f7 queen on a freeze and so so good so i guess so you want to trade one pair of rooks and now we should probably try to attack our b6 is hanging maybe queen d6 oh sorry queen c5 exists queen before queen before oops queen before threatens uh rook c3 i think yeah might be the case probably what if i play i cannot play maybe it's not as easy as i thought it's possible huh yeah after all the pawn on d5 like you said could be a weakness as well yeah i really don't like the threat of rook c3 so the queen d4 on the board but i mean how bad is it the bishop on b3 if it's not opened by moves like d6 isn't really great and i was thinking that i could play d6 and after rook c3 try to somehow yeah make it work but maybe this is okay though that's that's what i was trying to uh to work out takes takes and if i take i should take with the pawn i believe yeah you take with the pawn if you take with the queens probably still okay but i don't want to give up on that pawn like that okay so you take with the pawn and now i need to now it is better now it is better yeah this is this is actually this isn't a threat exactly because i can take and if i if i block i didn't like it because of some queen move like queen d5 queen of four let's say queen d5 queen of four yeah now i could should i consider moves like queen a8 and queen a4 i'm not sure is it a good end game if you are in time with your king you're great but then i have the move f4 after king g6 so perhaps you should and the pawn is hanging no then it is great for white yeah yeah it's it's a very tricky one actually i've got a very poor intuition about this position actually i realized that i she did take the route just took so queen if we will follow shortly and we'll see if she will go for queen before or try something different instead there might be an argument that even moves like queen d6 might be possible because it's not so of course the queen is not an ideal blocker but it's not that easy to make it go away you have to consider me taking on d5 yeah exactly that's that's the problem i think you probably can yeah it's a very funny position i could play moves like queen three but then you have even rook c3 and if i play a move like queen d queen a1 you're gonna go knight a4 i think yeah i feel like i'm losing control here with white basically yeah so queen a3 and we'll see after queen takes a3 what uh what marshal's gonna do but she has a big advantage on the clock she has like 20 25 minutes more than her opponent even though it feels like white shouldn't be in great danger because even if you're losing the d5 pawn at some point it will come with at the cost of a lot of trades you know and then there will be a decent chance that even there it's still a draw but of course of course white will try to keep that pawn alive yep and he just played queen a3 yeah all right let's check another game yeah let's move on and let's go to nina that's yeshvili against sabina we haven't seen this in a while and that was that reversed looking like french no yeah exactly we had knight a3 e4 and actually sabina just put the knight back on g1 so we got a weird super weird game h5 h4 random moves happening okay not so random but bishop g4 now f3 takes nino moves the bishop back and b5 what a cool move i really love it so the idea after c takes b6 is what to take back no you're not saying oh you cannot knight b4 first all right yeah it's knight b4 let me not blunder yeah yeah it's knight b4 white king is in trouble knight b4 and what rook c1 or something me yeah king of two looks a bit artificial but yeah probably rook c1 you might you might lose the queen actually there after some bishop c2 or maybe you're not losing the queen but it's definitely not happy there so let's say rook c1 and i take back is that the idea or is it some c5 like nino knows because she'll know this idea does this move make any sense here i believe so makes a lot of sense doesn't it because if you now take and i take um white king is still in the center very and d4 is coming and if i open you up i'm gonna i'm gonna crush you and you know i have to say that nina is a very creative player yes she actually enjoys a lot playing out of book like when if she could just take her opponent out of the book from move 3 she would definitely do so every game you know and i'm curious is sabina up for the task here to play a very imbalanced imbalanced game well i don't think he has a choice i mean his he's he's it's already very imbalanced and it's already very messy and it wouldn't surprise me if if i'm i'm gonna cheat again very quickly no it doesn't doesn't like it but okay it thinks white is a lot better here but uh somehow what's wrong with this move i think it's just losing but some random moves knight c e2 i mean come on how could we be so wrong here i mean the computer's spouting out all kinds of nonsense that we're not gonna see knight c e2 i mean it's a great move but who would play it exactly well that's uh that lines illustrate perfectly how uh you know we humans uh never almost never says the position like the comp it does no exactly yeah and this is why humans chess is so much more exciting right i will i will place my money on nino in this game okay i well i would like to see nino when she had a tough game yesterday and uh why not all right very complicated let's go to another game and should it be the harria uh ravi mama zada gunai game okay only a few moves because it seemed it seemed like white had an interesting idea out of the opening right yeah he basically fixed this structure here so this square is here gunai played bishop d7 planning to meet knight here with sorry rook to d8 almost certainly but ravi just said okay let me finish development bishop d8 and rookie one love the way ravi is playing the point is now rookie one prepares bishop f4 and now there's no e5 and as i say but where is that bishop going i mean bishop d7 bishop d8 it looks a bit yeah i mean she's just abstract yeah she she she she just uh it doesn't have many good moves or she can't find a good plan it seems to me because you normally place the bishop there after the rook has left the f8 square right right right or if you have the idea of playing f6 and then some bishop g6 but here the pononi 6 is hanging so uh i'm a bit pessimistic about about the latest prospects in this game yeah i think i think ravi is is feeling very good about his position here yeah i agree you know the in general let's have a quick overview let's take it to the to the playing hall let's see them for a moment and we'll do a quick bit of looking at the screens and the boards by the way by the way i see a comment in the chat does ravi have any norms but i think he's already a grand master yeah he's a grand master he just he got three norms in one year he played a few close tournaments in england and got over 2500 he is officially a grand master i don't know why it's not updated here but that is that has been confirmed by fide so he is a he is a gm and we see the playing hall yeah we see the playing hall and i i'm just looking at all the boards at the same time and what did i predict i predicted plus three for the board yeah i'm actually feeling very uh very how very unclear actually because i think bilal is gonna win today against iran and i think um but yovanka has quite quite decent chances of doing the same versus julian i think i think joe has got a great chance against pier and i think that um i will counterbalance that with ninos um completely imbalanced position i think she's great in those ones i believe she can pull some tricks on sabino there i agree i mean the sabino game yeah i'm not confident that plus three is happening it could be one of those 50 50 days it could end five five yeah we've a lot with a lot of uh results which are not draws actually right exactly yeah because i believe we might actually see only only one draw by how the games look so far well the bobby check game will quickly go there because that is pretty solid i mean bobby has got a bit of an initiative though because it's a bit awkward for marie to to actually move her pieces oh that that fancatted bishop works so well with the queen right yeah exactly we this is the position on the board and the knight can't move because of mate um but that's all he's got really going on here and i'm not sure that's gonna be enough now yeah i'm i'm i'm i'm not convinced that marie is you know she's a very very strong i have a very direct way of playing here with black just rookie eight bishop f8 and then i will be fine if i have time to protect g7 the knighty fiver whatever is coming but bishop b5 here is awkward yeah that might be a problem i don't really want to bring the rook to e7 because after rook d1 and bishop h2 bishop h2 does that work really wow i got swindled yeah that doesn't yeah you're right yeah rook d1 doesn't work okay yeah but you're right the rook on e7 feels but i want to play on the other hand rook c7 and trade trade rooks and yeah it's uh i'm lucky that rook d1 actually doesn't work i can't really well you're thinking i will be answering a question here because somebody asks if the team wins count or the point wins so actually it doesn't matter how many rounds one or another team wins what counts is how many points they score overall so even if women would win for example six rounds with five and a half and men would win four rounds with let's say seven three it might uh it actually will be still more points for the men and that would mean that they would win the match exactly so they have to be careful about every every half of the point so have you come up with something in that position no i haven't i haven't thought of anything i think it's it's so weird it it feels just for the moment that i would like i just can't find i can't find a way yeah rook e7 is really ugly but perhaps maybe queen queen d4 uh huh so you want after rook c7 to play rook d1 now exactly yeah it is it is looking good okay perhaps i don't have to to go rook c7 then okay what else could i play i could play an even uglier move which one e5 no i was thinking about bishop c7 but well i mean if it works but you know it's one of those moves where i don't know it feels like why does got a few ways to keep a bit of initiative but actually e5 was also an interesting yeah if e5 is interesting or i did not consider that but maybe now just queen a4 yeah meanwhile i believe something completely different happened the queen is on e7 already so she played queen e7 here yeah and bobby already played something it looks like it's bishop d3 bishop d3 okay yeah so his idea here is that rook c8 doesn't work apparently because you can take what and bishop b5 and that wins for white yeah that's right and yeah so you can't you can't go rook d8 the bishop also wasn't doing anything here now oops so the bishop comes to d3 and of course white has got an improving move putting the bishop there and then suddenly ideas of the battery sometimes make sense because you can get rid of this knight but maybe black just wants to play e5 at some point i'm not sure where perhaps i could even consider taking on a free and playing e5 really not sure that doesn't feel right to me yeah i have weakened a bit my light squares but on the other hand your king is also not ideal and i've closed that monster bishop on b2 i'm gonna say i don't like it there's something about it i don't like i i can't say exactly what but let's say i go queen c6 all right there are no threats for now so i should create some of my own could i play some knight h5 um yeah i don't see the threat i put the king on e2 a lot it's very safe on e2 yeah sure that's an interesting idea yeah i mean i can even preempt it i can even go king f1 here for example rook d8 let's say rook d8 yeah i'm not uh i'm i'm just not you're not convinced i'm really not convinced i think your bishop is bad i've even if i just go king e2 let's say um and i'm not sure i've played this very well at all but i've got control of the c5 bishop c5 yeah queen e4 i don't know so you're saying the king is doing fine yeah i think the king is fine on e2 there's something about this sequence of taking on f3 and then putting your pawns on the dark squares it it doesn't sit well no of course it's completely unnecessary to take on f3 because that's what white actually wanted black to do but i just wanted to see if uh if it's possible at all exactly yeah i mean for sure it could be um all right so probably bobby is putting some pressure for now on marie and she has to be quite accurate here but if she finds a few precise moves then the initiative might might go away yeah that's what i think uh what else indeed what else where should we jump to let's let's check again joe's game against pia it was a very exciting position oh and it has changed a lot we last left it around here bishop f3 pawn to b4 the knight did come to e2 and pia did respond e5 this is the classical way of playing the queen came back and she did go a5 going for it and now joe played a very interesting move knight to g3 a very unusual one as well trying to um yeah to get to f5 but it is very interesting that i've never seen the english attack being played in such a way yeah no like really the f4 moves the knight g3 maneuver without the pawn being on g4 it's so very how to say it's very unusual yeah it's very non-standard yeah i agree all right so e takes f4 follow yeah knight f5 is a really big threat so she took took and put the knight on e5 in order to be able to meet knight f5 with bishop takes f5 and that's what happened joe just went knight f5 immediately takes takes and we have this position now my feeling is that this has gone very well for pia and that actually she can start to get a bit optimistic you know the only thing which i dislike in black's position it's the d5 square like if i play bishop d5 you're right okay it's not my move it's black's move but if i place the bishop on d5 it controls the whole board right and then maybe i could start thinking of a way to attack black's king even though i'm not sure how to achieve that but perhaps i could go even for a different colored bishops position after some let's say then bishop b5 detail but then yeah i still don't see a way that i attack black's king but perhaps i can use the fact that the f7 pawn is a bit weak it's a it's a very interesting position and oh but just done on on the clock quite a bit 25 minutes less i think that's okay i hope that he has yeah i think that's i think that's okay i think um 25 minutes here for 20 uh for sorry for 19 moves is it's enough time but i can see your argument about black being uh completely fine here because maybe she can even consider moves like knight c4 immediately with some piece sacrifice later knight c4 knight a3 check i mean you should always sure you're ready to meet that somehow queen d3 knight a3 check but i could even i could even start with the move like queen c7 perhaps and now i want to play knight a3 but i don't understand if i if i let you do it and i take and put the king on c1 you're saying that the king is safe there might be the case looks a little i yeah i i uh knight c4 is i was actually trying i mean that there were a few ways of trying to play this position how stupid is the move bishop f6 here no it's great but after bishop d5 the knight is no longer coming to c4 yeah and that's what i wanted to achieve to somehow bring the knight there queen c7 trying to force it there but yeah it's not uh it's not clear i think once the bishop does get to d5 you're right now does she ever want to take and i guess the answer is no because after takes i'm uh threatening the g-file is open yeah she probably won't take i wonder what i'm actually very curious she looks like she's about to play a move but uh i think knight c4 might be interesting after all knight c4 queen d3 queen c7 bishop d5 for some reason i you don't like if maybe okay let's say you go rook c8 but wait could i no knight knight after bishop d5 i was thinking maybe i could have some knight b6 but perhaps it's just too slow no knight b6 might be okay trying to get the bishop sure why why why not yeah she's she's not gonna she plays queen c8 oh wait where is where is the aha so she just wants to get f5 point and now maybe she wants knight c4 right and it's a smart smart way of making it happen exactly because now after knight c4 when you play queen d3 the knight on c4 is protected and you have time for bishop f6 attack will be too a very a very nice move i must say and it actually might force okay maybe it maybe it's not the case but maybe white will now consider taking on e5 just making sure that nothing happens to the king yeah you can take on e5 but i think that's a move that joe would like you know if he has the post pawn as much as possible yeah i mean if if he has no other options he'll take i was thinking what if i just go bishop d5 and sacrifice the pawn yeah like so what i will take it okay rook df1 and now i have to be careful because for example queen d7 runs into bishop takes e5 and then bishop takes f7 and i lose my queen so i will not fault to that on the other hand what do i do after rook d2 f1 it's one of those positions maybe you can try and play like the computer might try play and play something like this with queen g4 typical kind of computer stuff claiming that the queen is safer and it might be i mean it just might be difficult to attack but maybe here i can rook h3 i was thinking of exactly the same rook h3 and then that's actually it's