28
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 above 2500, and wins with moves between 4-10. It returned 131 games. Of those games, whether due to the remaining moves simply not being transmitted, someone ...
20
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 engineer & beginning with studying an iPhone.
17
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 Morozevich"]
[Black "Viktor Korchnoi"]
[ECO "C77"]
[WhiteElo "2758"]
[BlackElo "2601"]
[PlyCount "25"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d3 b5 6. ...
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 interest ...
16
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. Don't try to analyze the games yourself.
14
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 - Round 9:
[FEN ""]
[Event "Anand - Carlsen World Championship Match"]
[Site "Chennai IND"]
[Date "2013.11.21"]
[EventDate "2013.11.07"]
[Round "9"]
[Result ...
13
In my experience, memorization of chess games simply came from improvement. I first realized that I could remember the games of past tournaments when I was around 1600 ELO, and as I improved my visualization became sharper and I could recall games played years ago. My advice to you is to have the games notated and not just read, but play through them ...
13
Wikipedia says that the longest decisive game without a capture is:
Nuber-Keckeisen, Mengen 1994 lasted 31 moves without a single capture. In the end Keckeisen, facing imminent checkmate, resigned:
[Fen ""]
1.e4 b6 2.d4 e6 3.Bd3 Bb7 4.Nf3 g6 5.O-O Bg7 6.Nbd2 Ne7 7.Re1 O-O 8.Nf1 d6 9.Qe2 Nd7 10.Bg5 Qe8 11.Rad1 a5 12.c3 Rc8 13.Ng3 Kh8 14.Qd2 Ng8 15.h3 e5 ...
11
Yes, many times. Ivanchuk- Kamsky 2009 is one example, but there are hundreds if not thousands of others. Ushenina - Girya 2013 made some news recently because Ushenina couldn't mate with knight and bishop in time.
11
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 "Damljanovic, Branko"]
[Black "Kamsky, Gata"]
[Result "1-0"]
[WhiteElo "2585"]
[BlackElo "2595"]
[ECO "A09"]
[EventDate "1991.11.??"]
[PlyCount "73"]
[EventType "tourn"]...
10
Yes, it does look like Reinfeld made a mistake, but white should still be doing well after 18... Qf6.
White should now play 19. Qc1! hitting the queen and the bishop. Now black's best continuation is to sacrifice the queen with 19... Bxf3 20. Bxf6 Bxd1
[FEN "r4rk1/b4ppp/p1b1pq2/1p6/1P6/P1Q1PN2/BB3PPP/3R2K1 w - - 1 18"]
1. Qc1 Bxf3 2. Bxf6 Bxd1
One ...
10
It won't be terribly common, but it's not unheard of either. Here are a few examples involving well-known grandmasters:
Ivanchuk-Csom (1989):
[fen ""]
[Event "Yerevan"]
[Site "Yerevan"]
[Date "1989.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Vassily Ivanchuk"]
[Black "Istvan Csom"]
[ECO "E20"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "49"]
1....
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
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 get to the 1500 range, you'd do best looking at games from the GMs of the 20th century up until the 1990s. That was when classical chess theory "matured", so to ...
9
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 potent idea, and in general it's a good idea to open up lines for one's rooks against the enemy king if one intends to attack it.
But there is another point to ...
8
Here's a variation from Stockfish. What we see is that after the smoke clears, Black's advantage actually is pretty small. Here's why:
If we just 'added up points', which is not a bad way to get an immediate feel for a position, we'd see White is down a single pawn, 13 vs 14.
We also notice White has two pawn islands of two pawns each. Black has two pawn ...
8
Per wikipedia:
Shortest Game with no captures
The shortest decisive game ever played in master play that was decided because of the position on the board (i.e. not because of a forfeit or protest) is Z. Đorđević – M. Kovačević, Bela Crkva 1984. It lasted only three moves (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 c6 3.e3?? Qa5+ winning the bishop), and White resigned.
There ...
8
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 every move. Basically, as for the start of the game, the first 10 or 20 moves are played from memory (known opening repertoire + home preparation) and not found ...
7
I talked to National Master Dan Heisman about this game and according to him, the answer is really very simple:
At the time, black thought that 8...Na6 was the best move. Black's intention was to control b4 and get to c5. After that both sides played almost perfectly which resulted in a draw.
It is also possible that the game was actually made up, but ...
7
Black is down 2 pawns, pieces completely passive, the pawn on e6 is impossible to get rid of, pawn on h6 is also important, creating potential outpost on g7 for rook. White also has two bishops and controls both open files. There is no need for White to prove anything by concrete analysis. Unless Black has some immediate way to get material back - he might ...
7
So it's about this position, right ? Let's pick Tony's move for White, and see what happpens next :
[fen "r1b2r1k/1p4bp/8/4p2n/1P3pp1/3P2P1/5PBP/1Q2NR1K b - - 1 1"]
1... f3 2. Qc1 fxg2+ 3. Nxg2
Let's count material : with ♕♙ for ♜♝♝ (11-11), much depends on the pieces actual prospects, and neither side is much better on these grounds.
White's case is ...
7
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 looking for), chessboard renderering, etc.
The code is well-documented and easy to understand. It took me around 30 minutes to read the code and start testing. ...
7
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 defense against all the mate threads and all black can do is prolong his suffering by throwing in some pieces.
[FEN ""]
[Event "US Chess Championships"]
[White "...
7
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 pretty much based around his journey of doing that.
6
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 Championship is this 20-move victory by Arasan over AllieStein. Computers report their depths, e.g. on move 16 AllieStein had a depth/selective depth of 38/54 - ...
6
Definitely study classic Morphy's games. The fact that Morphy was so far ahead of his peers is a good thing. His opponents often missed Morphy's plan and the plan came out clearly, and it shows you what you should strive to do.
In modern chess so much depends on opening preparation, where moves are often not intuitive and depend on engine backed ...
5
It really depends on where your skill level is at. If you play rated Federation chess or happen to be buzzing around your favorite online server, you'd probably fall into a rating class or have a rating that serves as a great predictor of your skill/strength level.
With that being said, here's a category-based answer to your question (using the USCF ...
5
There is a drawing line in the Zaitsev variation of the Ruy Lopez that shows up from time to time I would think.
[FEN ""]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 d6 8.c3 O-O 9.h3 Bb7 10.d4 Re8 11.Ng5 Rf8 12.Nf3
5
This question seems to have been answered by TD in ChessPub Forum. I post the answer below:
[fen ""]
[Date "1996"]
[Round "?"]
[White "De Groot, Adrianus Dingeman"]
[Black "Simmelink, Joop Theo"]
[Source "ChessBase"]
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 Nc6 3. Nc3 e5 4. d5 Ne7 5. h4 Neg8 6. a3 a6 7. Nf3 Ng4 8. Ng5 f5 9. Qc2 Bc5 10. e3 Ne7 11. Be2 Nf6 12. b4 Ba7 13. Bb2 h6 14. ...
5
I never played Sicilian Defense as Black for this reason.
A quote from Larsen:
Had I not played the Sicilian with Black I could have saved myself the trouble of studying for more than 20 years all the more popular lines of this opening, which comprise probably more than 25 percent of all published opening theory!
Constantly following updates and ...
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