welcome to the Jib Chess Battle of the Sexes 2022. We're live from the Garrison Library here in the heart of Gibraltar for a very, very special, unique first of its kind event, a classical Scheveningen event contested between 10 of the best women players in the world and 10 of the well certainly very strong grandmasters who are battling it out here for a huge prize fund of £100,000. 10 women versus 10 men it is purely battle of the sexes no women will be playing against each other they're all on the same team as are the men so it's all about brotherhood and sisterhood in this tournament they've got a fight together because they've got a lot of pride on the line and a huge prize fund to fight for a £50,000 difference between the winning and losing team. It's classical chess so it's going to be an hour and a half all moves and then a bonus time after move 40 so the games are classical like they have been in Gibraltar since chess really landed here and as you can see there on the screen we are playing in a fantastic new venue for many who have been following the Gibraltar chess Congress and Jib Chess for years of course the Caleta Hotel was the home of this event with a heavy heart the Caleta Hotel will be a no longer in use and so we've moved down the road to the Garrison Library which in itself is steeped in history and heritage and it's absolutely fascinating to be playing in in this well to be commentating from here and for these players to be playing here and I think they're going to enjoy it very much it feels like a very apt surrounding to play such a high-class high-level tournament we will of course go through the pairings and through the players in a very short while you can see there's already some of the names some absolute superstars in town for example Jean-Claire Abdul Malik playing for the women's team one of the top young fantastic women players in the world close to you know getting even in I believe top five she's certainly going to be in my opinion one of the biggest stars when it comes to women's chess in the following years we've got Gunai Mamadzada she has had a phenomenal year in her own right already rated 2470 very very bright future how about Pia Kramling the women's captain Pia a stalwart of the game she is a grandmaster she's played the best she's been the best and now with her years of experience and wisdom is going to be guiding this team through hopefully to a victory Iris Secunda from Indonesia is here as is Marisa Bag and let's not forget the guys as well captaining the guys team is the very trustworthy Sabino Brunello grandmaster from Italy and we've got a lovely mixture of players and what's really fantastic about this tournament is that it's been designed so that each team is fairly matched so the average rating of the women's team and the average rating of the men's team is almost identical just a few rating points so it's going to be very very competitive and not lopsided so who have we got well we've got the likes of how about Joe Gallagher the famous Joe Gallagher playing now under the Swiss flag from England great player in his own right Ravi Harrier is here England's newest grandmaster Bobby Chen Grandmaster from Australia we've got Balashonka from Hungary fantastic young international master and what about this the king of the internet himself king of YouTube Eric Rosen you know Eric he's lit up the internet with his channel YouTube and Twitch and otherwise has got a huge following absolutely brilliant that he's here and we've got as I say I'm not calling the exact pairings here I'm going through the names but how about Maria Muzichuk one of the top women players in the world rated well over 2,500 grandmaster huge talent great for her to be here Olga Gia from Russia we've got ex world champion Antoinette Stefanova playing great to see Antoinette here she is a repeat visitor here in Gibraltar she's been here for years and years and years it's great to see Antoinette back Yovanka Huska Yovanka many people will know from the job that I'm doing at the moment with all of her work over at the Meltwater champions chess tour she's now giving playing ago and the young talent from Israel Marcel Efronsky also here in the building absolutely fantastic mix of players and as I say I expect a very very competitive tournament and very interesting chess they're all very creative players so that's going to be fantastic now what we're going to do in a in a short moment is we will go over to the playing all because we've got a very esteemed guest making the honorary first move today sir Bonanno who is the minister here for bossano I beg your pardon a service Joe bossano who is the minister for economic development enterprise and telecommunications I believe he's going to up well he may not will get confirmation on that my understanding he was he may be interviewed another day here but hopefully he's going to be making the first move if not hopefully we'll see him at the tournament at some point because he's been really the big supporter for Gibraltar chess and he's the one who has really made it possible for this event to happen under all the circumstances globally in the meantime what else have we got well of course what we want to do is we want to hear from you guys at home always so even though I'm alone at the moment I will be joined fingers crossed by the lovely arena bulmaga who is on her way and we want to hear from you guys so make sure you use the hashtag jib chess will keep an eye on Twitter to make sure we'll keep an eye on the YouTube comments as well to make sure we get your feedback questions queries and otherwise this is very much the first of its kind I've compensated on many events over the years lots of different formats but a chevon ingan event where it's men against women it's a it's a new format and we asked a lot of the players yesterday briefly what they thought and everybody was really enthused there's a camaraderie in the teams which is very nice to see and it's very also nice to see how you know a lot of these players especially I would say on the women's team where they're all top players they all participate in the same events where they are you know they're real rivals and now they have to work together and that's a really nice change because they're so competitive when they play against each other now they have to play for each other and employ certain tactics and as the tournament goes on what's going to be really interesting is what happens when you get to round seven eight or nine where if you know if it's closed you change your tactics well that's where pia cramling and Sabino are gonna have to impose their wisdom because there might be some games where you know pia says look tonight or today please you know don't go all in here or try and make a draw here or do whatever it is because you know the prize swing is is just so huge that you might have to employ some different tactics so there's a lot of meta game stuff going on in this tournament and that's what makes it equally as fascinating it's it's obviously also an absolute honor to be here and really a lot of thanks has to go out of course I will get some thanks before the tournament kicks off to the Gibraltar government to Brian Callahan who's really been the foundation the rock of this tournament who has been here since the very start either the Gibraltar open or now here who is pretty much devoted himself to making sure this tournament you know is able to happen and despite all the difficulties and global circumstances to be able to get over 20 nations that's right we've got over 20 flags from I believe every major continent is here it's it's absolutely fantastic and a lot of credit needs to be given to the sponsors who you'll see on the screen to the Gibraltar government to Brian and to the entire organization team who have worked really tirelessly in order to make this happen it's not been easy as you guys can imagine and a lot of credit is due there we can see now in the playing hall the players getting lined up we've got Matthew Carr there the arbiter in the top left corner who's going to be making sure everything works smoothly Lauren Frey who is the director of the tournament this year in the middle there speaking to Patricia and you can see a few looks like visitors media interesting bystander interested bystanders and we can see the people lined up there of course it's taking place in the library this library itself was created in the 18 18th century and it was it is I should say located in right in the center of Gibraltar and many many interesting old books here a lot of heritage in this library and I can say that having played in a similar setting before playing in the library with all the history around you it does inspire you to play some really fascinating chess it feels like the right kind of place to play and the setting is very very interesting now what we could do is actually go through the pairings very very quickly as we've got five minutes I'll talk about the individual pairings now so we've got Irene Sukand against Sabino Brunello that's going to be you know certainly of you know Sabino is favorite on paper but Irene is is absolutely no pushover and especially with the white pieces and by the way you can see that all the women have got white today so each team they either have all white or all black every day so Irene has got white against Sabino Abdul Malik playing against Andres Marano Andres Marario perhaps one of the lesser known players playing for the men's team he is a an Andalusian IM very very strong young player got a lot of potential Abdul Malik the big rating favorite of course Jean Sy has had has had a phenomenal few years her progress has been incredible so Jean Sy a big big favorite but Andres not going to be an easy game on board three Gunai Mamadzada against Hussein Aziz now Hussein Aziz from Qatar one of the top players out of Qatar great to have him here and playing against for me having covered chess for the past year one of the big breakthrough stars Gunai Mamadzada she's now rated 2470 incredibly young she I think she's only 21 or 22 extremely talented and I expect her actually to be a big contender for the the women's crown in the next few years I think she's got all the weapons so that's going to be very interesting Pia Kramling of course no introduction needed Pia has been playing chess for at the top level for decades and she's playing against Bilal Bilhassin from Algeria Bilal is for me again a kind of un he's he's I would say he's not an unknown quantity but he's extremely talented and Bilal is going to really well make it a very very tough game we can see them there Bilal rated 2508 higher rated than Pia but Pia with the white pieces she is extremely solid extremely tough and I don't expect this to be an easy game for Bilal at all so that's going to be interesting moving on we've got Marie Sebaq against Leandro Kürser now Marie Sebaq many many people will know the top French women's player and she's been basically the top women's player for years and years and years as far back as I can remember she's won just about anything she's a grandmaster and she's playing Leandro Kürser now Leandro Kürser is from Argentina Leandro has been here a few times as well he actually got his GM title in Gibraltar in 2017 has had some amazing individual results loves it here so Marie is going to have a difficult game today because Leandro is in his second home almost and we can already see actually the games have kicked off so we can see on the video there that is the game between Maria Muzichuk playing with the white pieces and England's newest grandmaster Ravi Haria young Ravi what a year he had last year he got all three norms in one year which is just unbelievable fully deserves it really really classy player and is playing against a you know a very very tough opponent in Maria Muzichuk so obviously we'll be checking out that game Olga Giga playing against Joseph Gallagher Joe Gallagher was you know for many years one of the top theoreticians in the world produced a lot of great stuff and in fact today I can see out the corner of my eye he's playing the Kings Indian defense his trusted defense he's even got a variation in the Kings Indian with his name on it so Olga we really interesting to see what she does Olga in her own right a bit underrated nowadays 24 16 she's much better than that so she's probably had a rough year or something last year because for me Olga she was rated I believe over 2500 at some point and very very love lovely person class player and very curious to see how she does with white against Joe Gallagher Antoinette Stefanova playing Bobby Cheng this might be the most interesting pairing of the round Antoinette Stefanova Etty the former women's world champion loves Gibraltar she is here every year without fail she played in the open for years and years and years did extremely well had some I recall she had some amazing performances over the years and she's playing against Bobby Cheng a new breed of grandmaster out of Australia I believe Bobby Cheng originally was from New Zealand but moved to Australia when he was 10 years old started training with grandma's of Darryl Johansson and then he became world under 12 champion which was obviously amazing for Australia and so he's going to be giving Antoinette a tough game that's a really interesting matchup after that we've got Yvanka Huska against Balash Chonka as I said in the introduction Yvanka mostly known now for her commentary exploits has done an amazing job as co-commentator for the Meltwater champions chess tour the Magnus Carlson tour she is a great player in her own right she's still very hungry as a chess player when I went to Oslo for a guest appearance on the show I spoke to Yvanka and she's still got a lot of ambitions as it regarding playing actually getting the grandmaster title perhaps getting her rating back up to where it used to be she's got a lot of a lot of plans and so she won't be ruled out because this is going to be a big stepping stone for her and Balash Chonka as I say I met Balash lovely guy he's only 24 years old he's from Shegat in Hungary he's pretty much already grandmaster status I would say he's already got one norm from the Bundesliga he's already crossed 2,500 and he's very close to getting the grandmaster title so he could probably even do it here with a good performance because there are more than enough grandmasters he can face that will be an interesting game difficult game there for Yvanka and Marcel Efremsky Marcel I don't know extremely well but I do know that she is really one of the hottest prospects in women's chess she's 26 years old rated 2437 she's Israel's top women's player and she won a bunch of world championships as a youngster and she's playing Eric Rosen who Eric you know just had phenomenal success in the online streets and the stuff he does on YouTube and Twitch is phenomenal one of the biggest followings in chess if more than half a million people subscribing to him on YouTube 200,000 people in Twitch and I spoke to Eric yesterday and Eric is very very excited about playing some over-the-board chess he too has got some serious ambitions wants to get the grandmaster title got a fair way to go because he's only rated 2356 but I think he's very underrated and I'll be really curious to see how he does in this event so that's the pairings and I guess that means that we can actually just go straight to the games so I guess I guess we should start with the captain first and we will start with Pierre Kramling against Bilal and if we can bring the board up that would be fantastic because I'll go through the moves here we go so aha I can see the live board here but I was hoping I was able to go through the moves apparently we'll just check that out in a second here guys bear with us okay that one isn't working let's let's try this