yeah it gets it gets messy and the bishop on d5 is really a good piece but it's i guess a critical moment because it's very difficult here to assess all these positions and to realize is that bishop a good compensation enough for the pawn or not i'm very curious what what joe will do well the computer is with i'm i know i'm cheating a bit more today but i'm just so curious the computer is saying both bishop takes e5 and bishop d5 are the best two moves and they're both pretty equal so so i'm very happy about ourselves yeah exactly i mean joe if i was in joe's shoes i would play bishop d5 because i think this sets some some decent practical problems for black but you are taking risks here yeah i know that no question i'm taking risks yeah so it's a very interesting moment is joe willing to take risks or if he takes on e5 that means that he wants a safer game exactly yeah taking on e5 is is uh is probably just going to end in a like i can imagine something like queen d7 you have to take right queen c5 rook d5 you probably start losing so takes takes but pierce just never losing this position ever she's just too solid but joe is also never losing this one rook d1 rook d8 and they'll they'll sign the score sheets soon i just don't think that that that one will basically be an indication by joe that he's let's place bets on it i bet on bishop e5 i think for a safe choice i don't i think joe is uh he hasn't won yet he's uh he blew a game against maria musichuk i think he i think he's in the mood for dancing but you know it's so interesting when you haven't won a game in the tournament and let's say if i would be in joe's shoes yeah what would i choose because normally every time i get in this situation i choose to risk it and to try to get the full point and then let's say one time out of three it works but that were two times i actually lose the second game so yeah i mean it and do you want to you to lose one more game against a woman here that's another question well any game you lose here is against a woman so it doesn't really matter i don't think that's really what he's thinking about i think joe is just uh thinking you know what what are my practical chances after bishop d5 he just raised his eyebrows and he was he just saw something in his analysis i think joe is gonna just you believe in his fighting spirit in this position the only thing that's slightly bothering me now is he's gone under 20 minutes and he still has 18 moves to make so there will be one minute per move you know i think if i would be um in his position against pia i would i would take on e5 definitely she you know she's a player who uses so well those counter chances and that's exactly why she's such an expert of all those chevening against you know because it's exactly what you do there you try to try to get counter play to make white take risks and then to exploit that a very interesting moment good night mama zada has just played a a move i can see that one of the ugliest moves you can ever play oh oh no queen d8 bishop f4 and now she played a rook oh guna guna is having a really bad time here a7 what's this oh she wants to meet knight b6 with knight takes a5 this is her her idea yeah but the problem is that rook a7 is not threatening a thing is it no perhaps she wants to play knight d5 yeah i think here if i was white i would seriously consider g4 g4 um ah so after knight take knight d5 i i mean i firstly yeah so i just want to have the option of coming back i might be able to take go knight b6 here that could also be very interesting so like takes takes knight b6 and now this doesn't work because knight takes d5 and this probably is losing you still hold on for the moment with knight c6 maybe it's not losing actually maybe it's not yeah but i mean the other main idea is that i wanted to drop this bishop back to g3 but maybe it's again just a little bit too too loose yeah i think i might take and play bishop f6 because after bishop d6 i suppose i have bishop takes g3 so it's fine so rook a3 now i would love to do something about that bishop on a8 but the threat of bishop d6 is quite strong maybe i could yeah it's not an easy position it's just an interesting move that occurred to me i have no idea if it's any good or not and it wasn't the move played by ravi and again it's not stylistically something that i think ravi is uh kind of approving on he played 94 yeah he played 94 so he's going basically for the d6 square yeah and after knight takes e4 he wants to play bishop takes e4 and just claim that it's very difficult for black to to do something about that rook on a7 after all it has to get back to the game at some point yeah and the other point is that bishop g5 trying to exchange more pieces will now run into some tactic you you would think but maybe not for example queen h5 h6 yeah and i wonder if ravi would actually consider takes takes takes takes and cementing takes takes and rook e5 but you could even play a knight b6 just laughing at black and it's game over you mean here b6 b6 and knight b6 and you play without a rook yeah that rook is gone gone forever isn't it yeah that's that's really sad rook a7 is just my goodness i mean i don't understand i if black has to resort to this kind of move it means that black is definitely in big trouble yeah and i'm sure that gunna understands that yeah i totally uh totally agree um i think that yeah i think ravi is big favorite to win this one actually it's a position he's solid he's he's uh he's got no danger gunna has to find these weird moves i i i'm i'm just gonna um flick on the comp to see the objective evaluation and it's very very good for white as we could imagine i'm just curious about g4 if it likes it doesn't like it good nonsense move all right let's let's go to eric's game because so we see a lot of requests of that okay oh wow we've had we've had a complete liquidation in this game so oof but wait isn't oh all right let's let's have a look how the game developed we left it after here yeah she played rook a c8 yeah the move we were thinking i mean the move which you played in one second actually g4 that's that's a logical move i mean it's logical but it does it's risky it leaves the kid i get very worried about this diagonal here but maybe it's okay she now took and he takes e5 this is his idea yeah he wanted to keep those spawns running so some f5 might yeah but here rook c4 i really like what what olga did yeah she wants to play rookie 4 right that's her her big shot and the point is that after bishop b6 she took with a jack very important king g2 rook takes f4 take take oh yeah and i was thinking that black has an extra point but white can actually consider taking on d5 can absolutely take but wait isn't there some queen c6 aren't we running there in trouble no queen d2 right queen d3 yeah queen d3 or even ah queen d2 maybe rook c4 right queen d3 is probably yeah queen d3 followed by king g3 is no big deal so okay so eric can take back but my big question is does harrick eric no he doesn't i wanted to go e6 and be brilliant yeah you just want to make that pawn queen but yeah but if i had rook b8 it would be made and after e7 king f7 there is a check unfortunately yeah yeah or a check it doesn't work okay so we can't play e6 so most probably you have to take yeah i believe never have the players can really try to win this one it should eventually be a draw because you go away with the rook i play king g3 maybe rook c4 though ah rook c4 that's a clever move uh that's a very clever move wait wait am i losing okay rook c3 er rook c2 check sorry king g3 yeah rook c3 rook d8 you swindled me yeah you tricked me oh my okay he six but perhaps rook c5 might be a problem oh rook c5 just wins does it e7 it wins material definitely does it yeah e7 d5 okay i just queen queen takes oh yeah i yeah i mean but this is a draw it's a draw yeah it's a draw anyway yeah queen f7 queen d8 and i draw immediately right but it's a funny it's a funny line but can you just go king f7 king f7 i got queen f3 check and i've covered myself against everything now even here queen f5 check might be a weird draw yeah it is here i give check or is it not king f8 yeah okay i just uh i go here ah so that you have queen b8 chuck yeah all right hmm i could try on king g8 king f7 and i will not try king g6 here a little a little too much yeah now i believe he has enough time here don't worry about time chat erics got it what a fascinating position indeed so little pieces left on the board but still so many resources hidden yeah and i guess the best move is just to take on d5 yeah queen c6 and queen d3 with dead equality right just very quickly we'll stay here for one minute because it's not a particularly interesting position bobby cheng against mary sabag mary has done very well oh but how did she manage to trade the bishops she somehow she went takes takes and bishop a3 and the point is the rook is on c1 this was very clever very good by mary sabag so bishop a3 was my suggestion but bishop a3 is a very good follow-up yeah i didn't like e5 but bishop a3 is is a really good follow-up and yeah and now and now we have a position like this which is yeah i mean bobby is yeah i mean it's just it's just almost certainly going to be a droids the bishop comes to f3 uh the knight will come to d5 probably i'm not even sure the knight will come to d5 why not yeah sure i mean it can um i could play also g6 h6 whatever yeah it's should be a draw somehow yeah because the knight on d5 is a really good piece as it covers um that squares on the c fail because if we imagine that the queens go off the board yeah then white might have you know a slight age just because there are pawns on both flanks and we've got a bishop which plays better when there are pawns on both flanks but the d5 square should be just enough to ensure that black is doing fine yes i think black is doing fine now let's check in with Irene very quickly has her position improved and i think the short answer is it's very similar it's very static and i think she's uh oh it's terrible i i'm afraid i have to say that yeah it's it's it's not dead though you know uh if i'm looking at the image we've got from uh from the playing hall i see some light there array of sun array of array of hope there array of hope for Irene but the problem is the sun is shining on the white pieces and not on her pieces so that's a sign from the gods that uh the ray of hope is is more on bill i think no i think this position is just really really really awful to play for black definitely but i will say because there must be a lot of Irene supporters out there it's not uh white plan is not not so clear no you know the danger in these positions is that you don't find the breakthrough but right you should be really patient in these times of positions find a way to improve one piece then another piece and then it is much more difficult for for the one who has the worst position to play because he has to be really precise you know every move every move to calculate and then when uh your opponent is low on time then it will will be the moment to find the breakthrough i believe yeah i agree uh yeah it actually reminds me of a game i uh i've seen recently i thought i still went uh sergey karakin won against yordan van forest yes it was such a disgusting defense yordan had to endure for a very long time and then eventually uh sergey managed managed to win she played a move yeah what move did she play rook c8 you know the chat is asking uh is asking you uh why are you calling me iran and not irina but i believe you're actually calling me irina i'm calling you irina there is i'm talking about iran in the play i'm talking about iran tsukanda who's playing right uh we've actually asked her how does she prefer her name to be pronounced and she said it to be iran yeah exactly now this is irina next to me and iran is playing the playing the match against uh below yeah if you get the two of us next to each other you could you could make a wish actually at least that's what they say all right so she played rook e to c8 yeah rook e to c8 and uh again you still need to find a plan here as white and and that plan is is not straightforward yeah okay i would uh be inclined to leave them to to find the plan and go to nino's game against sabino brunella because it was it was looking really exciting and nino did indeed sacrifice that she did right she played c5 night before we saw this so coming in here rook uh and he just took actually sorry so that's uh that's very brave yeah takes rook to c1 okay so black is a pawn down but white's king is awfully exposed bishop d7 queen d1 and now just queen d8 getting off queen d8 that's uh a bit of a ah but it makes sense because she wants to argue that the pawn on h4 is or might be weak at some point so perhaps when she goes at some point with the knight away from f6 she could just take then the h4 pawn well i am completely not sure how i feel about this position because there is the a3 move and and we are sacrificing the d5 pawn it seems yeah suddenly we're sacrificing d5 so what's uh well not really because h4 hangs right so knight c6 ah so that was precisely the idea right and takes that's why she played queen d8 yeah a nice a nice little trick i would take black here all day just so you know uh i hate white's position here um that's it maybe it's not so bad if you can play king f2 let's say you get a3 knight c6 and you just play a move like bishop d3 how bad is is life here maybe it's maybe it's actually not so bad whatsoever no i think the computer will defend it 100 games out of 100 you know but yeah for humans the situation is slightly different even though i tend to tend to incline now in white's favor actually you know if i was really optimistic a few moves before now i'm not sure anymore because after all white did not do anything wrong all the pieces are on good places on central squares only the king is still there in the center but f2 seems like a good square for it yeah the f2 square or yeah f2 sometimes it goes to g2 but i agree i it's it's a bit it's very optimistic by nino but uh uh you know a lot can still happen in this game it's it's it's not over for sure it's not over for sure right do you have any other interesting developments i mean we have a lot of interesting games the yavanka huska game ah yeah let's check that one out it was really oh the bishop escaped from yeah well the bishop the bishop exchanged itself off so we had the position i think that's good news trading that bishop no probably yeah f4 and she went a6 immediately which very surprising to me she played she didn't take on d4 and and he just he just was able now to take on e7 i think this was a pretty good pretty good decision because yeah now if you take here probably i can take or at least i can take here and i feel a lot better so she took takes takes and now simply 92 white is a pawn up there is also a big problem with white's position and that is that it has an open character actually because the center is very unstable let's imagine i'll take on d4 on one day and then play c5 then my bishops will be really good and that knight on h5 is struggling a little bit and the king is struggling as well i prefer black here interesting yeah i'm not sure i mean yavanka attacked this pawn that's a very nice move because if we provoke b3 then the dark squares might get weak especially since white doesn't have a dark squared bishop anymore to protect them and bishop e4 rook h3 so you like the bishops i would still take white here no i believe black is better you think black is better yeah but yeah we see that black should be precise here and if this why can't i go here ah bishop f3 yeah that's clever well now that's a concrete reason why black is black is oh that's very nice if bishop e4 rook h3 maybe he had to go rook h2 here but then bishop f3 anyway yeah this is yavanka's plan this is very nice rook g rook h3 bishop g2 and now if rook h2 bishop f3 this pin is very very you cannot play rook g3 because of queen h4 well rook g3 queen h4 and now what if i i guess that should be the reason no should be yeah it's it's fine because i can just go back then with the bishop to e4 so my queen is fine on h4 yeah now this could this could there's always huge risk playing like this with right and indeed um it is possible for to get norms here in the tournament i see someone asking if it's possible to get a gm norm and that's exactly what the players are looking for here i think iran's got quite a good chance of that it's still so early right it's round four like exactly you start to know more around round six round seven around that that region but she's definitely had a promising start yeah even though today she's in a bit of trouble yeah that's exactly and then she saves that game well if she saves today then she's got really fantastic chances yeah all right let's look elsewhere let's quickly go back to joe gallagher and just see which decision he made yeah let's and i know my joe yeah and he was never gonna take on e5 he's here to play he's here to win he's here to crush but he played bishop d5 the move sacrificing a pawn and then the rook to d you know i applaud this decision but i have the feeling he's gonna regret that he might do because bishop g5 might be a great move yeah and why do we think that the bishop on d5 is better than the knight on e5 true good question yeah we would love to actually take that knight on e5 if the queen wouldn't be hanging because trading the dark squared