History Awesome / Chess

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task Babson task]] is a "White to play and mate" problem in which Black can promote a pawn, and whichever piece he promotes to, White ''must'' promote to the same kind of piece. But it sounds impossible. After all, why should White have to promote to a rook or bishop when a queen is more powerful? Even if the knight can make moves the queen cannot, why should White's knight promotion be determined by a promotion at the other end of the board? Pierre Drumare worked on composing such a task for ''twenty years'' before coming to the conclusion that it was impossible. The problem of creating a Babson task was solved in 1983 by Leonid Yarosh, hitherto a complete unknown in the chess problem world. He subsequently [[UpToEleven bettered this achievement]] by creating a version with a "perfect" non-capturing key. [[note]]In chess problems, it is an aesthetic demerit for the key to be a capture, since such moves are more obvious to solvers.[[/note]] And there was a happy ending for Drumare, who subsequently succeeded in composing his own Babson task, albeit one with certain aesthetic flaws compared to Yarosh's. In fact, over a dozen Babsons have been composed since then, and Yarosh's is still seen as the best.

* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Lasker#Notable_games Edward Lasker vs. Sir George Thomas]] in London 1912, a borderline HumiliationConga summarized by Thomas with the words "[[GracefulLoser This was very nice.]]" Lasker (not to be confused with world champion Emanuel Lasker) ended the game within 18 moves with a queen sacrifice into a series of checks that ''drags the black king all the way across the board into his own back rank'' and then delivers checkmate [[CherryTapping by moving his king]]. The general consensus among chess fans is that the only way the game could've been more awesome for Lasker is if he checkmated by castling.

* Simultaneously forking an enemy king, queen and rook with one's knight. It's objectively no better than a normal fork, but it's cool nonetheless.

* "The Golden Move": An utterly brilliant queen sacrifice played by American Frank Marshall in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall his game against Levitsky]] in Breslau 1912. The black queen can be captured in three different ways, yet White is completely lost.

* "The Golden Move": An utterly brilliant queen sacrifice played by American Frank Marshall in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall his game against Levitsky]] in Breslau 1912. The black queen can be captured in three different ways, yet White is lost.

* Any checkmate, in formal or informal play at any skill level, where a Pawn delivers the final blow.

* In December 2017, almost exactly 20 years after Deep Blue, [[https://www.chess.com/news/view/google-s-alphazero-destroys-stockfish-in-100-game-match the neural network-based AlphaZero completely dominated Stockfish 8]]. To emphasize how impressive this is: AlphaZero beat Stockfish, one of the strongest chess engines in the world at the time (and over 1000 Elo points higher than Deep Blue), after teaching itself how to play for four hours with no outside input beyond the rules of the game.
** Google declined to pursue AlphaZero any further than the paper they released on how it works, so the Internet took the paper and built an AI based on the paper. Known as [[https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess Leela chess Zero]], it built up to phenomenal strength during its first six months, being able to occasionally beat the strongest conventional engines in the world at the time such as Stockfish 9. Its rapid progress led many to estimate that the program would be the strongest chess player in the world by the end of 2018. Leela is considered remarkable due to its inclination toward positional play, similar to AlphaZero. While its tactical play is of a lower quality than that of many of its opponents, its strategic depth puts other systems to shame and often compensates for its shortcomings.

* Deep Blue versus Kasparov. Whether it is more awesome that someone could [[GadgeteerGenius build a robot that could take on Kasparov]] or that [[TheChessmaster Kasparov could manage to take on a super robot]], you decide.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task Babson task]] is a "White to play and mate" problem in which Black can promote a pawn, and whichever piece he promotes to, White ''must'' promote to the same kind of piece. But it sounds impossible. After all, why should White have to promote to a rook or bishop when a queen is more powerful? Even if the knight can make moves the queen cannot, why should White's knight promotion be determined by a promotion at the other end of the board? Pierre Drumare worked on composing such a task for ''twenty years'' before coming to the conclusion that it was impossible. The problem of creating a Babson task was solved in 1983 by Leonid Yarosh, hitherto a complete unknown in the chess problem world. He subsequently [[UpToEleven bettered this achievement]] by creating a version with a "perfect", non-capturing key. [[note]]In chess problems, it is an aesthetic demerit for the key to be a capture, since such moves are more obvious to solvers.[[/note]] And there was a happy ending for Drumare, who subsequently succeeded in composing his own Babson task, albeit one with certain aesthetic flaws compared to Yarosh's. In fact, over a dozen Babsons have been composed since then, and Yarosh's is still seen as the best.

* In 1982, during a "chess awareness" publicity tour stop in Orlando, Florida, then-US Open Chess Champion Andrew Soltis invited a randomly selected twelve-year-old boy named Aaron Butler up onto the stage from the crowd to play against Soltis in an exhibition game. The idea was that Soltis would teach the boy (and the crowd) to play chess. Butler then proceeded to beat Soltis in two moves, using a combination of moves called the "Fool's Mate", which you can assume happened only with Soltis's active cooperation. When asked about it later, the boy said, "It just seemed like the right thing to do."

* Just about any move marked with a double exclamation mark (!!), especially those that lead to checkmate. This annotation mark is specifically meant to be awarded to any move the annotator finds brilliant. Some ! moves also count.

* After Kasparov's Immortal, a new chess game known as [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World Kasparov versus the World]] took place, played over the Internet in 1999. Garry Kasparov took on a team of over 50,000 people from 75 different countries ''and won''. Excellent moves were played throughout by both sides, and the game was more or less even right up until the end. In fact, the only reason that the World Team was unable to force a draw was because, at the time, ''there were no seven-piece endgame tablebases''.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxkzbLKnl8A "The Windmill,"]] a 1925 game where Carlos Torre Repetto defeated former World champion Emanuel Lasker by sacrificing his queen to enable his rook and bishop to decimate all of Lasker's other pieces, with Lasker helpless to stop it as his king kept getting put in check with only a single possible move to escape.
* "The Golden Move" - an utterly brilliant queen sacrifice, played by American Frank Marshall in his game against Levitsky in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall Breslau 1912]]. The black queen could be captured in three different ways, and each of them would lose the game for white immediately.

Back to TabletopGame/{{Chess}}.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task Babson task]] is a "White to play and mate" problem in which Black can promote a pawn, and whichever piece he promotes to, White ''must'' promote to the same kind of piece. But it sounds impossible. After all, why should White have to promote to a rook or bishop when a queen is more powerful? Even if the knight can make moves the queen cannot, why should White's knight promotion be determined by a promotion at the other end of the board? Pierre Drumare worked on composing such a task for ''twenty years'' before coming to the conclusion that it was impossible. The problem of creating a Babson task was solved in 1983 by Leonid Yarosh, hitherto a complete unknown in the chess problem world. He subsequently [[UpToEleven bettered this achievement]] by creating a version with a "perfect", non-capturing key. [[note]]In chess problems, it is an aesthetic demerit for the key to be a capture, since such moves are more obvious to solvers.[[/note]] (And there was a happy ending for Drumare, who subsequently succeeded in composing his own Babson task, albeit one with certain aesthetic flaws compared to Yarosh's. In fact, over a dozen Babsons have been composed since then, and Yarosh's is still seen as the best.)

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task Babson task]] is a "White to play and mate" problem in which Black can promote a pawn, and whichever piece he promotes to, White ''must'' promote to the same kind of piece. But it sounds impossible. After all, why should White have to promote to a rook or bishop when a queen is more powerful? Even if the knight can make moves the queen cannot, why should White's knight promotion be determined by a promotion at the other end of the board? Pierre Drumare worked on composing such a task for ''twenty years'' before coming to the conclusion that it was impossible. The problem of creating a Babson task was solved in 1983 by Leonid Yarosh, hitherto a complete unknown in the chess problem world. He subsequently [[UpToEleven bettered this achievement]] by creating a version with a "perfect" key. [[note]]In chess problems, it is an aesthetic demerit for the key to be a capture, since such moves are more obvious to solvers.[[/note]] (And there was a happy ending for Drumare, who subsequently succeeded in composing his own Babson task, albeit one with certain aesthetic flaws compared to Yarosh's. In fact, over a dozen Babsons have been composed since then, and Yarosh's is still seen as the best.)

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_Game The Immortal Game,]] 21 June 1851. Two of the greatest chess players in the world, Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky, sat down for a casual game during a break in a tournament. Anderssen then proceeds to sacrifice a pawn, a bishop, ''both rooks'', and then his ''queen'' ... to checkmate with three minor pieces in twenty-three moves.

* [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphy_versus_the_Duke_of_Brunswick_and_Count_Isouard Seven years later,]] in 1858, the American master player Paul Morphy visited Paris, where he was invited to the opera by the Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard. Both being fairly good chess players in their own right, they decided to challenge Morphy to a game of chess. As it was bad form to refuse such a challenge, Morphy accepted, even though he would rather watch the opera he came for. Going for as short a game as possible, he checkmated his cooperating opponents in only seventeen moves... after which he resumed watching the opera performance. (To this day, the Opera Game is routinely shown to students as a lesson in [[StraightForTheCommander the value of rapid development and seizing the initiative in chess]].)
* Bobby Fischer had many, starting with [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_the_Century_(chess) "The Game of the Century"]], a brilliancy[[note]]Chess slang for "crowning game of awesome".[[/note]] won against grandmaster Donald Byrne played in 1956 -- ''when Fischer was thirteen.''
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babson_task Babson Task]] is the task of composing a "White to play and mate" problem in which Black can promote a pawn, and whatever piece he promotes to, White ''has to'' promote to the same kind of piece. It sounds impossible: why should White have to promote to a rook or bishop when a queen is more powerful? The knight can make moves the queen cannot, but why should White's knight promotion be determined by a promotion at the other end of the board? Pierre Drumare worked on this task for ''twenty years'' before coming to the conclusion that it was impossible. It was solved in 1983 by Leonid Yarosh, hitherto a complete unknown in the chess problem world. He subsequently [[UpToEleven bettered this achievement]] by creating a version with a "perfect" key. [[note]]In chess problems, it is an aesthetic demerit for the key to be a capture, since such moves are more obvious to solvers.[[/note]] (And there was a happy ending for Drumare, who subsequently succeeded in composing his own Babson Task, albeit one with certain aesthetic flaws compared to Yarosh's. In fact, over a dozen Babsons have been composed since then, and Yarosh's is still the best.)
* Deep Blue versus Kasparov. Whether it is more awesome that someone could [[GadgeteerGenius build a robot that could take on Kasparov]] or that [[TheChessmaster Kasparov could manage to take on a super robot]] you decide.
* And, almost exactly twenty years later in December 2017, the Neural Network based [[https://www.chess.com/news/view/google-s-alphazero-destroys-stockfish-in-100-game-match Alpha Zero completely dominated Stockfish 8]], one of the strongest chess engines in the world at the time (and over 1000 ELO points higher than Deep Blue), after teaching itself how to play for 4 hours with no outside input beyond the rules of the game. What ices the cake is Alpha Zero's position based play feels almost human like, and it freely gives up pawns to improve it's position against Stockfish.
** Google declined to pursue Alpha Zero Chess any further than the paper they released on how it works, so the Internet took the paper and built an Neural Net AI based on the paper. Known as [[https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess Leela Chess]], it has over the last six months built up to phenomenal strength and is able to occasionally beat the strongest conventional engines in the world such as Stockfish 9. Many estimate that by the end of 2018 the program will be the strongest chess player in the world. What make's Leela's play remarkable is it's highly positional nature including a willingness to sacrifice material fearlessly to obtain positions that have been thought impossible to attain against the brute force chess engines that have dominated the last 20 years of Chess since Deep Blue. Her strategic depth puts other systems (and humans) to shame, and often overcoming shortcomings in her tactical play which scores much lower than many of her opponents.
* The Turk, a supposedly robotic chess player that toured the courts of Europe in the Eighteenth century and convinced people that ''it really was an eighteenth-century robot that could play chess''. There were endless theories about how it might work, helped along by ingenious design elements that concealed its real "mechanism": a human player inside. The player could tell which pieces were moved by a system of magnets; when a piece was lifted up, the magnet under that square would fall, and when it was put down again, the magnet on the new square would rise. See [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk the other wiki]] for more, including the Turk's legendary match with Napoleon!

* Forking the enemy King, Queen and Rook with one's Knight.
* No consensus exists on the topic of the greatest game ever played but [[http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1011478 "Kasparov's Immortal"]] is a popular choice among aficionados.
* Nobody taught Capablanca to play chess. He learned the moves by watching his father play with a friend, and he played his first game because he spotted his father illegally moving his knight two squares diagonally like a bishop. Teased by his son for cheating, Papa Capa crustily told him that he didn't even know how to play the game. So they set the pieces up, and Capablanca won the first game he ever played. Later he was taken to the local chess club and matched up against a proper player, who very kindly gave the untrained four-year-old a Queen start. Capablanca [[http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1481959&kpage=1 hosed]] him.
* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortal_losing_game Immortal Losing Game]] was this for both David Bronstein and Bogdan Śliwa. Bronstein for setting up an entire ''series'' of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swindle_%28chess%29 swindles]] from a seemingly "lost" position; Śliwa for successfully avoiding each and every one of them.
* Just about any move marked with a double exclamation mark (!!). Especially those that result in checkmate. Some ! moves also count.
* In 1982, during a "chess awareness" publicity tour stop in Orlando, Florida, then-US Open Chess Champion Andrew Soltis invited a randomly selected twelve year old boy named Aaron Butler up onto the stage from the crowd to play against Soltis in an exhibition game. The idea being that Soltis would teach the boy (and the crowd) to play chess. Butler then proceeded to beat Soltis in two moves, using a combination of moves called the "Fool's Mate", which you can assume happened only with Soltis's active cooperation. When asked about it later, the boy said, "It just seemed like the right thing to do."
* Chessmasters tend to enjoy giving "simultaneous exhibitions" -- that is, playing many opponents at once (usually amateurs). Others like to play "blindfold", picturing the game in their heads. Many amazing records have been set over the years, but the crown probably belongs to Reuben Fine, grandmaster and psychoanalyst. In 1945, Fine played four simultaneous blindfold ''rapid-transit'' games and won them all! (What does "rapid transit" mean? ''Ten seconds per move'', that's what.) The icing on the cake: one of his opponents was Robert Byrne, himself a brilliant player who would go on to be US champion.
* A member of Lichess.org, [=MoralIntentions=], has played [[http://en.lichess.org/forum/general-chess-discussion/the-alphabet-of-chess 26 games against a handicapped AI]], where the final board position is both checkmate and displays one of the letters of the alphabet.

