Friday, February 09, 2007

Another Wild Position

This position is one of those that look like they must be composed but in fact comes from a real game.

It's Janowski - Ed. Lasker, New York 1924. I came across it while thumbing through Tartakower and Du Mont's 500 Master Games of Chess the other day.

Black is about to play his 67th move.

Would anybody care to punt some analysis as to what's going on here?

I never get anything this random in my own games, probably because many moves before the game has a chance to get interesting I've already offered a draw. Perhaps I should try to play on just a little longer!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wjat's going on? The diagram is upside down and black wins with 67..Qe4+ !
(Martin)

ejh said...

It's not so much what's going on as what's been going on that requires the analysis...

Tom Chivers said...

It's an interesting question as to why the games of the top players often enough become novel and fascinating - whilst club games for the far greater part are dull or at least simpler. Maybe because at the top level, the will to win and the relative lack of blunders catalyzes creative juices, who knows.

ejh said...

I can think of a couple of explanations. One, that they're prepared to put their pieces in odd positions because analysis tells them that they're safe, whereas we'd balk at it for reasons of fear and lack of imagination. A second would be that they're far readier than we are to take on material imbalances and make positional sacrifices.

I've often found that correspondence games take on unusual shapes - far more so than OTB games (though of course I'm a notoriously conservative player).

Anonymous said...

The game ended...

67. ... Qd5+
68. Kf6 Qd4+
69. Ke6 b1=Q
70. Nxb1 Qxe4+
71. Kf6 Qh4+

draw!

Now I've got the hang of ChessPublisher, when I get a mo I'll edit the post to enable people to play through the whole game.