The Ghosts of Chess Past || Magnus vs Vishy Anand || Tech Mahindra Global Chess 2026

Hello everyone and welcome to another incredible game from the Tech Mahindra Global Chess League. It is Magnus Carlsen versus Vishwanathan Anand, the Alpine APL Pipers versus the PBG Alaskan Knights. I've made an inquiry in the previous video whether you guys are interested in the teams or not. Some of you said yes, some of you said no, so I will mention it as we very rarely have such team events. But yeah, I do understand those who say that you don't really care, you just want to see the game. So yeah, Magnus Carlsen versus Vishwanathan Anand. The two of them played the World Chess Championship match in 2013, where Magnus Carlsen became the World Chess Champion. They played a rematch in 2014. Magnus defeated Vishy again and now it's 2026 and you never know, you might wake up one day and it's Magnus Carlsen playing Vishwanathan Anand in pretty much any time format. Well, probably not classical because Magnus doesn't play a lot of classical. But yeah, very happy that even now, a decade after the World Chess Championship match, we still get a nice game between the two of them. So let's check it out. Magnus with white opens with pawn to g3. We have knight to f6, bishop to g2. We have pawn to d5 and knight to f3. We have pawn to e6 and castles kingside followed by bishop to e7. Now we have the King's Indian attack. This is the Yugoslav variation. d3, we have castles kingside and pretty much everyone plays knight b2, d2. c4 is also somewhat popular. But knight c3, almost no one plays this. And this is of course what Magnus chooses. He wants Vishy to strike with the d4. And Vishy could play c5 and say, I don't really care, you know, about your little taunt. But no, Vishy accepts the challenge. He plays pawn to d4, knight e4. We have knight to c6 and pawn to e3. There are some games where knight e2, d2 was played. But here, e3. And it is now, as of move 8, that we have a completely new game. We have d captures on e3, knight captures on f6, bishop captures and f captures on e3. So Magnus, with the very strong center, has a semi-open f-file. Vishy, without a problem in the world, he still has to figure out how to develop the light square bishop. But there are many candidate ideas here. So pawn to e5. You could also just develop the light square bishop this way. Knight to d2 and bishop back to e7. As he knows knight c4 is coming and he wants to be ready with f6. That's exactly what happens. Knight c4, we have f6 and pawn to a4. Bishop to e6, closing off this diagonal. And a very very nice square for the bishop. We have pawn to b3. And for those who are new to chess, you might be thinking, can't we just mess up Magnus' pawn structure? Well, yes, but you improve his center and at some point, you know, he's just going to trade off pieces, play c3 d4, and he's going to have a much much better pawn structure in the center. And we all know, you know, long ago, people said he who controls the center shall win the game. So after b3, we have bishop b5. Vishy says, all right, let's trade off the light square bishops. And now comes c3. So preparing d4, we have a6 a5 and bishop captures on g2. King captures and pawn to b5. a captures on b6. Alpassan c captures and pawn to e4. Now, you expected d4 and it seems like a perfectly reasonable move. But e4, the move Magnus plays, also makes sense. You free up d3 square for the knight, then you can go to d5 to f5, and those squares seem absolutely incredible to have a knight on. So pawn to b5, knight to e3, and pawn to b4, trying to mess up on d4. So pawn to c4 and bishop to c5. And although Magnus does have these beautiful squares to use, the d4 weakness is definitely something that can be felt later on. Knight d5, we have pawn to a5 by Vishy, and pawn to h4, followed by queen to d7. Now, Magnus' idea is obviously h5 h6. And maybe instead of queen d7, Vishy could have gone for king h8, and then just, you know, wait for the pawn, and then play g6, and that's all perfectly fine. But Magnus plays h5, and Vishy now plays pawn to h6. And Magnus doesn't think twice. He just sacrifices his bishop, plays bishop captures on h6. And he played it fairly quickly, invested two minutes into this idea. G captures, and now you could play rook captures. And rook captures even seems like a more reasonable move, because you cannot capture, because if you capture, then you fork the king and the queen. But Magnus wants to win back material right away. He forks the king and queen right away, rook captures on f6, rook captures on f6, and now rook to f8 by Vishy, followed by queen to f3. And okay, Magnus is down a piece, but he opened up the path towards Vishy's king. And, you know, from experience, you know this is an equal position, pretty much regardless of what you play. And Vishy has some nice options here. He could go bishop to e7, he could go queen g7 even, and then you don't really have any options. You would have to trade something like captures, captures. And yes, you are up an exchange, but that knight having the d4 square, that's more than enough for Vishy. But Vishy played knight to d4, and now he blunders the game on the spot. Do you see what the problem is? What's the idea here? How do you win this for Magnus? Yes, it is queen to e3. But not right away, of course. If you played queen to e3 right away, rook captures on f6. So Vishy probably saw this, and he said, okay, that's not good. But he missed the simple rook g6 check. And now there's nothing for you to do. King to h8, queen e3. And going to f7 is impossible. The queen is covering that square. So king h8 or h7 is the only thing you can do. And now queen to e3 also would be enough. But Magnus decides to capture on h6 first. King to h8, rook to g6. King to h8, and now queen to e3. I don't think capturing the h6 pawn was necessary because, I mean, it's impossible to prevent the queen from coming there. But okay, he does capture the pawn first. We have rook f3, rook to h6 check now. Because if you go with queen to h6, you can block with queen to h7. It still wouldn't be enough to save the game. But maybe a bit more precise this way. Rook h6, king to g8, and now queen to g5 check. And the problem is, if you go king f8, then it's just a king hunt leading to checkmate. Rook h8, king to f7. King to f7, queen to g8 with check. King to f6, rook to h6 with check. King to e7, rook to h7 check. And that's pretty much it. You can even go for queen d5 check. You pick up the queen, and that is it. Wherever the king goes, you deliver queen b7 checkmate. So after queen g5, Vichy plays queen to g7. But now Magnus just skewers it. Rook to g6. And that's pretty much it. Vichy tries rook f2 check with some tricks that if king captures, you can go knight e6 check and win back the queen. But of course, Magnus will have none of it. King h3, rook h2 check, king to g4. Magnus just ignores Vichy's tasty offering and says, nope, I'm very happy on g4 with my king. And it was in this position on move 37 that Vishwanathan Anand resigned the game, as there is nothing more to be done here. So very interesting, because Magnus drew all of his games in the first half of the tournament. Now we're in the second half of the tournament. He only defeated Vichy in the first half of the tournament. And now in the second half, he also defeated Vichy. So 2-0 against Vichy in the Tecmark Interglobal Chess League for Magnus Carlsen. And it's not that relevant for the team. Like I said, I don't know if you guys are interested in this, but Magnus' team won. Let me just make this a little bit smaller, so you can see it. Magnus' team won because they had some very nice victories on boards 5 and 6. Khabib Koneru defeated Nino Batsyashvili, and Volodyr Murzin defeated Abhimanyu Mishra. So that's a pretty big victory. With Gujarati lost the Jouz Khan Erdomush, Anish drew Arjun, Divya Deshmukh drew Katrina Lakhno, and Magnus Carlsen defeated Vichy. So it wasn't really necessary, but you know, a win on board one always goes a long way. So yeah, I really hope you enjoyed it. I would like to thank Aleksandr Zolotkovsky, Derek King, Roland Winster, Cameron Polifronio, and James Rybka for your 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 in whatever else happens in the chess world. Thank you all, I will see you soon, and have an excellent rest of your day.