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Is any game known where all the pieces (except the pawns) are still on the board, and where a piece (not a pawn!) is captured at each half-move, leading to a pawn endgame?

In other words, is there a game where a "full" board is transferred to a pawn endgame in only 14 half-moves?

Here a game where the tranformation is made in 16 half-moves:

[Event "URS-ch26"]
[Site "Tbilisi"]
[Date "1959.??.??"]
[Round "15"]
[White "Kortschnoj, Viktor"]
[Black "Geller, Efim P"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "E69"]
[PlyCount "83"]
[EventDate "1959.??.??"]
[EventType "tourn"]
[EventRounds "19"]
[EventCountry "URS"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
[FEN ""]

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. g3 Bg7 4. Bg2 O-O 5. Nc3 c6 6. e4 d6 7. Nge2 e5 8. O-O
Nbd7 9. b3 exd4 10. Nxd4 Nc5 11. h3 Re8 12. Re1 a5 13. Rb1 Nfd7 14. Be3 h5 15.
Qd2 Ne5 16. Red1 Qe7 17. Kh1 Bf8 18. Re1 Bg7 19. Re2 Qc7 20. f4 Ned7 21. Bg1
Nf6 22. Nc2 b6 23. Ree1 Bb7 24. Nd4 Re7 25. Re2 Rae8 26. Rbe1 Ncxe4 27. Nxe4
Nxe4 28. Rxe4 Rxe4 29. Rxe4 Rxe4 30. Bxe4 c5 31. Bxb7 Qxb7+ 32. Qg2 Qxg2+ 33.
Kxg2 Bxd4 34. Bxd4 cxd4 35. Kf3 Kg7 36. Ke4 Kf6 37. Kxd4 Kf5 38. Ke3 Ke6 39.
Ke4 Kd7 40. f5 g5 41. Kd5 Kc7 42. g4 1-0
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  • 1
    Are you looking for a real game or a composed game?
    – ericw31415
    Commented Aug 7, 2017 at 17:34
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    A real game. It is easy to compose an example with the optimal length
    – Peter
    Commented Aug 8, 2017 at 17:19
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    If anyone out there has access to a database of games, I think a python script could handle this. You could just split the PGN by spaces, then take moves_only = [pgn_moves[x] for x in range(0, half_move_ary) if x % 3 != 0] as the array. Then if movves_only has 14 elements in a row, flag that.game for later. This would only show us 14 captures in a row, but there probably aren't too many games like that. Or you could just take the FEN after each move, and once the first piece is captured (RNBQKrnbqk count decreased by 1) verify the same happens the next 13.
    – aschultz
    Commented Aug 4, 2019 at 4:44
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    btw, the term for "half move" is a ply.
    – Inertial Ignorance
    Commented Sep 28, 2019 at 22:53
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    I looked at lichess games from 2013 and 2014, and all ccrl4040 games, and lichess games from january 2019 (I don't have any more on my pc, it's ~16M games in total). The best I found was 19, but it's not a lot of games so there are prospects. I can provide software to quickly run through pgn files if someone wants to (~150k games/s). Raw output: pastebin.com/fnL8D76x
    – Sopel
    Commented Oct 9, 2019 at 20:10

2 Answers 2

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Such a game more than likely doesn't. The game that you give is amazing enough in that 16 already exists. Without access to a database, however, I don't know for sure. Perhaps someone could try to do that, and search in one or two. But again, more than likely it doesn’t exist due to the extreme conditions and setup that a real game would have to arrive at the do it, not to mention that there are two minds involved.

Just for fun, as a related note that isn't an answer, here is the fastest possible game with such a sequence.

[Title "me, chess.stackexchange.com 7/3/2020, Non-Unique Proof Game in 15.0 Moves"]
[FEN ""]

1. e3 e6 2. Qf3 Qf6 3. Qxb7 Qxb2 4. Be2 Be7 5. Nf3 Nf6 6. O-O O-O 7. h3 h6 8. Kh2 Kh7 9. Qxa8 Qxa1 10. Qxb8 Qxb1 11. Qxc8 Qxc1 12. Qxf8 Qxf1 13. Qxe7 Qxe2 14. Qxf6 Qxf3 15. gxf3 gxf6
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1

I have made a search on pawn endgames in my database, and here is the definite answer! 21 full moves, it really cracked me up to see it hahahaha.

http://view.chessbase.com/cbreader/2020/7/3/Game1044992468.html

By the way your above example is not 16 half-moves (that would be 8 full moves). It's 34 full moves.

Cheers!

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  • 1
    Okay well, then I messed up. :)
    – David Miedema
    Commented Jul 3, 2020 at 21:25

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