* Any game where a grandmaster finds a way to recover from a major screwup.
* The following apocryphal story, told by the chess teacher George Koltanowski. He was teaching the rules of chess to a new student, who wished to play a game immediately. George was about to checkmate the student on the next move, but the student surprisingly promoted a pawn to a king! George had forgotten to inform the student of the restriction, and had to stick to his own rule. So he played a move that checkmated ''both'' kings simultaneously!
** In one version of the story, he promotes his own pawn into a king ''of his opponent's colour'', and mates all three on the same move!
* Yet another game involving Kasparov, known as "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World Kasparov versus the World]]", played in 1999 over the Internet in which Garry Kasparov took on a team of over 50,000 people from 75 different countries ''and won''. Excellent moves were played throughout by both sides, and the game was more or less even right up until the end. In fact, the only reason that the World Team was unable to force a draw was because, at the time, ''there were no seven-piece endgame tablebases''.

** The last moves of this game were used in {{Film/Blade Runner.}}

*** Google declined to pursue Alpha Zero Chess any further than the paper they released on how it works, so the Internet took the paper and built an Neural Net AI based on the paper. Known as [[https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess Leela Chess]], it has over the last six months built up to phenomenal strength and is able to occasionally beat the strongest conventional engines in the world such as Stockfish 9. Many estimate that by the end of 2018 the program will be the strongest chess player in the world. What make's Leela's play remarkable is it's highly positional nature including a willingness to sacrifice material fearlessly to obtain positions that have been thought impossible to attain against the brute force chess engines that have dominated the last 20 years of Chess since Deep Blue. Her strategic depth puts other systems (and humans) to shame, and often overcoming shortcomings in her tactical play which scores much lower than many of her opponents.

** And, almost exactly twenty years later in December 2017, the Neural Network based [[https://www.chess.com/news/view/google-s-alphazero-destroys-stockfish-in-100-game-match Alpha Zero completely dominated Stockfish 8]], one of the strongest chess engines in the world at the time (and over 1000 ELO points higher than Deep Blue), after teaching itself how to play for 4 hours with no outside input beyond the rules of the game. What ices the cake is Alpha Zero's position based play feels almost human like, and it freely gives up pawns to improve it's position against Stockfish.

* "The Golden Move" - an utterly brilliant queen sacrifice, played by American Frank Marshall in his game against Levitsky in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall Breslau 1012]]. The black queen could be captured in three different ways, and each of them would lose the game for white immediately.

* "Te Golden Move" - an utterly brilliant queen sacrifice, played by American Frank Marshall in his game against Levitsky in [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levitsky_versus_Marshall Breslau 1012]]. The black queen could be captured in three different ways, and each of them would lose.

* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxkzbLKnl8A "The Windmill,"]] a 1925 game where Carlos Torre Repetto defeated former champion Emanuel Lasker by sacrificing his queen to enable his rook and bishop to decimate all of Lasker's other pieces, with Lasker helpless to stop it as his king kept getting put in check with only a single possible move to escape.

** And, almost exactly twenty years later in December 2017, the Neural Network based Alpha Zero completely dominated Stockfish 8, one of the strongest chess engines in the world at the time, after teaching itself how to play for 4 hours with no outside input beyond the rules of the game. What ices the cake is Alpha Zero's position based play feels almost human like, and it freely gives up pawns to improve it's position against Stockfish.

* In 1982, during a "chess awareness" publicity tour stop in Orlando, Florida, then-US Open Chess Champion Andrew Soltis invited a randomly selected twelve year old boy named Aaron Butler up onto the stage from the crowd to play against Soltis in an exhibition game. The idea being that Soltis would teach the boy (and the crowd) to play chess. Butler then proceeded to beat Soltis in two moves, using a combination of moves called the "Fool's Mate", something that a player of Soltis's skill should never have been caught by. When asked about it later, the boy said, "It just seemed like the right thing to do."