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I am doing a study that focuses on endgames which involve well-timed king marches, namely endgames in which the winning idea lies mainly in king positioning rather than the coordination of minor pieces for example (although this is a key idea in almost every endgame). As soon as I started stumbling upon this very specific type of endgames, I remembered a famous game from Magnus Carlsen, in which he marches with the king for a consecutive series of move (about 5-7 moves), diagonally to the other side of the board, establishing a key position for his king as soon as possible and winning the endgame. Unfortunately I cannot recall which game it was, nor the time/opposition, if I'm not mistaken there were no rooks left on the board.

  • I admit this is very little information given to find the game, but that's all I could remember for now. Although he tends to play a lot of endgames because of his style, I do recall that game getting famous because of its fearless long king march. Here I am asking about it, in the hope that someone else may remember this game, or provide any additional information about it.

  • In any case, if you know of similar endgame plays, please do feel free to post about them here, as a comment or answer, as they are relevant to the study at hand anyway.

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    The very same day you asked this question, Navara won a game against Wojtaszek with a spectacular king march! en.chessbase.com/post/biel-04-king-march
    – Maxwell86
    Jul 23, 2015 at 19:13
  • @Maxwell86 Thanks a lot for this. Just wow, 11 king moves all the way from e1 to h8, although the king was for the most part driven out forcefully by checks that didn't leave many options, still not everyday you see such king adventures when so many minor and heavy pieces still on board. Cool, this ought to be called "the ultimate bait"! :)
    – Ellie
    Jul 23, 2015 at 19:27
  • For long King marches, it's all about learning opposition.
    – Paul Burchett
    Aug 5, 2015 at 17:46

1 Answer 1

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Here are a couple of games I found (although they do not really feature a diagonal king march):

I cannot resist adding following king marches:

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  • Thank you so much Maxwell, a great collection! Among the Carlsen games you referred, I didn't find that specific game, but they are all ones I hadn't seen and they're perfect examples on their own.
    – Ellie
    Jul 23, 2015 at 20:59
  • You're welcome, I'm also quite curious to find the game :-D. Do you have an idea about the time the game was played. Maybe you can tell for sure that the game is minimum X years old. Was it a game from his childhood or was he already a top player?
    – Maxwell86
    Jul 24, 2015 at 7:22
  • No not really from his childhood, I'd say it was played about 5 years ago, but may have been 2-3 years ago. Not older.
    – Ellie
    Jul 24, 2015 at 12:01

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