JYNXZI vs GOTHAM CHESS BATTLE

Levy, if you beat me blindfolded, I'll give you 200 tubs. No, no, bro. Trust me. You don't want to do this. I can play like five blindfolded games at the same time. What? Levy, how? How? Because you don't know what the legal moves are. So the way this would work on chess.com is I would just, you know, I see the highlights. Like I would see your, you know, the highlight of your piece. But if we were playing, you would just tell me the move and I would keep track in my head. How are you gonna be blind? How are you gonna beat me blind, bro? I don't understand, dude. I'm gonna, I'm gonna turn off. So chess.com, boot us up a game. Me versus Janksy. We'll be, we'll do 10 minutes. 10 minute per player. And I'm gonna turn off my pieces. So I'm gonna go to my pieces. Blindfold. I don't see any pieces on the board. They're all gone. Can you give me subs if I win? Like, give me like 10 subs? Because I'm gonna win. I'll give you, I'll give you like 500. If I win 500 subs! No cheating. Levy, one thing about me, bro, is I don't cheat in any video games, bro. I do not recommend people try blindfold chess. It hurts your brain. Oh, we're playing. You ready? So wait, put, wait, let me see you put it on the blindfold. No, I'm like, if you look at my stream, I straight up have no pieces on the board. I do not see the pieces. Okay. So on the board you have. Yep. You should. I straight up, it's just, this is a board. It's nothing. You're not gonna win this, bro. Bro, you're not gonna win. I promise I'll win. Let's go. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's do it. All right. I like this. So do you even know what piece I move? I mean, you have to know, right? Yeah. As I see, I see the highlights. So, but I took your pawn, bro. Okay. That's fine. I'm not fazed by that at all. Let me do it right here. Oh, you copied me. All right. What are you going to play against this though? I saw a clip. You moved your knight in a game you played and somebody discovered, checked you and took your queen. That was crazy. Oh, that was exactly how that game went. This is why on the second move, I need you to play knight to C6 to defend your center pawn. Otherwise there's all sorts of tricks. You want me to play try hard, right? Yeah. Try hard. Like you're blind. Try hard. Oh my God. My queen's attacking your king. How do you know? How do you know? And that's, yeah. So it looks like I should take with the queen, but I'm going to do this. So now that's the trick. The trick was that I caught you with this. In the next time you're playing with black, defend the center pawn. Don't get into this knight swap with me. So you fall into this trap against me. It's okay. I have a lot of experience. Don't worry. But the next time don't fall into this trap. You're so cool, dude. You're so cool. Oh my God. All right. So wait, let's lock. Okay. Let's lock in. I never give up. Don't give up. My internet could disconnect. Yeah. All right. Ah, was that principled? No. That was not principled. Wait, what am I doing? What am I even thinking? Yeah. We have to get the knights out and we had to castle. Now, now we're, now we're in trouble. Now that that move is safe. All right. I'm going to develop. I'm going to develop. I can't see the pieces. You could, you could, you could trap me much better. All right. I like these moves a lot more. This is, this is good. I'm going to go here. I'm going to go. Good God. I can't move anything. Good God. Principled move. I'm going to go. Super principled. Yes, but I wish you castled. Scheisse. You're right. We're still not castling. You're right. Yo, uh, Jinxie, have you ever, have you ever seen this move? Have you ever heard of en passant? What, what, what is that? Your last move, you moved upon two squares and you stood side by side with me. So I took the square behind that pawn. You see what I'm saying? So you moved upon two squares and for that turn and that turn only, I can take the square diagonally behind it. What? I did not make this rule, man. I don't, it's a chess rule. It's just, it's to prevent a pawn from sneaking past another pawn. En passant? Yeah, en passant. En passant. Is it French? Yes. Now you got Scheisse. Let me stop. You're so good. Stop. You could have taken my bishop. I understand now. I understand. You could have taken my bishop. What? I thought it was in check. No, no, no. The pawn was just in front of the king, but you didn't have to move the king. But you only, we can run it back. We can run back a quick game. King e8. Hold up. Let me see. Do I have a checkmate here? Yo, bro. This guy. Hey, you don't have a checkmate here, bro. How do I tell you? Levy, levy, levy. You don't, you don't have a checkmate. All right, fine, fine, fine. But on the next move, I do. Oh my god. Bro, levy. I'm sorry, daddy. I'm sorry. Like you owe me, bro. What do you want me to say? This is insane. Okay. What about your bishop? What are you going to do about that? Um, yo. You don't even have pieces. How? One more, one more, one more. Yeah, let's go, let's go. I'm not going to blunder this time, buddy. No queen, no queen blunders, bro. No queen blunders. All right, I'm white too. I'm not going to blunder. This is what the guy played against you. Scandinavian. You took the pawn last time, and then you got your pieces out. That's what I want to see. We'll play principled. I'm not super principled, but... Okay, nice. You think I'm going to give away my