one ah here we go we're good all right excellent okay so started out with Pierre Kramling playing with white playing the move night f3 to start Pierre has played night f3 and c4 and all of these Reti or English systems most of her life Bilal replies night f6 c4 and e6 night c3 and an early Bishop b4 which is now met by the move Queen b3 this is a slightly rare move of course it's being played and it's actually a system I quite like if white had played the move pawn to d4 we would have got a more standard either a goes in or a Nimzo Indian variant but the move Queen b3 says you know what I'm gonna attack the Bishop and I am going to force you to make a decision about whether you want to give up this Bishop or not and I actually really like this style because I think it's not as theoretical and you can already get in some practical problems here is black for example if black takes on c3 here for example the move Bishop takes c3 white can take back with the Queen and now this diagonal down here is potentially very dangerous diagonal for black because white is going to continue with playing some kind of Queen side expansion a3 and b4 gonna put the Bishop on b2 black might try to set up something like pawn to d6 and pawn to e5 to stifle this Bishop on the long diagonal but I always preferred these positions for what I feel like there's a lot of kinetic energy in this position for white and if you are able to open the position having the pair of bishops really works out very well instead though well that can't be the move so there's a transmission error in that game b6 would drop the Bishop so I think most likely what happened was that Bilal probably took took and played the move b6 hopefully we can get the correct moves there and I can see that the board is down just for the moment so we'll figure that out it's good that we've got that at the start let's move on to another game and let us go to well where should we go lots of interesting games going on we've already got a lot of game a lot of moves in the Maria Muzichuk versus the Ravi Harrier game so let's have a look so what we've got here is on the bottom left on your screen the small board is the current position and the board that's flicking through the moves is obviously my analysis so start out with e4 e6 the French defense oh let's try not to do that again the French defense played by Ravi it's his go-to weapon I played it a lot with a lot of success he had fantastic world cup where he employed it and has had some just really good success put put it back on the map really in many aspects so he plays a French d4 d5 Maria now plays the move night c3 and now we see the classical by Ravi the move night to f6 Maria now plays Bishop g5 of course the other main move here is to play the move e5 kicking the knight immediately but Bishop g5 pinning is perfectly fine and now Ravi decides to play the Rubenstein variation with d takes e4 which again is not the most played here after Bishop g5 Bishop e7 is is more popular just breaking the pin as is the move Bishop b4 which can lead to some very interesting and double-edged positions but d takes e4 a favorite of a lot of interesting players for example I think of Alexander Morozovic used to play like this and we get a very very imbalanced position after knight takes e4 Bishop e7 and after the move Bishop takes f6 g takes f6 so black voluntarily weakens his king side structure but the point is that he's looking to use the fact that he's got the two bishops to kick the knights to try and exploit the fact that the position is open and it's the sort of position where you can absolutely play for a win here as as black this is this this position is full of dynamism so white here plays the main move which is to go Queen d2 now in this exact position Ravi plays a move that I'm not so familiar with but Ravi is extremely well prepared I know that because I've done some work with him and my understanding is that in this position more common is to play a move like f5 immediately hitting the knight or perhaps to play a move like pawn to b6 to develop the bishop to b7 but Ravi tries to solve all of his problems off the bat with the move c5 which is very very interesting indeed immediately attacking the center so white here plays the move knight takes c5 I guess the move d takes c5 has to be considered but not exactly sure how black would follow up I want to play something like queen takes king takes and maybe if I go f5 here I wasn't quite sure what I was doing against knight d6 check I would have to take that off I guess pawn takes can I just go king d7 here as black and try and win that pawn back and for example if knight f3 I can take I can put the king on e7 and say no harm done even this position looks slightly better for white so Ravi must have had some direct resolution here after d takes c5 but Maria didn't spend much time she just took on c5 with the knight already so she's obviously well well she's familiar with this position at least Ravi took exchange queens and now played the move a5 which is a very very typical idea and we see what Ravi's trying to do is he's trying to stifle whites move pawn to b4 which would protect this pawn so Ravi's indicating that he wants to win this pawn back and if black manages to win this pawn back in this particular structure black tends to be doing quite well because the king is very safe the rooks can fly to the d and c files even the g file can be used and it's not really clear what whites pieces should be doing here so Maria played the move rook to e1 brings the rook in straight away and now Ravi plays the move knight to d7 hitting the pawn and this is where I expect Maria you can see her on screen thinking to play the move c6 this would be a typical idea in this position to try and give back the pawn under favorable circumstances dislocating these pawns so you have two isolated pawns and now continuing to get her pieces out I don't know a move like just knight to f3 for example and again it's a sort of position I would take white if rook to b8 maybe I can put the king on c3 protecting this pawn I can put the pawn on b3 white is very very solid so it's clear in this game that Ravi hasn't got really any big expectations to try and win he just doesn't want to lose this game so that's going to be very very interesting indeed let's move on to another game and I'm trying to find one that's just a little bit more spicy and I can see one out the corner of my eye here the game Maria Sebag against Leandro Kriesser will go from the start the game started as a Kara Khan e4 pawn to c6 d4 pawn to d5 the advanced variation with e5 and bishop to f5 and the most played variation nowadays which is just to bring the knight out and put the bishop on e2 this variation is called the short variation named after Nigel short Nigel who has also been here for years and years and years but you know he's he loves Gibraltar just like anybody else he managed to get his name on the variation white plays in a very standard and simple way but it's got a bit more venom to it than it than it may originally seem sometimes this bishop can get a little bit in trouble on this f5's where you can start chasing it around if you are not careful with black here so the short variation very very popular black now brings the knight to e7 which is certainly one of the most played moves white just castles and black decides to play in French defense style with the move pawn to c5 attacking this sensor again not the only move black has tried all kinds of things in this position one idea is just to play h6 at the right moment firstly to give a bit of a safe space for this bishop to come back to h7 and sometimes it's actually to get a little bit jiggy with the move pawn to g5 start creating space perhaps put this knight on g6 and play a bit more aggressively so any one way another way to play is just to bring this knight to d7 before anything but no Leandro goes for a very critical variation which is to attack this sensor immediately and ask white how she wants to play and here Marish who you know Marie if you look at her games over the years a very very combative player doesn't really back down she now plays the move pawn to c4 after a two minute thing so now we have all of this tension in the center the position like liable to open up and we we could get some fireworks now I as I say I'm not a huge expert on the theory of this line so I'm just going to go buy their moves Leandro played knight to c6 and again Marie playing relatively quickly which is an indication that she's still in book plays the move pawn takes on c5 and Leandro replies with the move pawn takes on c4 now material is equal for the moment but I can see that white can win a pawn by playing either queen takes queen and then bishop takes c4 or bishop takes c4 immediately my guess is that if there is a queen trade and you take on c4 black probably has got a number of ways to be fine here for example the move knight to g6 hitting this pawn hitting this pawn you can't defend both pawns at the same time you can try and get some pieces out with tempo but perhaps after bishop g5 you can just move the rook and it doesn't feel as though black is any in in any serious danger here whatsoever so I'm not sure that really works for Marie so much but she is going in for a little think now so I wonder how well versed she is in this particular line difficult to say we'll see if she has anything up her sleeve okay we move on and I can see that we've got a lot of orthodox classical openings on the board let's go to Jean-Claire Abdul Malik against Andres Merario so this one started off as a Italian opening and we get to effectively one of the starting positions of this Italian lots of different moves you can introduce you can play h3 here first or you can play the move b4 all kinds of little nuances to this position but I'm gonna get to the to the to the juice of the matter which is what happens after knight bd2 and one of the big things that black always asks himself is well my bishop can sometimes come to come under attack I need to give it a bit of breathing room so you normally move this pawn so you can drop it back here but where to move it there's somebody who's played e5 all his life I've always tended to put the pawn on a6 but it's become more and more popular nowadays to put the pawn on a5 you do this for two reasons one you stop b4 kicking the bishop another reason is you can actually gain space with just with your a pawn yourself by playing the move a4 like so the downside of this move is that you give up the b5 square that square is now a little bit more weeks sometimes this bishop can actually come around the houses like so and get a more Spanish position and sometimes you can utilize this b5 square successfully as white however most of the top grandmasters are playing with the pawn on a5 there seems to be a bit of a consensus now that this is probably the right way to play so a5 was played shanzayar playing very quickly with the standard knight to f1 the idea is often to bring the knight to g3 as we see in these structures andres decides to keep on running with the a pawn makes perfect sense pawn to h3 okay bishops d7 bishop to b5 so as I was mentioning now shanzayar looking to take advantage of to have that square threatening this pawn so andres plays the very very natural move knight into e7 which is you know a typical typical typical idea now your offering the exchange of bishops which is what happened bishop takes d7 and queen takes d7 but of course when you remove the knight from the seven square then sometimes what can happen is the the pawn on d3 can advance the d4 because there's no tension around there and you hit the bishop and here andres marario played the move bishop to b6 and the first question I have is well white cannot win a pawn looks as though first glance you could but you can't for example after d takes e5 d takes e5 if you take the pawn on e5 I can just chop here on d1 and chop here on e4 I'm now hitting f2 I've won my pawn back and I'm doing fine and if you take on d7 first I can just take back and the knight hand-elite defends this pawn so andres has not blundered a pawn with the move bishop to b6 so instead what happened was and I will get those moves up in a second is shanzayar just brought the knight to g3 and I believe that's the position we have at the moment with merario alalcon in the tank what can you say about this position very very standard-looking position I like the fact that andres has managed to advance his a pawn I think that's actually a fairly decent trump for him gives him a lot more flexibility on the queen side he's got decently connected rooks the only problem is how do you proceed now with black because if you ever put a knight on g6 which is what you tend to want to do in these positions is that sometimes white can now play the move knight f5 now I know already people are saying at home well hold on your blundering with night takes e4 even this isn't a blunder because for example I can either play something very spectacular like night's hg7 or maybe night's h6 with check and then recapture here on e4 but things get very very out of hand for example after f5 rookie 1 and e4 it may be the case that's black is taking over the initiative quite quickly here so things can get as I say very very out of hand and andres plays what looks like a very very interesting move indeed the move queen to b5 that one I did not see coming but that move is made possible as a result of this advanced a pawn right to a4 because now white can't play a4 himself andres is just protecting this pawn latchly with the move queen b5 the knight can't jump to f5 very very interesting move indeed so we've got potentially a a unique game here because I've not really seen this maneuver before the other point is that the b2 pawn is also now always in the eye line of this queen so very very interesting game happening there okay what else have we got going on let's take a look at mamad zada against Hussein Aziz mamad zada with the 110 113 rating point advantage which is extremely interesting playing white we had a Berlin defense and the main line with castles night xe4 and the move 5 rook to e1 of course the absolute Berlin main is with the move d4 and we've seen tens of thousands of games in this variation where the queens come off but gunai decides that she wants to play with the other very trendy variation rook to e1 hitting the knight the knight goes back and now you can take on e5 of course the bishop is not able to be taken because knight takes c6 check will win the queen with that discovered check so you have to go bishop e7 and now this bishop trap drops all the way back to f1 this is all well-known theory the knight takes on e5 the rook takes e5 and castles pawn to d4 been seen thousands of times and now the move bishop to f6 and this is the first moment where things get a little bit interesting because years and years ago white's move here simply wasn't on the table because it's not a human move but the machines showed that it is possible and that's to play the move rook to e2 the main move of course is just to drop the rook back to e1 but there are some benefits of having the rook to e2 a lot of the time when this rook comes over to e8 white would like to not have to worry about rook takes rook and then this d-pawn hanging so the rook to e2 is actually protected and it gives white a bit more flexibility in terms of being able to bring pieces out for example if black plays the move rook to e8 now white could for example play bishop to f4 4 in in one move and not worry about the exchange of rooks but Hussein here decides to play a move which is also I remember I think Wesley so played it I think a bunch of players have played it again a very weird looking move but one that's a computer approved which is to play the move knight c4 again a move that