bishops isn't exactly what we wanted to achieve here it's it's absolutely not well he does take oh my god he's only down to three minutes on the clock now i'm definitely thinking he's regretting his decision of sacrificing the pawn so what's the idea after queen takes g5 good question i think what he's gonna do is gonna take take a rook f5 and you know now aren't you asking yourself why did i do that but just g4 g4 yeah i mean you could have the same position with a good bishop on d5 but with an equal amount of pawns to say so and here you're a pawn down and actually i believe that the knight on e5 is better than a bishop would be on f6 with a pawn on e5 for black now i mean this knight is just okay the bishop is also really nice on d5 but the knight is great there in the center as well yeah i think just in big trouble pia has 44 minutes on the clock he does take so let's see let's see what he has he's not gonna get him get away with it easily so h takes g5 so this is on the board and he does go rook f5 but has he just missed g4 i believe that i mean is this just really bad for joe now the computer is not that unhappy about this position but for for a human it is very difficult to defend yeah i agree joe's gonna be very unhappy with how this is gone if he magically makes a draw of the g4 and just some rook d1 and just but it you know it's very it's very easy to improve for black in in these positions you just have to do it slowly yeah but here pia has a lot of time to slowly improve her position and if we remember her first first game against bilal where she also was a pawn up and the computer was saying that bilal had enough compensation to sorry keep the game balanced well here the case is exactly exactly the same i believe uh yeah well and yovanka didn't play bishop g2 so she played another move which played g4 all right let's go to yovanka's game yeah we just saw just a moment ago it looked as though bishop g2 was really strong but she played bishop g6 which is you know a sign of somebody who's a bit lacking in confidence in my opinion and i'm not saying that this is a bad move but she could have done better yeah exactly so bishop g6 yeah i mean the position is still is still very unclear the problem in white's position here it's that we've overexpanded with the pawns and now with the pair of bishops that point on b3 the king okay it's safe for now but it might not be the case in the few weeks right so let's pretty go back to the eric rosen game because olga oh we actually went down the line we were looking at with queen d3 and indeed rook f8 and king g3 so we we actually looked at this so getting out of the pin moot stepping up and getting out the queen and now olga plays the move queen c1 nice move by olga this move is uh has a threat the point is that let's just say you play a move that doesn't threaten anything rook d1 suddenly queen e1 check is the end of the game because uh you have to go king h2 and now i can come down check and you're either winning material or getting a mate exactly but what about rook d8 is it the same happening there rook d8 yeah now e5 i see is hanging so i'll give a check then i will take b7 in the end king g2 and i can't take this queen c4 check i mean after queen f2 here i have king h1 so i'm safe right right but there might be another problem with queen g1 perhaps instead of queen e1 ah queen g1 and now i'm not sure what's going on here king h4 queen e1 now and now you're taking the e5 if i would check you know this is bad yeah that's that's over so he cannot play rook d8 no and that queen e1 is a really nasty threat also queen f4 is a threat sometimes right and then similar play is this actually very bad for eric no i believe there should be a defense but you know what happened recently to me in a game i had the same kind of position everything was balanced but my king was a bit more exposed i just blundered mate in one with five minutes on the clock can you believe that yeah i can i it's happened to me it's it's when you're under very bad memories with this kind of positions okay i hope i hope it does not happen to eric queen d2 that's that that's a solid move yeah that feels like it should be the right move right yeah because now after well the queen trade is just a straight draw and after queen g1 check i guess he just wants to put the king on h4 and say that he covers some key squares it's still a little bit scary but it's not uh no it's all right because i actually wanted to play rook d8 at some point and if i trade rooks then it's immediately no risk or no risk at all and it seems like the king will not get mated upon on e5 does quite a good job about protecting the f6 square so there are no queen of six you know after i go for king g5 or something and i see that somebody's asking me if i ever met olga girya in real life and if she's a really humble person and she actually is she's a really really nice person uh we used to be quite close a few years ago before covid times and uh i really i really like her yeah and of course she's matters that they're just in the next room so uh like you know it would be we were all playing no but you know you there are players which you like but they're not humble well yeah that's true as well absolutely yeah yeah um actually i have uh now thought about a funny thing we have met i went to meet the new year's eve at her place all right in 2019 after the world rapid and blitz championships in musko because she lives there and actually both of us had a terrible year after after that i think we both lost like 50 or 50 slash 60 elo points so i think we're not celebrating the new year together anymore and i see out the corner my wow look at this move by bilal against iran um we had this position knight c8 attacking the rook now a lot of the time you could just bring the rook back to b2 or something like that but he goes for the move rook to b5 this is an extraordinary interesting and maybe excellent move by bilal what a move the point is that on bishop takes b5 you can throw in the swishensakh in between check knight takes d5 check are you sure uh i thought you could ah there is such a nice point king c6 yeah you can take with the pawn okay yeah maybe this is beautiful and king takes d5 bishop b3 is mate wow that's absolutely stunning that's amazing look at that king c6 and ab5 and the point is that if you go here now you run into knight f6 check and the game is is immediately over wow rook to b5 oof that's an unpleasant move for iran because now you're threatening knight takes d5 and rook takes a five i think that's the end of the game takes here well you have to now probably go back to d8 is it so bad though don't we have any chances at all to save this one i don't think so why do you capture back with the rook um probably with the pawn with the pawn well i was thinking i had a b6 there let um i don't know yeah let's try with the rook let's try with the rook b6 yeah okay and now if i play the problem is that black cannot really untangle the pieces because the knight is not moving right the rook is not moving right but maybe i want to bring no i don't really want to bring my king to c6 because after bishop e4 maybe i will get into another nice mating net yeah and i've got so many ideas here as white for example i can go rook b1 and put the rook around here and do stuff like this that's one idea another idea is actually just to uh just to bring the king uh take take a pawn like this on h4 it's a very nice concept of this exchange sacrifice it is and bishop takes b5 on the board you know what it reminds me of it reminds me of the best games of magnus actually because he also likes to sacrifice exchanges no i was it in the game against tanish gearie where he did and won in a very nice style recently yes yes yes i believe we will get this and here yeah the problem with a takes b5 is that this guy's now passed and i'm not sure how you can use the a file so i do prefer rook takes b5 b6 and now i you know i like a move like rook to b1 just saying okay your move how do you plan to actually make a useful move yeah that's a good question because the first thing which came to my mind was to bring over the king but i don't have a good square for it like i was saying king c6 runs into bishop b4 so okay 97 but you can take the pawn right i can take the pawn i'm not also forced to take that pawn for example i can be super exquisite sometimes and just say that my position is so dominating i can go knight f6 let's say rook h8 and now play a move like bishop d3 and claim again that my knight is actually worth more than the rook i don't want to let you uh untangle yeah i believe all of these possibilities have a chance here but uh uh did did she play a move already she played king d8 and rook takes b5 is on the board so a very very unpleasant position to play with black here right very nicely done by bilil she's gonna play b6 still compared to the previous position there is a risk every time involved when you sacrifice material because of course it is good of course you are dominating but if you make an inaccuracy here if for example we imagine that knights go off the board somehow i suddenly have great chances with black to save the game right yeah i agree i agree 100 percent and there is unfortunately no ray of sunshine on the board anymore no i i feel i i don't see Irene surviving because i just think it's too many uh too many problems too many problems yeah just too many problems right now anything else let's go back to uh shansaya because the position is getting very very hot it was already hot now it's getting spicy hot and spicy knight b5 by liandro chrissa here wait today we are having here an argentinian kazakhstani encounter on this board right interesting interesting mix okay so knight c2b5 played but at least i see that white king is on g1 it's back to safety but there is a pawn there missing uh black black is a pawn down right black is a pawn down but d5 is potentially weak and um can we take it immediately how do you want to do that oh i think first take on d2 rook takes and now bishop d5 well bishop d5 bishop fc i i see you don't bishop fc i was hoping for even bishop no bishop a to bishop b7 no i will just take no that that doesn't work okay so bishop takes d5 let's see are you sure it doesn't work why did you give up so quickly bishop f6 bishop f6 bishop d5 rook d5 rook d to c2 am i not going to get in trouble over yeah i mean that's what i was trying to make work i should have i should have i should have spent more time on it and here and try and pin and win looks very nasty doesn't it mm-hmm yeah maybe knight b3 is a threat it wasn't a good idea to to just take the pawn like that let's try a different way how do we make it work i didn't want to take with the knight on d5 because then the pawn on e7 would be hanging but maybe there is another idea to this position you just want to wait there was also knight e4 yeah there's a there's a knight e4 here i'm not sure which one probably this one this one all right but no then again this rook c2 and it's a very unpleasant then maybe the other one okay yeah now if i'm getting the pair of bishops i'm optimistic about about the position so if i go here okay i will take once rook c2 knight g5 i have the feeling something different i know they are they are in a similar position and knight d5 knight d5 yeah feels all right i would probably go knight c6 here is white maybe all right i will take yeah you're gonna take and take on b2 mm-hmm and you're gonna just say a pawn is a pawn yeah now it's me who has the pawn up yeah okay that doesn't work yeah maybe it's better to go for this knight e4 ideas rather than take directly on d5 i think she'll do that actually it's a very typical move you see a lot in the greenfield and there you have it yeah yeah this is a really good move very nice and leandro with a little but he's probably not risking much because the queens are off the board he will have to be a bit precise but probably after many trades it will be a very drawish position now where does black have any chances to overtake here um after all we have the pair of bishops yeah exactly i'm not i'm not sure no i would take black here actually rook c2 okay so let's see let's see if there's like a a mass trade leandro down to five minutes as well so actually quite a few moves to play before before this all happens yeah five minutes is not much in this position no but he mishandled it because it seemed like he was doing very well but that that's what i was saying that chan saya has this fantastic fighting spirit and i think i think i never saw her lose to games in a row right okay should we stay on this game or should we move to another one i just wanted to have a look at yuvanka's game again because there's been more massive changes and i have to say i'm not a fan of of what's happened for yuvanka i don't know what went wrong but but like her king is weak yeah why you why did she open up the how did that happen i don't know so it went it went something like uh rook h3 bishop g6 which we already thought was the wrong direction knight to g3 and now queen to a7 which i i don't mind it kind of makes sense but i think she missed f5 actually as a concept i think queen a7 is probably not that good i don't understand it and if i take on f5 yeah so yeah well it's the same it's the same thing so takes takes takes here well nearly the same thing i wanted to take on f5 actually you want to take oh yeah or here or there it's the same bishop h5 knight h5 and now ct isn't it better i don't know but what i do know is white's position is better than it was yeah definitely much because now with the light squares available um the white king can actually find shelter on g2 e6 f6 and actually black's king is arguably more unsafe than whites and uh i really hate how this has gone for yuvanka takes uh jillion took on e6 okay fe6 fe6 and now queen d3 bishop before check it's over the jillion he has played a move on king e2 and i'm actually a bit fearful for yuvanka here because queen g6 is landing the rooks are doubling on the ff4 we have to play probably a solid move here like rook f8 rook f8 no in order to play queen a7 after queen g6 oh but then you maybe have knight takes uh queen g6 queen i'm not sure how is that one well so queen g6 queen f7 we take on g7 check king e7 i probably have to take yeah i guess take and probably go back and post and two pass pawns now it looks bad i put the pawn on g5 but maybe i have time for some bishop c3 and d3 yeah but no well yes maybe maybe but you know the two pass pawns are gonna mean something here i think i mean it's not easy though it's it's all right i believe it's all right it's all right it's all right but it's gone wrong i mean that's just one one sample sample line maybe she should castle can she do that that is legal castling might be interesting it's legal yeah castling is legal here but wait here queen no queen gc you wanted me to play queen g6 and then play d3 and then get mated well you can take king takes d3 i wasn't completely sure king d3 yeah i mean sure king d3 oh that's unexpected yeah i was so happy about seeing that uh that tactics but maybe it's not over yet okay queen c5 well queen c5 you want to come in here huh perhaps you know i can just go knight f6 rook f6 yeah queen c3 king e2 yeah unfortunately i don't have time to both take a rook and defend against the mate on g7 and if i take on f6 it's not one of those positions where i have good compensation for an exchange exactly and she played for castle yeah i i kind of like the move but i guess queen g6 has to be checked but maybe she's just gonna go king h8 just get the king yeah yeah that's another option but d3 is also very tempting i must say maybe but that's a threat anyway right why cannot really stop that yeah exactly maybe you can just do this anyway mm-hmm oh we missed mate in one thanks for pointing that out queen g7 is mate yeah that's uh yeah we probably need a break no yeah we're gonna actually that's that's i think we're gonna need a coffee refill because we've been going for um actually how long have we we've been going for a while now so uh we are gonna take a quick break we won't be too long because the games are getting really really heated up uh we're gonna get some coffee before we blunder more mates in one don't blunder maybe one in your own games we'll be right back i'm on the top hundred in the world we only have one woman and regarding the number of players we have just one woman for every 10 12 or 14 men playing chess in a game or sport where physical strength is not important at all i mean endurance is important but brute force is not important at all this is a very big mystery we are back to the battle of the sexes round four and i've got here uh eric rosen uh how are you eric i'm good i'm still cooling down after the game uh i just finished like 10 minutes ago so still adrenaline kind of rushing through my system but uh good to be here all right and congratulations for your yesterday's win how did you feel after that i felt good yeah it was a pretty uh smooth game i think very instructive game too from the black side of a nimzo indian and uh yeah it felt good to like play a relatively clean game without any mistakes or blunders uh when was the last time you won against gm oh uh like in a classical game because online it happens pretty often um that's a good question i'm not sure uh it's definitely the first grandmaster i've been in at least a couple years wow