Sunday 7 February 2010

The most complicated game ever?

A hard thing to decide, because the criteria is so fuzzy. What defines 'complicated'? Confusing, Baffling, or Incomprehensible. I would probably throw in some element of 'surprise' in the sense that what really happened only becomes clear at the conclusion of the game.
One candidate would be the Bronstein - Ljubojevic game from the 1973 Zonal. I've seen this appear in a number of game collections and in each there are pages and pages of analysis. Bronstein himself devotes 17 pages to this game in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice", although that utilises analysis done by Timman and Keres in other publications.
Interestingly when I ran it through Fritz it seemed to get most of the moves played, but it was the assessment of the position that fluctuated wildly. So that may be another definition for complicated, 'If the computer has no idea who is better!'

Bronstein,David Ionovich (2585) - Ljubojevic,Ljubomir (2570) [B03]
Petropolis Interzonal Petropolis (11), 1973

1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 Nd5 3.d4 d6 4.c4 Nb6 5.f4 dxe5 6.fxe5 c5 7.d5 e6 8.Nc3 exd5 9.cxd5 c4 10.Nf3 Bg4 11.Qd4 Bxf3 12.gxf3 Bb4 13.Bxc4 0-0 14.Rg1 g6 15.Bg5 Qc7 (D) 16.Bb3 Bc5 17.Qf4 Bxg1 18.d6 Qc8 19.Ke2 Bc5 20.Ne4 N8d7 21.Rc1 Qc6 22.Rxc5 Nxc5 23.Nf6+ Kh8 24.Qh4 Qb5+ 25.Ke3 h5 26.Nxh5 Qxb3+ 27.axb3 Nd5+ 28.Kd4 Ne6+ 29.Kxd5 Nxg5 30.Nf6+ Kg7 31.Qxg5 Rfd8 32.e6 fxe6+ 33.Kxe6 Rf8 34.d7 a5 35.Ng4 Ra6+ 36.Ke5 Rf5+ 37.Qxf5 gxf5 38.d8Q fxg4 39.Qd7+ Kh6 40.Qxb7 Rg6 41.f4 1-0

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Tim Taylor in his book on the Bird's Opening makes much the same claim for 2 games with Mestel in Ftrom gambit lines, alos claiming that the computer switches wildly between favouring balck and white, sometimes even without a move being played as it analyses further and further
Stephen M