51
I believe that the game you speak of is the extremely famous Lasker-Thomas match in which Lasker forces Black to accept his queen "sacrifice" on move 11. It is followed by a king hunt in which Black's king is forced to the last rank by White, who then finishes the game with the king giving a discovered check from the unmoved a8 rook. The game is ...
41
Yes, there has been a stalemate in a serious game that is under 30 moves long. According to Tim Krabbe's "Chess Records," the fastest such game happened in 27 moves.
[Title "Sibilio-Mariotti, Ravenna, 1982"]
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
1. e4 e6 2. Nf3 d5 3. e5 c5 4. b4 cxb4 5. d4 Nh6 6. a3 ...
32
This does sound like the famous game between Edward Lasker (not the world champ) and George Alan Thomas.
[FEN ""]
[Event "Casual game"]
[Site "London ENG"]
[Date "1912.10.29"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Edward Lasker"]
[Black "George Alan Thomas"]
1. d4 e6 2. Nf3 f5 3. Nc3 Nf6 4. Bg5 Be7 5. Bxf6 Bxf6 6. e4
fxe4 7. Nxe4 b6 8. Ne5 O-O 9. Bd3 Bb7 10. Qh5 Qe7 11. ...
31
I want to offer a semi-realistic example. I think I have seen something like this in a game by masters in some book, but of course I cannot recall where. But this is something that at least can be realistically missed in calculations from far away.
[FEN "6k1/5ppp/6r1/3b4/4r3/8/1Q5P/1R5K w - - 0 1"]
White just gives a back rank mate, right? :)
...
25
Shirov resigned: the thinking was that despite both sides left with pawns and a knight, the advantage went to Black.
Black has an extra pawn and Black's pawn chain is mutually supporting. White is down a pawn and they are split. White's king is buried too deeply in the corner to either prevent a black pawn advance to promotion or to save White's pawns.
...
21
Sure it's possible. In fact, it's possible that this kind of "inevitability" happens earlier in the game, with many more moves to go until mate.
Here is an example the Wikipedia on joke chess problems. The composer's full name comes from chess problem databases.
[Title "Vilhelm Röpke, Skakbladet 1942, Mate In 6"]
[FEN "K1k5/P1Pp4/...
19
If you really mean "dubious", then no one really fits this description since Steinitz, who liked to, for example, go for walks with his King when playing the King's Gambit as White. But people didn't really know better back then.
If you're willing to relax "dubious" to "offbeat", the first player that comes to mind is Bent Larsen, one of the strongest ...
17
Short answer: Since after the bishop recapture on f8 (and not the rook recapture!) white is tactically and positionally completely busted, with 5 active black pieces against a completely exposed king in the centre and no foreseeable chance of consolidation in order to eventually benefit from the material advantage.
First observations:
15...Bxf8 is with ...
16
https://www.chess.com/article/view/how-to-avoid-blunders-part-two
In one of his books GM Alexander Kotov even coined a term "Dizziness due to success" which describes Chigorin's blunder that we just witnessed pretty accurately. Kotov even tells his own story. He was playing a game and achieved a completely winning position. His opponent lost any ...
16
The answer is yes.
According to jawp article, a game of Taikyoku Shogi was played for Japanese TV show "Tribia-no-Izumi" (=Fountain of trivia), broadcast on 19th May 2004. The game continued 32 hours 41 minutes and 3805 moves before the first player won. This seems to be the first full-recorded game of the variant.
Also, there is a webpage
dedicated to ...
16
Are there such examples of torturous winning, where a grandmaster
resists his urge to resign and lets the opponent take all of his
pieces before he gets checkmated?
No, there aren't, for the simple reason that that sort of behaviour would require both players to behave in an extremely childish manner and childish behaviour (e.g. "hope chess") is ...
14
[FEN "kq6/8/K7/PQ6/8/8/8/8 b - - 0 1"]
1... Qb7+ (1... Qa7#) 2. Qxb7#
Black could mate with 1...Qa7# or lose with 1...Qb7#, when White's only legal reply is 2. Qxb7#.
14
Not exactly a prize, but answers your question in spirit: Immortal Losing Game Wikipedia's summary of the game is:
The Immortal Losing Game is a chess game between the Soviet grandmaster David Bronstein and the Polish International Master Bogdan Śliwa played in 1957 in Gotha. The name is an allusion to the more famous Immortal Game between Adolf Anderssen ...
12
22...Rd2 saves the queen, but black is still down a massive amount of material. After white takes the rook on d2, he has two rooks for just a bishop. With such a huge material deficit, there is no possible hope of defending with normal play. The only chance for black would be to have an immediate attack on the king or other very strong compensation, which is ...
12
Among World Champions, Alekhine was a top bluffmaster. Capablanca once remarked that "Alekhine's game is 20% bluff".
Here's one example of his bluffs.
[FEN "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR w KQkq - 0 1"]
[White "Alekhine"]
[Black "Erich Cohn"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 exd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. e5?
This was played in Alekhine vs ...
12
Black has (almost) three connected passed pawns which will be unstoppable.