congrats on that and uh let's have a look at today's game uh please tell us when did you think was the first critical moment of the game uh you could uh yeah sure so i went into uh this kind of italian i don't even know what we call this um this d4 and e5 line now i'll admit that i was expecting her to play caro con so this was like a secondary opening that we actually had bets on that you know really yeah lauren said he she was gonna play the caro con i went for the e5 uh so you had the same feeling as lauren's did you expected a caro con yeah well i i didn't know what to expect because she she can play caro con e4 e5 and sicilian so it's sometimes annoying to prepare against players like this who can play so many different things and um i had to try and just cover all my bases so did you have in mind this line when uh thinking what you'll choose if she plays e5 before the game yeah yeah i had this position on my computer screen this morning but during the game i just forgot everything oh wow because it's my first time playing this opening oh really uh yeah i usually like i usually don't play e4 i'm usually a london player um and uh i figured that this is kind of a trendy line these days i think welsey so has a chessable course on this line um and if lauren's not prepared then it can be easy to kind of get a slightly worse position um and because she's a caro con player i wanted to test her but uh it turned out that i was the one being tested because she was more prepared than me so the five yeah uh yeah and we got into this position bishop b6 this is all theory and then for some reason i couldn't remember the move order whether i'm supposed to castle first or knight c3 first no i think you did it uh you did it correctly if our memory was right of course yeah yeah like once we reached this position then the lines kind of came back to me um but i spent maybe 10 minutes off the clock at this point and uh yeah we were wondering actually why you were taking time but now that you've explained it makes a lot of sense right right so thankfully like after i played queen c2 i was still in preparation and uh the the main line i was more ready for here is bishop g6 and then queen b3 queen b3 97 uh and then castling and it uh then some bishop d3 bishop d3 eventually and there's a lot of branches after bishop d3 but uh okay i would have been happy to go into that i will put it on the board bishop g6 bishop d3 queen b3 oh sorry sorry right queen b3 first 97 castling c6 so this is like the natural line i think i played the game with some 92 here 92 is a move yeah uh getting the bishop pair essentially um and yeah it's one of those things of like playing a new opening for the first time like i basically learned this opening last like day or two so uh it's easy to kind of forget things and that's why it's it's more important to just understand what's going on in the position rather than just trying to memorize everything definitely but she took on c3 did it came did it come as a surprise uh a small surprise but i knew this was a move and uh if we go forward a few moves i mean she was blitzing out everything like she still had more time and she started with after f6 takes f6 and i still remember looking at this position it was either last night or this morning um that black can't take on f3 here because i have the intermediate move f takes g7 and whites doing well that's a nice intermezzo right right so instead she went for queen takes f6 queen f6 and i think it's still theory um i think there were a lot of games played played in a similar manner right and i'll admit after bishop e2 this is pretty much the end of my preparation uh and especially after she played 9a5 i was on my own um but thankfully the position kind of played itself because after 9a5 she's just asking for me to play 9e5 which i was happy to do bishop takes e2 then queen e2 c5 all logical okay so when she played c5 it looks like a beginner's mistake because she's allowed allows knight e7 right and what what is wrong with it yeah so uh it's an interesting calculation exercise because uh at first it looks like i'm just cleanly winning an exchange um but after a few minutes of thinking i realized that black has queen c6 here queen c6 and there's a lot of counterplay after knight f8 and cd4 and the problem is that after say c takes d4 there is a check coming here yeah the rook on a1 it's gonna get lost and it's weird like after cd4 i'm i'm temporarily up a full rook mm-hmm but i didn't see a good way to just consolidate and be up material so i wanted to do this because you have to you have to give up one of the pieces either the bishop on e3 no or the knight on f8 and that's gonna be just an exchange up right yeah but it's not easy to be up the exchange here exactly because if i take on d4 there's bishop d4 and uh and even rookie gates now a threat yeah and i think white might get in trouble here no white might already be losing yeah um so i just avoided all of that and uh castle short castle yeah and then we kept going uh cd4 and yeah a lot of these moves were very natural queen e6 now avoiding knight d7 and queen's very useful on e6 because it it supports this knight c4 idea right um so when i had f4 knight c4 yeah i really liked this knight c4 move we were not sure how to evaluate this position because it seems like you have a bit of a problem on the light squares right right uh especially with my pawns on dark squares and having darts for bishop and i'm tied down to d4 the move i really wanted to play is g4 and get a setup with g4 f5 and start attacking immediately um so i i want to play g4 immediately you wanted to make it work right right the problem with g4 immediately is i believe uh what was it i think knight takes e5 knight takes ah yeah and then d4 and i want to take with the d pawn but then d4 and i'm i'm getting hurt yeah the pawn on f4 will be followed up because it's bishop f2 rook f4 yeah yeah right so you chose to consolidate first rook a to d1 so rook a d1 yeah um proving my worst place piece and then here we got a bit worried about this g4 to be honest uh we were afraid your king will be too exposed actually but uh you handled it well it seemed to us no yeah i think g4 is called four in the position even though i am leaving my king my king a bit naked on g1 uh i do have the the king side majority so it makes sense to push the pawns and if i get an f5 then there's f6 potential i thought black has to be very careful here but she found uh she found a very concrete line knight takes e5 de5 and rook c4 it's a very important move now because now we don't don't have time to make f5 happen now right so my dream is to play f5 and then e6 yeah and i call this connect four with the pawn chain but there's no time to do it because uh when i play f5 and e5 hangs and here i had to be really careful not to have my pawns just crumble yeah so you took on b6 we trade and yeah this was quite quite concrete after queen b6 king g2 i lose f4 but i win d5 and yeah i was i spent some time here because there's queen d2 as well yeah we saw we tried to make e6 work but it didn't i didn't consider e6 yeah we we fought to try a queen sacrifice but it doesn't work unfortunately so queen d2 you fought right so queen d2 yeah and i thought that uh at first i thought this should be the strongest move because i hit the rook i can take on d5 with chuck but then she has rook f7 saving the rook avoiding the chuck on d5 and when i take on d5 there's queen f2 queen h1 and queen g3 and at least there will be a perpetual right well i thought like i didn't see how to survive in this position well now there's queen h3 queen f1 yeah yeah ah right so rook f1 doesn't work because the rook is hanging right yeah good point all right um so i spent a long time trying to see how i could survive after queen g3 but uh i i didn't see anything clear cut so decided to just not enter the sign yeah perhaps it was for better right right um but okay after i play rook takes d5 it's still a little bit unsettling because queen c6 i'm pinned had to play queen d3 and then she found an interesting move rook f8 uh yeah we were trying to make uh rook c4 work i was thinking about this too i'm calling for some rook c2 rook c3 ideas so here's there is a funny line i can play queen f3 oh queen f3 breaking the pin and after rook c2 i can play king g3 and then after rook c3 looks like i'm losing a queen but i'm just mating yeah that's a funny line yeah all right she played rook f8 instead so rook f8 and uh yeah and then i'm still under pressure because rook d8's the threat at uh walk my king up and then she played queen c1 and it looks really scary given that there's all these tracks on the back rink um and yeah there's queen e1 queen g1 to worry about and i can't really easily stop everything but i realized that i can allow black to play queen g1 so i played queen d2 here yeah that seems like a very good move because you cover basically all the dark squares no right except g1 except g1 so if queen g1 here uh i just tuck my king away on h4 right and then black doesn't have a great follow-up i don't think yeah we we also thought so because even rook d8 might be possible as after queen f2 you will have some even king g5 and then you are fine because you covered f6 square right yeah my uh my pieces are well placed enough where black can't hurt me too much uh but she played queen a3 queen a3 and then this just led to repetition of moves i played rook d3 queen c5 rook d5 and i still allow queen g1 if she wants it but if she didn't play queen g1 in the first position i didn't think she would play it again and uh yeah we repeated here so i think it was a relatively peaceful game yeah it it definitely looked like you both were trying to find chances but both of you played well so i guess that draw is a fair result i think so yeah um i'm really curious to check the opening theory and also check with the engine to see if there or anything missed in this game i am curious to ask you how how do you feel when you know there are so many supporters cheering for you does it motivate you to go for even more than you would normally yeah it's definitely motivating um and i definitely like one of my goals is tournament is to play really interesting and fighting chess and um i think it allows me to kind of detach myself from the results now it's easy to just focus on just trying to win or trying to play solidly but uh for me i'm just trying to have interesting games and and instructive games too oh that's uh that's a really nice strategy i believe and i wish you luck with that before letting you go i have one more question sure i saw that you are great friends with erin sukandar right and you are gonna play in this tournament eventually against each other in the final round actually oh wow in the final round i did not know that so uh how uh how are you trying to make a mindset for that how is it to play against friends generally yeah so we were actually teammates at webster university uh back from back in 2015 through 2017 and uh yeah it's it's always tricky playing a former teammate because we we train together we know each other's repertoires right and uh i mean for me i'm just trying to take it one game at a time so i'm not looking too far ahead at my my future opponents um even taking it one move at a time so uh yeah i'll i'll worry about it when the the day comes but uh for now i'm just trying to play good moves sure and you had a very nice comeback as a team yesterday winning with a very high margin plus four uh congrats on that thank you and what are your thoughts now about the situation in the match uh yeah i've i didn't have a chance really to look at the other games going on this round because i was just so focused on my own game and uh it's a tricky thing about team chess because of course you you want to be rooting for your team you want to keep an eye on the team's games but in the end chess is still an individual game and really i'm uh i'm trying to do my own job and and play uh play to the best of my ability so um i i hope that we can score another uh another plus score in this round but uh yeah it's nice when when there is a team to kind of lift you up especially if uh if i have a bad game or bad result it's nice when the team can so your team spirit's uh nice here do you do you have team meetings do you have uh any secret meetings for settling up a strategy for the next game yeah i don't want to reveal too many secrets but we do have a whatsapp group where we we share some secrets so all right all right thank you very much thank you uh and i wish you best of luck in the next games thanks so much appreciate it uh let's now get back uh to the games welcome back everybody uh there was eric rosen uh pretty i think happy with the result i mean a draw i think it was a fair result all things considered so a draw there and while you were doing that arena basically there was just a flood of results uh just incredible if we take a look at the pairings for today we'll see on the screen that uh there are now five results in and they are all draws the first game was chonka musichuk we already know that finished early the creaser versus abdu malik game ended in a draw which i think is probably the right result it felt as though zhanshaya solved her problem she sacrificed the two pawns and then got great activity eric as we just saw drew against olga bobby cheng against mary is not a surprise at all and hussein aziz also isn't really a surprise against marshal fromsky they found a i think it was a repetition basically at the right moment to uh to make the draw so oh it was that semi tarash yeah it was the semi tarash game and a position similar to what we were looking at with this past deep horn but marshal uh she had everything under control basically and they just went back and forth in this position and there's there's nothing to be done and that leaves us with only five games in progress five games in progress and and basically anything can happen now anything can happen now let's let's have a look at the games still in progress let's have a look at joe galaga quickly because sure we were saying how joe would be very disappointed and i think pia is making phenomenal progress in this position um yeah so joe's still a pawn down but also his piece coordination is not the greatest the knight on e5 is so good protecting f7 and somehow black's rook starts to infiltrate in white's camp yeah and here for example well maybe it's not so easy because if joe's able to play a4 and maybe stabilize but even then i'm not i'm not completely convinced and rook c3 played by pia joe with one minute 22 seconds he's got five moves to play he needs to find a move and the problem is a move like king to d2 might run into well probably not rook g3 because of rook f2 but maybe this is also okay maybe this is also okay i'm very very concerned for joe here though it looks it looks like it's uh it's got out of control 54 seconds now for joe galaga yeah it's he'll be really disappointed if he loses this game yeah because he could he could have played it safe but also before that it looked like he had a slight edge there or maybe not even a slight one maybe it was even more than a slight edge a4 okay trying to i mean this is a pretty useful move to have but rook c3 must have had an idea what was that idea not completely sure yeah because rook g3 rook g3 now you can go rook f2 or rook d2 or even bishop d5 now oh yeah so i don't like rook g3 so let's have a look a4 pia to play plenty of time four minutes for four moves you can really it's actually not that easy as i thought to make progress with black here because the knight from e5 doesn't really move so with which pieces should i create threats she played rook g3 she did okay so i guess maybe her idea is that after bishop d5 she wants rook a3 is that possible uh to be able to get some scope with this rook perhaps yeah perhaps that's the point and if rook f2 maybe now she just wants to play let's say king e7 but what's the idea after that how do we make progress with black maybe she should try and come after this pawn wait i will set you up a trap here okay rook e4 rook e4 i want to take rook takes f7 oh you can yeah yeah i'll i'll i don't want to play f6 i don't think yeah because after f6 maybe i can go for rook e to f4 and then hope for some i'm not sure i want to play h6 though i thought i want but maybe i don't yeah somehow the king on e7 is very safe with the knight on e5 because it covers all the squares around it so i guess will gonna have to find out he played he didn't play this he played rook d2 okay so that's also all right i believe probably is all right um and knowing pier she won't want to for i think rook c6 feels like or rook b6 feels like a useful improving move let's see what she goes for here what is this oh rook e3 rook e3 now okay maybe she wants to play g3 at some point possibly yeah or she's just trying not to alter the nature of the position before things get out of you know out of control i've made a plan okay so i want to bring the rook to b4 the other rook rook b6 rook b4 then g3 rook h4 and try something over there i like that a lot actually i think joe is toast in this position i just get the the impression that black has just got too many ways to maneuver and too many ideas and i i don't see how joe survives let's go to another game which is uh under move 40 sabino uh brunello against nino batziashvili let's go straight there because they must be low on time one