Can You Spot the Greatest Chess Move of All Time?? | Topalov vs Shirov 1998
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- čas přidán 20. 11. 2021
- In 1998, GM Alexei Shirov played THE GREATEST chess move of all time against GM Veselin Topalov. Do you have what its takes to see the greatest move ever??
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This is the largest video on this channel so far, and it covers a truly incredible move from Shirov! Enjoy!
I spotted it immediately. This was not because I am a brilliant player, but because I guessed that it would be the craziest-looking move. Perhaps that is the key to becoming a very good player: treat every position as if somebody has told you that there is definitely an incredible move available and you just have to find it..
To be honest, what you're describing is kind of what Mikhail Tal used to do all the time. He would make all these wild sacrifices, some of which were dubious, but his opponents were often too shocked by his willingness to attack and just crumbled.
I'm glad you like the video, nice job finding the move!!
Yeah me too
Well, it’s knowing when to play these moves that makes you a pro player
I saw it in about 30 seconds, and also have had that same thought. Imagine that someone has told you there IS a brilliant move available.
I'm also not a great chess player. And, more than spotting the move, I think what would demonstrate brilliance is to be able to have thought out much of what MTX subsequently explains. I doubt I'd have had the guts to play it, or to finish it off. Placing the king next to the bishop, to block white's bishop's diagonal I thought was pretty awesome!
@@NotTheMaestro That's so true
I saw bishop h3, but only because that was the only way you could sacrifice your bishop in one move. Agadmator has taught me that every time he says “pause the video to find the best move” it involves sacking a random piece for what seems like no reason.
lol well at least it worked! thanks for liking the video
Shirov said he found this move during the game because previously he lost a match to ulf andersson with the same type of sacrifice
I considered B h3, and immediately thought white doesn’t have to take. I’m surprised you didn’t explore that line.
Great point, if white doesn’t capture right away and instead starts moving their king to the center, black will take the g-pawn. If white spends a tempo capturing the black bishop on g2 the king will be out of position, and if white ignores the bishop on g2 and continues to move toward the center, then black has won a pawn, now has a passed f-pawn and has kept the bishop on the board. White will have no hope of defending against passed a, d, and f pawns if black is able to keep their bishop. Great question tho, such a deep move. Hope you enjoyed the video!
@@MTXChess thanks!
Novice here, maybe an "ignorant" question; can the white king threaten the bishop by moving to h2?
@@elineadrienne1921 Hey Eline, not a bad questions at all. The king can definitely threaten the bishop if it is moved to h2, but in this kind of endgame position having an active (i.e. centered) king is key to winning. If Kh2, then black probably will just march their king into the center (Kf5-e4-d3). If white takes the bishop,( Kxh3), the white king will be so out of place and the combination of black's a and d pawns with the king will be able to overwhelm the white bishop. Great question. Thanks for watching the video and supporting the channel!
Just saw the move instantly. Not because I am a GM or anything even near. But I am an intermediate player & felt that doubling the white pawn will make black an upper hand anyway as black would now have so many passed pawns. Too many for one Bishop & one King to stop.
Probably it is partially the effect of my chess literature reading list where I have made list of almost all of the attacking players/books & that's the area in which I would like to play excitement filled attacking chess instead of slow positional play. Have been practicing from positions of attacking players/books only. I believe if you are hell bent to attack all other things will (compulsorily you have to learn on the way) fall in line in about 2-3 years.
Thanks it was an instructive position.
Engines don't consider sacs as they find their refutation (may be after 10 moves). As great attacker Leonid Stein says - You can always refute the sacs in post mortem, but over the board, NEVER.
That’s right! Nice job!
Amazing video
Thanks Adriel!
Bishop sacrifice in an end game! Wow! I paused the vid to guess but this was not in any of the lines I was thinking about...
I know right! Pretty incredible move, glad you enjoyed the video! More to come!
saw it immediately but dont know how to continue
That’s why it’s such an amazing move! You really have to calculate the continuation to make sure it works! Crazy calculations and nerves of steel to play a move like this!
What would have happened if you moved the pawn up instead of capturing? You went over moving the king but not the pawn. Thanks and I subscribed!
Old time gm really strong shirov 2710 today is 2810, interestingly shirov never could beat kasparov with 17 losses and the rest was draws
Just goes to show you how strong Kasparov was!
wow, 17, at least he kept coming. I lost to one person 16 stimes when I started. Then I beat him once.
Beautiful ❤️
Really a great move
what about pawn d4? opens up the king to block the other king and exchange pawn for bishop.
Good question. If black played d4 they’d just lose the pawn to Bxd4. Sure black can get their king to the center faster because the pawn is out of the way, but the h pawn will never queen and white can defend their kingside pretty easily even if blacks king is centered. Good question
I didn’t even need to pause the video I just was instantly like “well the only thing it could be is Bh3”
There is no way I would ever consider it OTB, though.
I think a lot of people feel that way about this move. It's easy to see, but calculating it out to ensure that it results in a win is the really hard part! Nice job
I can not believe I found it. I just wanted to get the pawns to double up then I would have the upper hand.