really couldn't really be considered years and years ago the point of this move is well that in general the knight is quite poorly placed on d6 and black wants to play d5 and be able to bring the bishop into the game via f5 or g4 so black finds this kooky little move knight c4 in order to do that and now the point is that when white kicks the knight away with b3 blacks argument is that that hasn't actually helped white because you've weakened this long diagonal here and black is happy to invest moving this knight for another tempo in order to justify that white now played the move queen to d3 and pawn to d5 and I believe this is a position we have on the board I tend to feel that white has got really very very little here I think you need to be an extremely well-prepared super grandmaster in order to really make these positions materialize in your favor I feel as though having commentated on the elite events when you look at the the Wesley sews and the Karawanas and the Maxim Vashila Graves who play these positions they really understand the nuances 20 30 moves deep and if you're not as aware of those then converting any kind of little advantage here is very very tough now already Hussein is kind of prepared to complete his mobilization perhaps with the move bishop g4 on the next move and then he might reroute the bishop round to g6 that looks very natural if gunai tries to get her pieces out very clearly with a move like bishop a3 black can just play the move rookie 8 black can always consolidate with c6 white in the meantime might want to try and get the rook over to you one that's another reason why the rook is on e2 it's because you can double quickly and try and take control of the file but as I say I tend to believe that black is doing just fine here and I believe the machines will agree so good night running absolutely zero risk here but is she gonna be able to grind out some kind of small advantage to work with only time will tell moving on let's have a look at a game of Yovanka Huska playing against Schonker and we have a Vienna opening here by Ballat Schonker taking this pawn on c4 indicating the start of the Vienna variation a variation I've played myself many times think it's a really good opening it's been played by a number of top players got very very popular over the past few years and we get a the basically the classical Vienna line which is so black wins a pawn but by winning that pawn white is able to establish the center if white is able to recapture on c4 unimpeded he then white is gonna have a good position so black pins the knight on c3 in order to meet Bishop takes c4 with Knight takes c4 now believe it or not this particular position is actually one of the hottest lines in this variation it's a pawn sacrifice things can get very very spicy indeed but Yovanka decides to go for the old main line which is to play the move Bishop to g5 re-pinning this night so that the knight on e4 is not on priest but now Schonker plays the move h6 which is basically the safe way of playing this variation for black and has taken over as the main way of playing when I was playing this variation with black I was playing the move pawns b5 which is a very very double edged move protecting this pawn on c4 keeping the pawn advantage but now you have to try and work out what you're gonna do when white tries to pin you we get something like a bovinnik variation from a Slav something very similar to that alternatively there are even crazy moves like pawn to c5 that exist in these positions crazy looking moves but the more safe and solid pawns of h6 has taken over as the the main way for black to play the point is that when white takes the knight you take back and you take here you say fine white you've won your pawn back but now I'm gonna try and play on the dark squares due to the absence of that dark square bishop with the move pawn to c5 and there is a bit of action going on down here but white says it's more important for me to get my lead in development so I'm gonna castle and black indeed decides to castle as well and after e5 just drops the queen back to d8 now I think it's in this position here where the standard way of playing is for white to actually play the move knight into e4 and after c takes d4 just to ignore it by playing a move like queen to e2 the idea to bring the rook to d1 try and win that pawn back and try and utilize the fact that white's got a lot of pieces over on the the king side here in the middle and on the king side and black's king is actually bereft of defenders and sometimes things can come at you very quickly here if you're not careful again at top level these this particular lines been analyzed really really deeply seems as though black can hold the balance but you really need to know what you're doing and it's going to be a test here for Schonker especially if you've anger follows up in such a fashion to see if he knows what's going on in in such a position judging by the pace with which black has played these this position judging by the the timing it feels as though Schonker is much more familiar with the position than then you've anger you've anger is already half an hour behind on the clock which is surprising because this is just a mainline theoretical position but again we'll see what ends up happening can see Eric Rosen there in the picture and there is the man himself baller Schonker with the blue shirt awaiting his opponent's next move let's go to Olga Gira against Joe Gallagher this game we saw the opening to or rather I mentioned the opening but let's see what has happened since we have a Kings Indian Joe Gallagher's pet line Joe been playing this for I would say now 30 years wrote books on it has his own variation it feels very comfortable in these structures so white here played the move pawn to e4 and d6 the mainline Kings Indian we have a classical variation with the move Bishop e3 now this is where things start to get slightly less common the absolute classical is the move point Bishop to e2 but Olga plays the move Bishop to e3 after which Joe strikes out at the center with e5 anyway which is a fairly common idea in these mainline Kings Indians you do not lose a pawn because if you try and win a pawn normally what happens is you try and win this pawn here on e5 but now black is able to strike back normally with the move Knight takes e4 or perhaps rookie 8 just looking to win back this pawn on on e4 and Joe is not going to be too too unhappy to see that as a result then and we can see there Joe and Olga Olga decided to play the move Queen to c2 which is a another fairly typical idea where white is perhaps looking to get in a very very quick rook to d1 and expose this Queen so Joe gets to Queen out of the way with Queen to e7 and now Olga decides to float in with the move Knight into d5 hitting the Queen at Knight forcing a trade Knight takes d5 c takes d5 and now Joe has to be a bit careful because the move Bishop c5 might actually win in exchange so Joe played the move rook to d8 getting out of that and Olga now goes in the tank now Joe as you can see also well you can't see perhaps on your screen but I can tell you that Joe has used half an hour Joe is certainly not a quick player let's put it like that he's not a rapid rabbit nowadays he's he's a long thinking methodical player he prefers the classical time controls but spending so much time already must be slightly encouraging for Olga who has got a nice 20-minute advantage on the clock with her to move and perhaps is already I don't know if she's surprised but feels as though White has actually got a really decent version of a lot of these Kings Indians the thing that Black will want to do at the right moment here for sure is to play the move pawn to oops not Queen to c7 that's definitely not the move she wants to play what I'm trying to say is let's say White plays a standard move here let's say the move Bishop to e2 is that one of Black's key ideas is to try and undermine the center with the move pawn to c6 if you're able to get this with Black normally things work out okay because if White ever takes Black is absolutely over the moon with Knight takes c6 because now the Knight can come to b4 it can come to d4 the Bishop can come out to g4 the d4 square is a fantastic outpost for the Knight this rook can come to c8 and this Queen on c2 would not be so happy so that is in general Black's main plan so my my my my question is what is Olga going to do to try and stop Black from getting an easy game perhaps the way to go for White is actually to put the Bishop on c4 here with the idea of saying well you can't get your stuff in that easily because if you play a move like c6 can I even now play a move like Knight to g5 just teeing up on this f7 pawn if you take I take and you don't really have a way to defend this easily because if you go rook here I can just take anyway thanks to the fact that this Bishop is hanging after rook takes f7 Queen takes c8 and Black White just wins a bunch of material so that looks like that is not particularly good and you don't really want to go Bishop e6 here as Black even though on further inspection it might not be as bad as it seems because it looks from the start that taking here and having these double pawns are bad but after takes takes the Bishop moves away and now Knight c6 Black is ready to lump that Knight in on d4 and I'm actually not sure how bad this position is for Black it's one of those where it could end up being okay but Bishop c4 definitely feels like a like a standard move here of course you can just go Bishop e2 but I don't really see what what the idea is to do that unless of course one idea beings that after c6 you go Bishop c5 something along these lines where you're now hitting the Queen and let's say the Queen goes to c7 that you try and move this pawn to d6 but I have a feeling that this is bad for White because I think the pawn ends up being more of a weakness than a strength although in this particular position it's it's certainly not straightforward because if Queen a5 I can go b4 the Queen is actually nearly trapped the Queen can go to a3 though and the position is getting very very messy problem is b6 is coming and then d6 might fall so sort of position again that I think Joe is in general reasonably happy to have a go in so I think Joe in this position is if we look at the live position is actually pretty pretty happy with things okay where haven't we been yet well it feels as though actually is there a game yes there is the game f-roim ski against Eric Rosen so let's go to to that game and but with me for one second here I just lost here for the moment the hmm okay that's not loading up for some reason slightly slightly strangely let's let's take a shot at the playing hole yeah let's do that and we can see there Sabino Brunello in the middle ah we can see Sabino Brunello there in the middle we've got the the Chief Arbiter there as well having a nice little wonder of course very very nice setting it is a bit chilly in there though so you will see a lot of players with their jackets on and you can see the Irene Sukunda just got up from her chair and you can see a tartan blanket so blankets have been provided that is a very very nice gesture from the organizing committee realizing that it can get just a little bit chilly in here from time to time let's go to that f-roim ski Rosen position Rosen game and we get a Bishop b5 Czech Sicilian here an opening that's again been part of my wheelhouse for years Bishop d7 not the only move black and block with 97 which leads to entirely different positions but here Eric decides to go Bishop d7 Bishop takes d7 Queen takes d7 and I was always one for castling in this position with the idea of if Knight f6 bringing the rook to e1 and trying to build a center with c3 d4 but instead Marcel plays the much more positional route which is to play the move c4 and trying to establish some kind of maroxi bind in the center after Knight f6 Knight c3 and g6 Eric deciding to fianceto the Bishop white can now go d4 c takes d4 Knight takes d4 and we can see that having these two central pawns stopping black from breaking with d5 this is the aforementioned maroxi bind these positions for years and years have been considered triple a safe for white and I tend to agree in general you don't get in big trouble if you know what you're doing but the game got very and it's one of those openings where you can just slowly grind and if you don't want to risk too much with white here you don't have to but things got a little out of hand as I can see in just a few moves because okay Bishop g7 white castle black castle white now play the move h3 this move is also very very useful because the move Bishop e3 immediately runs into the very unfortunate Knight g4 hitting this Bishop and that's very annoying you don't have to play with h3 you can also play with f3 and that's another way to stop the Knight coming to g4 and you solidify your center with with with this pawn move so e4 is more protected so for again from a theoretical standpoint it's been debated over the years whether to play h3 or a f3 in this game Marcel has gone with h3 and now Eric plays the move rook to c8 immediately hitting this pawn white now plays to move pawn to b3 some white making a lot of pawn moves and now we see the move pawn to b5 by Eric Rosen which is a fantastic move it's a well known move in these positions as well for the for the time being if white just had one more move there would be some connection along the back rank and there would be a bit more harmony but just for the moment Eric has taken the half chance to play this move which is a move that black wants to play in general anyway trying to undermine this structure this move works here for tactical reasons for example if I well I can't take with the pawn because I lose my knight that's pretty simple if I take with this knight on b5 now black can seriously consider the move knight takes here on e4 and thanks to the pin along the long diagonal if I take I can just take back thank you very much I've won an exchange so you can't take with that knight you can't take with the pawn and if you take with the c knight straight away on b5 then black is going to be very happy to take on e4 winning a central pawn for a flank pawn in these positions this is a massive win for black from a strategic point of view and the position is in his favor but it seems as though Marcel was pretty well at least mildly familiar with this position because she played the interference move pawn to e5 which is a really really really interesting idea the point is that when you take this pawn I can now take this pawn on b5 and unlike before I've managed to double your pawns I've managed to double your pawns and block the diagonal so that you don't cause damage down here and after knight takes b5 we've just seen that Eric has played the move pawn to a6 kicking this knight away and it looks as though the position is going to get quite sharp because the white knight really doesn't have any place to go it has to come back to a3 it can then come back into the game via c2 but we have a very imbalanced position three pawns against one on the queen side five pawns against three on the king side I gotta say though I think I would take black in this position I think something went a little wrong for Marcel some kind of move order thing feels as though black is doing quite well here I like the mass I like the fact that I can get my knight into the game to d4 very very quickly I like the fact that there's still a lot of potential activity long the long diagonal and I don't really see what whites immediate plan is in in such a position the other thing that black has got going for him is that he can always play them with pawn to e6 to stop any knight d5 occupations so why it's a kind of deprived of squares at the moment and blacks