51
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Where can I find this game with a sacrifice followed by a long series of checks leading to a discovered mate?
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 ...
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41
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Shortest stalemate in serious tournament game
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-...
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32
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Spectacular queen sacrifice game
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 "...
- 18.8k
31
votes
A position with the only legal move resulting in checkmate
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 ...
- 1,496
25
votes
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How is Kasparov vs Shirov 1992 a victory?
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 ...
- 1,225
21
votes
A position with the only legal move resulting in checkmate
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 ...
- 21.2k
21
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Has there been any blunders in resignation?
The official source that people link to when this question comes up is Tim Krabbe's excellent blog post from more than 20 years ago now: The ultimate blunder. He collected every single game in the ...
- 14.9k
19
votes
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Which notable players in chess history successfully used dubious openings?
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 ...
- 14.4k
18
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Famous grandmaster games of "torturous" winning or flaunting out of arrogance?
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 ...
- 74.2k
17
votes
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The Game of the Century - why didn't Byrne take the rook after he forked Fischer?
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 ...
- 11.8k
16
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Could you help me to find which game this is?
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 ...
- 21.4k
16
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Has anyone ever played and recorded a full game of Taikyoku Shogi?
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 ...
- 451
14
votes
A position with the only legal move resulting in checkmate
[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#.
- 1,910
14
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Have there been brilliancy prizes awarded to the losing player?
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 ...
- 21.2k
13
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What is the most queens that have been on the board in a grandmaster game?
This sounds like a job for Tim Krabbé, who presents two games with six queens: Szalanczy - Nguyen, Budapest 2009 and Anton - Franco, XXI Elgoibar Magistral 2011. I don't know how many of the ...
- 14.4k
12
votes
In Nakamura v. Friedel in 2009, (22. Bc1) why did Friedel resign?
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 ...
- 905
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Which notable players in chess history successfully used dubious openings?
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/...
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How is Kasparov vs Shirov 1992 a victory?
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 ...
- 20.3k
12
votes
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Is today's World Championship game the first with a symmetrical position and one file completely occupied?
Using this CQL query:
cql(input all_wcc.pgn)
[Aa][a1-8] == 8
or [Aa][b1-8] == 8
or [Aa][c1-8] == 8
or [Aa][d1-8] == 8
or [Aa][e1-8] == 8
or [Aa][f1-8] == 8
or [Aa][g1-8] == 8
or [Aa][h1-8] == 8
...
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11
votes
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Longest number of moves that have been identical in two independently played games on record
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 ...
- 1,010
10
votes
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Which is the oldest chess game?
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"]
[...
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10
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What is the most queens that have been on the board in a grandmaster game?
If you have a PGN file of chess games you can use CQL to search it. Something like:
(match
:pgn src.pgn
:output queens.pgn
(position
:piececount [Qq] 3 8))
Should return all games with ...
- 806
10
votes
Famous pawn promotion matches
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"]...
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What are some games I can watch to become better in playing chess?
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 ...
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9
votes
Could you help me to find which game this is?
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....
- 1,547
9
votes
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A question about piece development
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 ...
- 20.3k
9
votes
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What is the longest professional chess game that ended in a checkmate?
The game Dann-Kovchan ended with 217...Nc2#.
[Title "Matthias Dann-Alexander Kovchan, Dresden Open, Dredsen Germany, 4/8/17"]
[FEN ""]
[startply "433"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 ...
9
votes
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What is the legend of Ossip Bernstein, who supposedly played chess to save his life?
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 ...
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votes
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Has a "resignation blunder" ever been refused?
Some quick Googling suggests that the rules (or at least some sets of rules) do allow you to refuse a resignation from your opponent
This does not reflect the FIDE Laws of Chess. According to Article ...
- 74.2k
8
votes
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In Nakamura v. Friedel in 2009, (22. Bc1) why did Friedel resign?
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 ...
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Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible