I just watched Pawn Sacrifice. Enjoyable movie about Bobby Fischer. So started reading about him. The movie claims game 6 of his tourney with Spassky was the greatest game ever played. Wiki says that’s not so claiming that goes to Fischer’s win over Byrne at 13.
When asked why he played out an obvious loss, he (Byrne) said (paraphrasing) “I thought it was a nice gesture to let the kid mate me”.
Which makes me think it was uncommon. Grandmasters must know when the end is coming long before it actually does but it seems like you would play it out anyway in case your opponent makes a mistake or you see something you missed earlier.
So does the movie clique, checkmate!, happen often in upper level play?
I’m not sure, but I think the most common procedure is to resign when checkmate is inevitable. It’s highly unlikely that grandmasters are going to make a stupid mistake and blow the game when they have it in the bag.
Yes, mate is quite rare for that reason. And in fact, a grandmaster’s notion of “when checkmate is inevitable” is far earlier than most folks’: At the time of conceding, the grandmaster will not see any particular path to mate, nor will he know how many moves it’ll take: He just knows that he’s too far in the hole to be able to recover.
Also, this thread will probably do better in the Game Room. I’ll ask the mods to move it.
Oh, and another very common outcome is for a game to end in a draw, not because of stalemate or any other “forced” draw condition, but simply because the two players agree that the game isn’t going anywhere.
I think this amounts to “I think we can be confident that neither of us will make the kind of boneheaded blunder that would be necessary to produce a win.”
This becomes interesting because of how many steps aways from literally winning (capturing the King) the game is considered to be won.
The object of the game is to capture the opponent’s King. But no chess game ever actually goes there. As soon as the King is doomed to be captured in the next move (Checkmate!) the game is stopped there.
Now, we have games ending, not when the actual Checkmate happens, but even earlier when the Checkmate becomes inevitable! A sort of Meta-Checkmate.
A few years ago I helped answer another chess question here. As part of that, I went through a large standard database of games and found that a little more than 3% of its games ended with a checkmate actually played on the board. So that gives you one answer.
However, if you’re looking at world championship-level play, then I expect the percentage is much lower than that - maybe about 0.1%. That database included games by much lower-rated players, and at fast time controls as well. Checkmates are extremely rare in long games between top players. They do happen - off the top of my head I can remember Kramnik missing a one-move mate in a computer match, and Nigel Short walking into a mate in one a few years ago. But that’s almost evidence of how rare this is - I only remember these games because of the fact that the mate appeared on the board.
As far as the discussion about resigning many moves before mate, there are many many positions that are obviously won, although forcing a checkmate might take dozens more moves. I’m many levels below the strength of the players we’re talking about, but if I somehow got a Lucena rook endgame against one of them I’d win it, and the mate is a dozen or so moves away there.
I never met Donald Byrne (who died young of lupus), but everyone from back then seems to have thought him a nice guy. One more reason to resign is the chance your opponent might choose, either from a sense of insult or just natural obnoxiousness, to make a big production of mating you; also, spectators seem always to crowd around games about to finish, in preference to more competitive games, and most people don’t like to be a
sad spectacle.
Technically the king is never captured. If the king is in check and has no legal move it is checkmate. If the king is not in check, has no legal move and no other piece or pawn can move it is stalemate. Among grandmasters, and even at lower levels, it is customary to resign a “lost” game: one where one is quite materially down with no compensation or even in a lost position. This is just politeness and is considered rude not to resign such games, unless you are playing speed or blitz games where errors occur regularly. Moreover, you inflict upon yourself unnecessary torment not to resign a lost game.
This is an excellent answer (and thanks borschevsky for taking the time to go through the database. )
I’m a FIDE (World Chess Federation) Master currently rated 2244. I’ve played about 1000 tournament games (some in the British Championship.)
I’ve never been checkmated, nor have I checkmated anyone.
I’ve had people resign the move before checkmate, but that’s as close as it gets.
I’ve seen only a few checkmates in tournament play - and they were all when one or both players were in time trouble.
P.S. I got the Lucena rook ending against a player rated 2250 - and he didn’t know it was a win. :eek:
That’s impressive. Chess has always fascinated me. Do you expect to make it to a higher level at some point? Do people get to keep the highest level that they have achieved (like bridge) or do they peak and then decline?
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