Learn the Smith Morra Gambit with Hikaru

Hikaru reviews two of his own games and discusses gambits including the Smith Morra

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178 Comments

  1. Smith Morra step by step:
    1. e4 c5
    2. d4 cxd4
    3. c3 ???
    4. Be 2775 and win the game

  2. look at Hikaru beating kids ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

  3. As Hikaru starts with quoting Smith, one should add for completeness that he wasn't very successful with it

  4. ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚Amazing intro!!

  5. If Iโ€™m below 2000 but aspiring to be above it I donโ€™t think itโ€™s unreasonable to play 1.d4. I get great positions against unprepared opponents and just feel more confident playing d4.

  6. Youโ€™re so entertaining, mad respect for letting levy win the streamer award ๐Ÿ’€

  7. I like the quote,it's like my life 's quote ๐Ÿ˜€

  8. i play smith morra all the time, because of all the opportunities it opens. Esserman has a nice book on it. So nice to see it played at top levels.

  9. Thank you hikaru you made my day๐Ÿ˜Š

  10. Marc, you have made it. The Smith Morra has arrived in the mainstream

  11. Ooh a new weapon against the Sicilian. I can finally move away from Levy's grand Prix attack ๐Ÿ˜…

  12. hikaru gives u motivation before every opening xD

  13. hikaru's energy on the opening is very addicting.

  14. I like 1.f4 because as a below 2000 it has teached me to ignore kings safety and always sac if possible ๐Ÿคฃ also I am pretty close to 2000 so maybe I should start playing a normal opening. My friends always tell me to stop playing f4 and play something "normal"
    Also below 2000 you should be playing for fun thats why I play f4 really aggressive

  15. Please can you make more opening videos but not immediately with your opponents/actual games but just explaining the variations of the opening and then the games๐Ÿ˜…

  16. I'm glad to be living in this day and age, when one can get daily coaching from a 2800 rated super GM. Hikaru is the people's champ!

  17. So I am tactics, interesting ๐Ÿ˜ฎ๐Ÿ˜ฎ

  18. This is nice and all, but a random 2000 player in Agadmators comment section said this opening is trash, so who do I trust here?

  19. man i love the smith morra gambit, first opening i learned. now they all gonna learn it and how to defend it, i think i have to find something different thats not often played ^^

  20. A while ago you had a tutorial video on the danish gambit. And it felt more beginner friendly than this

  21. Youโ€™re the goat Hikaru! You can still see the love of the game in your content

  22. This explains the gambit well. I am amazed how un developed black pieces are. Hmm, I won't be too quick to take the free pawn, but.., it makes me wonder, what way the game plays if I decline the gambit?

  23. ๐Ÿ˜€I watch and highly recommend GMHikaru content for its consistent high quality.
    Yet. I'd laugh and probably wouldn't agree that anyone below 1900 has to play e4 all the time and take their lumps to improve. IMO that's exactly right if you want to develop or already find yourself playing in a highly tactical attacking style like Hikaru but IMO there are as many ways to play chess as there are individual humans. I myself self-schooled myself on the technical aspects of playing positional defense before adding tactics to my personal style. I studied games by players like Botvinnik, Petrosian and Smyslov with the idea that tactics are born organically out of a position that was prepared and only when the ground was properly cultivated tactics would finish off my opponents, and that got me up to Expert class (UCSF). IMO practically anyone else can tread the same path I did and also approach a UCSF Master rating.

    But of course, becoming really good at chess requires a well rounded style. No matter what your personal bias might be, higher class play requires a good balance of both tactics and strategical play although it's anyone's guess what the right mix might be. I am mightily impressed that Hikaru can exemplify chess played mostly based on tactics and relatively few games that involve long, slow maneuvering. Even long Hikaru games are usually a succession of tactical constructions rather tha an effort to strangle. I speculate that might be because of the impact of computers on play today that positional advantages are achieved by relatively few tactical sequences and computers may not yet be capable of playing positionally as well. And it helps that brute force calculation of about 9 plies(half moves) are frequently sufficient to conquer most opponents.

  24. Small comment on the references to the Danish Gambit in this video….
    IMO simply offering the c3 pawn (in double KP openings) is the Goring Gambit initially but evolves into the Danish Gambit if White develops a certain way and doesn't recapture with the QN on c3 immediately.

  25. I was looking forward to this particular GMHikaru take on the Smith-Morra because one can almost say that Hikaru's treatment/interpretation of playing it is relatively new to me. The viewer should know that in none of these games Black played the recommended defenses to the Smith-Morra but that's part of the charm of choosing an opening like this that puts pressure on the opponent to remember and spend time on the line and the Smith-Morra is actually a fairly safe gambit for hite to play… AFAIK White always achieves good positions and pressure even if Black plays accurately although in the end with all gambits if Black can withstand the assault without having to return the material, White is likely playing the rest of the game at a disadvantage… But at the GM level I doubt that a pawn deficit in the opening and middlegame likely means a loss in the endgame.

  26. My fellow 900ELO players, Here i come with Smith Morra

  27. Thank you, this is my favorite of your guides so far.

  28. The best part was Uno, dos tres, cuatro, cinco, seis pieces ๐Ÿ˜…

  29. This is what I started playing against the Sicilian

  30. I recall a funny comment by Bent Larsen on the Smith-Morra. He was playing in a tournament in San Antonio where Ken Smith was also playing. He commented on a game where Smith played 1. e4 and his opponent played a French Defense. Larsen annotated Black's 1…e6 with a ?, saying 1…c5! wins by force since Smith always plays his gambit and lost every game playing it.

  31. Hikaru 's fake smile for intro of his video is permanent

  32. Marc Esserman Gambit – shoutout to Morra Mayhem

  33. What had happened to Hikaru in TATA Steel india rapid & blitz ? He lost to Arjun 3-0 there !!๐Ÿ˜•

  34. A collab with Marc wouldโ€™ve been cool.

  35. The emphasis on โ€œsaaackโ€ instead of โ€œthe rooookโ€ was just the content we needed. Somebody needs to do a video loop of levy and hikaru saying, โ€œsack(ed) the rookโ€ back and forth to each other and it would be gold.

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