Nice David! It’s a hard move to find, but the hardest part is doing all the calculations to guarantee it’s winning. Amazing that Shirov could pull it off!
I saw bh3 in less than a sec and i knew it was winning... because i already knew the game hahaha.. btw that was a dynamic sac, they are know on endings when you can usually sac a piece in order to create an unbalance in the position like here, the active black king and those 2 passers were too much for the bishop and inactive king for white.
Totally right! Way to go!
Am I a grandmaster? My thought was to mess up white's pawn structure.
Nice intuition! The hard part is r just seeing the move, it’s calculating all of it out to be 100% certain that it’s better than a draw! Nice job nontheless
1:02 I might just be a Grandmaster 😁 as I unintentionally spotted the move in no time 😅. Actually I thought that double pawns are bad in endgame.
Nice, its actually not that difficult to spot, whats hard is calculating out all the lines! Pretty insane
@@MTXChess Yes, that's true. Keep posting these types of contents.
stand closer to the microphone
Why does the engine refuse to consider the bishop sacrifice?
Great question, I wish I knew more about chess computers and why they miss certain moves. There are several notable winning moves that computers have missed, I believe this is the most famous example. I think it misses this move because the compensation for the bishop is 100% positional. There are plenty of lines in chess openings where the computer will say +/- 1 when one side is up a pawn even though they have serious positional weaknesses. I think the lay-men's answer is that computers have a harder time assessing positional advantage than material advantage.
@@MTXChess Legend, thanks for the reply. Every time i play a move I think the computer must not have seen it's a terrible blunder!
Chess engines have trouble with this move because of how they approximate which side is better and the nature of this position.
First a chess engine will give a position a numeric score. The score starts with evaluating white pieces. They will assign each piece a point value and add them up. They will also do things like count how many squares white controls. Then assign some weighting to that and add that to whites score. Other things like how many checks or captures are available can be added too. Each with a weighting specific to that engine. They then do the same for black. Then subtract… whites score minus blacks is the starting score for that ply. That’s just the beginning though.
After that engines will start considering the positional scores for each legal move they have. They update the score for the current position to be the score in the best forced line. Then they consider the replies. Again updating the score for the current position to be the best result that am be forced. Rinse and repeat. Engines will also try to select for certain moves likely to be good moves like checks and captures. They may evaluate these lines a little more deeply hunting for a mate before returning to less promising lines to evaluate more deeply. Again each engine has different rules.
Clearly this is a very naive way to assess a position. However this tends to work well with computers because they can evaluate 10’s of thousands of positions per second. And truth be told simply having more material is often a clear sign of who is winning. In the cases where a sacrifice works and a deficit in material doesn’t reflect the winning side. Shear brute force finds the winning side helped along by searching for forcing moves.
So why is this specific position so difficult for computers? Well firstly the best move is a sacrifice. So engines naively assume this isn’t likely good. They would be able to work past that more easily if there was some quick forcing checkmate. But here many of the lines that need to be found include ideas like the black king shouldering it’s way to C2 so it can escort a pawn with another sac. Engines just don’t select for these types of ideas. They have to come about them by brute force. In this position engines get lost in a sea of variations where the bishops just move aimlessly all over the board. The usual procedure for finding moves doesn’t actually approximate making a plan. So engines have no way to reason that black can only win if he promotes. And any promotion is likely winning even if you have to sacrifice a lot of material along the way.
Eventually all chess engines find this move. It just takes them a while. A fun fact here though. Black is winning with Bh3. And that is the only move that is winning. This is a certainty. Engines have evaluated this position completely. That is to say the have evaluated every possible continuation necessary to determine the results. If you look for it I’m sure you can find the distance to mate for this position online. If I recall correctly, this position is like a mate in 43 or some such nonsense. Don’t quote me on the number. It’s big though.
@@DeepFriedLiver Thanks for your insight. Computers love to hold on to their pieces.
@@DeepFriedLiver what an amazing comment, thanks!
I saw this move before hand because it’s something I would tend to do in my games as a 1400. I’ve never seen this tactics before aside from my own games. But it’s very obvious. The reasoning behind this move to whenever I get to a similar position in endgames is I would treat my bishop(usually bishops) or knight as equal to the pawn in value or less. Because the pawns reaching the end and promoting to a queen would determine the outcome of the game much better than not. And the move makes sense because if you think about it during the opening what do a lot of players do? They take their bishops out to pin the knight to ruin the pawn structure. Why don’t people utilize a similar tactics with what they are given in the endgame? Usually though in similar position I would rather sacrifice my bishop for a pawn but in this case the best move would’ve been that since it ruins the pawn structure. The stacked pawns are harder to push and not only that, they aren’t even pass pawns. I was looking for the best play made in chess and I found something that resembled what I do in my endgames… weird, I thought what I did wasn’t special
Link to your games because I find this hard to believe
i'm going to guess bishop h3, asking white to double pawns to make room for the double island. but i doubt it would work cuz what if they just don't take. i'm not even sure if it would work if they did takte
edit; surprised i got it. i just thought that was the only thing that made sense haha
Nice job Shaun, a really tough position to pick the correct move!
