Secrets Within Secrets || Esipenko vs Giri || FIDE Candidates Tournament 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to another interesting game from Round 4 of this year's Speed A Candidates Tournament. It is Andrey Yasipenko versus Anish Giri. Both of them started the candidates with a loss. Andrey lost to Djavokir and Anish lost to Pragnan in Round 1. And after that they got two draws to calm everything down and now they would very much love to win. And what's interesting about Anish Giri when he is playing, of course if you play E4 he will play the Sicilian and he will play the Nidroth. And everyone wants to beat Anish at the Nidroth. He is constantly saying that he is the greatest Nidroth player ever and that he made a course about it and that you should buy it. And of course everyone wants to prove him wrong and defeat him where he is the strongest. And that is exactly what Yasipenko will try to do in this game. And the line that he chooses is just incredible to even think that someone has that prepared. But that's just for you. You have to be prepared for everything. And let me just show it to you. So we're going to go in for the Sicilian Nidroth. Pawn to e4, pawn to c5, Nf3, d4. We have captures, captures, Nf6, Nc3 and Pawn to a6. The Nidroth Sicilian is on the board. And usually, I mean usually, the most played move here is Bg5. But you can play pretty much any move. Like I always love to mention that Rg1 is the 11th most popular continuation against the Nidroth. And still you have to be ready for it. People will play it against you and it's extremely annoying and strong. But, you know, for the candidates the main line will do. I myself was playing Bc4 some 10 years ago and then I dropped it completely. I tried the Adam's attack, Rg1, I even played Bg5. Now I'm slowly returning to Bc4. It's, you know, every line against the Nidroth is interesting. I guess as you age you prefer different things. But okay, Bg5, the main line, and Pawn to e6. Followed by, not the most popular, but Bd3. Here Andrei says this is only the 8th most popular continuation. So are you ready for this one? And Anish says pretty much instantly, as you can see by the situation on the clock, Be7. Not even thinking about his reply. And again we have castles and Qd2 being the most popular moves here. Iespinko goes for Qe2. Again asking Anish, are you prepared for this as well? And Anish says, yes I am. Knight captures on e4. And there are many ways you could meet this. And Iespinko shows that he is prepared for this one. Because you could play knight captures on e6. And then after all of the trades happen, especially if you capture with the f-pawn, then you can capture here. And then after Bishop captures, you have Qh5+, and then you're gonna win back the material on g5. But no. He just goes knight captures on e4. This is the top move recommended by the engine. And he shows Anish that he's ready for him. Bishop captures on g5. And now knight to f5. This is a vintage anti-Nidroth move. Has been crushing Nidroth players for the last 50-60 years. Maybe even 70. And it's not easy to deal with this. There are many things you can consider here. Just ignoring the knight. You could go Bishop back to e7. You could castle kingside. You could capture on f5. But capturing, you have to go into something like knight captures. Opens up a check. King to f8. And it's fine. But if you're not ready, or you know that maybe there's a better move, you should play that. And Anish plays Bishop to e7. Which is, again, the top move recommended by the engine. And you can see that he is not burning a lot of time at all. Knight captures on g7 with check. And here we reach the point of deviation. As there is a game where king to f8 was played. It was played in the 1980 U20 World Championship between Sandor Orgovan and Pavel Stempin. And the game ended in a draw. But it's a pretty crazy line that can go either way. For example, you attack the knight. The knight retreats. And now you go Qa5 check. Let's say you can't defend with the queen because then you hang the knight. You have to play pawn to c3. And then something like pawn to f5 attacks the knight. Knight to d2 and queen e5. You force a queen trade. And that's how you survive the attack. And then you're just probably okay with this massive center here. But like I said, after knight captures on g7 check. Anish went for king to d7. And it is now, as of move 11, that we have a completely new game. And interestingly, king d7 is the top move recommended by the engine. Which Anish knows, judging by the clock. So okay, we have castles king side. Knight to c6. And pawn to c4. Fighting for that d5 square. But also, the king is in the center. You want to have the option of c5. Or b4, b5. Always an option. We have king to c7. We have knight to h5. And bishop to d7. Here, Anish spent some 20 minutes getting this to work. Because he has to make sure he's not getting checkmated. There aren't any sacrifices here. And if he can play rook to c8 and king to b8, then his position will be fine. We have rook f to d1. Nicely aligning the rook with the black queen on d8. But also with the pawn on d6. Sorry about the weird arrow. We have rook to c8. And now, Andrei can just allow Anish to escape. But he can also start the attack right away. And he does. Pawn to b5. A beautiful pawn sacrifice. You probably think that it's not possible that b4 is by far the best move here. But it is. You can ask the engine. b4 is by far the best move here. And it makes perfect sense. We have knight captures on b4. Rook a to b1. And now, how do you play this? Interestingly, Anish played the knight captures on d3. There perhaps was sort of a moment where bishop to a4 could be played. The point is that you don't have this move. If you have this move, then it's fine. But you can play bishop captures on d1. And now if queen captures, pawn to d5. And this is now lost. So you're not going to be able to play rook captures on b4 right away. You can play rook d2. You get the rook out of harm's way. But then knight captures on d3. Rook captures and king to b8. And this is now perfectly fine. With Anish's move, knight captures on d3 instead of bishop to