World 1 FACES World No 2 in BLINDFOLD Chess Match Magnus Carlsen vs Hikaru Nakamura

Okay, shake hands, but do it blindfolded. Yay! We can start, we can start the clock. Knight F3. Uh, D5. Oh, it's gonna be fast, okay. E3. Knight F6. He's playing Hikaru's Opening against Hikaru. C4. Any Germans in the audience? E6. Is this the Vincent Kaima system? Knight C3. I also play this with white, but much worse. Uh, B6. B3. Bishop B7. Bishop B2. Bishop to D6. C takes D5. D takes D5. Esteemed fans of my channel will know I have played this position with white, and lost, multiple times. But I am not Hikaru. I am Magnus. Rook C1. Um, A6. Knight A2. Do not play chess like this. I will... castle kingside? No, no, knights, bishops, castle. Castle, yeah. As I say, when they do it, it's fine. When you do it, no good. G3. Knight BD7. Bishop G2. Rook E8. E8. Castle. Bishop, uh, F8. Uh, queen to C2. C5. Pawn to D4. Pawn to A5. Rook F to D1. Okay, Rook F to D1. Rook to C8. Okay, very tense position on the queen side. Black expanding. Magnus thinking if the rook is attacking the queen or not. I don't want to say it. D takes C5. Knight takes C5. Okay, he traded. Now, Hikaru had four ways to take that pawn. He chose one of the four ways. Riveting commentary. And now if he moves his knight, Magnus' queen is attacked. But he knew that. I'm not helping him. Knight to C3. 10 minutes and 40 seconds for Magnus and 13 minutes for Hikaru. Oh, wow. Magnus is playing against what we call an IQP. Isolated Queen's Pawn. But it is sufficiently protected for now. Queen to E7. It is less protected than on the previous move, but it still cannot be captured. Knight to D4. Knight F to E4. Queen to E2. Pawn to G6. Knight D4 to B5. Infiltrating with the knight. Maybe opening up the diagonal. It's the hardest part of a chess game. Opening is finished. Now what? Hikaru maintains his two-minute lead for now. Rook C to D8. Magnus dipping below nine minutes. Still plenty of time. But we should have a very exciting finish. Knight to A4. Yes, the more you want to force something, trade some pieces, clarify the position. Now Hikaru's time advantage is three minutes. Bishop to H6. I would lose with white and with black. I don't like either person's position. It requires too much finesse, too much skill. Bishop to D4. Bishop to A6. Bishop takes C5. All right, so Magnus is clarifying things. How will Hikaru take back? Not with the queen. Knight takes C5. 740 for Magnus. 1013 for Hikaru. Magnus at 640 now. So it's three and a half minutes up for black. But we may see some trades in a pretty straightforward position soon. We will see. Knight takes C5. All right, now we see a trade. Hikaru will take back with a pawn. Big moment. Six minutes for Magnus. Bishop takes D5. And he's gone for it. He grabs a pawn. We are moments away maybe from an explosion on the board. But chess is very deceiving. It looks like everything is fine and good and you take a pawn. But Hikaru is looking at some wicked stuff right now. The bishops on both sides staring menacingly down the diagonals. The queen and the two rooks. This looks like a Black Mirror episode. Just saying moves, you know. Bishop takes B5. Queen takes B5. Okay. Bishop takes E3. Here we go. And he sacrificed the bishop. Not a rook, unfortunately. Yet. It's not checkers. You don't have to take the bishop. F takes E3. Never mind, it is checkers. Rook takes D5. He did the thing! Rook takes D5. He did the thing! Queen takes E3. The rook! Yeah. Hikaru's down a rook. Oh my gosh, what has he done? Queen E4. King F2. Queen E3. Oh. King G2. Queen E4. We might have a draw. King H3. Queen E6. Oh, he runs with the king. Another check. King G2. Oh my god, what am I doing? I'll claim a threefold. Queen E4. Uh, no, no, I'll play G4. G4. Oh. Queen to E3 check. Wow. King G2. Neither rook is being captured. Queen E4 check. Oh my goodness. King G3. Queen E3 check. King G2. Queen E4. Not rigged, not scripted. Queen E3. I think we can just about... Yeah. Oh, draw. Three move repetition. No, but you can also go King H4, right? King H4, Queen E7, rook G5, I thought. Like... Yeah, like, I mean... Yeah, rook G5. H6. And I think Queen C5. I mean, it's still a... I have Queen H2 is hanging. No, I've got... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's too much. Yeah, it's too much. But... I mean, I thought from afar that I had... Rook E1. Oh, but Bishop F2, yeah. But Bishop F2 and then this and rook D2. Oh, actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, Bishop F2, Queen F6 and rook D2. Yeah, it's very concrete. It was very concrete, yeah. Magnus, did you spend a lot of time before taking on D5? Because you wanted to keep the game going. You kind of saw this... Yeah, I was... It was very interesting. Because it all of a sudden just exploded with tactics. I mean, even this was an option here, right? Yeah, knight B6 to move. I assumed there was a tactic for me, but I was wrong. Uh, but I thought, like, even knight E6 should be all right. Like, it looks... It looks off. Yeah. But then... Maybe this was... No, but then you can take on D1 first. Yeah, if you play the other order. So that doesn't really work. But yeah, this is just... Yeah, I mean, you can go for this, but I assumed again I have D4. D4, this, takes, D3, like... Yeah, it looks terrible. See, this is how it used to be. Now you just click game review. And the little coach says, you did great, but you threw away the game in the endgame.