knights feel like they've got outposts so I think Eric should be relatively happy around here we will see what happens now am I missing anybody yes I am feels as though we've not seen Stefan over against Bobby Cheng let's go there Antonetta playing with the white pieces we had a reti that turned into a Catalan and the move pawns b3 very rare move the main move here is to play the move castles but Antoinette decides to play the move pawns b3 protecting the pawn now I don't know the main exponent of this particular sideline but Antonetta's husband Ivan Cheparinov is an opening expert and normally I know that she gets some ideas from him so I wonder if it's some preparation from from his side the point is that after pawn takes pawn pawn takes pawn it feels as though black is doing really well by striking out in the center and really annihilating the structure because after c5 when white castles you can just take on d4 knight takes d4 now if we take a quick moment here we can see that the white pawns have been split here on the queen side two isolated pawns and you might say well black has castled black is very solid life must be good for white for black however black has got some immediate issues to solve because this bishop on g2 is such an important piece here it's such a powerful piece along the long diagonal stops this black bishop from getting out easily sorry that's not a move and let me just delete delete that because it's a bit silly so black has got some immediate development issues how is he gonna deal with the fact how is he actually gonna get his pieces out in this position well the first thing is he played the move a6 but now Antonetta who's very dangerous with the initiative plays the move knight to c3 queen to c7 and now this queen comes out to be three protecting the pawn and you've got to be very very careful here as black things can go wrong very very quickly if you are not on the ball and I believe Bobby Cheng has made a move and he's played the move that I was thinking which is to play the move knight to d7 which makes perfect sense because I believe the knight wants to sit on c5 and hit this queen and the knight sits perfectly there that's a great outpost for the night hits the queen protects the pawn and it will then allow the final deployment of the black pieces so I'm really curious to see what Antonetta has got planned here because knight c5 is coming on tap unfortunately white would love to play the move before developing with tempo but you run into e5 or do you for example does the move knight f5 here exist and suddenly things are getting very very spicy indeed if you take my bishop I take your bishop with check king here and now I can keep up the momentum perhaps with a move like knight into d5 and if takes I can take here and then I'm taking here on the next move and I've won a pawn the dad looks pretty good for white if you play the move knight to c5 immediately then I can take this check this is the problem and actually I lose a piece so I'm hitting the queen and the bishop so 905 is a so bishop f4 e5 905 seemingly doesn't work and we also by the way now see the idea behind a6 by Bobby Cheng a couple of moves ago to stop any knight b5 so he could put the queen on c7 in peace so what is Antonetta going to do in this position not so easy at all maybe one idea is to play the move rook to b1 and after the move knight to c5 to actually plant this queen on b6 I think that's what she's going to go for actually because now after queen takes b6 rook takes b6 I still think the position is fine for black but at least we retain some pressure down here on this pawn it may even be the case that black could play for example I'm not saying black will but just to illustrate plaques plays to move bishop d7 here because bishop takes b7 might not even be possible because of the move rook b8 and the pin and does actually seem as though you lose a piece here I also want to point out by the way ladies and gentlemen watching at home I'm 99% of the time not using the engine as in I'm freestyling which is why I'm blundering fairly often so do bear with me we here at the Gibraltar a jib chess and Gibraltar chess Congress in general over the years if you've been watching the commentary tend not to use the engine I think getting the human perspective on these positions is is often the right way to go but of course there are sometimes where something absolutely needs to be checked but I will be doing it with without the engine so if you do end up if I do end up making a huge blunder somewhere along the line that is the reason why it's because I am playing the moves don't be too harsh all right any other games that we've not checked that well we should go back actually to peer cramling who we saw right at the very beginning but we didn't get through any moves against Bilal so we last saw it after Queen B3 which is as I said was an opening I quite liked and Bilal now played the move pawn to C5 in fact so Bilal protects the bishop with pawn to C5 white plays the move A3 and this also gives the opportunity for the bishop just to drop back to A5 so this is an attempt by Bilal he doesn't want to give the initiative to white too early and doesn't want to play too solid peer now plays E3 black castles bishop to E2 and black now launches out at the center with D5 which makes tons of sense and white castles and black brings his other knight out to C6 and now peer herself decides to try and occupy the center the only issue with this line is that the queen is now slightly misplaced on B3 and so it's very difficult to see how white wants to complete development and also the move pawn to D4 looks like it could be a particularly nasty move to face so instead white played the move D4 but now Bilal was able to take take and take on C4 and after Queen takes C4 we've actually managed to get an isolated Queen's pawn position so this pawn is isolated it's Queen's pawn and it's a very very curious position here because it's not a standard isolated Queen's pawn where white's pieces are all facing the kingside already but that said it's actually you know instinctively doesn't feel like a very bad version either because after what Bilal played which was H6 to which is you know he he viewed as a useful move to stop white developing with a move like bishop G5 white now plays the move Rook D1 as played by peer and now ideas of breaking open with pawns D5 are very much in the air other ideas could be pawn to B4 bishop to B2 and then D5 after which this bishop has got a fantastic diagonal and I have to say I'm kind of a big fan of Pierre's position here and you can see Bilal on screen and Bilal is he's kind of wriggling around in his chair that tends to be a bit of a sign that he's uncomfortable and I too would be a little uncomfortable here with black feels as though white is actually starting to develop quite the initiative and I would definitely take white here and Bilal's gonna have to come up with some kind of solution because you can't just play standard moves here and expect to be okay with black. White has also got ideas for example knight to E5 is an idea just to illustrate after A6 knight to E5 is a very credible idea the point being that if you take I take I'm hitting both the queen and rook sorry the queen and knight I should say and if the knight comes to D7 now white's got this phenomenal space advantage and the queen can also swing over to the action on the king side so I would already be very very very concerned here as black for example can I just play the move queens G4 you can't take because I can take and you lose a piece and now I'm threatening the move bishop to H6 so for example if you play king to H8 now I can play queen to H5 and suddenly we see the issue with putting the bishop on A5 as well in this variation which is that black is objectively losing here because you can't stop me from hacking on H6 and delivering mates in the next few moves so some some issues here for Bilal for sure and he's gonna have to try and figure out a way to to solve them and I believe I have actually had a look at all the games and they are all still in play I would say judging by what we've looked at so far that as expected first round KG first round and I would say that the advantage overall is probably with the ladies that's far feels as though they've got a lot of promising positions Pia cramling her position looks good Maria Muzichuk looks like she's slightly better Olga Gia looks like she's got a good position Gunai is doing well so it looks as though this round for the moment that the the ladies are have started off very very well indeed and some work to be done by the boys on screen Pia cramling and Bilal still there perhaps we can get an overhead shot of the playing hall see how everybody is doing is everybody seated here we go everybody seated which is interesting and there's Leandra Chris in the middle sporting the black jumper Sabina Brunello also their lovely little pan shot got Stefan over and Gunai Mamadzada course oh she is wrapped up she is feeling the cold I don't blame her I'm in the commentary room and I am wearing a I can't even remember what they call it what's the what's the long johns but for your top half that's what I'm wearing a thermal that's it I'm wearing a thermal you can't see it but I can promise you it is a bit chilly but the chess is hot so with that said we're gonna take a short break we'll be back in a few minutes time the games are just heating up and don't go anywhere see you in just a jiffy hello everybody and welcome back to the jib chess battle of the sexes 2022 we're live from the garrison library here in the center of Gibraltar historic place lots of heritage and for the first time in Gibraltar we've got a pure battle of the sexes tournament 10 top chess players top 10 women players versus top a top group of male chess players 10 players on each team men versus women and a very very balanced selection so we've got a very competitive tournament on our hands if you've just joined us for the first time welcome with this is round one today we've got a full schedule nine rounds and a hundred thousand pounds prize fund 75,000 pounds for the winning team 25,000 pounds for the losing team so a 50,000 pounds difference so these players who are over so often on the opposite sides of the board when we think of the top women playing in this tournament they often face each other big rivals when it comes to the women's world elite chess tournaments are now all on the same side because they want to take home the prize the big prize facing off against this group of talented men as well some old and young heads playing a great selection of players and we are very much in the heat of the battle before the break I mentioned I liked all of white positions to date basically so today all the all the ladies are with the white pieces all the men are with the black pieces and I thought that I didn't really like any position from the guy's side let's see if anything has changed over the past few minutes let's check back in with Maria Muzichuk Maria Muzichuk and I guess we'll go straight there her game against Ravi Haria now Ravi decided to go with the French defense which is really an opening he's been very loyal to recently and we have the following position after move 20 the last time we looked at things was around here rookie one Ravi played the move night to D7 trying to win this pawnback Maria quite logically played the move Bishop to B5 pinning that night and here King to see E7 and indeed the move seats pawns C6 this is a slightly improved variation of playing C6 before the move Bishop B5 so Maria obviously did that much better C6 and now Knight to E5 so almost a pure pawn sacrifice here by Ravi but the idea is that if you take on B7 Bishop takes B7 Ravi claims that he gets a hell of a lot of play down the long diagonal here and he could end up being fully compensated for the pawn in fact it's very difficult to see exactly how you how you plan to protect G2 pawn so instead Maria said you know what I'm gonna go for a more positional approach I'm gonna go F4 kicking the knight the knight can now take the pawn but now I can just trade trade create these two pawns here and play the move Knight of three so Maria's idea is that she wants to claim that she has one of these better Knight versus inferior Bishop middle games you can often imagine how a Knight could land on a square like C5 and dominate that Bishop so I really like Ravi's next move here which was to play the move pawn to C5 really really really like this move by Ravi Harrier you take away the square on D4 from the Knight and you also prepare the move Bishop to B7 to try to put the Bishop on this long diagonal and make it an in not an inferior piece but a superior piece because suddenly the Bishop is weighing down on this diagonal and I tend to believe that Ravi is actually able to solve his problems like so I tend to believe that this is actually a very very very decent position now for black because combined with the pressure down the long diagonal also the rook down here it gets very very very uncomfortable for white it's very difficult to see how to protect these pawns just to throw an idea out here let's say after B3 I went to Bishop B7 and once again let's just say why I played a move like let's say A4 these are not particularly good moves but just to illustrate what can go wrong here black can play a move like rook g8 hitting the pawn you can't move it because you drop the Knight and after a move like rook to E2 you could even run into ideas like rook takes G2 here just shows the power of the Bishop rook takes G2 and bishop takes F3 black Nets a pawn and is the one with the winning chances so that's why in this position now then that Maria decided to play the move rook to E3 protecting the Knight and after Bishop B7 to be able to swing this rook over to this side of the board in order to you know touch these pawns here on C5 and on A5 so she plays the move rook to C3 hitting the pawn but Ravi says you know what it's much more important for me to attack this pawn on on G2 but now Maria plays the move G3 so she's able to play the move G3 because the rook protects here and now she's longing to get this rook over to somewhere a little bit more let's say convenient because the rook is doing nothing on H1 a little bit more useful so but Ravi doesn't have to address that straight away and instead plays another move which I like very much which is the move pawn to A4 which is an idea to gain some more space on the Queen side and not allow White to fix the pawns favorably so again this is a move I like very much and here yes Maria could have moved the rook over but perhaps she was worried that a check might actually inconvenience the King so instead she plays the move King to E3 protecting the Knight and now actually threatening the pawn which is why Ravi now played the move rook G2 C8 and it feels as though Black is doing just fine here despite having the the the isolated double pawns let's say it feels as though the Black Bishop fully compensates for the slightly compromised structure this little cluster of pawns as well is doing very well because it's excuse me that's not obviously a move that was just a me clicking on the square I'll just make sure I delete delete that the pawns cover some squares from Knight jumps it also they nicely safeguard the King and actually we do have a situation here where this Bishop does seem to be better than the Knight the Bishop can land on D5 can hit this pawn and again just to illustrate how Black can play on all sides of the board here let's say this rook came to D1 and the Black Bishop came to D5 hitting this pawn here on A2 if White now goes A3 now we see another benefit of this pawn on A4 is that the rook can come to B8 and to B2 and all of a sudden White has got some serious issues defending this pawn