33
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Games where a pawn checkmates the king
One amazing game I know that ends in a pawn mate in one called The Polish Immortal in which Black sacrifices all four minor pieces to win the game! The pawn does a double-step to give the mate.
[Title ...
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25
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Has there ever been a grandmaster-level win where a queen did not move nor get taken throughout the game?
As noted in the first comment to your question, there are certainly a lot of draws. To narrow it down to reasonable games that were wins, I searched the Mega 2019 Database for games with both players ...
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22
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Would studying the games of old players hurt my progress?
The answer from SmallChess is good. There's also an illustrative tweet from Garry Kasparov on the subject:
For beginning chess players, studying a Carlsen game is like wanting to be an electrical ...
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22
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What does it mean to ''analyze grandmaster games''?
I agree with you, more than your coach. Just analyzing a GM game, even with a computer, is not helpful just by itself if you have no idea what is going on.
For example, just earlier today, I answered ...
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21
votes
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Positions where pawn promotion to queen is worse than to other piece
Knight promotion is reasonably common (though not nearly as much so as Queening); Rook and especially Bishop, much less so, because the only motivation is stalemate avoidance(*). Tim Krabbé has a ...
- 6,524
17
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What is the fastest loss by a GM in a FIDE classical game?
I also did some research and found this game IM Hagen Poetsch vs GM Yair Kraidman in Vienna Open 2013 where black resigned in 4 moves. Black has forgotten that white recaptured with the Queen not the ...
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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 ...
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16
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Would studying the games of old players hurt my progress?
Paul Morphy's games are better resources for learning at your level. There's no use for you to get into deep positional understanding typically in modern GM games.
You should get a book on Amazon. ...
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16
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Has there ever been a grandmaster-level win where a queen did not move nor get taken throughout the game?
Here is another decisive game where neither queen moved:
[FEN ""]
[Event "36th Olympiad"]
[Site "Calvia ESP"]
[Date "2004.10.17"]
[EventDate "2004.10.15"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Alexander ...
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15
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Has there ever been a grandmaster-level win where a queen did not move nor get taken throughout the game?
I just happened to be reviewing the 2013 World Championship match a few days ago and asked myself a similar question because in round 9 Carlsen won without moving his queen or bishop.
Anand vs Carlsen ...
- 151
13
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Why do miniature games happen at the grandmaster level?
Your statement, Grandmasters think of next many moves ... is a bit misleading for your question.
Grandmaster are able to calculate many moves ahead, but this is not something they do at each and ...
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12
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Why do miniature games happen at the grandmaster level?
This question can be answered from the angle of computer chess as well, when it might actually be more illustrative. The shortest decisive game ever played in the unofficial World Computer Chess ...
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11
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Has there ever been a grandmaster-level win where a queen did not move nor get taken throughout the game?
This is a relatively long one (37 moves) with the white queen keeping on d1 during the whole game.
[FEN ""]
[Event "Belgrade Invest"]
[Site "Belgrade"]
[Date "1991.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[White "...
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What does it mean to ''analyze grandmaster games''?
So forget about Stockfish, forget about Kasparov, forget about GMs.
You are 1850. You understand something about the game. Not everything will be correct, some of it will be.
Start analyzing. It can ...
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10
votes
Java Library for PGN parser
After reading a bunch of open source code, I just found out that most of them are relying on Chesspresso which is a solid Java Chess library that can handle move validation, PGN parser (what I was ...
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10
votes
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Von Popiel - Marco, Monte Carlo 1902, how to win as black?
The white player is about to lose the Queen. Does that alone immediately constitute as a loss in that level of Chess play?
Well, no. The problem with White position is that he lacks any real ...
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10
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Would studying the games of old players hurt my progress?
If you're a beginner then studying games from the old masters does more good, especially players like Morphy who emphasized the basics (quick development, attacking an uncastled king, etc). Once you ...
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10
votes
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Pawn Sacrifice Justification
As was stated in the answer to this post made by D M, one idea of capturing in this manner is to open up the g-file for white's rooks to attack black's king. In the game this proved to be a very ...
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Why don't we see more Kings Indian Defenses in top level chess?
It is simply not as solid as other openings, mostly because it cedes too much space, and especially with the advent of computers: White has simply found more ways to press black.
In a 2017 interview,...
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10
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What is the fastest loss by a GM in a FIDE classical game?
From my answer to this question on decisive GM games with only pawn captures, at 6 moves, this is probably still the shortest: Zapata vs. Anand.
[fen "rnbqkbnr/pppppppp/8/8/8/8/PPPPPPPP/RNBQKBNR ...
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9
votes
Two questions about Wesley So vs Varuzhan Akobian (2016)
But at what point was game not saveable, at what point did Akobian
make a (big) mistake?
Qxf2 is a big mistake as after that it is forced mate in 7 moves. If So had played 24. Bxf6 there is no ...
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9
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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....
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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
Games where a pawn checkmates the king
A beautiful, more recent, game between Svilder and Carlsen:
[Title "Svidler - Carlsen, GRENKE Chess Classic, 2019"]
[FEN ""]
1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 e5 4.Bc4 Be7 5.d3 d6 6.Nd2 Nf6 7.Nf1 Nd7 8.Nd5 ...
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9
votes
World championship games where underpromotion was necessary
Found a Rubinstein game!
[fen ""]
[Date "1908.??.??"]
[White "Alapin, Simon"]
[Black "Rubinstein, Akiba"]
[WhiteElo "2500"]
[BlackElo "2640"]...
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What was the highest rated classical game that was lost on time?
Not sure if this is the all-time highest-rated classical game ever lost on time but Magnus Carlsen's game against Veselin Topalov from Round 1 of Norway Chess 2015 was lost on time.
Yes, one more loss ...
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9
votes
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Has checkmate ever been achieved by castling queenside in a high-level game?
According to that CQL query :
cql(input Megabase2023.pgn)
mate
move previous from [Kk] o-o-o
15 games had queen side castle deliver checkmate, including 5 by 2000+ players
[Title "Vlassov, ...
8
votes
Would studying the games of old players hurt my progress?
Pretty much all great players studied the games of the best players of the past, and it is repeatedly recommended that studying them is a great way to improve. Marin's book Learn from the Legends is ...
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How do you analyze master games without annotations?
How? Yourself :-)
This should not discourage you from getting the help of an engine - afterwards §. Also, to me it seems critical to what end you are analyzing master games. There are many answers to ...
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8
votes
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Moving absolutely pinned piece to give checkmate: has this ever occured in a master game?
I used this CQL query to find such positions:
cql(input Mega_Database_2022.pgn)
flipcolor {
pinningPieces = pin from A
pinnedPieces = pin through a
line --> pin from A
--> ...
- 4,285
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible