Javokhir Sindarov vs Gukesh's mentor Vishy Anand

Welcome everyone to the game of Vishwanathan Anand, who is coming in with his team in this buggy, the PBG Alaskan Knights. You see Yaskaner Dogmas, Katrina Lagnon, Nino Batsyashvili, Vishy Anand, Abhimanyu Mishra there. They are playing, and Arjun Eric, I see they are playing at the Global Chess League 2026. And in comes the fires, American Gambits, led by Javokhir Sindarov. बीबी सारा असाउबायेवा एंड वी हैव मार्क एंड्रिया मोरिज़ी, सारा खादम, निहाल एंड डुबोफ़ सो वेरी स्ट्रांग टीम देर एंड ऑन बोर्ड नंबर वन वी आर गोइंग टू हैव द आइकन क्लश बिटवीन सिंदरोव एंड विश्यानंद वाओ दैट्स गोइंग टू बी एब्सोल्युटली एपिक देर यू सी अ हैंडशेक सिंदरोव द वर्ल Who is the world champion right now. And the guests make the first move. Handshakes all around, and it's time for the battle to begin. Now remember the time control, very interesting— 20 minutes per player with no increment until move 40, and then the increment kicks in for 2 seconds per move. So very intense time control. The arbiter comes in And he's going to start the clock, and off you go. Handshake, and Javakir opens with e4. Vishy responds with the Sicilian, a small surprise there because he usually likes to play e4, e5, but he goes for the Sicilian, taking on the challenge. Javakir plays d4, pawn takes pawn, knight takes d4. And now the knight comes out to f6, attacking the pawn on e4. Sindarov plays bishop d3. A very interesting move here, because generally they put their knight on c3. Now knight c6, bishop comes out, and Vishy jumps in. Knight g4, attacking the bishop here. Take on c6, the queen is attacked. So Takes c6, taken back. And now Javokhir brings his bishop back to d2. Don't want to lose that bishop. g6 played by Vishy to get the bishop on this diagonal. And Javokhir quickly plays his bishop to c3, attacking the rook in the corner of the board. Anand comes back. He's like, if you take here, I'm okay with the doubled pawns. And now I'll play bishop g7, castles, and I would have a very nice center. But Jawahir starts to disrupt the position. He pushes the pawn to e5. Pawn takes pawn, and now bishop takes e5. He plays queen e2, very interesting move here because he wants to take back maybe with the queen. Anand plays bishop g7, and now Pawn takes, bishop takes pawn. One can say that white has a small edge now because of the weakened c6 pawn. Vishy castles, but Javakir also castles here. And now the bishop comes to g4, attacks the queen. And provoking f3 so that you can go with the tempo to give a check. But Javokhir says, I'm not going to play f3. He brings his queen back to e1. Queen c8 by Anand, and knight to a3 played. We have rook to d8. The knight a3 move was very interesting because he wants to put the knight on the c4 square, and I think that's what Javokhir is going to do. Yes, he puts his knight on c4. Now this knight cannot be dislodged because there are no pawns to kick it away. But Vishy plays bishop f5, brings his bishop here to trade it off. Takes, queen takes f5. Notice the time, both players at 15 minutes. Keeping a good time on the clock is Anand, and I think he should be happy with the opening position because it's roundabout even. You can say a slight tingling disadvantage here for black. It's I call it tingling because it won't go away so soon. You know, this is a permanent weakness on c6, but black has enough things which are working for him to kind of negate that disadvantage. King takes g7. Now the knight defends the pawn. Rook goes to e1, and maybe rook b8. No, he goes h5. Vishy is trying to create play on the kingside with h4, h3. Jawahir brings his rook to the center, trying to put pressure on the d5 knight. And now queen f6. So the queen keeps an eye on b2. The knight on c4 cannot move. Queen e5 offering a queen trade. Now interesting decision by Jawahir. Knight b6 played. Wow, what a move! If you take here, you know, d1, there's some pressure. The back rank is a bit weak. So first the queen trade. King takes on f6. Anand at 11 minutes. Jao Kir at 11 minutes. This game looks like it's heading towards a draw. And Jao Kir says no knight trade. I want to play for a win. I want to beat Vishy Anand because you know amongst all the players who are on the icon board, Vishy is right now the least active player. And so a player like Jao Kier would want to score that full point. He goes rook c8. It's a bit passive, but I think Anand has the idea of c5, c4 on his mind. King f1 to activate the king. That looks very logical. And now pawn comes up to c5. He goes b3, but can we go c4? But c4, b4, you know, Jao Kier will not trade things very quickly. So Anand goes e6. Keeps his structure, makes a space for the king to come back to e7. And we have pawn to c4 now, fixing the weakness on the c5 square. King comes back to e7. King e2. And you can see Vishy has built a time lead. He's at 10 minutes. Is on 6 minutes 56 seconds. So 3-minute time lead to Anand. Knight to b7, he comes in. He's attacking the pawn on c5, looking at the d6 square. And Rc6. I like this move because firstly, you can't come on d6 now easily. I'm also going to put my rook on b6 or a6. a3 played by Javokhir. He wants to play b4. We have Rb6 attacking the knight and the pawn. I was wondering if an exchange sacrifice works here, but there's not enough compensation. So he goes back, knight to a5, defending the pawn here. And Vishy goes back, knight b8, a lovely move. He wants to play knight c6, trade off the knight, and then the rook ending would be drawn. Oh, b4! Sharp complications created by Javokhiri. Sacked a pawn, c5. He's like, Vishy, I'm coming up ahead. Pawn push, pawn push, rook b5. Good move, best move, only move. पॉन इज़ अटैक्ड ऑन सी फाइव नाइट इज़ अटैक्ड ऑन ए फाइव आई थिंक जावो कीर शुड टेक द बीफोर पॉन नो ही पुशेस सी सिक्स आहेड वाओ व्हाट अ मूव नाउ थ्रेटेनिंग सी सेवन तू मेक अ क्वीन विशी प्ले�yz नाइट ए सिक्स विच इज़ अ फाइन मूव मेबी द बेस्ट मूव स्टॉपिंग रुक नाइट सी सेवन अ चेक बाय द Knight takes b4, but he takes with the rook. A big mistake. Now rook takes a7, and suddenly Vishy is lost. Imagine if you had taken here c7, rook c5. The position is okay, you can fight on. But the moment he played rook takes b4, rook a7, now suddenly where does the knight go? You can see Anand bit confused. Check. He wants to come here on the c2 square. Later, so you need to play your king to d1, and of course Jawahir plays it. Excellent move. You know, otherwise king d3, there could have been knight b4 as well. Knight jumps into b4, c7. He pushes forward, pushes forward. Rook c2 to attack the pawn. Stop it. Rook b7 attacking the b4 knight, and Anand cannot hold it all together. Takes on b4, he takes back the pawn on c7. It's 4 versus 3, but an entire knight up. Things shifted there very quickly. Vishy losing his calm there, losing his focus. And for Javakhir, this is not so difficult. I mean, yes, the knight is not particularly great when there are no weaknesses, But I'm sure Javakir can create those weaknesses very soon. One of the ideas is to play h4 and fix up a weakness on h5 square. King f3, king goes to g6, and now knight e3 maybe. Yep, knight e5 check.