in fact it already looks like you can't defend it because once again just throwing a variation out there after rook B1 Black has got moves like Bishop to A2 here kicking this rook and all of a sudden White is in big big big trouble because rook moves and you can just take here suddenly Black has won a pawn and is in the driving seat so well done to Ravi I think he's done really well to navigate this position and I don't see any advantage for Maria and in fact I feel as though Maria will understand this too and I don't think she's gonna be overly optimistic in this position and instead will want to try and just make sure that things don't go south so Ravi claiming some well some some cut let's say some slight comeback which because it looked as though his position was slightly difficult but he managed to solve everything there now a position that looks completely wild that I can see out of the corner of my eye is the position between Olga Geirja and Joe Gallagher and I don't know what's happened but I can see a rook on F6 and I get slightly nervous for Joe let's let's go back to where we were in fact something very similar happened to what I was talking about in the game because as it turned out Olga did play the move Bishop to C4 this was the last time we left it and after Bishop G4 she did play the move 9 G5 and I thought this was a really interesting idea actually because you're hitting the F7 pawn like so and the the difficulty black has is that it's very difficult to stop to move D6 which is an immediate threat and Joe found a way to do that although very unconventional way which was to put the rook on D6 now never really seen this maneuver before in this kind of position well the point being that you can't pin because you lose the knight and then takes takes two pieces here for the rook is just effectively winning for black especially because you've ironed out the structure so instead Olga plays the very logical move H3 kicking away the bishop to D7 and now just castles and here Joe plays H6 kicking the knight so okay for the moment you have to abandon this ideas on F7 black blacks pieces are still rather tied up I would say in this position and as a result I tend to believe that white is still doing quite well Joe Gallagher now played the move rook F6 curious little move I as I say I've never really seen this maneuver ever in a Kings Indian the rook on the rook on F6 in front of the F pawn I mean normally if a rook's on F6 this pawn is already advanced to F5 but no no no Joe Gallagher says excuse me I'm gonna put the rook on F6 now this does actually set up a little idea here let me just say let's just say white played a random move like H3 I wonder if Joe wanted to play the move bishop takes H3 exploiting the fact that this knight on F3 is just for the moment a little bit loose he could even contemplate an exchange sacrifice for a move like rook takes F3 here takes and bishop takes H3 hitting the rook and if you're not careful here with white of course you can get mated I understand the bishop is there now but I'm just throwing out some ideas so Olga who has now abandoned her idea against F7 also understands that this bishop is not particularly well placed on C4 and instead plays a very classy move in the form of bishop to E2 I really like this move I think this is a great little move you protect F3 you prevent any bishop takes H3 ideas and you also introduce the idea of Queen takes C7 and we had a move because Queen takes C7 was on tap so Joe played the move C6 which is typical and now Olga just played rook fd1 and I have to say I really really really don't like Joe's position I think he's in a really really rough position here you you really don't want to have your pieces so poorly coordinated in these Kings Indians and I feel as though they are I feel as though this rook on F6 doesn't belong there the bishop on G7 isn't particularly good the bishop on D7 isn't particularly good the knight on d8 isn't particularly good and meanwhile white has got all the space all the pieces working well the bishops are lovely the knight does a good job rook is coming to see one any moment now and I don't see how you actually complete development here with black because if you have to go knight a6 you have to tend to feel that that can't work for example takes takes now a move like I don't know bishop to C5 Queen to E8 you're really holding on by a thread here is black I understand bishop takes H3 is still in the position but you can do all kinds of things to to to nullify that threat and I tend not to believe in this in this position so Joe Gallagher after rook fd1 I can't see exactly how much time he's got on the clock but it's certainly less than Olga and I think is he's he's he's really backed up here actually quite substantially and the position is is extremely tough in my opinion for Joe Gallagher so good news there for the women's team I think Olga in control and Joe you can see him there on screen as well hardly the the happiest looking guy is he at the moment I mean you can tell by the body language he he's an experienced player he also he also knows your he also feels that this position has gone a bit downhill and so Joe with a lot of work to do basically here you feel in such a position let's carry on and let's go to the position between Yovanka who's got and Balashonka now I said in the opening that I felt as though it was slightly strange because I I wasn't sure if Yovanka was in book or not well she showed that she was because after e5 queen d8 she did play 94 and after cxd4 I mentioned how a lot of the time white just bypasses this and tries to put the rook on d1 and play as such with Queen e2 rook fd1 and the like but as it turns out Yovanka decided just to take on d4 instead which also is a perfectly legitimate move that being said when you do play this move Queen takes d4 it doesn't feel as though you get you should be able to get much of an advantage as white because after Queen takes d4 knight takes d4 what is wrong with black's position the answer is not very much two bishops not really impeded in getting the pieces out on the Queen side so it feels as though Yovanka just lacked a little bit of theoretical knowledge in this opening in order to make this work Shonka played the move knight to d7 hitting this pawn and now f4 protecting makes a lot of sense and knight to c5 trying to exchange some pieces now of course if you take on c5 after bishop takes c5 black actually sorry white actually loses as a result of rook d1 and rook d8 and you are completely toast here so that's just a piece so you can't do that so instead Yovanka decided to plow the knight here on d6 which looks like a fairly sensible outpost to my eyes I mean this looks like a wonderful little square for the knight but it is only the it is really only one piece that's in the in the position I guess Yovanka is thinking about perhaps going f5 though so let's just say for example black played a move like pawn to b6 could Yovanka contemplate the move f5 with the idea that after e takes f5 you can take on f5 and suddenly dreams of hitting f7 are alive even in this position I'm not sure they really are after let's say bishop e6 and it may be the case that black defends or does he for example if you take maybe you can't even take with the knight here or maybe you can because after 97 checking h7 I thought this pawn was on preys but alas the e7 knight is hanging at the end so it's all getting rather complicated but I guess this is all much of a muchness here because after 96 black played the move knight to a4 which of course is a very very sensible move because we can see here that the knight now attacks the b2 pawn which is actually useful because you hit the bishop and the d6 knight is also being attacked so for example let's say you protect this pawn via a move like rook to b1 now at the very least I guess black can consider playing the move bishop takes d6 e takes d6 and maybe rook d8 just trying to win a pawn and if you go knight b5 I can go a6 knight c7 rook b8 but you are still hanging on after rook d1 and I don't see a way to win that pawn that was a very rough version of doing that though and it feels as though feels as though just for the moment in this position right here that black should have something but I don't I don't see a knockout blow I don't see a knockout blow so is your vanguard holding on here and the answer might just be yes the answer might just be yes but it's close Yovanka hand head in hand or half a hand at the moment concentrating wearing her mask I should also talk about a little bit about that according to the regulations you are not obliged to wear a mask at the board players are being tested on a daily basis here so it is completely your decision although I know a lot of players prefer to play without the mask I know I certainly can't stand playing with the mask but a lot of players here want to make doubly sure and that's of course completely reasonable and completely fine Yovanka did play a move and she played the move bishop to b3 interesting ah so she she's giving up what's this move she's giving up b2 here but I don't she wants to trap the knight after knight takes b2 and play a move like rook f3 and try and trap this knight can it be but that doesn't really work because bishop c5 exists here bishop to b3 my spidey senses is telling me that that just that just doesn't work but maybe she's got some brilliant idea where she just has some decent compensation but I I don't see it I don't quite see it I must say I don't see it at all well we'll soon find out I guess what her idea is after knight takes b2 is it just because f5 bishop see the problem is bishop c5 is suddenly a threat because you can't defend this knight no that one is a bit above my pay grade I'm gonna I'm gonna wait and I'm gonna wait and see what Yovanka has up her sleeve there because I legit have no idea okay let's go to another position and let's go to let's see here oh this position is getting very interesting the game between Ephraim ski and Eric Rosen now the last time we left it was around where was it around here d takes e5 so knight takes b5 by and a6 and night a3 this was the moment actually I said Eric played the natural move knight c6 the bishop came to e3 by Marcel and queen to f5 by Eric Rosen all looks very fairly logical queen c2 and now that we have knight b4 by Eric also a very very logical move the idea is that you don't mind white trading with queen takes f5 g takes f5 because this is look at this pawn shrug look at this pawn structure here this is a very very unusual pawn structure two sets of double pawns but they're very very versatile and very mobile pawns somehow feels as though that this position is actually that the if black is able to get these pawns going that he's gonna have a good time because they can start running down the board and pushing the white pieces back that being said if white is actually able to kind of stifle that then she's just gonna have this huge chance on the queen side to get rolling and that's where she starts to concentrate the forces she first plays the move knight to a4 looking to come in to b6 and hit the the rooks okay Eric plays rook to c7 and now she plays the move bishop b6 which I like because f4 was was very much always in the air and with the bishop on b6 hitting the rook on c7 are you gain a tempo effectively because f4 was coming the rook moves to b7 and now bishop to a5 one of the most curious positions I've seen in a long time I mean look at this three pieces here on the a file double sets of pawns what what on earth is this position this is just completely chaotic however I will say that I do prefer black still somehow I it feels just a tad wrong to have all of these pieces on the a file that being said the the move knight to c5 is coming and you've got to be able to deal with that as black because that's immediately threatening to win so what do you do here do you play the move rookie eight do rook c8 rather do you play the move knight d7 perhaps looking just to control that square also very plausible because now e4 ideas are coming in and your bishop gets active this is an absolutely crazy position I really can't say who I would prefer or not it looks as though they're also completely equal on time and all three results possible there that's for sure that can just go anyway all right we'll come back to that one in a short while now another game that looks like it's getting very very interesting is the Jean-Claire Abdul Malik against Merario Alarcón position now the last time we saw it was after the move queen to b5 which I thought was a very curious move by Alarcón he's using the queen as both an attacker and a defender so here after queen to b5 Abdul Malik played what looks like the most natural move in the position which is the move queen to c2 protecting a lot of pieces e takes c4 e takes d4 now by Andres c takes d4 and knight h5 I mean this is an incredibly interesting idea using the queen laterally gives up the center but wants to exchange some pieces to relieve a bit of the long-term tension I don't dislike it I do like the move 92 very classic move though here by Jean-Claire looking potentially to relocate this knight over to c3 which makes a whole bunch of sense and in this position here now this knight came to c6 and no fear at all because if knight c3 I guess Andres just wanted to post the queen on c4 and claim that the queen is perfectly safe there because knight d2 runs into knight takes d4 and we hit the queen so that's why Jean-Claire played the move bishop to e3 well this is very logical over protecting the d4 pawn and completing development makes just a whole bunch of sense here and in this position after bishop e3 Andres said well my knight is no longer doing any good work on the edge of the board so I will bring it back in with the move knight to f6 knight c3 hitting the queen and the queen did just post itself here on c4 Jean-Claire now decided to kick this queen away with b3 but Andres apparently very alert because he took on b3 now this queen is very close to being trapped here very very close to being trapped however close isn't the same as actually being trapped so instead Andres found the move knight to b4 hitting the white queen and on queen to b2 just snuck into the d3 square here via this move here queen to d3 and I've got to say I don't know how Andres has played this game with black it's completely unconventional but I'm starting to dislike Jean-Claire's position maybe dislike is a little too strong but just to illustrate if Jean-Claire now plays the move rook a to d1 hitting the queen I can just sneak in here around the back with the move queen c2 and you can see in Jean-Claire she's she's a bit confused by all of this and rightly so because it's a completely unusual way to have played this position you can just play the move queen to c2 and now you're hitting the queen and if you take I play knight takes c2 and black is doing more than fine if not better you're hitting the rook and the bishop and how can black ever be worse here after rookie two for a start you can come back but you can probably just take as well on e3 and take and black has to be better here doesn't it because of this weak pawn here on a3 I would take black here all day of the week so I'm starting to actually wonder if in this position here whether Jean-Claire is in a little bit of I don't want to say trouble but it's certainly not a position which you know having played these structures as well most of my life with white I the move is not screaming out at me here I mean knight takes e4 I'm not even sure is a threat right now but it's certainly in the air rook takes a1 followed by knight takes e4 is a threat though so again just to put a silly move on the board to illustrate my point if I play the move king h1 now I can take on a1 you can't take with the queen