Perfection IS Possible! || Fabi vs Levon || Sinquefield Cup 2026 R5

Hello everyone and welcome to another beautiful game from the Sinquefield Cup. This is round five and we have two heavyweights so to say Fabiano Caruana versus Levon Aronian. Both of them former 2800 players but when they play I consider them 2800 players because they they play at such high level that

well I just don't consider them 2700s. And it's really a top level game a lot of theory and then the critical moment is decided by burning a lot of time on the clock and finding absolutely spectacular that will improve your entire week I would say. And this game I would say is a is a feast for the eyes

as well and especially when Levon is playing because he always wears such colorful t-shirts. I don't know if you ever seen Levon play. I mean he always brightens up the room. You can see here in the profile photo he has some sort of a leafy blue t-shirt but sometimes he shows up like this. It's a wonderful

photo by Leonard the official photographer photographer of the Sinquefield Cup. It's a pomegranate or rose hip. I mean just it's it's all over the place. There's so much stuff happening here. It's beautiful and that's not even the most colorful I've seen Levon play. I mean he he can play

he can pull anything off. He's a you know regarding the apparel there's just no one comes even close to him. We're we're still waiting for the successor of Levon in the next generation but pretty much everyone just comes playing wearing a suit. So we'll see. Alireza you know he is close but he's just I don't know.

It's not quite the same. Okay let's check out the game. So Fabiano with white opens with E4 with E5 knight F3 and knight to F6 the Petroff defense with knight captures on E5 the classical Petroff and now pawn to D6.

This is the only play you will uh the only move you will ever see at the high level at this very top level. Sometimes you'll see knight captures on E4 if black really wants to try something, maybe queen E7.

Uh but uh you can also win a lot of interesting games with knight to C6. It's not considered the best, but for bullet and let's say 3-minute blitz uh you will get some uh interesting positions. Your opponents often go E5 here, and then you can just go knight E4, and after D3 bishop C5, and white can resign. There's no

uh continuing this position because if you uh if if F2 is being threatened, you can counter by bishop D3, but then you simply capture and go queen H4, or especially if the knight is captured, then you will uh not capture the queen, you will sacrifice the bishop here, and then if king captures, you will win the

white queen. And even if you don't capture the bishop, just bishop G4, and this is resigns. So, uh it's it's a fun move. Try it out if you haven't. I mean, I've won a lot of games uh against players of every rating, like up to maybe 23, 2400 with with this idea. Uh but it's not, you know, obviously for

her classical game or or even a serious rapid game. Uh so, [snorts] pawn to D6 with knight to F3, uh and knight captures on E4, we have D4 and D5. So, this is the classical attack against the Petroff.

Nothing new being discussed here. Bishop to D3, bishop to D6. You can see that they're uh just gaining time. They're not even uh burning time. We have castles by both players. So, castles castles C4 C6. Uh and now knight C3, queen C2, and rook D1. Those are the three moves that you can play in this uh