Month: May 2024

And now the Praggna-Gukesh game from the beginning of the tournament, seventh on the list. A game that could have stopped Gukesh’s victorious march for the pretender title, or even thwarted it. The position after 22 moves. White has an overwhelming advantage, victory is at hand. Both chess players see a sacrifice by white a piece in exchange for the two central pawns. Gukesh is helpless, he has no influence. Of course, he may not accept the sacrifice, but then the pawn ending is less predictive of loss. So Gukesh is prepared and hopes to protect himself. And he did. He defended himself and won. Why? Well, Praggna makes a mistake, makes a cosmic mistake, sacrificing a bishop instead of a knight. It should have been played the other way around. See how we did it in Goldchess. We have, of course, many variants of white winning, winning on move 31 (only 9 moves to win), but we will show the mate on move 33. The game will fully satisfy the aesthetic needs of any chess player.
This is how we play Goldchess and this is how we teach the game. Beauty and efficiency.
https://www.goldchess.com/en/other/winnerslist.html#g0_wins

Part two, the Nakamura-Gukesh game. Nakamura could have easily won it. But he made an incorrect decision by playing 12.Ne4. This created open lines for the bishops giving the possibility of a strong attack, but Gukesh successfully prevented it. 12.ab4 should have been played. And this move could have been followed by 2 responses from black, 12…B:b4 and 12…Nc6. In the first case we have a win in the 19th move, in the second in the 26th. But Nakamura squandered this chance. Check out our wins.

Now the roles are reversed. In the later part of the game the victory could have been achieved by Gukesh. He captured a pawn on move 20 and had a good chance to win after exchanging queens. But later in the game Nakamura outsmarted him and regained the pawn. Capturing white’s bishop in the endgame didn’t help any more and didn’t change the draw ending. And winning was easy. All we had to do was exchange the knight for the white bishop, stay with the black-field bishops and realise the advantage. See how we did it. The position after white’s 26th move. Black played 26…Nd5, but this did not bring them success. A seemingly good move, but not really. We pursue a different concept, our concept, and it has an effect. Black’s win in the 46th move and mate in the 55th see. Both games are in -Winners Chess Miracles.

https://www.goldchess.com/en/other/winnerslist.html#g0_wins

Caruana a contender

Caruana had a chance to become a pretender if he had won his last game against Nepo. But, he played 72.Re4. This move was not only weak. It was a mistake, after which winning was no longer possible.

And winning was easy. See how we did it in Goldchess. Black’s position is, of course, defended by our educational computer, certainly much weaker than Nepo, but that doesn’t matter. After our move Caruana would have dealt with Nepo in exactly the same way.  The game is (Chess Miracles-Winners diagram) here:
https://www.goldchess.com/en/other/winnerslist.html#g0_wins

To play it, it is best to download our chess program:
https://www.goldchess.com/en/other/download-ceec.html

Nakamura, who had a chance to beat Gukesh in a big way in the last game, could also be a contender. In one of the earlier games, Gukesh could have been stopped by Praggna. And who knows if he wouldn’t have then gained a chance to win the tournament and become a contender. The ball is round and chess is unpredictable. We will show all these games in our next reports from the contenders’ tournament.