What would be your choice as
– The best chess game of this decade?
– The best chess game of the last century?
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Topalov-Nisipeanu, M-tel 07
I mean: Decade here.
okay
Does it really matter ?
Candidates Match 2007: Carlsen-Aronian 1-0 queens indian 49 moves
Just for clarification….since we are in the first decade of the
21st century, this means all games from Jan. 1, 2001-the present (remember, the new mellenium didn’t officially begin until Jan. 1, 2001 because there never was a year “0” in the western world).
Just wondering.
Games of the century (in terms of importance):
(1) Fischer-Spassky 1972, Game 3. This fundamentally won Fischer the match.
(2) First Kasparov-Karpov match 1984/5, Game 31. Karpov at 5-0, going for 6-0 had a won game, but allowed a situation to develop where anything could have happened and bailed out with a draw. This freaked him out; he lost the next game and never won another.
(3) Capablanca-Alekhine WC match 1927, Game 31. Capa had a winning game, but only drew. A win for Capa here would have tied the match at 4-4 and anything could have happened!
(4) Karpov-Korchnoi, 1978 WC match, Game 32. A win for Korchnoi here; or a draw here, and a win in his next white game and Korchnoi would have been World Champion.
(5) Botvinnik-Bronstein, 1951 WC match, Game 23. Bronstein one up, and with white to come in the final game, lost.
(6) First Kasparov-Karpov match 1984/5, Game 41. A much overlooked game! Karpov blew a won game near the end. A win for Karpov would have given him a still crushing 6-1 victory.
(7) Lasker-Schlechter WC match 1910, 10th and last game. Lasker’s must-win here from probably a lost game saved his title. If Schlecter had been World Champion, perhaps Rubinstein would have got a match; and Capa much sooner.
(8) Alekhine-Euwe match 1935, Game 29 (out of 30). Alekhine, 1 down, pressed strongly, and maybe could have won. A win here probably would have saved him his title.
(9) Kasparov-Karpov 1987 match. Kasparov’s must-win in game 24 saved his title.
(10) World Championship Tournamrnt 1948. Before their Round 4 game, Botvinnik and Reshevsky were leading with 1.5 out of 2. Reshevsky blew a completely won game in time trouble and lost. A win here, and Smyslov, as well as Keres, may have been required to throw games to Botvinnik!
(11) Alekhine-Keres, Round 12, AVRO 1938. Alekhine obtained probably a won game, made a terrible blunder, and Keres had a won endgame 2 pawns up, which he incredibly only managed to draw:
(a) A Keres win would probably have meant an outright win for Keres at AVRO, which would have strengthened his claim for a Title match.
(b) A Keres loss would have meant that Fine would probably have won the tournament outright. He might have had more clout for obtaining a WC match with Alekhine.
(12) Keres-Fischer, Candidates 1959, Round 15. Keres, leading the tournament, blundered a piece and lost. Keres played better in this Candidates than any other, and with a win here may well have headed Tal off.
(13) Keres-Benko, Candidates 1962, Round 27. Heading into this game, Keres was tied for first with Petrosian with 2 rounds to go. Keres had beaten Benko 3 times in this tournament previously (in addition to a 4-0 score in the 1959 Candidates!). But he lost! A win here would have put him one up, though Petrosian surely would have tried hard with white against bottom marker Filip in the last round. So quite probably a tie for first and a play-off.
(14) Tal-Fischer, Candidates 1959, Round 27. The famous pawn-grab by Tal in the 6.Bc4 Najdorf. Fischer obtained a won game, missed the win and lost. A Tal loss here would have seen Tal and Keres tied for the lead with one round to go!
(15) Keres-Fischer, Candidates 1962, final round. Keres missed a good winning chance. A win here would have tied him for first with Petrosian.
Games of the Century (in terms of an incredible/unexpected rout)
(1) Korchnoi-Karpov 1974, Final Candidates Match, game 21. The almost unbeatable Karpov, following faulty analysis, utterly destroyed by a N sac against his king in just 19 moves!!