because of knight c2 with the fork and if you take with the rook now I can take on e4 and I net a full pawn absolutely incredibly curious position and you can see it in the body language as well andres leaning back happy with good reason and shancaia she is just she's just struggling here she's just struggling you can you can see it and she's probably thinking oh I need to find a way here where I really I getting off to a loss here with white would be a really really poor result for shancaia in the first round against basically the you know close to the well one one of the lesser rated players and she's got to be careful we will of course come back to that one in a moment let's go to Antoinette Stefanova playing against Bobby Cheng and this position is also a position where you felt as though Antoinette had to find some good moves around here so this was the position we left last left it at the knight came to d7 in order to hop into c5 and you have to be quick here with white because if you allow black to just consolidate with knight to knight c5 and bishop to d7 things can get actually suddenly with white you've got no initiative and you've just got long-term weaknesses and black can start to get a bit optimistic so in this position here Antoinette Stefanova played a very nice move in the form of knight to a4 preventing knight c5 or at least dissuading black from playing the move knight to c5 but what black played it anyway but at least now you can take an after bishop takes c5 you can protect the knight and not have a knight posting here that being said as we know or most of us know uh if you've studied chess when pieces are exchanged from the board and you're the side trying to complete development that normally fades favors that side so black should have benefited from this trade of pieces queen to c3 now by uh eti and now e5 so bobby also saying well now i can successfully break out released my pieces via the move e5 this is a double edged move though because when you play e5 you give up control over some light squares and someday the knights might find their way in there so e5 the knight came back to b3 and the bishop came to a7 bobby cheng i like Antoinette's move now developing gaining tempo bishop a3 rook d8 and now Antoinette plays the move pawn to c5 uh again a very thematic move to a certain extent because uh you block out this bishop but at the same time and you can't try to control some squares in an ideal world this night on b3 might land on d6 one day but blacks position at the same time is kind of all of his pieces make sense so for example here if i just play a move like bishop to e6 or bishop to d7 or even bishop to g4 hitting this pawn how bad is my life if i just go bishop to d7 here and the answer is probably not that bad at all white pieces are just a little clumsy at the moment the knight especially doesn't look like it's gonna be able to find a home that easily and bobby did indeed play the move bishop to g4 i really like this move because you're attacking the pawn um and you know uh it's not that easy to suggest how to defend it because you don't want to go overly passive with a move like rook to e1 but at the same time what else are you supposed to do you could drop the queen back to c2 theoretically speaking but this also doesn't really impress i think bobby is doing all right i i think antoinette probably had a moment where she could have really put the foot on the gas but that it wasn't easy to see exactly what moment that was okay moving on mama zada playing hussain as is and this was arguably the most quiet of all the positions today this came about as a result of a berlin we last left it around here where i felt as though hussain had done a really good job in getting some kind of equality out of the opening uh it went bishop to f4 here bishop attacked the rook which is one of the ideas i was mentioning with the idea of now being able to connect the rooks okay queen c8 the bishop can now hit the queen with this and it's absolutely clear that this is you know gunai who played rook e5 to e2 and then rook back to e1 and now queen d3 to d2 it's absolutely clear that uh she's got nothing out of this so now c6 by hussain i like pawn to a4 and pawn to a5 stopping any push i like bishop to e5 and bishop to e7 also really think this is an interesting move by hussain because he's looking to bring the bishop to b4 potentially and the bishop on e5 again isn't really doing very much you can also kick away with f6 not worrying about the light squares because um you've got the light squared bishop controlling everything so bishop to e7 and now it's gunai trying to exchange some pieces off the board with the move bishop to d3 so my first instinct here is you don't have to take that being said if you go bishop to b4 immediately you've got to be a little bit careful that you don't start running into moves like queen g5 even this probably isn't very dangerous because black has got the move bishop g6 and actually now f6 is a threat and this is a threat so that probably doesn't work out so i wonder if you can just go bishop to b4 here and once again it feels as though it feels as though black is taking over the initiative just a little bit um maybe gunai's idea after bishop b4 is actually to play the move rook to e3 here protecting and threatening to swing across but once again i failed to truly believe that this is much of an attack after rook a8 because after rook g3 i can always play the move f6 and i have to be doing well here with black because my pieces are all coordinated there's a pretty nasty pin here and there is just no attack here for white so gunai not really um in full steam mode here i would say and hussein should be very very happy with his position um quickly back to maria musichuk against ravi harrier because this is the position closest to an end game of all the positions currently ongoing no results just yet and ravi has successfully got this position where he's doing just fine yes maria has got a pass pawn but this pawn is never truly able to be sent to the other side of the board um maria has just played a move that move will come in in a second let's say it's knight to d2 hitting the bishop uh you can just go bishop to d5 and now the rook can always come to a3 with check and the bishop is just much stronger than the knight on this open board she actually played the move knight to d4 here so she's eyeing up some knight c6 check ideas i guess but once again um doesn't feel like you should be too afraid of that i guess the only thing you've got to be a little bit careful of here being black is to play a move like f5 too quickly because you put all your pawns on light squares and suddenly you give away the e5 square so for example here knight c6 check king f6 95 hitting the bishop and then if things can go downhill for black very quickly for example bishop d5 i can now kick this bishop with c4 and let's say the bishop goes to b7 suddenly after rook d7 i'm threatening mate and the pawn on f7 and the game is over so you've got to be precise here so f5 already feels like a big mistake the point is that knight c6 check isn't really a knight c6 check isn't even really ever a threat just to illustrate if i move the rook to let's say a2 after 96 i just have to avoid king e8 because that would be made on d8 but i can play the move king f8 and i fail to believe that even this position is very much for white after rook d8 checking king g7 the black king is perfectly safe or if i missed some 97 move even this i'm not convinced worst case scenario i go h5 and give my king some lift but even here probably i can take check king h6 and as long as i'm not blundering mate here i'm probably okay it doesn't feel like checkmate though or does it rook g4 it's kind of curious 98 knight f6 is actually a bit of a problem so i have blundered mate good news that is mate right just to illustrate the mate so if you go here i give check check check and mate quite cute okay so 94 then by maria is actually a pretty interesting attempt and ravi is going to have to be a little bit careful i mean again it's definitely not panic stations i would say around here doesn't feel like panic stations at all does not feel like panic stations at all around here but a little bit of care required and you know you can see ravi there the head stretch the shoulder stretch maria sitting comfy with a tartan blanket also maria isn't really risking very much i should point that out i mean that's absolutely clear that maria is is risking close to zero in this position um it's just a case of whether ravi uh makes a draw i still believe that ravi is going to hold this position actually so uh let's see what happens now what else is going on um the peer cramling game team peer as they are going to be most likely referred to after e takes d5 this position here is also particularly interesting i mentioned before how i felt as though peer was getting a really good version of these isolated queens pawns after the move rook d1 and now let's say uh well bilal now played knight to e7 to stop d5 moves which is very logical indeed you will now allow this knight to jump in on e5 though which is fairly common place knight e to d5 like so bishop to f3 also fairly standard stuff and bishop to d7 so at least bilal able to start getting his pieces out bishop to d2 and rook c8 has to be said i quite like the past few moves for bilal i feel i feel like these have been good he's he's getting pieces out with tempo the queen drops back to b3 and now the bishop comes to b6 making itself useful knight takes d5 and e takes d5 this all looks uh very very very decent actually i must say um this all looks very very decent and the problem uh peers got here and it's peer to move after he takes d5 is you feel as though you can take this pawn on d5 but you just can't or at least it's not going to be anything major because after bishop takes d5 i guess you can play how do you want to do this i mean just for example after knight takes d5 queen takes d5 bishop e6 if you take queens off this pawn on d4 is just not going to uh survive black has got the two bishops and even if you actually hold this pawn on d4 with with an ugly move like bishop with an ugly move like bishop to e3 this kind of position is never bad for black the two bishops fully compensate here and uh white really has got close to little the black coordination of the pieces is phenomenal and uh black has got absolutely nothing to worry about so the question is what happens if you take on b7 here but again i tend to believe that this probably isn't very much for white because queen takes d4 looks problematic hitting the night and hitting the pawn on f2 and this is where things can start to get really really hairy if you're not careful here with white uh things can start get going downhill very very quickly actually um so that's why peer is having a thing and in fact we do have a move and peer decides to play the what looks like the most logical move in the position actually the move bishop to b4 clearing the way protecting the d pawn hitting the rook now this is a much improved inversion because now after the move rookie eight here if you take on d5 take and take is this a better version after bishop b even this feels like black should be after okay after queen takes b7 i'm two pawns down but my my spidey senses is telling me that i i don't feel like this should be that bad but i i'm struggling to see the the pure route through to be brutally honest i'm struggling to see the pure route through and unfortunately if that's the case then that's what bill l has to calculate as well um he has played rookie eight so the question is does peer actually have anything else here and you would have to think that she probably uh doesn't right what else is she's supposed to do apart from take on d5 here i don't see any other leverage spots in the position and if you allow black to do anything black can just play bishop e6 on the next or play move like 94 i think bishop e6 is the most natural and zero problems peer with about what it looks like is like 33 minutes left on the clock or 39 minutes perhaps so yeah 39 minutes bill l with 29 minutes so looks like she's you know she's got enough time here we're on move 18 so as i say it looks uh it looks as though feel as though this one is going to end in a draw somehow that's my impression about this position here um okay moving on now yvanka i mentioned before she she gave up this pawn against shonka and i wasn't completely buying it let's see if she was able to justify it so 90s b2 she brought the rook to c1 so this was her her idea here to bring the rook to c1 and the idea clearly is firstly to stop bishop c5s and secondly to bring the rook to c7 where it can cause a bit of discomfort but shonka found a great little move the move bishop d2 and i think that puts to bed yvanka's ideas basically because now after bishop d2 um you're threatening not only the rook but bishop e3 check as well and that forces your reply which is to take on c8 but after rook takes fc fc8 knight takes c8 rook takes c8 it's absolutely clear that this has been uh a somewhat of a somewhat of a disaster unless hold on a second i do see a tactic out the corner of my eyes can yvanka play the move knight takes e6 here the point being of course that after f takes e6 bishop takes e6 check and uh you win the rook and you have a winning position wait so why does this just work knight takes e6 it i mean it's a it's for yvanka this is a uh a tactic that she would see in her sleep so the question is is there a nasty reply here for black and i don't see it you could try and block with the move knight c4 ah knight c4 is nasty actually this is a little trapped by balash isn't it the more i think about it the point is that after knight c4 you are now trapping effectively this knight on e6 because after knight d4 bishop e3 check wins it that knight has got absolutely nowhere to go except the d8 square i mean can this can this actually be possible i guess it can because i'm threatening to take on b7 if you take i take here even this position is probably slightly better for black because for example i can give a check force this king to the corner and now play a move like rook d4 hitting the bishop and pawn but you start to get the sense that while it's got decent drawing chances for example if you drop back here you can never take like this because this is an easy draw and if you take with the bishop on f4 then worst case scenario i can play a move like g3 for example bishop takes e5 and rook takes f7 which should also end in a draw so it feels as though yvanka's actually got some resources here and if i had to guess i think she will play knight takes e6 and uh unless there's something nasty there might be something nasty here let's have a think this is a really curious position so knight takes e6 of course you could play bishop e3 check king h1 and knight d3 here is blackhead that's another curious little idea and now the point is that you're actually threatening knight f2 check and the knight is still trapped on e6 a knight f2 check might cause a few problems or does it i mean what if i just go g3 what what is actually going on here i've got absolutely no idea what what this kind of position is am i am i winning am i losing is it what's going on and yvanka has got about 15 minutes to work it out which is really not a lot of time in such a position so many tactics in the air you have to feel that this is uh i mean this is a very very tricky position yvanka with the hair behind the ears full concentration as we're so we've we've come so accustomed to with her but um wow i mean this is uh this is absolutely crazy what other moves has she got apart from knight takes e6 is there anything else apart from knight takes e6 here that makes sense the answer is pretty much no because if you don't play knight takes i guess f5 no sorry f5 runs into bishop e3 check so bishop e3 check is actually a serious thread if you don't play knight takes e6 then then what are you doing in this position basically what are you actually doing here really really really tough one i get the feeling that the game is actually going away from yvanka here and i would be a little concerned if i was in her position all right we'll keep an eye on that uh meanwhile see a move out the corner of my eye here maria musuchuk has she delivered a bit of a shot here to ravi haria the position was just a few moves ago i said ravi was doing just fine knight d4 rook a3 check okay the king came back to f2 and he put the bishop on d5 and now knight f5 check by maria is that actually a really good shot because the point is that if you go king f8 you run into a nasty little idea with c4 and if you take on c4 this is a famous mate and if you uh take on f5 c takes d5 you've got these triple pawns even this position might not be losing for black like after king e7 d6 king d7 but rook d5 i don't know it's it's it's getting uncomfortable and ravi also i i mean what else can he do actually he has to go king e8 does that move keep him on the board here king e8 boy boy boy this is ah but now c4 anyways because bishop takes c4 knight d6 check actually picks up the bishop bishop e4 same idea bishop f3 and well in the worst case now is white i can go knight d6 check king e7 and a move like rook to d2 and you feel as though just temporarily black is a bit poorly coordinated but ravi cool as a cucumber has just said you know what um i'm just going to go king e8 you show me why this is so bad now this is one of those occasions where i will quickly cheat and apparently it's completely fine for black and 93 was played by maria and now ravi can just put the bishop on e4 and uh everything is hunky dory basically um ravi has got uh perfectly reasonable position and you can see he's a bit more calm a bit more calm has come now to his body uh yeah he's going to play bishop e4 and and this is just uh absolutely nothing for maria now so panic over for ravi haria we got to go back to joe gallagher's game this one is getting very very spicy joe gallagher playing with the black pieces against olga gear yeah and i mentioned before how i really dislike joe's position and uh that hasn't really changed to be brutally honest um olga has now played the move pawn to d6 on move 20 and it feels as though that's uh that might be a uh i don't want to say a ko blow but instinctively it feels as though joe is very close to being toast because if you take on d6 i guess olga's idea is she wants to take queen takes d6 and now take on b7 hitting the rook you can't go here because you now drop the knight on a6 so that's no good and if you bring the rook into b8 maybe this is just about holding on oh sorry no the knight is still hanging i beg your pardon the knight is hang no that and the knight is hanging the bishop is on e2 this looks very very very bad for joe gallagher after d6 i don't see a move here for joe because if you move the queen across let's say you move the queen so i don't know d7 or d8 you all are also running well let's say d7 because you've got to control the b7 square you got knight's 85 now this is a catastrophe for joe and so far this might be a model game played by olga this could just be an absolute blinder played by olga guillher i mean this could just be game of the day i i wasn't convinced at all about joe's rook maneuver from the start when he he did all of this stuff with the rook to d6 and to f6 felt highly synthetic and not really in tune with the position and now it's kind of being confirmed because olga just played very natural moves she did nothing particularly special you know bishop e2 was class rook to d1 was good cd5 e5 is obviously good queen to b3 hitting the pawn and d6 i mean the game has flowed for olga in a very very positive way and i actually don't see any way out joe gallagher got about 20 minutes left on the club you can see him squirming in his chair he's very unhappy and he yeah he's he's fully aware that the position is is very very bad let's move on to another game and let's have a look at mary sabag against leandro crea sir i felt as though leandro had a pretty interesting opening and we have this position after move 17 here and once again it feels as though and i'll say this as well it feels as though uh leandro is doing uh just fine in this position basically that's without analyzing a single line wise pieces are a bit i mean they look fine but they are actually lacking purpose for the most part and i it's one of the it's one of those positions i've had over the years or something similar where you ask yourself like how bad could things be here right how how how awkward could things be here and then you start to look at the position more and more and you're like ha i don't actually have a move here with white constructing a plan in this position is actually pretty difficult i guess one idea is that i look at my bishop on g5 and i say i'm not particularly happy with this piece right so i say this piece here is a bit junk um so can i get this piece back into the game and one idea perhaps is just to drop this bishop back to h4 to then put it on g3 to then facilitate a knight into d6 jump and that looks fairly sensible to my eyes you know remember guys when you think about positions where you need a plan oftentimes you have to ask yourself well which of my pieces aren't really working marie decides to go with the move pawn to h3 which i am a bit indifferent towards to be honest it feels like a bit of a not a move that says i don't know what what i'm doing here but she wants to give some look for her king which can you know can always be a good idea but um yeah i'm not i'm not overly convinced let's just put it like that uh yes that said what are you supposed to do with black here because that's also not clear cut to me some part of you wants to go b5 but that probably doesn't work out because knight d6 is very annoying and then after bishop takes d6 e takes d6 queen takes d6 you drop b5 and suddenly you ask yourself why did i just do that that wasn't a very good idea the trades here have only helped white open the position now all of white's pieces do make sense so you can't play forcefully here so what do you do here with black also not at all um intuitive very tough position to play for both sides creaser with 10 minutes extra on the clock and uh he's got to use all of that time to work something out in the meantime let's look at Irene's game against Sabino Brunello this is the position after bishop f8 and move 21 um tend to feel as though black is doing well here or at least at least equal um but it's also one of those spanish positions which you have a hard time believing that white is really struggling um not at all clear to me again what and and again just like the last example actually a position where forming a plan is not straightforward at all forming a plan here is is really not clear cut to me um tough one really struggling here with a move like trying to suggest a move here with white is is not straightforward i mean you can always go rook d2 or something like that just to it's a sort of passing move but i feel as though black's going to go a5 in that position and all of a sudden he's going to start taking over the initiative um no i'm i'm kind of lost here i the more i look at it the more i start to realize that actually i think that Irene has got a bit of a task here to to make this work because it could be the case that she ends up just spending a fair amount of time it's move 20 and you don't really find anything she hasn't got an easy way to liquidate either because you can't take on c5 because bishop takes c5 it's just very unpleasant queen e2 bishop c4 or queen e2 and maybe knight a5 a bishop c4 first maybe bishop d3 knight a5 something like this starts to get completely out of hand basically um yeah just of a very very tough spot for Irene we'll keep an eye on that one though what else have we got going on the froymski versus eric rosengames the maddest game of the round and it hasn't got less mad since i last checked in so it was around here where it was knight a4 here bishop to b6 the rook came to b7 bishop to a5 and now knight to c6 back and here bishop to c3 hitting well not hitting the pawn eric came in with 94 and the bishop's come back to b2 so all kinds of random maneuvers going on in this game the rook came to d8 which looks logical f3 and now the knight jumped into g3 and this is what I was saying is that black has got this kind of weird play on the king side these knights are completely out of bounds and you have to start making big concessions as why it's suddenly on the on the king side and like moves like f3 are just not moves you want to play in general in such a position I mean this is clearly not a move you want to play so you allow knight g3 oh and now at least knight c5 is comes rook to c7 okay so knight takes a6 rook a7 wins so that's why she went rook d1 and now the knight comes in on d4 again I'm just my navigation in this position is just my my compass is completely off I tend to want to play black because I feel as though white's pieces are offside for example if you go knight takes a6 I am yearning for a move like rook d7 followed by knight takes here and if you take I guess I'm very happy because having this past d pawn has to be huge when it starts running down the board and you can't really blockade successfully or can you knight c5 rook c7 knight d3 but now as I mentioned before when you've got the flanks you flex it and the e5 move comes and e4 is coming absolutely not a not a clue in the world what's going on there so she did take on a6 so let's go there so knight d4 she took on a6 now what has eric got lined up here maybe the best move is actually just to drop back rather than play rook to d7 which allows knight c5 maybe you try and um trap this knight out the game ever so slightly with a move like rook to c8 rook c7 to c8 and again some some part of me is just it's amazing white has got three protected pass pawns here three pass pawns yet my intuition says that this is a bad position for white and it's because maybe knight b5 by the way is an okay move there but it's because these knights are as Spanish football players would say fuera de juego a lot of a lot of people watching the football here I don't know I need I've got absolutely no idea what's going on it feels like I would take black though and I'm very curious because the time situation is they're very very close 27 minutes against 25 minutes with 14 moves more or less to go feels like it could be a very very exciting finish before move 40 here we'll keep an eye on that meanwhile Joe Geller is still stirring about this position so Joe clearly 20 moves in has to be very very upset well not very very upset I mean Joe slightly peeved might be a better description and yeah I think he probably just thinks that this position is losing hence why he's thought for so long you've anger also feels as though it feels as though you've anger hasn't found a solution to her problems after rook f3 now black just is a pawn up of course that the the conversion in such a position is a little trickier because it's opposite color bishops and for example a move like rook c3 would be a catastrophic decision because after takes takes we do have opposite color bishops in game opportunities and why does God a good chance and in fact that game could go on for for quite some time so but you've anger clearly suffering a little bit and understanding something went wrong Jen say Abdul Malik's game has exploded here and it all looked kind of like andres was in control let's see if he managed to keep it so here bishops c1 was played okay so we saw this position bishops c1 so an interesting way to initiate the queen trade rook to e8 so white has got the center but black's piece is very active and here jansai decided to go with it with e5 the knight comes to d5 which makes a lot of sense e takes d6 and now black decided not to take back on c6 d6 immediately and instead played the move knight takes c3 bishop takes c3 and knight to d5 again a kind of incredibly curious decision but i like it because you can't take on c7 because i can just for example what can i do can i take on c7 no i can just take here right knight takes c3 takes takes yep and rook c192 check so 95 threatens the bishop and so you have to move the bishop right or can you take on e8 and play rook e1 if we're trying to get tricky but this clearly is the dream for black if we got an ending like this alakam would be pumping would be fist pumping because only black can be better and i don't know if this is actual suffering for white you put the bishop on d2 and you run the king to d3 doesn't really feel like suffering but andres obviously knows here he can't lose because he's got no attackable weaknesses feels once again that that kind of that position there is going to end up being a a draw uh pia kramling did win a pawn in her game so she ended up taking this pawn on d5 and in fact instead of taking back billel just played bishop e6 at once which is very very interesting indeed because um now after bishop takes e6 takes e6 takes e6 uh pia is just a a pawn up that being said billel has got really good control over some of the key squares in the position especially the light squares and after let's say knight to f3 you can play a move like queen to d5 and it's one of those again or knight to d5 i'm not really sure where you tend to feel that black has got enough decent coordination to claim that the extra pawn isn't really that much because after let's say takes takes now i'm threatening to come into e2 i'm threatening this bishop on b4 sometimes the knight's coming to f4 the rook can come to c2 all of these active moves for black and for white it tend you tend to feel that uh yeah that the position is just lacking in in energy really and the extra pawn you can't really do anything in fact in this position here if i was white i would almost certainly be uh not looking to win the game i would be looking to certainly not lose the game it's a sort of position that actually can get out of control very very very quickly if you're not careful so um let's check out one more position and then we may go for a very quick break before i'd go there let's have a look okay let's go back to ma ma ma zada gunai playing white and i said that i thought hussain aziz did very well and she did exactly what i thought which was to basically bring the rook to e3 and after rookie one bishop g6 i still maintain here that aziz has had a really successful game so far if the rooks come off nothing happens and in fact the structure is a bit preferable here for black and also this pin is still a little bit annoying for white so and and the good news for hussain is that he he isn't running out of moves because this knight on b6 still needs to be improved and it can come round via c8 and d6 and that feels as though he's going to be in a completely fine position and in fact i'm starting to prefer black in this position and i think gunai needs to think about how to actually start a bail out situation here i you shouldn't really want to play on too much in this position with white you've got no advantage you've got no attack there aren't really any prospects so this is where experienced players try to find a clean path to equality just for one example just off the top of my head bishop takes g6 takes takes takes takes takes and now queen e2 for example as a means of getting out of the pin looks like a fairly sensible way to proceed and you you try and get half a point here but certainly not a successful game for gunai so far and hussain has done very well all right with that said all games still in progress as i can see things at