26
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.
...
25
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. ...
17
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 ...
13
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.
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 ...
11
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
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 ...
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 ...
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 ...
7
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 ...
7
The game Lasker - Thomas, Lasker could have ended with a castling checkmate, but instead he played “18.Kd2#.” Some versions of that game I've seen may have ended with “18.O-O-O#.”
[Title "Edward Lasker-George Alan Thomas, London, Casual Game, 10/29/19"]
[FEN ""]
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 ...
6
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....
6
"That is, from an experienced player's viewpoint, why do we assume that staying alive with Rd2 is not worth the effort, and how would White be sure to win regardless?"
I don't want to speak for you but it seems you're getting more at a philosophical question about whether or not to resign than asking about the position.
For an under 1200 section, this ...
6
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.
6
I just saw this question, and while someone came up with the game you were looking for, here is a game with what many consider THE most spectacular queen sacrifice ever. It is a positional sacrifice for two minors on move 12! I thought everyone might enjoy this.
If you do have never heard of Rashid "SuperNezh" Nezhmetdinov, despite never getting the GM ...
5
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://...
5
Here is a famous game between two famous players that ends with “30...0-0.”
[Title "Timman-Kasparov, Eurotel Trophy, 1998"]
[FEN ""]
1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.e3 b5 6.a4 b4 7.Nb1 Ba6 8.Qc2 b3 9.Qd1 e6 10.Be2 c5 11.O-O Nc6 12.Ne5 Rc8 13.Na3 cxd4 14.Naxc4 Qd5 15.Bf3 Ne4 16.Nxc6 Rxc6 17.Nd2 f5 18.Re1 d3 19.Nxb3 e5 20.Bd2 Rb6 21.Bxe4 fxe4 22.Nc1 ...
5
Instead of 15... Rxf8 like in your line, black could play 15... Bxf8. Bxf8 attacks the queen, so the queen has to move. 16. Qa4 let c3 uncovered and makes 16... Nxc3 with an upcoming Re8+ possible, 16. Qc1 (the only other square for the queen) should pretty much be lost after 16... Nxc3 (the queen can't take because of Bb4). On 17. Rd2 Re8+ looks strong, and ...
4
Game two of the Fischer-Spassky world championship in 1972 comes to mind. Fischer forfeited it because of the cameras in the main hall. Due to Fischer's theatrics, Spassky agreed to play the 3rd game away from the audience, and lost. Then the drama by the Soviets around "devices" allegedly placed in Fischer's chair designed to disrupt Spassky's thinking.
...
4
Albert Einstein vs Robert Oppenheimer - Einstein won obviously :)
None of them is a professional chess player, but the game is so famous, simply because everyone wants to see Einstein playing chess!
4
I have an old book in my house, 500 King's Gambit Miniatures, and in the first pages at least the games didn't pas 30 moves. And I think it is a very good definition.
4
The record for most consecutive moves by a piece in a FIDE rated (it's FIDE at the least) event is 80 moves by a rook, starting on move 67. It happened in the game Yueh Wei Po- Arora during the 37th Chess Olympiad. This record is on Tim Krabbe's page for chess records of course.
[Title "Yueh Wei Po-Arora, 37th Chess Olympiad, Turin Italy, 6/2/2006"]
[FEN ...
4
If a game has a recognized name, you would do well to study it. Some widely acclaimed examples include:
The Immortal Game (Aderssen vs. Kieseritzky, London 1851)
The Evergreen Game (Anderssen vs. Dufresne, Berlin 1852)
The Opera Game (Morphy vs. Rufus and Dufus, Paris 1858)
The Gold Coin Game (Levitsky vs. Marshall, Breslau 1912)
The Battle of Hastings (...
3
Chess "thinking" is first and foremost a skill. As such it has to be practiced actively. Passively acquired knowledge will only flesh out what you already can do, it will not improve your chess all that much.
Of course if you try to follow all the variations of the commentators and constantly come up with variations on your own, you will benefit from ...
3
Depends on your strength.
If you are able to understand what's going on in the game, then yes. But if you feel like watching a mystery thriller, then no. To learn and improve yourself, first you should understand what's going on.
For example, I would advice 1800+ FIDE players to watch and analyze GM games. And I would advice 1600- players to not to lose ...
3
Black's next four moves will be Nxg3, (unless White advances the g pawn, in which case Black plays f5xg4), Ne4, Ng5, and Nxe6, unless White moves his N to protect it, in which case Black moves Ke7.
White's best plan is to activate his king to b1, c2, b3, and a4.So White's king is at a4, his N at c6 with two pawns in a2 and b2, having lost both his king side ...
3
Think of white's next move. The pawn in g is lost. If you move the pawn in e, black just leaves the king there and the white knight is pinned. So the only reasonable move is b1, to start taking the king to where the action is. Black can now take the g pawn and start advancing the three pawns to get to promote one of them. I might screw that up, but not a GM. ...
3
White's position is just bad overall. The main reasons:
The passed c-pawn is a huge asset. It's likely it will eventually cost White a piece, but in the meantime it cramps White's forces.
All Black's pieces are far more active than their White counterparts, with the sole exception of the rooks (which are roughly equal in activity).
Knowing Kasparov, he was ...
3
Not all the games are by strong players, let alone, players, who are well-known, but here is a complete list in the Mega 2019 database. If you would like to see a particular game, or two, I can post the PGN, and add it to this answer.
This one is interesting since one of players is famous, and both promotions happened so early in the game.
[Event "...
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