Grandelius vs Carlsen — A Benoni Battle

Hi everyone, it's Jerry. I have a sharp game to share with you from round two of the 2026 TP Sigmund chess tournament played today, May 2nd. On the white end, Niels Grandelius playing against Magnus Carlsen. Alright, classical time controls, 90 minutes each, 30 second increment throughout, bonus time of 30 minutes at move 40. We have a Bononi defense. White has this space to work with. Let's get some standard moves in out of this opening phase. All healthy developing moves. Bishop g4, and now knight d2. This is one of the better pieces within this structure, the king knight, especially once positioned on c4, where it exerts pressure on a base point. So we see the light square bishop exchange. Knight bd7, and the usual case with this opening, a same-sides castles game. Knight e8, opening up the f-pawn to challenge white's center. The follow-up is f4. This is move 13, and with this move, we reach an original position. Computer is more attracted to a4, some queen-side space, wants to sit with the f2-pawn. So if a4 was played and f5, it says go ahead and take on f5. If the rook is recapturing, white has the e4 square to operate with. Knight d to e4, nice arrangement there in the center, and in the case of pawn takes, this is how it wants to continue. Go ahead and fight for e5 with pieces. Bishop knight soon on c4. I did carry out this line a little bit after knight e5, it still wants to go there, and in the case of knight g6, be prepared to give up the dark square bishop for knight, support the bishop. Important to keep this pawn in particular under control. You don't want to run into these f4, f3 ideas punching holes in your king-side. Anyhow, we do not see this approach, no a4 here. It's f4, f5, e takes f, g takes f. Okay, black has been successful breaking up that brief pawn trio, has removed that center pawn. White now plays with this isolated e5 pawn. Bishop f2, queen's eyes open to e6. Also, the bishop may play to h4 once the knight is positioned on f6. Some pins nearby. Black covers e6, knight up3, knight g5 into e6. Maybe an idea, this is the weakest square in black's position. Knight f6 from here increases the pressure on d5. This does not need to be defended directly. If black is chopping away there, there is a queen e6 check picking up the piece. What we have here is queen d3. White ends up watching this point directly as an inf5. Okay, definitely a risky pawn to be capturing opposite the rook there, asking for discovered attacks. If white tried to go into e6, here's how black can respond. Queen d7, and after knight e6, rook f to e8, getting out of the way of knight takes rook, being on the queen there, and you can't maintain this knight really. Three attackers, two defenders currently on the knight, and if you try to support the knight, the other d-tail, black is now in a position to successfully swipe the d5 pawn, removing the defender of the knight. Okay, we do not see this attempt to dive into e6. It is queen d3. Pop quiz, what is your move? Pause the video if you'd like. Okay, one of the top moves is to complete development. Queen d7, defend f5 directly, be a supporter for the b5 advance, and you're ready to activate that final piece. Carlsen's approach, a much more dynamic one at this stage, starts some initiative. There is a fight over the e4 square, the c3 knight, a key defender. You would like to dive into e4 here with the knight, an improvement for that knight, and the bishop, which will exert pressure immediately on the queen side. Carlsen's play is with b5. The follow-up is knight captures pawn. The defender of e4 is going to be removed in this game soon enough. Now, if you take on f5, you're asking for knight captures pawn straight away, discovered attack, or after b4, give the knight a kick, and then take on d5. Not a good pawn to capture here, so after b5, it is knight captures pawn. It captures knight. Queen captures knight. Rook b8 is played here. See these, it's pressure on the queen side. b2 coming under fire here. This pawn poison pin and win of the knight, so we have rook b8. Follow-up is queen d3. It's saying top queen e2. What keeps the player away from queen e2? You're inviting rook e8 with tempo. It says to play in this way and pretty much crawl up into a ball to babysit the b2 pawn. White's play is queen d3, applying pressure to f5. We see knight e4. If rook captures pawn, you can go ahead and take the pawn. There is no good discovered attack against the queen in this case. No coordination on d5. The play here, knight e4, rook b1. Pop quiz, how would you continue? Pause the video if you'd like. Okay, the top move, move in the game, queen a5. Black activates his final piece, applies pressure to a2. Maybe at a later stage, b2 is picked up one way or another. The queen also, from a5, defends d2. Does not allow this top piece to be challenged with knight d2. Notice the