minute 20 versus one minute with four moves to go now what is going on here so sabina is a piece down but he has four points for it right the challenge will be not to get mated but i think white has that under control because queen h3 can be met by queen e5 and then suddenly black will get mated she just played queen g7 so she's threatening mate in uh in a different way and actually hold on a second here wait isn't this bad for for sabina why well how do you how do you stop me queen e5 knight f6 queen e5 knight f6 and queen g5 i guess ah you can right if you give back a pawn immediately yes but i guess the point is that if you don't have this uh this is made if you try and run this looks like mate check let's say here check and and mate 10 seconds for sabina yeah a bit nervous and if he goes here this really is going to be made as well he will go for it there's no other thing yeah he does go queen e5 correct queen e5 she's going to play knight f6 hundred percent yeah and he almost certainly will go queen g5 now the question is is there another move here after queen g5 and the answer is like can black play another move here to try and threaten mate queen f7 could be a move but i don't really like it because after queen h6 knight h7 it doesn't seem like i have any threats and then you know if we imagine that the queens are off it's unclear who's better actually it might be clear who's better it would be white because four pawns are too much but here black can get one of those pawns yeah or yeah and the problem is after this rook c6 yeah you actually attack and i actually uh rook well rook g6 is a cute way to defend yeah it is 94 check but i can probably improve my king maybe king f1 and then i don't have a good way to a5 rook a6 and i would say that sabina is big favorite to win oh wait she did not she didn't do it she she kept the queens or maybe she thought that maybe she thought that this was a better practical try yeah so you believe this is a better position for white i don't know i have no idea who's better here who's better and why yeah queen h6 seems like queen h6 knight h7 no perhaps some rook move no yeah so like rook c6 rook c6 is kind of where you but then you don't really threaten to play rook g6 because h4 is hanging right yeah and in fact there were no checks here for the moment so he played that you might have to contend with queen a3 here uh but on the bright side there are not many moves left until they get the additional time um but this is actually actually quite a difficult move for for sabina because uh it's he's so nervous i think he should play queen f4 to threaten queen a5 check again it doesn't alter the position he's gonna go rook c6 he's gonna do it and then queen a3 is coming and then i five seconds four rooks rook c5 that's that's probably better rook c5 yes because it blocks the queen but now if i go queen queen d7 d7 trying to infiltrate on h3 exactly then you will probably have to play queen f4 right yeah and i can't play queen h3 well i can no i can't sorry it's over oh no i can i can go here because check rook g7 luckily for me rook c8 doesn't work oh but you have yeah you have at least you're yeah you have a perpetual or do you net of fate yeah queen takes king h7 and no checks and now i'm threatening this and this mate is it lost though could be lost king d3 king g2 sorry g2 check king d3 yeah queen f1 check king c3 queen e1 check king b2 yeah and i i'm not covering the square and this square is covered it's probably winning for white yeah yeah that needs to be calculated that's for sure but that's a sort of i mean of course you're not obliged to play knight f8 you can just go back and we would have a draw this is the sort of position which could end in a draw you know i mean she played she played uh queen f4 did she she played queen f7 sorry she didn't go queen d7 she played queen f7 ah maybe she's looking to come to f5 or something ah yeah because that would cover also the e5 square and also the queen doesn't come to f4 now that's actually a really a really smart move i like it and now they've got the extra 30 minutes on their clock so i guess sabina will have to figure out what to do here there are still some games that haven't reached move 40 let's quick oh my goodness me what has happened in the jillion versus yuvanka game how did this king end up on a3 it was on it was it was comfy wasn't it okay like on e2 we last saw it here yeah let's just well i mean short castle yeah short castles uh he played queen g6 king h8 rook d3 rook d3 or i don't like that move yeah it doesn't look all right queen c7 okay now she got a bit of now the pieces started working she nicked a pawn she came in oh it looked like it was oh what was that rook takes c2 that's a lovely shot right yeah rook takes c2 the point is after here rook f2 check and the rook is lost so already it's looking very dodgy for white but he found he finds some miracle what is this rook h1 queen takes d3 he wants to go knight f4 discover check exactly but can i not go rook c oh it's check i have to play okay so knight f4 rook h2 but now knight takes d3 and it's okay for white yeah this is this is probably okay okay so she went rook c1 check rook takes c1 and bishop takes c1 she didn't take on d3 with check why rook c2 i guess yeah but rook uh rook f2 rook f2 or rook f1 it looks dead lost for white i mean what how how isn't this just winning immediately for black hold on i don't understand rook f1 king b2 okay let's try your rook f2 move i don't get it isn't just that's just actually immediately the game because there's no checks hold on maybe is there another thing i said no there is not because then you take the oh my god it even if i just take everything on c2 i have how many two pawns up yeah i mean that the endings two points the the endings are crushing but even this might be completely crushing somehow after some quiet move like king h7 um i have an idea bishop d2 bishop d2 wow in order to play bishop c3 and only then when the rule you're just happy that we cover here it feels like there are a million wins i mean maybe this is even winning right maybe even the game is winning let's have a look takes here bishop a3 by yavanka okay and now b4 he's wriggling away takes king b2 you found a little bit of love for his king queen b6 and it's on yavanka oh no they just got extra time it should be totally lost for white queen b8 check let's have a look at this position so king h7 i guess yeah no there's some knight f6 wait you've got to be careful knight f6 but i've got king g6 in the work scenario this is the move just to explain the trick is that after gf6 rook h3 check and then queen here or queen here is gonna should end the game should king g6 here queen g7 queen e8 and the king is running and the king is running and it's not the end of the game because here the king comes out and probably black is winning yeah but the easiest solution as you said arena is just to go king g6 now rook b2 is a threat and maybe this is a threat now so yeah it looks like it's a completely winning position for yavanka after some a lot of actually ups and downs but she's gonna win isn't she she's she's made move 40 she can calm down it's gonna be a big win for yavanka if she uh finishes her first win her first win yep let's look at ravi harrier who's just made the time control against what on uh what he has an extra pawn i believe oh goodness me he has an extra pawn but gunai must be relieved no incredibly relieved to get this position because this extra pawn doesn't feel that great i mean yeah it's the h pawn it's very difficult to convert it yeah i mean we we might go through the game if we are not uh if we don't have uh any other games but i mean okay the situation is clear he's a pawn up only white can win but winning this position is really not an easy job all right all right let's go back to bilal against iran because this was this wow this is this is just a destruction uh this is this is just yeah that's that's over d6 is coming and if you go rook d8 you can just go c4 she just played knight f5 yeah knight f5 isn't going to change anything this has been uh a really nice performance by bilal yeah you can go bishop c6 97 so probably for now we will have one win for the lady's team in yavanka's game yeah and one win in the men's team with bilal here probably scoring a point and pia kramling also with great chances a pair of rooks have come off the uh if all the rooks come off it's uh i guess a pretty easy win wait so it's a pawn up for pia and a pawn up for ravi so it looks like it's balanced and it will all come down to this game and this could go three ways yeah so a very a very tight match today yeah very tight yeah wow and they've all made the 40th move so this is actually probably going to be our longest day so far right because we've had you know not super short days but the players have got an extra hour and we're going to be here at least for another hour i would say given the positions that we have ravi playing a pawn up against gunai um you know yeah let's have a look at it how yeah let's how did the rook from a seven escape yeah okay so let's go all the way back to um here was the last time we were really checking it he played 94 which i i didn't mind and knight to d5 by gunai and he went bishop into d6 takes and takes still maintaining control bishop d7 and now he played c3 this all looks normal queen c7 the knight came back looks normal and queen to b3 also looks normal but at the same time now that the knights have come back at least this rook can get back in so i don't really know what happened here yeah actually white didn't want i believe to trade pieces because black species have very little space to maneuver around so perhaps this whole concept with 94 wasn't really precise maybe it's okay c3 knight back to e4 i mean white is still better here right that's not even a debate bishop c6 he took a pawn knight f4 by gunai now that is a sharp tactic yeah and he went bishop f1 here but i'm seeing out the corner of my eye could he have taken this knight and ended the game immediately so you win a piece black wins a piece and now bam perhaps he was afraid of something well you're giving the piece back you have to take else it's there is no other way but also the rook on a seven is out of the plague yeah exactly check and here i can probably take on f5 that's what he missed that's what he means definitely because if you take on g2 instead there are all sorts of queen f4 knight h4 you know yeah and the king might be actually in trouble there so a very a very nice but it's quite a quite a long line he had to calculate maybe not really no no i mean let's have a look knight f4 you want to go rough on him yeah i i mean he's a grandmaster now so you have to go rough on him and takes takes and takes is is really not a long line that's a that is something f5 is very easy to miss no not for a grandmaster i don't think so i mean the reason why i say it's not difficult to miss is because the whole concept of this position is about the rook on a seven and therefore the week back rank i would expect ravi if he had more than five minutes on the clock it's really a not a difficult spot for somebody ravi's talent um so he played bishop f1 and now the knight was he still has a good good position because he's a pawn up queen before rook d8 and now he goes back okay takes takes check a case still has a good position he goes knight b3 now now some slightly mysterious moves slightly mysterious i mean h4 yeah queen e4 makes sense okay this makes yeah suddenly suddenly oh 95 95 might be a move he missed because if you take this this check he must have missed this idea of 95 this is a great resource by gunai look how resourceful this is of course the point is that you can't take because of this and you have to take the queen check now you can't go here because this is check so you have to go to the corner she takes back isn't really happy right yeah and now gunai just tries to take some initiative but d4 now rook d3 is coming so she came back oh he ran into another he ran into another kind of 95 sorry rook d2 knight to c4 and now the knight on b3 is misplaced and now after takes takes knight c5 he ran into b wow he got pinned four times in a row right and actually now after 94 rook d8 knight g5 yes he got this and knight takes h3 i think it went g5 king g2 okay why it's still better but this is just not even close i mean gunai i mean she's got real chances yeah real chances yeah i believe she might be able to hold this one especially since ravi has to be very disappointing because he definitely feels that he had much more no sure i mean this is this is this is better for white but he was well i mean we already saw one variation he was totally winning okay she goes f6 which makes sense to secure the pawns and now um now try and improve this knight i mean if the knight can get to d5 and stabilize pawn goes to b5 rook goes to a2 you keep white passive it's uh why should try to bring the knight i believe to f2 then to e4 d6 somewhere around those squares so move like f3 would be one i would consider trying yeah to to find a route for that knight a better place for it because if i get my knight to d6 then you will probably have to eventually play b5 then your rook is a little bit pinned to to defending b5 yeah there are still ideas for white in this position he won't let gunae get away with it easily but it's definitely a huge relief for her to get out of that position agreed joe gallagher now they made the time control so you said that if they trade rooks here it's game over right i mean maybe maybe maybe not maybe it's maybe that's too simplistic yeah because actually it's a bit difficult to make progress here for example i will trade the rooks somehow i'll find a way to do it let's say rook c5 rook d5 takes takes okay um how do you actually make progress here is black because if you move the knight i win the pawn if you play this you always run into h6 or for example i can just take a lot of the time no i know the idea okay we should bring over the king to b6 you should probably bring it towards d4 in order not to allow me enter there and then i should play f5 and f4 and try to distract you somehow okay that all makes a lot of sense because it's important that my pawn is on g7 and it cannot be attacked by white's bishop so if let's say then i even give up the f pawn but get the a or the c pawn it should be a win i've got an interesting idea if you try and bring your king to b6 let's say you go here yeah i'm gonna go here and if you go here i'm gonna be very tempted to play like but i can play f6 oh wait f6 okay king f5 let's try to bring it king c7 h6 oh oh you just go like this oh no that's not the way to play for black no no no i don't like f6 all right so let's try you want to but i believe the sacrifice should work okay king c7 bishop f7 king g6 probably some kind of draw knight d8 knight e6 yeah king d7 knight f8 but even the king d7 yeah even the i'm losing the opponent game is lost yeah because yeah it feels feels like it should be loosing yeah it's uh it's probably losing have to count though like for example here king e4 king g5 king f3 king h4 and after d5 you have c3 but still it's unclear king e3 yeah king d3 and king c3 and this one i'm winning actually no oh no king e2 still still a draw yeah oh well interesting yeah i mean all kinds of stuff to consider there isn't there but there is a lot of calculation involved and as we see black doesn't really risk here so yes so it's white who's gonna have to be very resourceful to defend this one so the rooks it might be dangerous to trade the rooks yeah exactly so she doesn't have to trade the rooks of course but then how do you improve because i can just play your rook d5 and want to take the pawn on a5 and if you don't have rook c5 then what do you do do just play rook a6 because if you play rook c3 now i definitely go for rook d5 what what should be the plan there's no mating that right no there's not maybe i should bring the king anyway to b6 even even with the rooks on the board could i try that i mean i don't see another plan just if you have a better idea okay so rook d5 you want to go rook a6 yeah what to do okay let's say here i go rook b5 king c7 okay and now i just pass yeah how am i gonna win it maybe this isn't winning actually the more the more i look at this the more i think joe's got chances here actually all right so maybe i have to play rook c5 not allow you go on d5 and maybe actually trading with the rooks is the only chance for black because i don't like that i have to stay and protect the pawn on a5 it's a very passive position for my rook so you go rook c5 immediately yeah and then i offer the rook trade yeah and i have to agree with that one i have a feeling that's what we are gonna see very interesting yeah not over for joe gallagher i thought it was gonna be extremely tough but he's got the active king no rook b6 a different move what is that one what's that idea after rook d5 i don't know knight c6 no then i take this pawn okay rook b4 check i guess king g3 knight c6 now but now rook g5 maybe some can i play knight d4 uh probably do i have some checks here some nice checks probably not check i go here yeah that's not enough check i go here that's not gonna be enough rook b6 maybe we we don't see something what might that be okay definitely rook d5 should be the move for white to check first no yeah i think you have to go rook d5 here yeah and it's