queen? No, you're too good to be that. You're too good. This is the skin. Now I'm nervous, because that last game, I think you just gave me for the memes. So you literally, on your screen, it's just a blank board, huh? Wow. Yeah, yep. So you just see highlights. Now, you see highlights of every piece that's moved, or just the most recent? No, just the most recent. What? Bro, bro, bro, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Your highlights are just the most recent. Nothing else. Yeah, like the last move, knight g8 to f6, yeah. Wait, Levi, I just cooked you. Levi, I'm not even kidding. I just cooked you. I don't think so. Ah, you gave me check. You gave me check. Remember, it's not over if it's just check. All right, I'm going to go here. You want to trade? You're being tricky. I don't know if I want to trade. Let me think about that. Okay, do I want to trade? I think that's a sigh of desperation. I think you want me to trade. I think there's a better play on this board, and I just, I don't know. Let me just trade. Don't overthink. Let me trade, let me trade, let me trade, let me trade. I like the acronym KISS, keep it simple stupid. So sometimes that's the best thing to do. Boom. And now be principled. You haven't gotten all your pieces out. You haven't castled yet. Fantastic. White is playing like a 24, 35. Are you serious? No, you're playing great. You're playing great. I'm going to kiss you, bro. Do it. What? I'm married, but I could get permission. It's fine. Yeah, yeah, bro, a friendly kiss. Okay, you did that. Okay. All right, let me think. So I just think this is such a great play. No, it actually isn't. It's not a great play. By the way, I can still explain my thought process. I just don't want to distract you. I'm trying to get my bishop out and I just want to castle. That's it. Nothing crazy right now. Okay, pawn to a3 is fine. I can explain my thought process. Are you going to push your b pawn two squares to attack my queen on the next move? How do you know? You're looking, let me look at his stream. I gotta look at his stream. It's just a blank board. Libby, how do you have everything memorized? How is that even possible? Yo, bro, I told you. I think it's like some degree of mental illness. I don't actually have so much aura, dude. It's just a blank screen. Oh, look at his screen, bro. Okay, so you did that. So you know that that's what I'm going to do. Interesting. Smart cookie. That's all right. It doesn't mean it's bad to do, though. It doesn't mean bad. So no, it doesn't mean it's bad. And that's really good that you said that. So the worst thing as a chess player is to play someone a lot better than you. It's like the worst thing to do in like a sparring match in like boxing. It's like fighting Mike Tyson. Yeah. Yeah, you feel like anything you do, you're going to lose. But you just play. You just play. You do your best. Okay, see, this is already much better. I like. See, I'm not going to blunder this game. All right, let me go here. Libby, you're nervous. You're nervous, Libby. Straight up, by the way, I'm pretty shook. All right, let's go here. What would Magnus do right now, Chad? What do you guys think? All right, Magnus would do this. By the way, he very well might. That move is very reasonable. Don't know why people in chat are laughing. The laughing emoji. All right, it's been a fun match. Wait, what? Wait, no, no, no. How has it been a fun match? It's tie game, tie. I'm just kidding. I'm just, I'm trying to use my aura. This is going to be tricky for you. This is very tricky. Ooh, remember, when we castle on the side of a board, we don't want to push the pawns there. Because by moving your pawn two squares, you attack my queen, but your pawn used to protect that pawn. And now everything crumbles. Oh, my God. We had to be patient. We had to go to the other side of the board. Don't push pawns where you castle. Your king has to be safe. Now, now, now, now we're in trouble. Levy, stop. Don't do this to me. Levy, don't do this to me. Oh, no. Dude, you hung a rook. What are you doing? Oh, my God. Oh, no. But, bro, your screen is blank. Like, do you even know that you hung a rook? I do. I was considering whether to play the move that I played or a different move, but I was like, I'll play that move. I'm going to look at the screen again. I'm just going to look at the screen. Yeah, I'm going to play. Should I take with the king or should I take with the bishop? Yo, look at this guy. Literally, look at this guy. Chet, look at how he's playing. Do you see this? Like, I've never seen anything like this in my life. All right, all right, all right. You're not feeling stressed with my, like, queen and knight and then all those pieces? I just don't even think you remember where they are. It's like, there's no way. You have king g1, rook f1, pawn f2, knight f3, pawn d4, knight c3, pawn on c2, b4, a3, queen d1, rook a1. What? How do you know? Okay, I'm not going to get intimidated by this guy, Chet. We can do this. I'm like Pegasus. You like Yu-Gi-Oh? I... Or is that, are we generations apart there? I have, I think I played Yu-Gi-Oh. I played the cards, you collect the cards, but I was like five. Yeah, I was not five. I was a little older, but that's fine. It's all good, bro. All right, check this out. We got a tie game here, bro. It's tied, it's tied, for sure. Appreciate the bishop. My queen was, my queen and my knight were defending together. Oh