The fortress that even Magnus Carlsen couldn't understand ¦ Carlsen vs Iturrizaga

Welcome everyone to the game between Magnus Carlsen and Eduardo Iturizaga at the World Rapid Championships. Right now, we've reached the move number 7 here and it's Iturizaga's move and he plays his knight to d7. Let's see how we reached this position. The game started off with d4, knight f6, c4, e6, knight to f3. It was the Bogo Indian. Magnus blocked with the knight, castles, a3. The bishop dropped back and now Carlsen puts up a big center. The main move is d5 here but d6 is also getting popular. Bishop e2 and now the knight jumps to d7 preparing the move e5 or c5. Magnus comes back to the board and now one of the normal moves in this position is to castle. You can also go b4 here but Magnus plays his knight to f1. So, kind of a rare move has been played by Anish before. c5 played by Iturizaga and Magnus brings his knight to g3. It's very interesting that the knight on b1 actually makes its way to g3 like the Ruy Lopez. Knight takes d4 and now we call this the Moroxe structure where white has more space and is controlling these key squares. Carlsen castles here and Iturizaga must play this carefully because when you are low on space, you have to be accurate. You're already strategically bit worse. Bishop e3 by Magnus bringing out his bishop and now knight to f6 played putting pressure on the e4 pawn. b4 gaining space in the position and now Eduardo goes bishop d7. Will Magnus expand even further with f4? No, first he brings his rook. He takes control of the c-file and rook c8 played and now pawn to f4. An excellent move here. Grabbing space in the center. Now Iturizaga must be careful. He's already very passive. Rook e8. Yes, it's like a hedgehog structure but here he needs to come up with a plan. Magnus now even brings his knight back. He's like I won't let you trade pieces because I have more space. Bishop f8, a typical move. Bringing his bishop back. Maybe g6 bishop g7 next and Magnus now plays pawn to c5. You must take but he makes a mistake. He goes e5. Taking here was relatively better because after knight c5, bishop c5, white is better but black is fighting. e5, you take on d6. Now you're pawn up but Eduardo is saying that the e4 pawn is hanging. Well, if you take rook takes f4, then after bishop e6, it's very difficult to defend the d6 pawn. So Magnus goes bishop f4 defending the d6 pawn but he will lose the e4 pawn. Now who's assessed the position better is the big question. Clearly, it's Magnus Carlsen here. Rook takes e4 and he jumps with the knight. Rook d4 played attacking the queen and queen b3 eyeing f7 point. Very quickly, bishop e8 played and now chops off the pawn on b7. Magnus already clearly better. Queen b6 played. You can see here that there can be a dangerous check on this diagonal. So the knight comes back and blocks it. Bishop takes d6. We have four pawns each. So right now, materially black is doing fine. Also, the f7 pawn is defended here but white has this beautiful knight and he snatches a pawn attacking the rook and now white has two extra pawns on the queen side. This is a very tough position for Iturizaga. Rook e1 is a nice move to attack the but he comes back bishop c4 putting pressure on f7. Although now you can go knight e5 defending the pawn and also attacking the bishop and maybe Magnus' last move wasn't that accurate. If he had gone rook c1, it could have been very nice to put pressure here. Anyway, bishop c4, knight jumps to e5. Good move by Eduardo. I need to move the bishop now. He goes rook e1 and the point is of course you take, take and if you take on a3, then e8 is hanging. So he goes takes, queen takes c4 and now also notice that bishop c4 is impossible because of queen f7. So rook f6 played, Magnus takes, queen takes f6 and now everything is in control. Can we start already pushing? Yes, he does. All the back rank tactics, knight a4 and then rook e8 is a mate. So he goes a6 taking away the back rank issues and Magnus goes b5. He's calmly pushing forward. Magnus has slightly low time on the clock which is kind of unusual when he's winning but this should be easily possible to you know manage. Now b6 cannot be played because queen would take the pawn. a5 is a bit too rushed. So you have to be a little bit patient and Magnus plays a very calm, cool, classy move keeping an eye on the bishop on e8. Eduardo goes queen c3. He's attacking the knight on c5 and Magnus calmly brings his queen back to e3. Maybe there were other moves. Knight b7 was stronger but queen e3 makes sense. Queen to b4 keeping an eye on the rook and the knight and h3. Magnus calmly just takes away his back rank issues. Rook c8 and now the rook jumps in and defends the knight. So everything's protected here. The knight defends the pawn. Oh bishop b5. Eduardo says I'm ready to sacrifice my bishop for two pawns. This endgame should be utterly lost actually. King h2 by Magnus. This is not going to be easy to hold as black check. Queen g3 and yes if you take the queens, this endgame does require some effort but should eventually be winning. He goes queen a8. He says let's keep the queens on the board and now defending this position against Magnus is just so difficult because one of the things that Magnus