My favourite chess site (or, indeed, site of any sort) on the interweb is Chess Notes by Edward Winter. I could spend all day reading this and indeed have blocked it at work to stop me doing so:
http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/
However another excellent site which I rediscovered after several years when checking the O-O-O-O problem is Tim Krabbé's Chess Curiosities:
http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/chess.html
Part of which is the "110 Most Fantastic Moves Every Played":
http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/chess/mfm101110.htm
(and then follow the links at the bottom).
If you have an hour or two to spare, I can heartily recommend going through every one of these moves. It won't improve your chess ability a jot - that sort of stuff is well beyond any of us. But perhaps it will make you appreciate how imaginative the true masters of the chessboard can be and so increase your love of the game.
Hi Fat Lady
I've often said Winters site is the best in the net and I too spend
many a happy hour just browsing and learning.
I have 'Chess Explorations' and 'Kings Commoners and Knaves' excellent books
when you cannot be bothered screen reading and want to play over games
with a board.
Tim Krabbe's site is also excellent and many an article has been inspired
by just an idea from his pages.
Of course I argue about his choice of games and the 110 best moves.
It's always a personal choice.
His No.1 choice was move 16...Nc6 from the game:
Averbakh - Spassky, Leningrad 1956.
Spassky writes:
I have played 16...Nc6 because I did not see any other practical resources
because my position was so passive. I was very surprised that Yuri Averbakh
was thinking about 1 hour (!!) (55 min.)
I considered that after 17.dxc6 bxc6 18.h6! Bh8 White would have two pieces up
and they could manage the win very easy.
Mark Taimanov wrote about 16...Nc6:
"I would rather resign the game than to make such a move..."
But my choice of the most brilliant move ever played is in game No. 98.
Nezhmetdinov - Chernikov, Rostov 1962
And White's 12th move. 12.Qxf6.
Originally posted by greenpawn3499 actually, but I agree that's far too low. And it's the only Nezhmetdinov game in the list; I probably would had half a dozen.
But my choice of the most brilliant move ever played is in game No. 98.
Here's another queen sacrifice from Nezhmetdinov in probably his best known game:
That one didn't make any impression with me. I played through the game hoping that the "fantastic move" would be obvious, but it wasn't and I had to go back to Krabbé's page to find out what it was: 10. Kd1. Is the idea simply that's White's king is safest on c2, or is there more to it?
Trouble with this stuff is it makes me feel like jacking it in :'( Why continue to churn out pedestrian error-strewn games in the delusional hope that, just once perhaps before I die, I might play something similar? I never will. I simply don't come close to understanding chess positions like these guys.
I find Spassky's ...Nc6 too ridiculous to behold. I agree with Taimanov - it's simply 'unplayable' by a mere mortal. Yet of course any patzer could, and likely would, play it. But clearly Averbakh felt something was going on since it was Spassky who'd played it. Poor Averbakh! Imagine his tortured state of mind as Spassky edged the game away from him. It's almost as if Spassky was taking the p!ss, something the gentleman Spassky would never do of course.
Nope, these moves delight and depress me. And I still have to work out Marshall's jaw-dropping, pocket-emptying Qg3 every time I see it 😀
The game is known as 'Burn's Immortal', for obvious reasons. The move ...Qg4 is indeed fabulous although very much out of character: Burn was a dull player.
Burn said he found it easily, given he was otherwise lost. From interest, I just ran the position through an engine. Houdini finds it instantly. It's a pretty safe bet most of the RHP 'top 30' would find it easily too 🙄
Hi Atticus
Theses games are to inspire us, not depress us, though I see exactely where
you are coming from. 🙂
I'm happy with a large chunk of my OTB games played in shock sac style.
(none of which btw belong on the same page as any of the above.)
But without them (and others.) I doubt if I could have produced any of them.
Thread 131628 'Please post famous moves' we all had a shot
at posting our favourite move.
My first choice was a computer move from 1977!
My best and most inspiring move by a human is still (and always will be)
Craddock - Mieses London 1939. When as raw recruit I saw 7...Rb8 and the whole
idea behind it unravelled before my impressionable eys I wanted to play 7...Rb8 moves.
I've never got past this stage. That was the one that started it all.
I'm the reverse of Atticus.
When we play a game of chess we are stage directors conducting our actors
and giving them their lines. I do comedies, but just once I'd like to play a
Capablanca/Karpov style game. Inside every clown there is a Hamlet.
But I would not make a habit of it. 🙂
Craddock - Mieses London 1939
- Joined
- 18 Jan 07
- Moves
- 12477
Originally posted by atticus2The thing that I find most galling is that seeing these brilliancies will never make your own game any better. So you're told that this move is brilliant. Well, fine. If it's a massive sacrifice, you can even see why it is brilliant. If it isn't, maybe (and I mean maybe) the guy who claims that it is brilliant will deign to tell you, after the fact, and with full knowledge of how the game went from that point, why the move turned out to be brilliant after all, instead of a brilliant blunder
Trouble with this stuff is it makes me feel like jacking it in :'( Why continue to churn out pedestrian error-strewn games in the delusional hope that, just once perhaps before I die, I might play something similar? I never will. I simply don't come close to understanding chess positions like these guys.
Except that you don't. You know why they turned out to be brilliant. But knowing why something was useful in a game as it unfolded is not really the same thing as knowing that it would have been just as useful had the opponent chosen a different reply six moves after the "brilliancy", and it is not the same thing at all as being able to spot it coming in your own games. Far from it. You can see all these esoteric moves a thousand times over, and never once have the chance to use a similar move in your own games.
They may be beautiful, they may even be brilliant - useful or educational they are not.
Richard
I got to play a move exactly like the one that should have ended this game:
Believe it or not, I reached a similar position in one of my games and scored with that same ...Bg1 shot. So, it certainly didn't hurt that I had seen the Marco game before. 🙂
Originally posted by Fat Lady😴
That one didn't make any impression with me. I played through the game hoping that the "fantastic move" would be obvious, but it wasn't and I had to go back to Krabbé's page to find out what it was: 10. Kd1. Is the idea simply that's White's king is safest on c2, or is there more to it?
Originally posted by PacifiqueThat's a rather disappointing response. Surely a lawyer should be more erudite than that? Come on, explain why you think that Kd1 is such a good move. Obviously at least one other person (Krabbé ) agrees with you. It's clearly a different sort of move to most of the others in the list as they are mostly unexpected tactical brilliancies, or at least positional sacrifices. I don't know what to make of Kd1 at all, it doesn't seem to have been the turning point of the game, so why do you like it?
😴