Friday 3 September 2010

How the hell did this happen?

I'd initially planned to post something on long term queen sacrifices this evening. To this end I was trying to search my database for games where one side was up a queen for an extended period of time (20 moves or so) but still managed to lose. Turns out I couldn't find any real games like this, mainly because I could create a search filter that returned games where Black met this condition, but couldn't do the same for White. I did actually find 3 'supposed' games where this happened, but in each case it was simply an incorrectly recorded result (ie Black won but it was recorded as a white win).
However I did run across the following position from the 1931 Olympiad. I am impressed by both the arrangement of Black's pawns, and how useless they turn out to be. How this came about can be found in the following game.

Addicks,Johannes Hermanus - Larsen,Ojvind [C00]
Prague ol (Men) Prague (5), 1931

1.d4 e6 2.e4 d5 3.Be3 dxe4 4.Nd2 Nf6 5.Ne2 b6 6.Ng3 Bb7 7.Bb5+ Nbd7 8.c3 Bd6 9.Qe2 0-0 10.Bg5 Be7 11.0-0-0 a6 12.Ba4 b5 13.Bc2 Rc8 14.h4 h6 15.Rh3 Nb6 16.Nh5 Nxh5 17.Qxh5 Bxg5 18.hxg5 Qxg5 19.Qxg5 hxg5 20.Bxe4 Bxe4 21.Nxe4 f6 22.Nc5 Kf7 23.Nxa6 Nd5 24.Nc5 Rfe8 25.Rf3 Re7 26.g3 Rh8 27.Rfd3 c6 28.Re1 Rhe8 29.Rd2 e5 30.dxe5 Rxe5 31.Rxe5 Rxe5 32.Nd3 Re7 33.Kd1 g4 34.Re2 g5 35.Rxe7+ Kxe7 36.Nb4 Kd6 37.Nxd5 Kxd5 38.Kd2 f5 39.Kd3 c5 40.c4+ bxc4+ 41.Kc3 f4 42.a4 Ke4 43.a5 Kf3 44.a6 Kxf2 45.a7 fxg3 (D)
46.a8Q g2 47.Qf8+ Kg3 48.Qxc5 Kh2 49.Qxg5 Kh3 50.Qe3+ Kh2 51.Qf2 g3 52.Qe2 Kh1 53.Qh5+ Kg1 54.Kd2 Kf2 55.Qf5+ Kg1 56.Ke2 Kh2 57.Qh5+ Kg1 58.Ke3 1-0

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a position!

Kevin Bonham said...

Excellent endgame!