What Made Kasparov Great - GM Mihail Marin | The Pawn That Never Stops

What made Kasparov great? The question has many answers — this video answers one of them: the d-pawn that simply refuses to stop. GM Mihail Marin goes back to two games of the 17-year-old Kasparov and shows how the d5 break turned an ordinary pawn centre into a permanent threat, at a cost in material Kasparov never bothered to count. Both games start from the same picture: a big White centre and a Grünfeld-type structure that can also arise from the Queen's Indian. In Kasparov–Přibyl (1980) the d-pawn travels from d2 all the way to d8, with a bishop handed over on the way. In Kasparov–Gheorghiu (Moscow Interzonal 1982) the same push demands exact calculation, and the modest Bf4 gains a full tempo — twice. Mihail also goes through Kasparov's own published analysis and finds a defence he missed. Nimzowitsch wrote that an unblocked pawn wants to advance. Kasparov was the player who took that literally — and it shifted the pattern Karpov had imposed on chess in those years, until younger masters everywhere started pushing pawns the same way. ⏱ Timestamps: 00:00 Video overview 00:45 Introduction 02:43 Kasparov-Přibyl, 1980 07:15 Kasparov sacrifices a bishop to advance his pawn 13:38 Kasparov-Gheorghiu, Moscow Interzonal 1982 16:15 A strong intermediate move 18:17 A small trap 📚 Topics covered: Garry Kasparov, the d5 pawn break, pawn sacrifice, dynamic play, Grünfeld structures, Queen's Indian centre, intermediate moves, Florin Gheorghiu, Josef Přibyl, Nimzowitsch, Anatoly Karpov, Informator analysis ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📘 Recommended Resources ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🔗 Learn from the Legends, 3rd Edition: https://www.newinchess.com/learn-from... 🔗 Get ChessBase — the ultimate tool for chess analysis and preparation: https://shop.chessbase.com/en/categor... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎓 About GM Mihail Marin Grandmaster Mihail Marin is a three-time Romanian National Champion, Olympic medalist, former second to Judit Polgar, ChessBase author, and Chessable instructor. He currently coaches the Italian women's national team. This channel provides advanced chess lessons focused on opening strategy, positional play, middlegame understanding, and endgame technique — designed for ambitious players rated 1400–2400+ who want real improvement. 🔔 New in-depth chess lessons every week — subscribe and hit the notification bell! 💡 If this video helped you, consider using Super Thanks to support the channel! 📩 Coaching inquiries & business proposals: [email protected] #chess #grandmaster #chesslesson #chessanalysis #chessstrategy #chessimprovement #marinchess #chessmasterclass #kasparov #chessgenius #chesslegends #chesshistory #middlegame #chesstactics