current state of the white rooks. They do not stand well. The best rook is the rook on b8, half open file. Notice how things would shift significantly if the mentality here by black was to simply win the material back. So I'm talking about rook captures b2 here. In just a blink, it's now this white rook that is at least top for white. Completely open b file. So in short, Carlsen, after rook a to b1, more interested here in piece activity than picking up a pawn. So we have queen a5. He has the far more pieces without question. Knight cannot be challenged on d2. This g5 post is available. From here, queen d2 is played. If knight takes knight, pawn takes knight, this queen stands well right in the center. Queen takes a2, we have this activity for the white rook. The play here is queen d2. The queen is poisoned. Challenges this strong post. Queen takes queen, knight takes queen, lands a fork. The queen goes to h3. And this is a more appropriate moment to now swipe the knight, only after sidelining the queen. There is a mate threat on h7. Knight takes knight, follows. Pawn takes knight. And a more appropriate moment to take on b2 right now. Rook takes b2, rook takes rook, queen takes rook. No rook activity with this line. We're 25 moves in. Bit of time pressure here for team white. Still needs 15 to get that bonus time of 30. The follow-up from here is queen h5. Says white is lost after this. A top line from here is to play queen b3. Queen exchange here with then rook b8, bishop g3. These pawns falling. The line I was interested in is first establishing the bishop on e5 with then rook to b8. From here, it's calling for bishop e1. Pressure on this pawn. Do know in this line with rook b8, the other idea with the bishop backing off, rook f3. Important to hang on to the b3 pawn. Without it, these two become passed. Okay, we do not see this top play offering a queen exchange. It's queen h5, queen takes pawn, g6, and the response here, h6. This is top. This is winning for black. Notice once more, peace activity. If you're capturing the pawn, this queen post is too great. Very disruptive. Hitting a lot of stuff. Bishop in a pin. If this pawn falls, rook activity is there. Not so easy to challenge this queen. Queen falling back is dropping a pawn. Carlsen does not allow this queen activity. H6. Now this queen feels very silly here. Nothing exciting happening on the king side. Follow up queen f3, and the plan from here, quite simple. You have this passed a pawn, push it, and that's what we see. a5 from here. Now notice if the mentality is, well, this pawn is closer to promoting, let me go with this one. There's a problem with that. There's no longer pressure on d5 for this one moment, and this would allow queen e3, looking to be disruptive next with queen e6, queen captures pawn. Okay, Carlsen goes with a5. Keeps pressure on d5. It's a little bit slower, but do know, more dangerous pass pawn. You already have that promotion square covered. Restriction on the queen in this case. Don't try queen e3, queen captures pawn is there. Okay, the play from here is h4, a4, queen f4, and about 15 minutes spent here by Carlsen ends up playing a3. Allows d6 to fall, and next up c5, and had calculated even a follow-up check line with then bishop captures rook. We'll see what this looks like soon enough. Notice if queen captures d5 here, there's now queen captures a4. It says it is no longer winning, so he continues marching on with the a-pawn. Queen takes d6, queen b2, bishop captures pawn, a2, queen e6 check, king h8, and from here, king h2 is played. Now again, when the queen was on a2 and the pawn was on a4, before playing a3, Carlsen had to see this very position. He had to know he would have a good response to bishop captures rook here. King h2 is played here. What would happen if bishop captures rook? Well, we would see queen d4. This would be the only winning path. There's a big problem here on the diagonal. Stepping up with the rook, there's promotion there with check. The other idea, this one right here, moving the king, queen takes pawn check would be there with then bishop d4 check, and this is leading to a checkmate in two from here. Pick your favorite one. Promotion with a queen or rook with check, and then checkmate, and also queen takes rook and queen h4 for mate. Okay, he saw this idea from afar, knew that this rook would be poisoned. The play here is with king h2, queen e5 check, queen takes queen, bishop takes queen check, king h3, and after move 36, rook d8, white resigns. Save the rook, no longer under fire, and soon the rook will have to give itself up for the pawn just a moment away from promoting. Very sharp game out of this Bononi defense. Your thoughts with this one? Feel free as usual to leave any feedback to this video in the comment section below. I hope you enjoyed it, and maybe took a thing or two away. That's all for now. Take care. Bye.