does incredibly well is that he understands where each of the pieces belong. So rook to c3 played and now Eduardo, well he plays rook to c6 and now Magnus can calmly put his queen in the center. He can maybe then start pushing his h-pawn. He gets a bit impatient. He goes rook b3 and this allows Eduardo to sacrifice his queen with rook take c5 because rook b8 check he can give up the queen and the question is, is 3 versus 2 a fortress in that position? Will first of all Iturizaga find this kind of fortress? It's actually not a fortress to be honest. There is possibility for white to play for a win. He takes it and Magnus is one of those guys who never really believes in fortresses. Takes, takes. What an interesting endgame we have here. I think Magnus is winning this but he has to play very carefully. Queen e3. Now slowly you want to start pushing your pawns but more importantly you want to get your king right into the heart of the position. That's not easy. Meanwhile, what Eduardo would want is some stable squares for his rook on the third rank. That would be very important. So g4 played by Magnus, a good move. He understands these positions well. Okay, Iturizaga needs to just keep moving his rook. So he plays rook a8. The king can start moving up. Oh, h4 a blunder. A big mistake but he doesn't find it. Rook c8. King g3. What was that mistake? We have to spot it. I'll talk about it at the end of the game but now let's focus if Magnus can convert this into a win. Rook a8. He goes king to f3 and once again the bar drops. He goes rook c8. Rook b8 actually. Two times the bar has dropped completely giving black a chance to actually hold but Iturizaga was not alert enough. In Marathi, we would say, to zaga na uta Iturizaga. Okay, sorry for that. Queen e7 played. Brings the queen into the position and now rook played to a8. Magnus pushes his pawn to g5. He's going all in here and this is a good move. We have h5 played in the position and now it's completely winning because you simply bring your king in and the rook cannot really stabilize on the third rank because queen e8 and you lose the f7 pawn. So king comes up to e4. Rook check. He even goes one step ahead and you're not afraid of losing this pawn because queen d8 and you simply take this pawn. So rook a5. Check and now Magnus can move in. King c6. Let's go. Just move the king in. Yes, king to c6 played calmly and now if another check, I'll simply go king b7. He goes check. King b7 and now Eduardo can put his rook on e6 but check. King here and now do we go queen f8. Lovely move. Check. Maybe you force him to go pawn to g6 and now slowly bring your king in and one of the things that you must understand here is that king and pawn endgames are lost for black because if I bring my queen up here and I sacrifice for the rook that's losing which is why this fortress does not work and Magnus, well he understands all of this in a jiffy. He's so good at these endgames but he's being careful here. He goes queen to c3 and now rook comes back. Oh, he goes rook e2 and here's the point. You can simply put your queen on c4. Maybe you can start with a check. Queen c8, king g7. Yes, check. King g7 and this very nice move. Queen c4 attacking the rook. If rook e1, there's check. e3, e4, e5, e6. I'll just simply take it and so Ituri Zaga has to resign. Magnus Carlsen wins this. What a beautiful game and it's time for us to study the fortress as to why that position was drawn. You could see there Magnus just being relieved there. He knew that the win was not easy and maybe his opponent had a chance. So in this position when Magnus pushed his pawn to h4, Ituri Zaga had to find the move h5. This was very nice because now white has two options. Either to push the pawn or take the pawn. Let's first look at taking the pawn. Now comes this very nice move. Rook a6 and what's amazing to note is that after check, you even give up one pawn here but now I simply have two stable squares to keep rotating my rook. Rook h6, rook f6. So for example, I can go rook h6. You can try to bring your king in but now you can't do much because even here I simply give you a check. King e5. I keep moving between these two squares and the position is an absolute draw. That's the reason why gxh5 is not a great idea. But what happens if you push your pawn to g5? Well, in this position, you go g6 and there's no way that you can stop this rook from coming to e6. For example, after Kg3, I simply go rook a6 and put my rook on e6 and now my waiting moves will be with the king. I'll go Kg7, Kh7, Kg8 and once again, your king won't be able to break in. Iturizaga got another chance in the game when in this position, Magnus went Kf3. He could have still played the move h5 and then transferring his rook to the 6th rank. But as it turned out in the game, Iturizaga did find that maneuver but he was a bit too late. As you can see in this position, he did get his rook to the 6th rank but the king had already come behind the rook. If the king was here, then this position would have been a draw with this fortress. But now with the king being inside, all the king and pawn endgames are just lost and you will see here that after Qc4, if rook e6, I simply take, take Ke6 and this is a winning endgame for white.