a4. Now, Andrei can throw in... Instead of what he played, he can play rook captures on d3. And now, you can't really run away with the king because the d6 pawn hangs. You haven't had time to move that light square bishop. But luckily for Anish, Andrei doesn't play it. He plays queen captures on d3. And now Anish has time. He plays bishop to a4. Now the d6 pawn is sufficiently defended. And it comes with tempo. So he's up material. He seems to be escaping. He's the one putting pressure. And yeah, it looks nice for white. But there really isn't all that much there. Rook to d2, which is also a useful move, as you are planning to double up on the b-file. King to b8. Rook b to b2. And now, of course, you just need to defend that pawn. Bishop to c6. And what do you play here? Is there any way to put any additional pressure? Anish is up only one pawn. But it's a lot. With having the strong center, the c-pawn is weak. There doesn't seem to be all that much Andrei can play. And he definitely agrees with it as he strikes with pawn to c5. He gives up another pawn just to open up lines of attack. But does it really work? d captures on c5. With queen captures on a6, winning the pawn back. Now threatening the scary rook captures on b7. That would end in checkmate. But Anish has all the tempi in the world. Queen d5. Defends on b7. Puts pressure on the knight, which, okay, maybe not that relevant. But the knight cannot move as you will checkmate the white king on g2. So pawn to f3, getting rid of this annoying threat. And now rook to c7, just adding another defender. And everything is fine now. With queen to d5, you also maybe can move the rook away from the c-file. Because queen c7 will not be a threat. But for the moment, it doesn't seem like Ispenko has any moves here. But okay, a little time on the clock for both of them now. It's time to be precise. We have knight h to g3, rook to d8, and now knight back to f2. As f3 has been played, you can reactivate this knight. So how is Anish to win this? Do you further consolidate? Do you build up more defense? Do you start an attack on the king side? Or do you just advance the c-pawn? This is what Anish does, and it is the cleanest way to proceed. Knight g to e4, and we have pawn to f5. Knight to c3, and queen to c5. Pinning the knight here, we have rook to e2, putting pressure on d6-pawn. And just bishop to f6. Challenging the knight, knight to a4, attacking the queen. And now bishop captures on a4. Every trade is only happening in Anish's favor. We have queen captures on a4. And of course, you're all looking at it. Pawn to c3. It's time to further advance the c-pawn. Queen to c2, blockading the pawn. Always a sad moment in a chess player's life when you have to blockade a passed pawn with a queen. But it is what it is. Bishop g5. We have king to f1. Unpinning, but repinning. Queen to c4. We have rook to d1, offering a rook trade. But now Anish finishes it off with a brilliant rook to d2. And there's nothing more to be done here. Rook captures on d2 is played. C captures on d2. And he was in this position. There is nothing more to be done here. So, tough start to the tournament for Yesipenko. A loss in round one. Then two draws. Then again, a loss in round four. But Anish, even though he lost to Pragnananda in round one, he bounces back with a win. And now Anish is back on 50%. So, you know, all is as it should be. And here you resign, because what can you play here? There's nothing. If you trade queens, queen captures, rook captures, you can even play pawn to h4 to try and stir some trouble. But of course, black will not react to this. Rook to c1. And that's it. Now you resign. Knight to d1. Rook captures. King f2. And rook c1. Now you can promote to a queen. And that's it. And if you don't trade, you can play something like queen d1. But then the black queen just moves. And then you go rook to c1. And you win this way. There's just no time to do anything about this. It was perfectly executed by Anish, showing that he truly is the grandmaster of the Nidorf Sicilian. And, you know, make no mistake. Everyone will challenge him to e4. Everyone will play against his Nidorf. And, you know, they will try to find it where he's weak. And he even mentioned that this particular line is not even present in his course. But he knows it. And he says that it will be featured in the next one. So yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed it. Very nicely done by Anish. If you guys haven't seen the standings here, are the standings after the rounds have been played. Let me just load that up. So Djawolkar now after four rounds leading the tournament with 3.5 after that amazing victory against Fabiano Caruana and Fabi on 2.5 points. So leading by a full point. And then even more against the rest of the field. Anish Pragananda and Matthias Wlbaum on two points. Hikaru Weiyi on a point and a half. And Andreas Penko in last place for the moment with only one point. And, you know, just to enjoy it for a few more seconds, let's check out the photo of the matchup. There we have it. Again, if you guys can spot anything out of the ordinary, feel free to mention it in the comments. But yeah, that's pretty much it. Incredible stuff by Anish. Truly a knight of master. Very much looking forward to seeing more. So yeah, really hope you enjoyed it. Tomorrow is a rest day, so we're going to probably cover some games that I've missed. And then we're continuing in two days time. So yeah, really hope you enjoyed it. I would like to thank Derek King, Andreas Rosenthal, Oskar Nissen, Manuel Silva and David Nelson for their contribution to my channel. Thank you a lot. I really appreciate it. As usual, you can check two of my previous videos here. Thank you for watching and I will see you soon. Continuing to check up on your wonderful suggestions and whatever else happens in the chess world. Thank you all. I will see you soon and have an excellent rest of your day. And if you want to learn more, not just the knight or first link in the description below, download Lotus Chess. It is the best possible way for you to learn chess. Guaranteed. And, you know, just try it out. You will love it. See you soon.