White is not going to promote his pawn without the king, which is far away and likewise is not going to get a passer on the a or b file soon.
11
There are Several reasons for identical games:
The fact that we databases and computers allows us to find the best move in known positions. (if both players knows the theory in the same level - it might lead to a known draw).
Hence some players might follow a known game between two great players, which might result with identical games.
The fact that ...
10
The oldest recorded game with the modern rules for moves is this game played in 1475. Although it's not clear if castling and en passant were in force.
[FEN ""]
[Event "Valencia "]
[Date "1475"]
[White "Francesco di Castellvi"]
[Black "Narciso Vinyoles"]
1.e4 d5 2.exd5 Qxd5 3.Nc3 Qd8 4.Bc4 Nf6 5.Nf3 Bg4 6.h3 Bxf3 7.Qxf3 e6 8.Qxb7 Nbd7 9.Nb5 Rc8 10.Nxa7 Nb6 ...
10
First, by far the most popular chess YouTuber is Agadmator. His channel does a nice job of going over famous games, and explaining them.
Other good videos are what are called "banter blitz". Banter blitz is when players, and you want to watch Masters, explain what they are thinking aloud as they are playing. You can then get a better idea of what we see, ...
9
Bobby Fischer's games in the 1965 Capablanca Memorial gained fame because he was denied a visa to travel to Cuba, and was the only player in the tournament who had to play all of his games from New York by telephone. It was especially grueling because those games typically lasted 8 hours or more due to the communications lag.
9
Sorry it is not an answer to the original question. It is supposed to be a comment to StudetT's answer - definitely correct one - but is too long to fit the comment format. Just a bit of chess history.
Dizziness due to success was not coined by Kotov.
It is a title a Pravda editorial, signed by Stalin (I have no idea who actually wrote it), published in ...
9
Several reasons I can see:
In closed positions like you have here, piece development is not as important as in open positions.
To me it seems that black played his King's Indian set up, more or less ignoring what white is playing, which generally is not a good idea.
Black should/could have attacked the center in the beginning more aggressively, thereby ...
9
The written sources appear to be:
An obituary on Bernstein by Edward Lasker (a friend of Bernstein) in the April 1963 issue of Chess Review, which is described in the link below, including a scan of the 1963 article itself: http://jewishchesshistory.blogspot.com/2009/09/alekhine-escaping-execution-definite.html
However, the US Chess Federation has made it ...
8
After White's 22. Bc1, it seems like responding with Rd2 would keep the game alive for Black.
This is an entirely wrong assumption. Black has no counterplay whatsoever, while White holds the initiative. Being down material, Black has no resources/time to repel the coming attack, nor to organize a defense/counterplay. Because his queen is trapped he will be ...
answered Jul 1 '14 at 17:26
AlwaysLearningNewStuff
11.6k2 gold badges24 silver badges55 bronze badges
8
A game between McDonnell and De La Bourdonnais is very famous. Although no promotion was executed on the board, it is definitely the theme of the game.
[FEN ""]
[Event "London m4 ;HCL 18"]
[Site "16"]
[Date "1834.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "62"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Alexander McDonnell"]
[Black "...
8
There's this game by Frank Marshall, about which he claimed his last move excited the spectators in such a way, they showered him with golden coins. However, I've also read the coins were not intended for him, but tossed on the table by those who bet against him, for the winning gamblers to collect. But it was an amazing move though. More info here:
http://...
8
The question therefore is, where did Kasparov misplay the position?
No, he did not. All the lines give Black equal chances, no matter what move White chose to play.
How did he lose his small positional advantage.
He did not lose advantage because there was none in the first place. White position just looks "prettier". He can not stop the freeing d5 ...
answered Mar 3 '14 at 15:29
AlwaysLearningNewStuff
11.6k2 gold badges24 silver badges55 bronze badges
8
Currently I still can't find a drawn game, but I found a game where white had 3 queens, black had 2 queens and other pieces, and black won. There was a game on chess.com where black had 0.1s left and promoted in time for checkmate (3 queens).
[FEN ""]
[StartPly "137"]
1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. d4 O-O 6. Be2 e5 7. O-O Nc6 ...
8
Krabbé's first example for "Most Queens: 6" is a game Szalanczy - Nguyen,
Budapest 2009, where after 58 a8Q each side had K+QQQ+N+P. The game was drawn on move 75, after two pairs of Queens were traded on moves 65-66.
7
Thomas Wilson Barnes used 1. e4 f6?! to beat Paul Morphy.
[FEN ""]
[Event "London m1"]
[Site "London"]
[Date "1858"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Paul Morphy"]
[Black "Thomas Wilson Barnes"]
[ECO "A00"]
[PlyCount "100"]
1.e4 f6 2.d4 e6 3.Bd3 Ne7 4.Be3 d5 5.Nc3 dxe4 6.Nxe4 Nd5 7.Nh3 Be7 8.Qh5+ g6 9.Qh6 Bf8 10.Qh4 Bg7 11.O-O O-O 12....
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