my god. Bro, Levi, that was the most impressive thing I've ever seen in my life, dude, legitimately. He's literally, look at his board. Levi, that was so impressive, bro. I'm not even gonna lie. So if you made it this far, I'm now gonna go over these two games. Normally in my videos, I have a pretty long intro, and then I actually get into what I'm talking about, but I decided in this one to just jump right into it. Hopefully you enjoyed. And now let's take a look at these two games. What's fun about this collaboration that I did with Jinxy, I mean, it's not over by any means, but I'm recording this in late April 2026. This was probably late March. This was just maybe a week into our collabs. Jinxy still was a very rough chess player. He still didn't have a full sense of developing the pieces. He was still making a lot of blunders. This was after one of our first ever lessons. The first game was kind of straightforward, but there's still a beginner mistake in here. This is the most popular position after one and a half moves of chess. And now when black completes the second move, that is now two moves. Normally here, the knight goes to c6, and then white has a big choice of what to play. White can choose a different opening path. If you're a beginner, you don't know all of these different opening paths. You kind of have to choose one. You can't have all of them. Like going to a restaurant. I mean, you could theoretically order all the food. Then you have to pay for it. The mirror image knight at the grandmaster level is called the Petrov Defense. At the beginner level, it's called Me Copy Opponent. After knight takes e5, black has to be very careful of this queen attack, which is exactly what I did in the game. This is a real defense, but it's only a defense because modern day computers have shown that it is playable. Whereas as a noob, you know, you're going to suffer the fate of the king in the middle of the board here. The computer thinks that you just give up the knight and then play like this. After white defends this, you know, you can actually just win a pawn here, but then get very quick development. Actually, by some sort of miracle, black's position is not completely horrendous. But obviously, jinx he went here in this game, and this is a very famous trap. Knight to c6 check, and then you take like this. And in the rest of the game, you know, he blundered his pawn, but I showed here how I developed. I could have taken this with the knight, but of course I had to passant. I took the bishop. I castled, and the game ended in style here because I spotted that rook to d8 would be a checkmate. I am defending with the pawn and my queen guards this pawn, but I need a little bit of backup, so I set that up. And as you're going to get better at chess, you know, these things are going to come a little bit more naturally. Rook to d8, and then this. Now keep in mind, I don't see this. I am playing completely blindfolded. Well, not completely physically blindfolded, but obviously, you know, I'm using the blind board on shells.com. Look, as a beginner, you will blunder your pieces early. There's no way around it. But this game was much better. I mean, I ran this game through a game review, and I will tell you afterward how Jinx he played, but he played completely fantastic. So I play the Scandinavian defense against king's pawn. Most popular opening. I play d5. There's a lot of different openings. I'm currently in the middle of a slow run, an educational speed run, if you will. And yeah, I'm playing a lot of openings, and one of them is the Scandinavian. It's one of my favorite openings, especially for blitz. And the point is that after this, you put your queen to the side of the board, and then you're going to develop the rest of these pieces. And in this game, Jinx he played fantastic. I mean, he played nothing like a beginner that had just learned. He developed his knight. You know, he gave me this check, which is already like at least four or 500 level. I offered a trade. He didn't blunder anything. And then he castled. And okay, granted, we were communicating at the time that the game was going on. And so I was able to sort of, this is very early days in his chess career. I was able to help him prevent himself from making disastrous mistakes. Still, I thought he played very reasonably. So I played this movie six. I already could have long castled, but my bishop is maybe going to go here. One thing about putting the bishop on c5 or just in general into the middle area, if the opponent can attack your bishop and just simply move a pawn, it's probably just a bad move. You probably should not develop your bishop like that. And bishop to b4 is also reasonable, but I do have to be ready that my opponent will attack me with that pawn. And then I might have to trade for the knight. Whereas here, I don't have anywhere to trade. And that's why the bishop here is good because it's free of any pawn attacks. And on top of that, it's pointed directly at where my opponent is castled. And you can kind of, hopefully already see the early signs of a kingside attack. My opponent went a3 and then he went b4. Now, technically, technically, more advanced viewers who watch this video would have realized that that was a free pawn. I actually can take that pawn because this is an illusion of defense. I am pinning the pawn to the rook. And if I take this and he takes, I will take his rook and I