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Want to know how it feels to attend a World Championship match? Sagar Shah and Amruta Mokal, the couple behind the ever-growing ChessBase India website, are working on getting the most prestigious event in the chess world closer to us aficionados.
Browse through their YouTube channel for frequent video updates from the venue of the match. You will not be disappointed!
While Carlsen and Nepo are trying to figure out how to handle a massively complex Catalan Opening, let us take a look at the behind-the-scenes right before the start of game 2, the first encounter in which the world champion got the white pieces in the match.
Sagar Shah shows you on this DVD how you can use typical patterns used by the Master of the past in your own games. From opening play to middlegame themes.
Sagar enthusiastically goes over the first moves of game 2. What was Carlsen’s physical reaction to Nepo’s 7...b5? We are in for an exciting fight!
Another update from Sagar. Nepo seems to have solved his positional issues while still a pawn to the good. An enthralling fight, indeed!
If we chess aficionados find ourselves glued to our screens while following the tense games of the match, imagine how it must feel for the players inside the glass enclosure. Sagar has uploaded a video showing us how things look a few meters away from the players!
Magnus has reached this position 146 times with white and only 14 times has he gone for the Catalan with 4.g3. So it was already a surprise for Nepo
It was time for Black to surprise White with the move ...b5!? The main played move is ...a6. But Nepo went for the 2nd most played move.
Next Magnus surprised Nepo with Ne5!? The more common way to go was a4
...f6!? pushes the knight away but also weakens the Black king a bit and the e6 square
e5!? and it was already starting to look dangerous for Black as he was quite underdeveloped
Ne5!? by Carlsen came as a big surprise. The move was aimed at getting control of the weakened dark squares, but it turns out that after just taking the piece on e5, Black is able to coordinate quite quickly!
Nepo gets his knight into the game and already looks quite well placed
The knight jumped to b3 and now it was important to keep the dark squared bishop with Be3, but it would also mean that you sacrifice and exchange and still have the strong knight on d3. Hence Magnus went Rb1 but now Nepo took twice on c1 and was an exchange up. It definitely looks good for the Russian player.
In this position Ian could have pressed better, but he gave back the pawn with c3.
Magnus played his queen to c2 and recovered the pawn.
The knight on d6 was the reason for White having good compensation
Nepo sacrificed back the exchange and liquidated into a drawish major piece endgame
The rook endgame with 3 vs 2 was going to be a draw!