uh having cheated it's apparently it's not very much for black yeah so the comp switched him off for one second doesn't think it's winning so joe this would be actually a critical draw given the match situation that means that gunai will also have to try her best to save the game otherwise the ladies might lose today again exactly gunai oh let's check one more time in nino's game let's see if there was any move played there because it was really oh and he got greedy he took another pawn so bino took the pawn on a6 well i thought he would do this but after queen h5 what's his you want h4 yeah sure that's that's a big problem why so what's what's his idea maybe just king e2 but that's still no king e2 is probably losing or is it king d3 and now take here oh wait aren't you gonna get some trouble rook c8 knight f8 queen h6 king g8 queen e6 yeah is at least a draw isn't it yeah okay let's try that answer queen h5 king e2 and what if i take should i take another pawn if you take here it might be a good move because it frees some squares so um oh and uh they they played something or yeah something instead of queen no the queen was on f7 rook f8 she played rook f8 oh that's even a better try because now she wants sabina to either play f4 or queen e2 protecting the f-point and then queen h5 perhaps f4 she can't play that he can't play we know that for sure because you also let the knights in the game queen h5 next and you can lose this very rapidly so is queen e2 then the only move queen e2 the only move and now queen h uh now now also knight f6 again makes a lot of sense but then he will go king e1 probably yeah but queen h5 is a great move okay queen h5 because after what do you do now the every pawn will also be hanging and the queen is not participating in creating there that threats which we saw before in the previous lines with the queen on a6 it looks like ninos got really really nice chances uh for a win here uh i mean i don't see her losing this game no i don't see her losing and sabina has to run with his king for his life yeah yeah he does no i think nino is uh is i don't see nino losing this this position actually and sabina doesn't have that much time he spent a lot of time thinking 12 minutes on the 41st move and now he's down to 12 minutes yeah incredible incredible as they say in france okay so nino keeping chances alive piah chances alive i mean let's go there this is uh this is uh uh just one of those positions which which you don't want to show to kids well it's just complete domination the the bishop dominates the the d8 rook the knights it might actually be a tsuk tsvang for black here yeah it could be tsuk tsvang yeah well in any case white has got lots of ways to win this position let's just say black played a move like h3 you just put the bishop on c6 and you play c5 on the next move yeah it's just very bad if he takes or you prepare it with like rook b5 and c5 and then a5 hangs and c5 hangs and meanwhile you've just got no ideas no worries whatsoever yeah no rook c7 played by Irene so try to hold on trying to stop this c5 but i guess uh bishop c6 the only thing is you have to be a bit uh you have to be careful of knight takes d4 here that's a nice one yeah king takes d4 and rook takes c6 that's a nice resource yeah so he's got to be careful not to blunder that so oh this is a this is actually a very clever move all right but what else what could he go for he could play rook where rook c1 rook c1 what for just to see what move are you okay because it's really difficult to make a move what do you do king a8 or rook c8 but now i can play knight of six and you don't have a rook on the e-file and on rook c7 i go c5 now you go c5 that's clever yeah yeah that's the knight protecting the pawn and when d6 comes it's it's really gonna be over yeah i have faith that bilal with 23 minutes is gonna find a way to to get it done ravi against gunai well we've seen this so we'll come back to that when something more oh no did we get this wait what oh king takes g6 is on the board so oh she didn't she just calculated it till the end i believe she just calculated this yeah we looked at this before the king looks in danger but after queen g8 queen g7 um even though it's not a really practical decision i understand that it should be winning anyway but well i would i would have played it safe if it wins it wins i guess that's the point right let's try we're queen a8 king now we looked at queen h5 before is there any and okay let's try queen h5 king f4 let's let's play this position because at least ah this is check this is all this it's just made into no actually yovanka made sure that yeah that she will win it by force so maybe that was actually a practical decision yeah now she has eight minutes but eight minutes are more than enough in this position uh julian has uh 30 minutes on his clock now but they are not gonna save him here no no and look look at ravi he he was hovering over what happened there with ravi he played the move king to g3 so i mean gunai has done really well she's put a knight on a nice route the knight is going to come into d5 um i'm actually getting not excited at all about ravi's chances i mean he really made a mess of this one i'm not sure why that knight is on g1 i felt that my route of bringing it towards f24 was yeah it's also on a bad route you're right i think what he wants to do is actually go knight f3 h4 or maybe does he want to play f4 here i don't think but she plays 95 yeah she plays 95 and i think he either wants to go h4 or knight f3 with h4 i don't know let's just say let's just say h4 and the point is that obviously after takes takes he can come back and then try and you know leverage his his extra pawn somehow but doesn't look easy to me it's still uh yeah it's still a long shot because i have some rook a1 maybe one move before maybe immediately yeah actually that's a good point so knight so rook a1 here huh knight maybe knight f3 now knight d5 95 h4 you still kind of get it in but it's g takes yeah it's gonna be a really long end game here where it's not easy to prove that white white will convert the extra pawn and indeed all games were drawn so far and we have five games in progress yeah basically they are quite leveled in a matter of the overall score in today's round yeah so yeah let's see who who will show the greatest will to win will it be the ladies or the man's team very difficult to say uh we know that yuvanka's gonna win we've got yuvanka on screen she goes king g5 and jillian knows that this game is is pretty much over um yeah and bill else also most probably gonna win so that's one one so we we go back to this game and sabino has played queen e2 but he's only got six minutes left on the clock and i fully expect queen h5 now by nino uh by the way somebody was asking what was nino wearing that's actually a blanket because it was a bit cold in the playing hall so the players are provided with them uh to keep to keep their thoughts warm well it's very cold in the playing hall i mean it's we're doing the commentary here i can tell you i'm wearing something underneath this shirt and it is you can maybe it's just because i'm bald and i feel i feel the cold a bit more but it's uh it's we're in an old old library it's been cold in gibraltar in general raining and cold outside so it is cold so i can sympathize with nino uh that she's wearing the blanket i need a blanket we'll be okay um queen h5 has been played great yeah that was the move which you predicted as well five minutes let's stay here because you know sabino he's gonna go king e1 isn't he he's gonna try and bring this king to safety yeah i think that's the only sensible move here because the king is really not feeling comfortable on the king side yeah it's cold in gibraltar actually it's not that cold it's very windy and because of that you feel like it's even colder yeah exactly all right yeah so queen h5 so we're waiting here for the but if he's gonna take a long time again then he's gonna be he's gonna go finally he played it now you've actually got a choice here as black you don't have to take on h4 taking on f3 is actually is actually a move isn't it because queen takes h4 maybe queen f2 is an idea and after queen h1 king e2 and queen b1 queen b1 yeah i mean it's scary isn't it you're with your queen passive this is this is scary so after queen h4 if i go king d2 that must be the move now nine g5 because f4 94 is check and if you take here can i go check anyways this is super this is super cute but are you sure it's winning no it's actually losing because i have rook h5 check unfortunately oh wow and i take here yeah even if you would get the queen yeah even this is has to be a draw not be winning yeah it might even be winning for white no okay that's probably too much but a draw is there for sure a draw is possible then we there we go yuvanka now yuvanka she might want to do an interview if she wants to come in and yeah that would be great yeah so maybe we can ask yuvanka to come in while we see because we've got a lot of long games that are not going to be resolved quickly so it'd be nice to hear from yuvanka the current situation is very bad for Irene yeah as i said she's been this has been a torture this game she's been suffering for hours uh ravi against gunai i think you know what i think the momentum is with gunai she's going to ram the b-pawn up the board and she's going to make a draw that's my um that's my prediction here i don't even think yeah i just don't even think the position is even that good for white anymore so i've really missed opportunity for ravi what about the game between pia and joe well pia is actually wow rook d5 f5 so she's going all in for the win she is giving up the a5 one in order to try and create some mating threats i guess against white's king after f4 f4 check king f2 now now g3 i guess is her idea and she wants to basically i think she or she wants to go rookie four check right right rookie four check and now after king f1 wait king f1 a g4 you have no way to defend against mate knight h2 rookie one that's really nice yeah yeah that looks like mate actually i'm really fearing for joe after f4 check so what if he goes king h4 does that move make any sense what about f3 now and if i just come back oh that one didn't think of that still rook d4 i guess okay now i take g takes yeah but now i feel a bit oh you're gonna check me and but even this i'm feeling a lot better about my chances you only have one pawn right well so maybe f3 was a bit hasty maybe i have to bring the rook first something like yeah rook e4 maybe rookie four okay trying to play rookie two and take that pawn yeah that that looks better that does look better okay yeah they played rookie five f4 and we will see now what joe's gonna do but if he goes on uh to f2 probably it is really bad no yeah i think he can't go to f2 let's uh oh ah king h4 g3 with the idea of f3 yeah and if you move the rook let's say you move it you go f3 check king here and then rook g4 very unusual way nice because now after king f2 you've got f takes g2 king g1 and knight f3 amazing yeah and if you go rook d1 uh then you take back a few moves well you can still go knight f3 yeah but after king f3 yeah this ending you're probably not gonna win are you you might win this no you might win this ending a five rook a one rook g5 you have oh yeah or rook g5 no i can't oh i just blundered the pawn yeah you did blend it upon yeah but okay but it feels bad because um yeah it doesn't feel like this this this this construction is not very good for white yeah it feels like it should be something better you know let's see where joe puts his king he's got 20 minutes so he actually needs to have a real thank you but wherever he puts it i think he's in trouble i really love this by pier what she's done so she's given up the pawn to to to get this going with the pawns and yeah and after king h2 let's say king h2 now maybe rookie four again yeah it seems like the a pawn doesn't have enough time to run towards queen and meanwhile whites king is definitely in a mating net precisely uh this is a really looks like the ladies are doing better yeah have a chance for a plus one score today yeah absolutely it looks like it so we're expecting pier to win nino against sabino is uh is completely unclear with uh with king e1 on the board but we don't think that nino risks uh really anything here iran we still think is gonna lose and we think guna is going to make a draw so that would actually be plus one for the for the ladies yeah yeah yeah yeah and actually guna i played the b5 move which was uh the best fun to fight for uh for the draw yeah b5 f4 and now it's just yeah b4 b4 is just clean because it's not that easy she takes okay i take knight takes rook c4 isn't it equal material 96 oh no i'm losing all my pawns oops okay let's do that again a bit slow so f4 b and if i go b4 see i've got c3 what am i doing can you lose that would be you can lose you can lose this is wow that's a really nice resource yeah that that's that's losing that's you know i was thinking that uh after some hours of commentary we start blundering things but the players are actually in the same situation of course yeah and they cannot really take breaks i mean they cannot stop the clock and say okay i'm gonna take a coffee now exactly exactly no i mean this is what we call a disaster actually this is just straight up losing isn't it because i'm threatening this which would then queen if i move the rook i go i go here and then i have knight c3 and that's losing so i i mean she's gonna go b4 and then actually i think is white how do you actually what do you do here sorry what am i missing how do you survive so you want to play b3 and then but i will be able to play some rook f2 or somewhere but i take take take on f2 and b2 for example you go here i go here you don't want to take on c3 no maybe knight oh oh that might be trouble for white exactly let's say you take and let's say i take back and you take just an example i go knight takes c3 and my idea is that i make the point is unexpectedly queening yeah now let's take a view a big view of the players just for the moment let's have a zoom in on this game because it's interesting you want to do it okay okay and you can see a few vacant boards wow if ravi loses this game goodness me that will be a catastrophe yeah yeah but we are gonna have an esteemed guest in just a short short while and arena is gonna do the honors for one of our big winners all right so the tension is still up in the match we see now sabino against nino on the screen this is the most unpredictable game left because well there are four points for the knight and let's see what will prove to be stronger the knight or the pawns the clock is ticking down and yeah with it the chances all right so we have a guest with us here uh yavanka huska who just won her game the first win of the round for the ladies team congratulations for the bed thank you um gosh i'm still shaking actually it was a crazy game it was absolutely insane you know but i guess that's what happens when you play such a sharp opening um against the caracan i mean we both spent a lot of time out of the opening and i have to confess i didn't really know what i was doing at some point i was just making it up and i was like i think i know some things but yeah and then and then i thought i was winning easily and then i blundered then i blundered on me 41 and i was like yeah but it's good that things ended well and let's have a look on the game uh you could use the keyboard and maybe you can show us the critical moment okay so yeah this move was uh i have to confess it wasn't a surprise because i had seen that he'd played one game in it but it wasn't something that i checked for some bizarre reason i think i was focusing on playing him playing d4 oh well and i was like oh well okay but you're very fast here we assumed that you knew quite a bit you know you have to bluff a little bit i knew some things i knew some things but uh yeah i didn't know the ins and outs and i think you really shouldn't be able to get away we're just knowing the general ideas here you have to know the moves so yeah i decided just to play e6 i normally actually play a6 in this type of position um but okay e6 is the move i chose yeah and he went for it so this is all this is all normal and uh this is all kind of really standard and you don't really care so much about this pawn on h5 because the reasoning is that the white knight on h5 is just stranded yeah and uh it's not doing a great job there and white has overextended you know actually that was the exact thing i was telling lorenz but he didn't uh he didn't believe me he preferred white for quite a while well generally in this type of position i actually this is the bit that i didn't know because i know knight c6 is a move and it was something that i had vaguely looked at but in my other games in the long a long time ago i'd actually been playing pawn takes pawn so no this is all theory and this is all kind of really normal and then here i forgot what i was meant to do but i i know that uh at times you're not really meant to be too fast about giving up even the g7 pawn because you're just so focused on the fact that white has overextended and that you're ready with the pieces to explode open the center so no we really liked how you've handled the position here after queen c7 okay i wasn't sure whether maybe i should be doing something else here but i couldn't remember