Uh-huh.

King f6 and rook to b5. He plays the rook there.

Rook check.

King g2. Anand would most likely have resigned this position in an individual encounter, but here he knows it's a team game and every single point counts, and so he's trying his best. The g-pawn is attacked. g4. And now you can see all of a sudden the h5 pawn has become weak. Vishy goes pawn to e5, and Sinderov goes from the backside. Rook b8, rook a2, and rook to h8. The king comes up. Rook h7 and rook a7. h3 played on the kingside, slightly pushing the pawn. And here e4 by Anand. And now you're going to lose the pawn because after takes, pawn takes g4, in comes a check and the pawn is falling. Vishy resigns there. Javokhir Sindarov scores a win. A very, very critical moment a takes b4. They are discussing that, and you know, Vishy could have taken knight takes b4. I understand that c7 was difficult to calculate after knight b7 attacking this. Rook c2 check, king d1, and this feels like it's almost lost because the pawn, you know, knight d6, queening. But suddenly you can play e5, stopping rook d4 ideas. And after knight d8, let's say you go knight d6, I have king e6. I mean, rook d4, and by the way, preparing here. So knight d8 stopping the king from coming to e6, but then you have e4. It was very difficult actually to calculate all of this, and Vishy could have held on, but in the game he actually rushed in with rook takes b4, and after rook a7, he was lost. And with this, the Fire American Gambit, uh, Fires American Gambit Go to ten points in this match. You know, three for Sindarov and Vishy's team gets four points. So the score is ten four in the favor of Sindarov's team. The players arrive and go in the buggies. I leave you with few scenes and also Sindarov's interview.

And now let's call upon the player of the match, Manjao Kir Sindarov.

जापानी के कंग्रेजुलेशन, व्हाट अ फ्लाइंग स्टार द पायर्स है स्टार्ट विथ। यस, आई थिंक वी प्लेट वेरी वेल दिस मैच। आई वाज़ वाचिंग फ्रॉम स्क्रीन, एवरी बॉल वाज़ प्रेशर। सम मोमेंट आई वाज़ थिंक लाइक आई विल विन फ्रॉम क्विक स्कोर, बट इट्स टाइम ट्रैवल, लाइक सम गेम्स एंड ड्रॉ, ब Keep playing our best chess against games.

You know, your board did decide the complete game, right? Your board decided the complete game and how it turned out for the Firs American Gambit. But today you played against a grandmaster. Was this just leading up to playing against another world champion that you're going to be playing sometime soon?

Uh, like, don't ask hard questions. Yeah, like, at some moment, uh, every game in draw, and like, yeah, my game was so important. And, uh, like, I was also thinking my game will end in a draw because we played 2 solid boards. But I think some moment when I got some chances to, to go a very interesting endgame, uh, when I sacrificed my pawn, I started to realize I have chances to win. And then, like, I played very well. So yeah, I mean, huge win. What can I say?

Congratulations on the first game. Many more to come. That is it from the post-match presentation ceremony. Back to the studio.