Hikaru's Immortal Sacrifices | KID February
Today I want to share with you all an absolutely stunning piece of King's Indian artwork. It's the perfect game to demonstrate how to play the KID, going ruthlessly for the white king's throat.
First, to revive your memory, we'll be picking up where we left off last year with our KID series, looking at a game for 13. Nd3 after the Classical move order. A quick recap:
Introducing the Classical. White wants does multiple things with this move, clearing the f-file to support their center with f2-f3 and preparing to bring over the knight to the queenside to attack.
This is one of the two main ninth moves for black, for reasons I explain more in-depth in my introduction to the Classical.
We're back to where we left off now. We've seen games featuring the main line, 13. a4 and games for the Kožul Gambit, 13. Rc1.
Now after a couple of months we're back in business. This time we're looking at a demonstrative game for 13. Nd3.
Only one game will be exhibited today, but its instructive value is worth much more, and its entertainment value even greater. Even better, it shows how effective the KID can be highest level... because playing white was GM Wesley So and black, wielding the KID, was GM Hikaru Nakamura.
So is currently ranked #5 at around 2780 and has been one of the top players in the world for years and still 28 years old. He's peaked at 2822 and ranked #2 in 2017. Born Filipino, now American, he's proven to the world what he can do, placing well in many elite tournaments.
Nakamura, very well known on chess.com as @Hikaru, a streamer and speed chess legend, he's currently ranked #19 in the world rated 2738 and peaked a #2 in the world, going up as high as 2816. The American GM is the reigning blitz #1 and has surpassed 2900 in blitz and 4-time US champion. Although he has declined slightly and is now aged 34, he is still at the top of the chess world.
This game was played in the exciting 6th round of the 2015 3rd annual Sinquefield Cup in St. Louis. It was a single round-robin event with the standard time control of 40 moves in two hours, then 1 hour with a 30-second increment for the remainder of the game. Out of the extremely strong 10-player pool of super grandmasters, including current World Champion Magnus Carlsen, former WC Viswanathan Anand, and WC challengers Veselin Topalov and Fabiano Caruana, Nakamura finished third, while So ended up dead last. This game brought Hikaru to his peak at world #2.
At the time, Naka was the world's leading expert in the KID, so Wesley must have understood what he was getting himself into when he dove into preparation. They both blitzed out the opening moves.
Wesley, frankly, just needs to learn how to prepare better. He just really misunderstood the position.
-Hikaru commenting after the game
Watch out, you might want to step back a bit. The fireworks are about to go off.
Although many times computer move labels mean nothing, I want to point out that even the silicon brain considered 6 of Hikaru's moves brilliant. Us humans might say even more. It really shows the road that so many KID positions go down, and you'll have to think about that if you're looking to start playing it.
So many KID themes were exercised there. You saw Rf7, the pawn pushes, active pieces, pressure on the kingside files, and clearance sacrifices. It's worth it playing through the game once just for pleasure and then going through it again, taking your time and really digging into it, analyzing and seeing what could have been.
A classic. Think about what was put up for grabs: two pawns, a knight, rook, bishop, the same rook again, another knight, and another rook. That's just about as far as you can go, and even in variations the queen could be sacrificed!
Everyone can enjoy and learn from these kinds of games as I hope you did. We'll definitely see more of Hikaru's KID soon 
Goodbye for now!