and uh yeah i kind of f4 kind of took me by surprise i thought maybe it was a bit one step too far with yeah because the bishop on g5 is uh a bit out of the game yeah yeah exactly and i just thought the bishop might get a bit stranded you know the king is a little bit caught in the middle and if it goes wrong for him it will like seriously go wrong so that's what i was dreaming about this is a type of position when men assess it differently because it is very interesting to hear you having the same thoughts i did yeah and still laurence was believing that bishop on g5 was fine like your opponent did i'm very curious yeah was actually right it would be interesting to check it with an engine later right you know i certainly will be doing that when i go back to the room i think it also comes down to style i think laurence has got a little bit more aggressive style and you're also quite a aggressive player too i used to be becker becker in those days when it was sunny and you know all those things yeah so okay so f4 and then after a6 this is where things kind of got a little bit crazy with trades because now i took with the queen uh may i ask you why did you not take on d4 instead of a6 that was a move which we tried to make work i tried to make that work as well that was actually my initial thought to take on d4 but it kind of it kind of felt like i was maybe helping him a little bit because after queen i was thinking queen takes d4 or was i thinking bishop takes knight and we might have been also thinking about bishop takes knight and uh no no not that one the other one oh sorry bishop e7 and i was just yeah bishop takes yeah and then after queen takes i thought that he was ready with castling queen side oh i see yeah that makes a lot of sense so okay maybe maybe black is doing well here i don't i didn't know so i decided to stay away all right so a6 quite after long fought is so is it true 27 minutes here yes wow wow the thing is though you do have to take these positions really seriously because if you make a mistake then it will go wrong so i kind of thought i should use the time and just think about where i wanted to target and what kind of things i wanted to do and it took me a long time to actually just consider even going bishop after bishop takes knight queen takes that will take me a while wow yeah not an easy move to make because you'd naturally want to take with the bishop right right exactly but i was i wasn't quite sure of the consequences if you got greedy you know took one on g7 so yeah um and after this one what what happened after this yeah knight came to e2 and my first instinct actually was to jump in with the bishop to e4 and then after the rick came to h3 i thought hey you know i want to regain my sacrifice pawn and just put my bishop on g2 and then rick to g3 but then after queen takes pawn i just thought hang on a second i'm just maybe letting letting him unravel himself we actually thought it was it was very good for black yeah but we're not sure about that no i wasn't sure either it did definitely so i spent a lot of time here also thinking like and i think you could do the same also after rook b8 b3 yeah i was also thinking about this as well bishop e4 and then after rick h and there was a funny line that rook h2 you play bishop f3 yes i was hoping for that you know secretly when one plays chess it was like make that blunder yeah that's a good one right so rook h3 and you decided to go for bishop g6 yeah i wanted to try you know you know one of my biggest weaknesses in the well in chess actually is like i'm too materialistic and i don't sacrifice material too often for like control so i was like no no no don't make that same mistake keep calm you know you got the bishop pair you just keep putting pressure on his uh on the dark squares and his open king so i was like don't get greedy that's why i played bishop g6 although it looks a bit strange okay let's uh let's check how the game went on and yeah because it became really crazy it was mad so after queen a7 i don't know i'm not sure he should be playing f well i maybe f5 is okay but i kind of thought that i was doing i think what happens next after this he has to be super careful he can't allow me to castle king side oh we were not sure how to assess this position but we were also a bit worried about your king after queen d3 yeah but yeah castle looked like a good move we actually tried to blunder mate in one in one of the positions both of us i will show you a bit later just for the fun so queen d3 bishop before king g2 short castle yeah and here we tried to make queen g6 work but that's what happened in the game yeah and then d3 yeah no no no d3 because he takes with the king yes exactly and then we tried to play queen c5 and it was actually made on g7 yeah no i was also when i got to this position in my head i was like oh you know i was actually gonna play queen to f7 it worked mentally and uh if you go queen to f7 that is also a blunder because he just goes knight f6 check and you're like uh oh oops that's a problem yeah so and then i was like oh no but then i was just like hang on a second just keep calm and after king h8 i was really happy with my position i thought yeah because the king looks quite safe and d3 is still yeah d3 is still in the air and you know then i can just start driving him back so he played rook d3 yeah and i was like well there's a weak pawn on e5 i want it and i thought this bit i handled quite well yeah we really liked it but then we did not understand uh if you could move or i could move it until here queen f7 rook h1 bishop is seven queen d2 queen g6 yeah it all looked very good for black here yes bishop h4 the materialistic yep yeah it's also trending rook f2 and i i thought i was winning well i'm pretty sure pretty sure i was winning but we didn't have so much time so so what you're going to see next is uh pot panic yeah bishop g5 king one and then i was like rook c2 and i was like this is a very nice shot yeah that was beautiful yeah but then what happened next i'm not so proud about here rook h1 yeah he played and uh yeah i don't know why i played rook c1 i just this is fine this is winning yeah look here after rook c1 take you could take on d3 yes this was the plan this was the big idea when i calculated everything but then suddenly i panicked and after i started thinking rook c2 and i believe you have rook f2 here as easy as that see this is why you shouldn't panic at home you've got to take those deep breaths and you've got to be objective because i don't know why i was looking at this position i was like oh my goodness me i'm going to go rook f1 check the king is going to go to b2 yeah i know the feeling is like oh my god oh my god you messed it up so um yeah yeah all right but it seems like bishop c1 was also good enough here yeah queen a6 bishop a3 and here you just collected everything yeah again the seconds were ticking down and i just thought just play a simple chess and then yeah yeah i think it's a very practical decision you've you've made bishop c3 king a3 queen f7 queen b6 queen a7 move 40 yeah queen a7 yeah i was thinking also about playing queen f1 and also controlling everything but then i saw this idea of queen a7 and i thought this is great yeah it definitely looked like black is already winning and he still found some chances no but this this move was just awful and i you know i thought great i haven't blundered in the time time control and then i was just taking some moments to compose myself and then the hand came out and played rook f2 oh so you did not see knight f6 coming when you played it no i didn't see knight f6 i also did not see rook takes bishop rook takes bishop was the thing that was like oh my goodness me here and i yeah and i literally just kind of went i mean i couldn't help myself and it just kind of escaped from me and thankfully queen takes queen takes f2 yeah and yeah so what was the idea after rook c3 i didn't see it so i was just we did not see it either okay we did not we actually saw this position on the board we analyzed it but we did not consider rook c3 okay wow all right so a bit a bit of a lucky moment i guess he played queen b8 instead king h7 and yeah we saw these complicated tactics the easy one we did not manage okay to do so knight f6 but here it looks like you win by force right yeah here i spent so after i actually spent about 10 minutes just trying to recover from my big blunder and just so i can don't mess it up and then i you know instinctively i was maybe gonna play king to g6 but i thought hang on a second let's calculate what's gonna happen after pawn takes knight and after that was my instinct also to go just king g6 and not calculating exactly but then i thought no no no no this is good training can i get away we're taking the knight and after 20 minutes of checking and rechecking and checking checking checking and then i was like okay it works so yeah gta except six and yeah like you said the king is escaping here and in a few moves uh you won the game yeah put them until here so yeah congratulations a lot of ups and downs here but i'm so happy for the ladies team i'm so happy that you managed to win today and how are you feeling here i i i love playing in gibraltar it's like a special place for me you know i actually started my commentary career here in gibraltar and uh it's just a fantastic place you know it's like half spanish half english and he's spanglish about so it does feel like home and i just love this concept of the battle of the sex is men against the women and do you feel more more motivated when it's like that when you play against men do you feel somehow that you can prove a point um i'm always motivated i mean i think for me because i don't play so much chess anymore i mean it's like a personal journey and the fact that we have such a nice team and uh we have a little whatsapp group where we send each other gifts you know actually i will tell you some intel eric said the same thing the guys also have a whatsapp group no yeah i didn't think of that but it was just a special thing that the women had no no i mean and yesterday after our loss pier kind of rallied the troops around and she said uh she told us you know it's all about confidence and it doesn't matter it's a friendly match and just give it a hundred percent wow well great it's great to see that you get along so well with the teammates and you have such a nice captain who supports you yeah i really hope that you'll be able to to win this match it's very close uh i uh okay my my bet is it will gotta be a plus one but uh yeah let's hope that will be true it has good news and uh thank you for cheering us on harina yeah i'm uh i'm your biggest fan here all right evanka thank you thank you for your time and good luck for your next games thank you very much welcome back this is round four of the battle of the sexes jib chess 2022 tournament a lot of games have finished we just saw yuvanka there talk about her rollercoaster win uh great win for her of course much needed win uh also for the women this uh this round because as it turns out that might be the critical win because irine succunda has just lost against billel we were talking for hours how her position was just uh almost impossible to play uh she did eventually lose it's not a surprise so at the moment as things stand it is plus oh that's it's yeah sorry that's a mistake on the graphics there will change that billel beat your arena so it's it's even at the moment with three games to go right we have three more games what has happened to ravi's position i mean he's probably still not gonna he's probably not gonna lose but i mean this has gone completely wrong i think he fell exactly in that thing which i missed as well with before and then suddenly he's in trouble let's have a look at what happened i mean how resourceful is she's amazing wow before he he did take oh and he just gave the exchange after c3 he so we had this position we were saying you can lose this but actually ravi just gave up the rook and then the problem is you lose the pawn and after king h4 king f7 we have this position here now uh well it's probably gonna be a draw i believe because there are two two little pawns left on the board so now one will go off probably he will play g takes f6 well he actually played night f4 first here all right anyhow those pawns will get off the board soon i i suppose well yeah for example you can take on g5 and play rook b3 that already but then h4 is or isn't it no i don't think so i just take i take you you never you never create it might end up into some two pawns and knight versus rook and that's a draw that should be a draw yeah but um yeah i believe black is not risking anything and it will be a great save by gunai who was in very big trouble today amazing yeah ravi will be really really really disappointed because he had just a dominating position and missed a few tactics and gunai showing how resourceful she is as you said lots of ways to make a draw here probably probably everything sensible actually makes a draw the only thing you don't want to do i guess is um allow somehow g6 yeah something like rook c4 g6 check king g7 and now king h5 i even but even here it should probably be still then you will have to work a bit for it yeah because you can't take here because of the check wins the rook and if you take here check king g8 i'm actually a bit i'm getting very nervous here no but it should be a draw still no and you cannot or can you play no you can't play d5 because i have rook b5 and if knight f4 then king to g7 and you cannot really unpin there well what if i go g5 here g5 okay i must take i believe or actually g7 is very interesting no g5 let's see you want to take oh wait maybe not maybe i can play f5 actually yeah and now g7 rook b6 d5 rook d6 and here are you sure you're in time you're so close to not i'm not sure king g6 let's say i must take oh you can actually go oh maybe i can play for a stalemate but no but i i actually you're in time yeah i made you all right so i take on d5 i will trust you on that one okay i go h4 not easy i mean did i just manage to lose this one i think you lose lose that one yeah but but that's the point that's why i wanted to take on g5 in the first place yeah i mean yeah you have to take on g5 take and just go after the pawn i mean this is so ah d5 maybe is is um his idea d5 is his idea he takes yeah this is probably still and now rook d3 yeah and there's too much disconnect between the knight and you can't you can't hold everything and she what did she do d5 what is this she's gonna try and give him a hard time here no why not no no yeah probably not but the king is on h4 for now maybe that's something she tries to use because now let's imagine let's imagine d takes e5 happens f takes g6 check you have to go king g7 yeah okay now how do you continue 90 no yeah let's say 95 rook d3 97 and d4 okay king g5 e3 yeah knight of five check king g8 yeah and if i go g7 e2 king g6 you've got rook d6 check right yeah even that by the way might be a draw for example g7 e2 king g6 threatening mate you have to go rook d6 right and takes queen and this is almost certainly a draw why well i mean why is it a draw you don't think this is a draw you think this is winning i don't know i was hoping king f7 just try and not lose my pawns my idea is that that i want to win those pawns yeah but you might do because your queen i mean and then my queen will protect g8 and maybe i can try to come with the king but okay i mean i'm curious but it is winning yeah yeah i can't allow this huh all right so i can't i can't allow these queen endings so if i can't allow these queen endings goodness me and it's actually on the board it takes f takes i think the king will have to be very careful and come our maybe you can somehow sacrifice the knight for the pawn and meanwhile try to push those pawns as far as i don't like that no i don't think so maybe the correct way is just to do something like uh okay let's go that variation but here that when i first looked at it i thought after here king g8 i can actually go knight g3 this was my there is also knight e7 to check me okay we can get back to it rook d2 mm-hmm ah now some king h6 king h6 oh wait rook h2 no it's not working um yeah this is uh what no no it's no this is this could be losing yeah it's looking yeah this could be losing is he in danger of losing this ravi okay if we are struggling to find the best way to continue it might be a problem for him as well ah g6 95 he's actually played this he's actually played this e5 this is the position on the board can he lose ah so rook d3 97 e4 what's oh we did this is actually winning after e3 why is this winning knight of five king g8 why is this winning all right perhaps we don't see some mating idea here king h6 a king h6 yeah that's the idea that's brilliant is it ece2 knight is king f8 g7 g8 take it and queen h7 in the end oh wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow wow g7 but you have rook h3 check as well ah there is a I don't know what's going on here there's a what Irene was saying is if I do this queen h7 is a lovely check but actually after g8 equals queen you've got rook h3 and this and now it might be losing all right so it seems like we are absolutely no idea why this is why this is good can she still lose all three results possible all right so let's check it a bit a bit more carefully so 95 yeah rook d3 looks forced because any other move