Questions tagged [records]
For questions related to (world) records in chess, e.g. the longest game (in moves or in duration), highest obtained rating, longest mate in n puzzle, etc.
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How many times can the same pawn move be made in a game?
How many times in a game can "the same pawn move" be made? By "the same pawn move", I mean, a move made by a pawn that would be notated the same way.
For instance, after 1.e4 e5 2....
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Both grandmaster and PhD/doctorate
Who have PhDs/doctorates that are also grandmasters?
Conditions:
standard GM only eg no WGM (see there for WGM version), no International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster
no honourary PhDs/...
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Both (at least) WGM and PhD/doctorate
Similar to this question Both grandmaster and PhD/doctorate but for at least WGM (WGM, female IM, female GM, etc)
Among woman grandmasters, who have PhDs/doctorates?
Conditions:
standard WGM only eg ...
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Open problems in chess involving maximum material imbalances
I am posting the present question since here Very unbalanced Chess Positions I have introduced three open problems (i.e., the third one, the fourth one, and the sixth one from the above), regarding ...
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8 pieces on one file in a master game at standard time control?
In today's (21st May 2023) game in the Superbet Rapid and Blitz between Maxime Vachier-Lagrave and Levon Aronian they reached a position where the c-file was fully occupied with pieces and pawns.
[...
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What is the fastest loss by a GM in a FIDE classical game?
What is the shortest FIDE classical game a grandmaster lost? It can be either resigning or checkmate. The opponent doesn't necessarily need to be GM. Forfeits don't count. Only serious games count, ...
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Longest sequence of moves where White's number of available moves does not change
There are challenges for the longest sequence of moves in which white's available moves increase or decrease. This challenge is for the longest sequence of moves (from the opening position) in which ...
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What is the longest sequence of increasing White moves with only White pieces?
Inspired by a comment by @Evargalo on this question, I ponder how long a sequence can last where each turn, White has more available moves than the previous turn, in a situation with only White pieces ...
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Longest sequence of moves where number of available moves increases
White has 20 available moves at the start of the game. After 1.a4 e5, white has 21 available moves. (The rook has gained 2 moves, while the pawn has lost 1).
What is the longest sequence of moves ...
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Longest sequence of forcing moves?
What is the longest fixed consecutive series of moves for one player such that the other player's response is forced every move? Assume draw rules must be obeyed (threefold repetition, 50-move rule, ...
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Is there a Chess 960 position in which White's moves can be decreased to zero without check?
Inspired by this question, koedem proved that, from the starting position, White's legal move amount can be decreased sequentially from 20 to 0 in 20 moves. However, doing so required some checks. I ...
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Longest sequence of moves where white's number of available moves decreases
An easier version of this
White has 20 available moves at the start of the game (from the standard position). After 1.h3 h5, white has 19 available moves. (The h pawn has lost the ability to move two ...
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Roundtrips with no shortcuts
In the picture, you see the longest roundtrip of a rook such that there are no "shortcuts" - imagine the target squares are given, then at each square you have exactly two other given ...
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Most combative head-to-head World Championships?
Chess.com keep tweeting about how combative this match is. 3 out of 5 games so far have been decisive, more than any other match in the last 10 years. Of course, us old timers remember Reykjavik 1972 ...
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What is the shortest possible game with 18 queens?
This question demonstrates a game in which all 16 pawns promote for a total of 18 queens on the board. It takes 80 moves...
What is the shortest sequence of moves that achieves this goal?
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Challenge: Create the longest set of moves where the game is able to be perfectly reproduced from only the current board state and move number
The challenge is to create the longest list of half moves whereby an AI could re-create that list of moves perfectly, only given the ending board state and the number of moves.
As example I will first ...