will end up with a rook and a pawn for a bishop. The only danger to me is that this queen is a bit stuck. Like it's a little hard to move backwards. I do have one move. But the other thing is he can't really attack me. He can't move his bishop anywhere because I would just take the bishop. He can't move his pawn to go here because then I would take his knight. So he, you know, he could go knight to b5 threatening this. I can defend it or I can just castle, give this away, you know, and very quickly get all my pieces back and be totally fine. Now, in the game, I went here. And, you know, mentally, I was already seeing that his knight is the only remaining defender of his king. So if I have a way to deflect his knight, I would win. If my knight could go there, I would almost be winning on the spot because the knight would be hit. I'd be threatening to take it. I'd be threatening to deflect the knight and checkmate. This move also is nice, but it blocks my bishop. So it gives him a little bit of time to defend himself. And here we long castle. We go the opposite side. But hey, after 10 moves, Jinxie has a better position against Old Gotham. And that's the thing about taking chess lessons is you can get yourself to a position within the first 10 or 12 moves, you know, against even the best player in the world where you haven't blundered anything and you actually have a very decent game. Problem is then you have to play a lot more moves and, you know, skills in chess basically dictate that the higher rated player will win because at some point you will blunder. Here, Jinxie chooses a bad plan. But he chooses a bad plan like for the 700 level, not really for the just started playing chess beginner level. And the bad plan that he chooses is after pawn to h3, I played rook to g8. Rook to g8 is a really, you know, mean move. Pawn to h3 is nice because you're defending it with the pawn. This pawn's like a little spike. So now my queen can't go there. It's defended and it's preventing knight to g4. However, this pawn is also a hook. A hook is a pretty sophisticated term in chess. It's when you castle and you advance one of your pawns. And right now I can turn that pawn into a hook. I'm not going to put my knight there and I'm not going to put the queen there. But if I put a pawn there, things are going to get really bad for my opponent as I'll be attacking the knight and the pawn. And if they take, well, then they're going to open up my queen. They will lose control of the g4 square because I'm going to go knight g4 and then get to h2 and it's just very unpleasant. Only thing is I can't play g5 because my opponent covers that twice. So this is how you make a plan in chess. Rook to g8. Probably I could have also played pawn to h6. Rook g8 and then I go like this. And this is where Jinxie simply makes a blunder but a really, really bad one. Like one that just completely... Like some blunders in chess are bad and some are fatal. Here you lose a pawn in front of your king. You're going to lose a second pawn but more than anything else, all this is wide open. And you kind of just lose here which is crazy because I just, you know, I take this pawn and I'm going to get in with my knight, with my bishop, with my queen. I would love it if my rook was open and these pawns were gone. So yeah, very tough position. Bishop g5 played. Knight takes g4. And now I can basically do anything. I did give him the rook here. He took it. But this position is totally, totally lost for white. White's king is so weak and white cannot move the knight, cannot move the queen, cannot move... And when I say cannot move, I just mean you can't move the knight because it's mate. You can't move the queen because you have to keep the knight protected. You can't go anywhere. This knight could maybe go to e4. And that's what he did. I went here and he took my bishop. Had he not taken my bishop, the next few moves here, I would have tried to get more pieces into the game. And the way you win here is you have to put the bishop on f4 and then you need to play g5. And what that does is it's going to get the rook into the game and that will be the final piece of the attack. Now, if you don't do that after king h1 and you just go g5, that's probably also okay but white could take that pawn. And now you have to be a little careful. You could accidentally blunder your queen but if you play queen h5, you're still totally winning because you are threatening... You know, like the rook has now entered the game because the pawn is gone. Can't take this. You know, there's knight e4 back. Give a check. The king moves. This is double checking mate which is really nasty. But in the second game, he played very decently. Like the computer up to this point thinks that, you know, he played at least like a 1000 and that was early days. So amazing to see how far he came, you know? It really is. Folks, I hope you enjoyed this little throwback. Some of you saw this live when we live streamed it. Just a fun little thing. If you're from the Jinxie community, from the Gotham community, if you are from neither, you know, but you just enjoyed this video, I appreciate it very much. Got tons of other content on this YouTube channel you can enjoy. I have books for improvement. I have courses. I have a lot of stuff, you know? And you don't have to spend anything. You can just watch the channel. So yeah. More Jinxie collabs coming soon. Get out of here.