like let's say rook c4 it's quite extra time now you just go king g5 and you can even run this guy so rook d3 is the only sensible move okay there might be also rook f3 you could argue but let's check rook d3 first 97 97 protecting the pawn e4 now e4 is not the only move king f6 does exist but uh because I originally thought king f6 that might be the solution not to lose it actually I believe but I'm not sure but here it's quite easy to make to go g7 king takes g7 and king g5 and white never loses now because yeah exactly oh and we have a result Joe survived it Joe survived what pia pia was not able to convert it amazing let's uh let's go to that game because here we'll still uh let's at least check the final position and see what happened Joe looks very happy and pia actually looked quite disappointed uh what what happened how so Joe did put the rook on sorry the king on h4 but we know that this was losing and here pia did not play the move g3 she played rook e4 do you remember exactly how I wanted to go yeah rook e4 but now it's rook a7 check king f6 and rook a8 really nice defense by Joe f3 and this king g3 move yeah this concept oops what happened there uh king g3 rook e2 and now just takes takes check and a perpetual and now there's no way to great save by Joe great save by Joe and a very very missed opportunity for pia huge opportunity yeah all right let's go back to here uh ravi it might actually uh wait we've got this we've got this exactly on the board in ravi's game yeah g7 king g5 right and this is going to be a draw I'm pretty sure now because after uh e4 you go knight f5 check you bring the king to f4 actually you lose this pawn but you lose this pawn and we get this end oops we get this ending which is actually a like okay you could play it on but it should end in a draw I think even this position you can't play on oh well you can sorry h4 yeah yeah no you cannot you can't really try there's always gonna be there's always some sacrifice for the rook for the two pawns and Sabino's game just ended against Nina Sabino won how did that happen how did he win this position what happened here oh god everything is going so wrong for us this day we had some crazy position around here oh no she had the extra and we said that Nina was safe here she did not risk anything we thought she she had a nightmare somewhere queenie won still looks all right still queen queen c1 might be a bit weird the the king because she doesn't have any follow-up checks then with the queen but it should be winning I mean for white it's winning I was thinking for black apparently she started to she started to lose I mean around here apparently it's still okay and she started to lose the plot allowing this king to walk up and when the king starts walking into the position and d6 was probably a very good move cutting coordination and queen g4 is a classy move my word that's a hard move because now actually you can't avoid the exchange of queens or losing a piece and there's queen h5 check yeah around here nino just completely lost it and he just walked out of the checks and won huge win for Sabino indeed and that actually means that with one game to go the boys are going to take oh it seems like you are going to be right today with the prediction well not quite because I think it's it's not going to be plus three but it's going to be a magic plus one when 10 minutes ago it looked like they were going down it looked as though pier was going to win it looked as though nino had a good chance and even gunai but yeah okay gunai was quite lucky for for the save so I believe the draw would be a fair result here but who knows maybe maybe gunai can can try some tricks does she still have some no we already said that after e4 knight f5 king f4 there is no way to to try anything with black there yeah I believe in the current position but this is the most disputed match we've seen the one which the result was unclear until the very last moment no uh yes this swang quite quite some ways she does only have 35 seconds left though so I'm curious what that's uh that's all right for gunai having played against her for quite a few times she can go to down to three seconds but she's got things under control I actually think she's thinking about rook h3 here that's my prediction that she she's thinking is it easier to make a draw winning this and then coming around I mean that also probably just makes a draw oh it's just a draw they just agreed a draw yeah that's fine I mean he probably offered the draw and it's it's a completely reasonable offer oh and wow and just like that the round is over and yeah the boys have clawed another point back and that means that after the day the boys are down one point only wow amazing comeback so far it's getting really interesting and from what looked like an even match or maybe with the ladies in a very slight advantage the guys turned around the tables in the very last minutes of the round that's unbelievable it really is yeah let's go through the individual results yeah as we see the score is now 19 and a half to 20 and a half and we have the results so a draw between chonka and musichuk draw between krissa and abdu malik Sabina won against nino bateshvili a very important win one which the men's team captains probably actually decided the match today joe with a nice save against pia bilal won what I believe to be a very good game against Irene with this interesting g4 novelty eric a draw against olgagiria bobby chang a draw against marie and ravi a draw against gunay the game which ended the last and it seems that he was pressing for quite a bit so very nice save by gunay jillian lost to yovanka and it is actually the only game where the ladies scored a point today and as is hussain draw against marcelle froimski yeah an absolutely action-packed day today I mean so many things could have gone the other way probably the the days so far with the the most swingy results where it could have been a win or it could have been a loss and it's been a bit of a bit of a lucky day in many respects for the for the boys some fantastic individual performances you can see ravi there he's gonna be I think the most disappointed of all the players because you know it was just a you know a crushing middle game position but he's smiling he's happy he's a he's a very well tempered chap so he'll he'll try and recover quickly you know gunay mamadzada I mean this this young lady if she can save positions like that the future is very bright for her because it's so resourceful it's it's quite incredible you can also there see sabino and nino now discussing their game obviously it has been so crazy their game I believe they're both very curious to what each of them has seen and what they've missed overall a very interesting round with many many events and many ups and downs just an incredible day full of swings and roundabouts now what we are going to do is we are going to try to get the team captains in here and what we're going to do is we're going to we're going to take just a very very short break but don't go anywhere because we are going to interview both peer cramling and Sabina Brunello captains of the men and women's teams to get their thoughts on today so stick with us we'll be back in just a few jiffies a jiffy what else can we do precisely what Brian Callahan and the Gibraltar organizers are doing this year 2022 here at the Garrison library we have a team of 10 women a team of 10 men they are playing each other every day for 10 days that means 100 games all together as the average of the of the ratings is more or less similar more or less similar and it's a big tiger in the case of men but just a bit then I think it would be very significant to see what the result is and if the result is a victory of the ladies then we should seriously think about the possibility of deleting the female tournaments I mean now a female player can choose she can play a tournament only with women or an open tournament with men and women together if this tournament and more editions like this one in the following years demonstrate that women's are performing significantly better when they play against men then probably one of the best things to do is to delete to eliminate the female tell us something about your game today it was not so interesting game because it was theoretical opening line and it was quite long we played this line and in the end there was equal end game and I think nothing special happened yeah it fizzled out to a draw it's quite interesting at the end wasn't it well let's have a look at the game okay okay Olga we're looking at the position after queen takes e2 what happened next okay I think it is a critical moment because white has this very good knight on e5 and I should play fast to have a counter play so I played c5 and there is if white plays knight d7 there is move queen c6 takes he doesn't want to okay takes what hits yes and I have this idea of queen c3 so okay yeah it works I think yeah I just calculated queen d3 take oh it's too fast too fast yeah it's very twitchy today take okay but no it's lost for white that looks terrible yes that looks like a sort of classic yeah so there is no knight d7 okay do you want do you want me to put click on a position so so in fact castles gets played also yes and after castle I took there is also bishop this d4 move I wanted to play rook e8 so now I want to play queens oh knight c6 or knight c4 so that's okay and in the game we just went to this end game there are yeah a lot of draws yeah it looks slightly scary as you put with a past e pawn yes maybe I even thought in the end first of all I thought about uh um queen g1 what does it do I don't understand it okay he wants to play it so queen g1 king h4 yeah and there are no checks maybe do it this way oh yes like a king h4 yeah and I thought maybe I should go to the rook end game yes is it in that line it's easier to play chess on the board yes we'll just play blind part for me yeah um queen f2 sorry where do we need to be queen a1 and then we we decided to go sorry that's fine and then white plays after king h4 king h sorry king h4 yeah so I can change queens I think it's draw but okay the pawn is on e5 yeah it always wants to go there doesn't it some stupid okay so I decided to just make shakes and uh yeah yeah okay I think the screen is trying to tell us something it doesn't want to look at any longer thank you very much holg thank you hello everybody welcome back this is round four of the battle of the sexes jib chess the games have all finished and I'm delighted to be joined by the two team captains pier cramling women's team captain and the men's team captain here Sabina Brunello guys today was an insane day of chess you haven't seen perhaps all the games or maybe you did when you were walking around but the result could have been 50 000 different ways at some point you know it looked as though you know you were beating Joe it looked as though Ravi was winning and then he didn't win and a lot of games could have gone in another direction as it turned out it was the boys who finished on a very solid plus one for the day meaning that the gap is closing now it's the women who are winning by one point I'll come to you first pier pier obviously you had a tough game yourself you had to win in the end a disappointing finish perhaps for you you must have been quite optimistic but tell us more about how you see the the general match situation it's four rounds the boys have got a little after two rounds it looked as though you were just steam rolling now the boys have got a bit back so I saw you last night with your team having a bit of a team talk now I didn't want to interrupt tell us a bit more about that if you can without revealing too many secrets no I just thought that when we we had two fantastic day around one and two and then yesterday it was just a very big upset and so we really needed to have to speak each other speak together and that's what we did and I think okay today I didn't see the games I saw my games I heard a little bit about others but I didn't see the other games so but but I just thought that in general minus one is not bad we were playing black today and it's always nice when the matches are closed we had just such a big upset so I thought this was a not not a bad come back for us but it could have caused maybe have been so what was your advice you just said to the girls look just steady the ship nothing too crazy or did you say play in your normal way and it's a secret I just we just have a talk and yes yes to to just to keep the good mood was anybody particularly upset on the team was there anybody that you felt you needed to talk to directly who who is having a bad time or was it just in general everybody is in quite a good mood no I could see that some of the players was upset but because that's very logical when you play and you know you play four or five hours it hurts a lot when you lose and of course maybe depends on how you lose but in general it hurts a lot so there were players who were upset so it was it was very important to have this meeting to be together and to be happy together and you know this this match is so long there's so many rounds to go so many games to play so in general it's it's the most important is that forget about what happened and just keep on the play Serena you you won your game today in one of the wildest games of the tournament so far it looked as though all three results were possible you said to me you said to me that you were actually quite happy about the position because you know it was so complex impossible for a human to play correctly there yeah um we won't analyze the game well done on the victory I know you needed that as well you know you're you're now gaining a bit of momentum the boys have also managed to yeah come back after disastrous first two rounds now it's only one point um do you plan on having any team meetings like pia did or are you just uh you know is there any communication with you and your team is there any guidance or advice there is communication of course we speak to each other and it's important to to have a good time to you know support each other or give a little help whenever it's it's needed or asked for generally speaking I don't believe in meetings I don't like captains who claim they made some magic out of a meeting that's not really how chess works in my opinion but it's important to have a good time to yeah keep some company with each other and be kind to each other uh all of the guys are obviously trying very hard yes everybody's trying to to help whenever anybody has a question be because more we try and you know support each other and that's very important I think and uh yeah I mean it's it's so close I mean I I have to say I was hugely pessimistic about your chances in the match in general and then I thought after two rounds well it's going to be uh blowout but you had this amazing round with black now with white today uh at some point I was it was looking like it was going to be a minus two day for the girls potentially um or something like that and you've ended up on plus one so how do you now keep the momentum I mean how is there any is there any special way to to make sure that you you carry on on this uptrend or is it just uh you know is there a way to you relax or yes I believe we have one more round before the break so it's important to uh to play a good game tomorrow so we feel happier on the rest day as well and this is a planned activity with the boys on the rest day I'm not sure what you are going to do but I think it makes sense to you know do something together yes of course we have we have time so I love the fact I must say commentating this with arena and everybody watching I'm it's very very excited that it's so close I know it's only the halfway point but if it was already plus 10 or plus 12 already it's starting to get quite difficult to make a comeback but with so many games uh it's just plus one for the for the for the for the women's team um I know that everybody else at home is excited to see the the remainder of this any words for Sabino I mean is it is a no I mean I mean my words for my team are you gonna have a team meeting tonight I haven't decided I haven't decided so I will I will I will I will check I want to see when I'm coming back so I know everybody's tired Sabino doesn't believe in meetings but what I do know is that the chess has just been so wonderful to analyze I I appreciate that you and your team and your team as well everybody's trying but also everybody is playing interesting chess there are no uh really dull games there's nobody making uh super quick draws at least there are okay a couple of earlier draws but it's not these forcing lines so I think everybody at home appreciates that as well that we get full games rich games swings and roundabouts and I'm forward to many many many more exciting rounds so guys remember tomorrow same time same place it's round five uh this will be the last round before the rest day and then we're in for the for the home stretch with the final five games so thank you so much for joining I know you guys are exhausted after such tough games today um we will be back same time same place tomorrow three o'clock don't go anywhere thanks for hanging out in the youtube chat as well and twitch remember to keep those social media posts coming until then I guess it's when us notches as they say not here but down the road I'll see you tomorrow thank you