(2) Spassky-Fischer Game 11, 1972. Fischer had scored +5,=3 in the last 8 games. Spassky did a completely unknown type of innovation in Fischer’s favourite Poisoned Pawn Najdorf. Fischer was all at sea and played absolutely horribly, demonstrating that if a type of position wasn’t recorded in Fischer’s computer type memory banks, he didn’t really have much understanding of chess at all.
(3) Karpov-Miles, European Team Championship, Skara 1980. Karpov lost after 1.e4 to Miles’ 1…a6!!
(4) Kasparov-Deep Blue 1997, Final Game. Kasparov, generally the best opening-prepared player ever, totally demoralised, plays straight down a totally lost opening variation.
(5) Lasker-Capablanca, Third and final game between these two at the St Petersburg 1914 Tournament. Lasker is in a must-win situation. The previously unbeatable Capablanca is utterly strangled by Lasker’s Exchange Ruy Lopez.
(6) Botvinnik-Keres Round 3, USSR Absolute Championship 1941. Keres, as white, loses horribly in a miniature to some high class Botvinnik opening preparation. Keres probably never recoverrd psychologically from this.
(7) Mikenas-Botvinnik USSR Championship 1940. Botvinnik, generally considered to be the strongest candidate to challenge Alekhine for the World Championship at the time, is utterly crushed. Botvinnik finished 5= in this tournament, 2 points out of first place. Shocked, he demands the USSR Absolute Championship the next year.
Kasparov-Topalov, Vajk 1999 by far. Also Topalov-Aronian 2006.
Jose Raul Capablanca vs Frank James Marshall Manhattan CC 1918.
Marshall unfolded his novelty and Capablanca proceed to refute his preparation in real time.
According to the question the “games of the decade and century” are, by default, the 21st century only. The 20th century is over and since no one bothered to clarify my early question….and since it is now the 21st century and also the first decade thereof, then any game played before 1/1/01 cannot count.
If Mrs. Polgars wishes to clarify this then that would be great. But, I doubt she will ever answer. So, it’s up to a matter of interpretation.
The 21st century began on 1/1/2001 becuase in the Western world there never was a year “0”.
This is an important distinction…
if she meant the 20th century (and it’s easy for many to still think we’re in the 20th century…but wer’e not) then it should have said the “most important game within the past 100 years.”
Anyone who states a game prior to the 21st century is incorrectly answerng this question.
“Game of the Decade”—It is currently the first decade of the 21st century.
“Game of the Century”—the 20th century is forever gone and is history. Hence, logic dictates that the “game of the century” must be one that began once the 21st century began.
I know you will not answer but, can you clarify this, Susan?
But, again…I know you will not respond. So, everyone enjoy answering a question that is not correctly stated.
Forgot one.
Kramnik-Deep Fritz 10, Game 2.
Kramnik misses a mate-in-one!!
I can’t believe how sour is this anonymous guy DEMANDING precisions! Just take the question whichever way you want, man, and have fun thinking of an answer; I think that’s the whole point.
2000 Anonymous,
Of course there was a year zero! You must be a FORTRAN programmer. Learn C and you will be able to understand zero offset arrays. Of course, historically there was no year 0 (or year 1 for that matter) because the BC/AD numbering wasn’t dreamed up until the 6th century.
We are perfectly free to start our counting at either year 0 or year 1. It makes the most sense to start counting from zero. Then, the year measures how much time has passed since the beginning. For example, a child is not does not “turn one” until a year after he or she is born. The counting starts at zero. If you decide to be silly and define the first year as “year 1” instead of “year 0”, you end up with ridiculous notions like “the 21st century doesn’t start until 2001” and “the year 1990 isn’t a part of the 1990s, but the year 2000 is.” Absurd! Why cling to such a strange notion if you don’t have to?
Some may have an extraordinary devotion to Dionysius Exiguus who dreamed up the “modern” numbering system 1500 years ago. He declared the first year to be year 1. Who cares what he declared? It doesn’t make any sense. Although his name for the starting point (viz. “1”) doesn’t make any sense, his choice of the starting point for the clock (Jesus’ birth) is reasonable. Unfortunately, he got the date for that one wrong. Jesus was not born at the BC/AD border, he was most likely born several years earlier. Therefore, the year accounting system we use measures time elapsed from an arbitrary point in history, so there is no reason to call the first year “1” instead of “0”.