the moment it looks as though the women have got a great position in the olga gear joe galligan game i expect joe to lose that position i however am a bit negative towards yovanka's position she's got a tough game there she's a pawn down and she's gonna have to hold on and the rest of the games are pretty balanced so we have a very very balanced round now but of course a lot can change very very quickly so we'll be back after the break and we'll be seeing the meat of this round halfway through round one of jib chest battle of the sexes 2022 don't go anywhere my very first time of playing in a team event where it's been men against the women and i can't wait i mean when brian suggested the idea to me like a few years ago i was like do it brian you just have to do it it's so radical it's special and it's unique years during this tournament the open tournament there's always a bit of rivalry for example even that special day off we used to have during the event where we had the battle of the sexes night where there was that fun game on the big board and everybody got involved and now it's for real now it's on the real board it will be great because every time we have been to jeep router to jeep the jeep festival there were a lot of women playing very well and beating a lot of grandmasters but this time as you know it is a bit different we have similar ratings similar age so i believe it will be a very interesting event and obviously i hope that the women will win we'll see what happens i mean who knows i mean it's it's interesting probably a one-off but it's a very good idea i think yes this is going to be like a very interesting format and i believe after this there will be many organizers will imitate the event format like this so we'll see i like the format and it looks like it should be interesting and close so i guess that's the main point that it's going to be close and yeah looking forward to it and hopefully our team will show our best and a little bit guys i have to say i don't think it's even going to be close so i think the women are going to crush the men yeah we'll see i am way less results focused and more just focused on playing good moves so we'll see that where where that takes me we have our own whatsapp group it's called uh laguapas so i think the laguapas will win this one because i believe in our team captain pia crumbling i'm just so very happy that we'll be in the same team because otherwise she's going to crush me again like in briga the grants is so uh and we have antonyatastava nova and we have the youngsters as well as anzaya mama zada and and the rest of the players uh of my teammates they are very amazing players so i'm very confident that we're gonna win this event of course women yeah i have no idea but i really hope that the that we win obviously um yeah it'd be nice to have the extra five grand but um yeah we'll see i don't know i'll tell you after round nine it's gonna be the women we have the best team atmosphere and we've decided we're gonna win that's it everybody and welcome back to jib chess battle of the sex of 2022 we are in full swing in round one a few results have come in though we'll get to those in a moment before we go there though i'd like to introduce uh irina bulmarga who's gonna be commentating thanks for coming arena you've saved me you've saved me thanks for coming it's uh it's uh it's there are a lot of games and any help is appreciated so thanks very much for coming at the last minute to watch them and i hope that uh women's team will get some points today i think they're gonna get some points well we know they've got some points because we can report some results so the result perhaps that is least surprising to everybody who's been watching since the start olga gearia has beaten joseph gallagher uh really nice game by olga was in control from the start to finish and she has beaten joe uh convincingly congratulations to olga that means that's the first win for the women's team since then there've been a couple of draws also in the sabag creosah game as well that ended in a draw which was uh kind of actually this position here before we went to the break uh irina i was saying it was very difficult to make a plan for both sides it was very difficult to suggest something and so they both felt it was the same situation and agreed a draw which is a clever thing to do and then jan sire abdamalik played against alakon really nice game actually by alakon played very creatively um and he got a very decent draw playing against jan sire in this position this ending is just a draw you put a king king walks to d3 and you've got no issues sorry i've got to do it down here jan sire is a very dangerous player especially with the white pieces absolutely yeah absolutely she's extremely dangerous and um but a good good draw then for alakon who's you know he's only rated 24-05 but that would give him some confidence today so that means we've got seven games still going on and looking at a few of the positions i will say that i've been mentioning this from the start i think yvanka huska um is in big trouble in this position uh here perhaps we can get the board she's uh she's a pawn down it seems yeah she's uh she's a pawn down with with no real compensation a weaker king uh the bishop is very good being on the dark squares uh if we can bring that up please mr producer in a moment because at the moment we we don't have the board so we're just talking but we can just here we go uh so this is the position uh the moment and as i say yeah yvanka in big trouble here yeah indeed and also the drawing chances are very little because there are pawns on both flanks so the bishop is doing a much better job than the knight of course if we could get to a rook hand game then the things would be different but even the rook ending i'm not sure is you think yeah because you know i can my rook is so well positioned i mean if the bishop and knight were off the board well there's rook c2 checks i can also just go b5 a5 rook a8 a4 and with four versus four you know king h7 king g6 yeah it's really i mean this is a really nasty position to have to defend and yvanka is going to need a lot of luck basically to to hold that one of the most exciting games of the round has been the game between froy froymsky and eric rosen and uh we have now this position on the board wow yeah it's been an absolutely crazy game and i was saying to uh the people arena that even though wide has got three extra pawns i said that i like black's position but has eric misplayed this a bit because i can just see the last move in an ideal world you would take with the pawn here on d4 but now the move knight d3 comes yeah and somehow it will be difficult to move those pawns no exactly i mean you could try and claim you can go f5 e5 f5 but even after e4 this guy's it's so it suddenly got difficult and if you have to go rook takes d4 i wonder if this is uh going slightly wrong for for eric here so rook takes d4 rook takes d4 rook takes d4 now of course if we could get the rooks off i think white would have a really good chance because these pawns run yeah probably white would be just winning yeah probably just winning but that to me doesn't look um possible at the moment so i think that uh well well rook d2 check is a threat that's a that's that's that's a bit of a problem yeah and then some e4 and you're getting mated with bishop d4 in some position so actually this is uh maybe maybe we're underestimating eric here how do we defend against rook d2 maybe king e1 is it but then e4 e4 some king e1 right away looks yeah e4 looks horrible for white rook d rook d1 maybe rook d1 will i get away with it e takes f3 oh nearly not yeah i was afraid actually you might take on d1 and maybe e3 also knows maybe that pawn can or not also possible yeah that also looks quite good i mean just as an example e takes f3 we'll look at your line in if you take on d4 now i can take because bishop c3 check picks up but i can take on f3 first yeah you can take on f3 first right right you can take on f3 first right yeah now actually this is okay for white isn't it i think so yeah that point was yeah i like your e3 much better actually that's that's a much better move so king e1 e4 rook d1 takes oops takes takes e3 now the threat is e2 and then bishop c3 so if i play a move like knight b5 yeah the question is do we have anything here might not might just be winning for white you know because i i just run yeah i don't see how black can make that pawn queen king e1 and that was the move played does it is that right that if foremsky played e king e1 here yeah she did wow it actually might have been the only way to defend against rook d2 that's true right and i'm not sure how to yeah those knights look very clumsy on a3 and b4 but they need just one move to get into the game and if black can do something meanwhile those pawns will be running looks very very very uh dangerous doesn't it indeed i don't know you need a star move here though and i i don't see it i don't see it so something must have gone wrong for eric because it looked really pleasant at some point this move rook a7 i didn't like oh no this even this maybe was okay f4 is that necessary apparently the move knight h5 might have been better yeah the problem is that after f4 we cannot create a past pawn anymore anymore you know or at least it's more difficult right yeah now now i'm now i'm very concerned about eric's position so i think around here when i was thinking i thought actually the move rook c8 was the best move because you you you cut the knight so complex it's so difficult it's a really difficult position yeah it's it's just it's just really really difficult um and i think eric apparently according to the youtube chat is now just straight losing wow which is shocking really um yeah it's difficult to suggest a move really really difficult to suggest a move wow knight b5 is coming yep and then the a pawn will just run towards queening yeah that's in the current position right so in this one in this one here which is sorry which is here king he won star move by f roimski and you can tell eric's body language he's also not happy um so f roimski on course to extend the women's lead now i will say this arena before the tournament started i said that i believed that the women were going to crush them in really yeah in fact when we all went for dinner the organization we went for dinner yesterday um i will say it on air because i don't mind but i will say it i believe that the women are going to win 52 48 because there's a hundred games wow is that right a hundred games i think that's right a hundred games 52 48 but you know i actually hope also that the women will win but it's also connected to the fact that women usually uh overperform in gibraltar that's a very important uh observation you're right they normally play but they normally do they overperform against other women or do they overperform playing the men i think playing the men right so then it's perfect so so so they're they're all playing the men so they should overperform according to the the trends of this tournament so yeah so all right in which games do men have any chances well none no yovanka we said already yeah so this this yovanka game uh chonka really does have to push here and i would say uh sabino brunello against iran actually things have gone gotten quite well for iran the past few moves this actually looks quite decent for white now i don't know what happened this position the d6 spawn looks dangerous and it's somehow divides the board into two parts and it will be difficult for black to coordinate his pieces the bishop on b2 might be a problem on the other hand if black manages to play c4 but i don't believe i mean i'm not sure he can afford let's say knight no he doesn't have time 94 queen e4 and the knight is hanging 94 queen e4 and this position is you're attacking the knight and then white might even have some ideas like c4 at some point opening up the bishop this is very unpleasant because rook c8 runs into d7 that loses queen d7 you just have b takes c5 that loses yeah actually this is just almost over right there's almost no way to protect queen b6 queen b6 looks ugly looks ugly as hell looks like there's a knockout blow here like d7 rook d8 can i just take on e5 yeah definitely i mean this is just hopeless so brunello in trouble in this position after 94 possibly unless he has some star move but he just played knight d7 i see knight d7 going uber passive here but hold on if i take on c5 what is his idea i have absolutely no idea maybe he just wants to take and play some um no i mean if i take with the queen play some i mean this is just looks bad it's oops this is just bad knight a5 or something but yeah that's what i was thinking but then you just take on e5 i mean i'm losing all my i'm losing my shirt in this position yeah it seems like sabino is in trouble yeah sabino in big trouble so that's huge for the women that means that well let's let's check on another game pierre against bilal this position also i mean pierre is a pawn up here but it feels as though bilal has got enough control to be okay here is my interpretation but it is a pawn and it's the sort of position where you don't actually expect pierre to lose it doesn't feel like pierre is in any is in any serious trouble here yeah the challenge will be for black to hold on to that d5 square and if he does then it will be not easy for white to trade some pieces because that's what she will want to having the pawn up so we don't have that okay some 95 but there are always some tactics there going on now there have been some moves bishop b6 rook c8 has been played okay so now he's gonna go rook d8 but that's good for white trading a pair of rooks is very good i agree takes yeah you just take queen takes queen takes you know maybe queen f5 or some random move i don't know knight e5 exists maybe rookie one rookie one to trade something more black shouldn't trade rooks i guess but then maybe i can play queen e4 try some queen e8 later yeah i mean you're not running any risks right here is white so you know bill l i have this feeling that he's not going to lose this game but clearly he's not going to win this game either unless it's a disaster i agree um let's move on to another game here let's move on to stefan osa stefan over against cheng and um well and so netz was done really well to get this position i feel because before it felt as though she was i don't want to say like losing the uh losing the thread but it certainly felt as though she was uh under under a little bit of pressure to get her but it she's she's done well and now she threatens to play e4 no yeah e4 is a threat so can we just go f6 here how bad is it i think i think it should be fine e4 knight b6 bishop f7 checking h6 e6 bishop e6 trying to somehow control this knight rook b5 rook b7 rook b4 maybe i'll try that rook b5 is there any mating i was thinking that but i don't think um i don't think there is probably it doesn't feel like yeah and if rook b7 my idea is i want to go rook b4 but even this knight is is actually very bad no yeah the problem for black is that i don't see a way to progress let's say just play king g2 yeah how do you untangle the pieces oh i've got have i got no i don't have a knight d5 you take with the bishop that's useful yeah actually this is a bit unpleasant putting myself in the pin is a bad idea i can't do that but how do i how do i get this no ansoneta i mean this position is this is this is good for white this is good for not this is what about f5 instead of f6 okay to try not to allow e4 maybe can it work it makes a lot of sense i like that suggestion i can give it if i give a check you can block even yeah i think knight f6 should be good enough knight i find it hard to believe that ansoneta will win this position yeah i find it hard to believe