Hello Nathan! It really is the greatest move of all time! A brilliant example!
Just 1 suggestion: I think you should remove the subscribe button that keeps showing up.
I feel this will annoy the viewer, and make it less likely for them to subscribe.
Maybe it can flash once in the middle of the video, and once at the end.
That is what I do in my videos. But it is up to you !
Hey! Thanks for the suggestion, I think you are right and can cut that out going forward!!
Also you have a great channel!
@@MTXChess Thanks a lot Nathan!
If you want to collaborate, let me know. We can discuss some ideas going forward!
I have just subscribed!
@@MTXChess I am your 36th subscriber !!
Something is wrong with the engines if they haven’t got time to consider that.
You're exactly right, I don't know enough about chess computers to know why they randomly miss moves in certain positions. I think super-chess engines like Leela or AlphaZero will see this move, but when I plug it into stockfish on Lichess it misses the move. Thanks for watching! Do you know of any other games where the engine misses a key move?
@@MTXChess I’m sure I’ve seen a few, but what games they were escape my mind atm. All the best.
that@@MTXChess would be an interesting theme to explore
I found in 5 secs. Don't even know how. Intuition maybe
Nice job ismael! Finding it is hard, but it’s calculating out all the possibilities that’s really challenging
What about after Bh3, black moves g3?! You didn't cover that in your analysis.
Hey John, great question. The goal of this position for white is to get their king to the center to counter black’s king. If white wastes a move playing g3 instead of advancing their king, then black gains valuable tempo moving their king to the center, not to mention the fact that black would’ve just won the pawn for free.
@@MTXChess Yes , the tempo wins the day.
@@MTXChess How does black win the pawn for free if white plays g3 sir?
Draw if he doesn’t capture
Hey Brosef! Actually Bh3 is winning for black, in the video we explain why white has to capture the bishop at some point. Either way it’s winning for black
Greatest move
I'm glad you liked this move, isn't it fantastic! Hope you like the video and the channel!
I found it but i didnt really consider everything else lol thats how i win my games extreme luck
Lol nice and s/o to you for having the most honest CZcams name
Why didn't white play g3 instead?
Hey Patrick! Great question, I didn’t cover that possibility in the video, but if white uses tempo to play g3 the black king makes it to e4 in time and white has enough control of the center squares to win! Thanks for watching, does that make sense?
I did think that move but I will never me a grandmaster or a smart player
That’s impressive just to think of it! What do you mean you’re not a “smart” player? It’s never to late to really improve at chess with a little dedication and hard work!
@@MTXChess thanks for the kind words
Lichess engine (Stockfish 14) found Bh3 at 30 depth for me
Hey Ryan, I can’t remember how deep I had the engine set to when I shot this video. I might have stopped at 22 depth (I believe that is the default). Still pretty amazing that the computer has to dig deep to find this move
Hurrah.. Im a grandmaster material in that case
Wow! Were you able to find the move without having seen it before?
@@MTXChess yes. Perhaps a fluke :) because putting the opponent's pawns in such position is always a big advantage. I usually exchange my bishop with knight early in the game, if knight happens to be opened on file above rook, like a or h. simply because it makes opponent's pawns in similar fashion and away from center of board and make them useless
@@udaishankar8616 well that is very impressive! Hope you like the channel and enjoy our videos!
The Queen Sacrifice in the Gold coin game was a better move
Hey Alexander, I also have a video on the gold coin move you can check out. Obviously it’s a matter of taste, and a lot of people would agree with you. Unlike the gold coin move though, this move from Shirov really requires you to think 8-12 moves ahead in a complicated endgame. The gold coin move was an incredible tactic, but Marshall only had to calculate 4-5 moves ahead for each variation in that famous position. Once you add in the fact that all the commentators were shocked by Shirov’s move when he played it, I do think this move is the best ever, even if it’s not as pretty as the gold coin move
@@MTXChess Yeah but this move had a logical tactic behind it and to dopple the opponents h our a pawns in Endgames is a typical think to do, while in the gold coin Game it was somethink most people would`nt even think of it as a move. Also he didnt had to plan 8-12 moves ahead he just knew that if the h pawns cant move its a winning Endgame.
@@alexanderlattreuter5196 This endgame isnt as simple as just doubling the pawns, its also about getting the king to the center first and that's where a lot of the calculating comes in. You're totally right tho, the gold coin move was incredible, no argument there
I found it
Congrats that pretty impressive! How did you do it? Were you able to calculate out the line that was played?
@@MTXChess i did not see any other move to liberate my King and pawns.
Resigne karne ki jarurat hi nahi hai
Hi Praful, unfortunately I can’t understand your comment
good move, but title is clickbait
Hey Petr, sorry you feel that way. Do you disagree that this is the greatest move of all time? I selected this move because several gm’s and editors of chess.com and chess magazine say this is the best move ever. Obviously a subjective claim…any thoughts on what a bette title would be?
Better yet, any ideas on what you think is the greatest move of all time?
It is preposterous saying this is the greatest move of all time. Ask the top players if they agree. I do not think they will say yes. I could have spotted this move.