One other point that the FORTRAN programmers make is that the counting goes from 2 BCE to 1 BCE to 1 CE with no zero. This stems from Dionysius Exiguus error, but it really doesn’t matter because you can just define year 0 CE to be exactly equal to year 1 BCE–a little turbulence crossing the border there, but it is much better than including the year 2000 in the 1900s.
It’s also much neater to do away with leap years: each year (using mean tropical) is now approximately 365.24219 days.
Please revise calendars accordingly: 2008 begins next January 1st at 5:48 a.m.
Thank you.
Seeing we’re way off-topic anyway, I should mention that Jesus was probably never born at all – he was just a myth invented by the gospel writers.
The writings of Paul, which considerably pre-date the 4 gospels, mention hardly any details of Jesus as a person at all. These were made up later by the gospel writers and are contradictory, eg Matthew says ‘Jesus’ was born before the death of Herod in 4BC, while Luke says ‘Jesus’ was born at the time of a census held by Quinirius, which was a local one held 6AD.
best game of last century is easy: Capablanca-Alekhine buenos ares world championship match game #27 ( Capablanca played a perfect game ( God-like) then, when winning placed his king on the wrong square giving Alekhine a perpetual)The other king move would have changed chess history.
this decade? Topalov-Moro San Luis 2005
The match of the last century was Capa-Alekhine 1927; much better than Iceland 1972, Baguio 78, or Seville 1990
chesss44: Great, intriguing analysis! You could write an interesting article expanding on it–entitled, e.g., “Crucial Games of the Last Century”
Any game by many time World Champion Susan Polgar is far better than all the rest of the cited garbage.
Pamplona, Spain when Susan took third place behind GM Yudasin and Korchnoi. It was this match that gave us the world’s first Woman Chess Grand Master!
Susan, will you put this game up in your Blog for the world to see? People want to see those last few games you played as you were “Breaking Through” the gender barrier and leaving nothing but your acheivement in the wake of the disbeleiving male chess establishment! Magnificent!
To life!
Vlad Taltos
One of the most exciting games of the century has to be game 3 of the Fischer Spassky 1972 match. Fischer had lost game 1 and forfit game 2. Fischer had never beat Boris Spassky.
Game 3 was exciting because it was Bobby’s first win over Boris and gave huge cheer to the American fans. It began the crush that made the world go wild. Bobby had settled down to play chess finally.
The best game I watched live has to be the Leko win over Kramnik in a Marshall. Leko was black and all the computers said he was crushed and lost. Suddenly no one had seen it but from the depth of lost the computers turned from dead lost to dead won. It was as if Leko had seen so much deeper than the computers. It was a fantastic game for Leko from the black side. The spectators went wild on that game. It was almost more than chess itself. Great game.
Anon 30 Nov 2007, 1:22:00 pm
Thanks muchly.
That would be interesting to do. (perhaps Susan can pay me to write it!)
The match of the last century to me was Karpov-Kasparov Moscow 1984/5. Kasparov, still aged only 21, did an extraordinary balancing act on the edge of a precipice for months!
Capablanca-Alekhine 1927 was also a titanic struggle. However, it was marred by many short colourless draws. There were many complaints then about these; as there were in the above match.
Perhaps the best played match of all time was the second K-K match in 1985. There were some extraordinary games in this.
Undoubtably the match that got the most publicity was Fischer-Spassky 1972. But in terms of the overall quality of the play, it was abysmal. About half(!) the games were marred by ridiculous outright blunders or very poor play.
Kasparov – Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999
Actually, I tried to think of a nice positional game instead of one of the – usually overrated – pretty tactical sacrifices. But then again… it really deserves to be called the game of the century.
From the last decade…there are many pretty games coming by barely noticed. I’ll probably settle for one of the recent Anti-Moscow games. Maybe Radiabov – Anand, Frankfurt 2005 (although I don’t know whether rapid games count)
Go is better than chess