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Earliest 2Q on board
[FEN ""]
1. d4 d5 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 c5 4. dxc5 e6 5. b4 a5 6. c3 axb4 7. cxb4 b6 8. Bxb8 Rxb8 9. Qa4+ Ke7 10. c6 b5 11. Qa7+ Ke8 12. c7 Bxb4+ 13. Kd1 1-0
Let's not analyze this horror too ...
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What is the longest string of moves by one side on one color of the board?
This game was dubbed "White Key Symphony" by chessgames.com for the fact that Karpov made moves on only light squares for 18 moves in a row.
Is this still the record for the light squares, ...
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Who is the oldest player ever to beat a reigning world champion?
Per title. I'm interested in all time controls. This record isn't in the Wikipedia list of Chess records.
Related: Youngest Player to beat a reigning World Champion? which asks for the youngest player....
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Who are the top 10 youngest players to reach a FIDE standard rating of 2200?
In age order of achieving the rating, who are the 10 youngest players to reach 2200 standard FIDE rating? Prag and Karjakin obviously feature, but who else?
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What is the longest current tablebase mate with a unique optimal line?
Having been inspired by an article on ChessBase.com, what is the longest current tablebase mate with a unique optimal line?
By unique, I mean for each of the winning side's plies, there is only one ...
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Longest sequence of unique legal moves for one player, always in check and ending in checkmate
I recently played a bullet game, in which I thought I was in checkmate, but then realized I had one legal move, this then repeated again and again 6 times until ultimately I was in checkmate. I share ...
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What is the maximum total number of piece points possible on the board?
Maximum number of non-pawn pieces on the board notes how to get the maximum number of non-pawn pieces on the board.
But what about the maximum number of points possible? It seems like this starts ...
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Largest round robin ever?
First, I myself played several large (20+) blitz round robins, this is nothing unusual. Thus: only "long" games.
Second, oversize round robins were quite common in the good old days (maybe ...
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What is the lowest ELO ever in history?
I have a lot of questions about ratings, which are sort of connected, but I think I better split them. This is pair 1.
I Googled a bit: By definition, ELO>100, and someone said (chess.com) he ...
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Most "heavy" model mate in a game
A model mate, to recall, is a mate where
a) any flight (including the standing place) of the enemy king is attacked exactly once;
b) no friendly piece (except king and pawns) idles around.
c) (...
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How do I find data to determine records like the youngest person to obtain a certain title?
A. Background:
Under Mobeus Zoom's suggestion here: List of records for youngest superGMs since 1950? (or 1970 or whenever FIDE started rating people. or basically after 2700s after Fischer) (this is ...
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Youngest Player to beat a reigning World Champion?
In September 2022 19 year old Hans Niemann beat Magnus Carlsen in the Sinquefield Cup.
On the 19th January 2023 18 year old Nodirbek Abdusattorov beat Magnus Carlsen in the Tata Steel tournament.
Is ...
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What is the farthest away a game can be from a guaranteed checkmate?
What is the maximum number of moves away from checkmate that a player can be where checkmate is guaranteed? There are many positions that are a guaranteed win for a player if played perfectly, right? (...
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2 GM Norms in 24 hours - first time ever?
Chess.com reports that 17-year-old Frederik Svane has scored 2 GM Norms In 24 Hours and asks if this is a record:
17-year-old Svane, the youngest of the two brothers (Rasmus recently turned 25), ...
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Moving a piece to a square protected by 5 opponent's pieces
At the 5th round of the 2022 FIDE World Team Championship, in the game between Ivanchuk and Van Foreest, White played the following winning move:
[FEN "1n1q2k1/2r1rp1p/pp1b1np1/3pN3/3P4/BP4PB/...
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What was the highest rated classical game that was lost on time?
Recently, I came across a game Vishwanathan Anand vs Veselin Topalov from Norway Chess 2022. In the second round, Anand who was playing with the black pieces won on time against Topalov as his clock ...
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How many unoriginal pawn moves can be made in a single game?
Consider an "unoriginal pawn move" to be a pawn move whose notation matches a move already played in the game. For instance, after 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.e5, there is one unoriginal pawn move, ...
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Longest sequence of unique series moves
Clearly a spawnoff of the preceding question, but far easier to analyze, and maybe helping a bit to solve that one too.
Take the starting position, remove all black pieces to simplify and now make ...
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What is the longest forced win with 3 to 6 pieces (ignoring 50 & 75 move rules)?
I am wondering, what endgame, with 3 to 6 pieces, has the longest checkmate with optimal play? Right now, the longest I'm aware of is the two knights versus one pawn endgame, which in certain ...
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What was the biggest chess tournament held in the world?
Which chess tournament and venue has brought in the most people in the world?
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Fastest stalemate in Duck Chess
Seeing the meteoric rise in popularity of Duck Chess (full rules), I'd like to ask how to stalemate the fastest (from the starting position) in this variant, because the stalemated player wins here.
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What is the most number of repetitions in a GM game?
In July 2014 FIDE introduced new rules regarding draws. The arbiter was required to step in and declare the game drawn in cases where the players repeated the position 5 times:
9.6 If one or both of ...
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An abstract Top 1 player rating vs time
How the highest Elo rating has been changing over time? Is there such an abstract data? Preferably FIDE rating.
I've been trying to find a graph or a table, but all I can find is a list of peak ...
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What is the longest forced mate optimally played in documented competition?
There are tons of questions about the longest forced mate on here and other chess forums. Usually the answers are the 2 Knights forced mate and another one that evidently takes 549 optimal moves. ...
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Maximum number of ways to get out of check
What is the maximum number of legal moves in a legal position, given that the player is in check?
It's easy to see that 43 is an upper bound. Let's suppose the white K is in check along a diagonal by ...
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England team win senior 50+ world team championships and all the board golds - first time ever?
In this year's FIDE World Senior Team 50+ Championship the England team won the tournament and won all four board gold medals:
England 1, headed by Michael Adams and Nigel Short, won all four matches ...
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Who was, or is, the oldest WGM?
It is well known that (concerning GMs only) Lilienthal set a record - he died 3 days after his 99th birthday. Yuri Averbakh has since surpassed him and may well be the first 100 year old GM.
What ...
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Inspired by Ding's victory over Rapport in round 10th of 2022 Candidate's tournament; victories with a piece not moving at all
So in round 10th of the 2022 Candidate's tournament, Ding beat Rapport, and at the moment of resignation (move 55!), Ding's c8 bishop had not moved from its original square during the whole game.
So I ...
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What is the maximum number of moves in a position of Crazyhouse?
We know that the maximum number of moves for a given colour in a legal position of standard chess (or at least record so far) is 218.
What is the record we can come up with for Crazyhouse?
Note that ...
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What is the longest possible sequence of consecutive checks without captures?
The best known answer (54) for arbitrary checking moves is given in What is the theoretical limit for the number of consecutive checks?, but I'm interested in sequences without captures.
As usual, the ...
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Longest "death certificate"
Give a legal position which is "dead" but would take (assuming the §5.2.2 about dead positions wouldn't exist) maximally long to play out until an automatic draw by fivefold, 75 moves or ...
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Is there a record for threefold repetition for when the claimed positions are the farthest apart, in terms of moves?
That’s one long question, so let’s break it down. Threefold repetition, as many know, is when a draw occurs, after the same position, with all piece types on the same square, all possible moves and ...
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Longest chess game possible (maximum moves)
What is the longest chess game possible in terms of chess moves? I read somewhere that there is a theoretical maximum of 5949 moves. But I don't see any proof and I don't think it is correct.
Can it ...
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What is the record for the most pawns, of both sides, on a file in a professional chess game?
Some of us have heard about the famous game Kovacs-Barth, Balatonbereny 1994, which has the longest known surviving quadrupled pawn structure . It is one of many games with quadrupled pawns for one ...
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