He didn't like this 4-move game going around with his name attached. In fact, Gibaud was champion of France no less than four times.
"Amateur" becoming Gibaud, and Gibaud the proverbial patzer, is not Lazard's fault he mentioned "a very strong player whose talent is done no justice by this game." Here, 5.h3 is not as stupid a blunder as in the shorter version, because White could at least have hoped to gain a tempo after 5.Nxe5 6.Bb2. What is true is that in his autobiography, Lazard gave a friendly game "Amateur" - Lazard, played in Paris, "around 1922", which went 1.d4 d5 2.b3 Nf6 3.Nd2 e5 4.dxe5 Ng4 5.h3 Ne3 and White resigned. Almost everything is incorrect about that statement: it was not a master game, White was perhaps not poor Gibaud, it was not played in 1924, it was 5 instead of 4 moves - and even at 4 moves, it would have had to share honours with other games.
This position occurred more often, and White did not always resign in Mory - Hareux, Besançon 1999, he even drew.īut nothing will prevent "Gibaud - Lazard, Paris 1924, 4 moves" being published as the shortest decisive "master game": 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nd2 e5 3.dxe5 Ng4 4.h3 Vassallo - Gamundi, tt Spain, Salamanca 1998. It happened in Djordjevic - Kovacevic, Bela Crkva 1984 There are draws in 2, 1 and even 0 moves, forfeited games of 1 move, joke games of 3 moves and what not, but the shortest decisive game ever played in a serious tournament is:ġ.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 c6 3.e3 Qa5+ and White resigned. Q endgame would have arisen which, according to the tablebases, is still a draw, but which they might have easily played on for another 100 moves. In Zawadzka - Lach, Black missed a good opportunity to break the 300-move barrier.Īfter 209.g2 210.a8Q Qxa8+ 211.Kxa8 g1Q, a Q+g-pawn vs. semifinals (1-0), 193 moves - still, at 24½ hours, the longest game in time a record it will forever hold.Īfter that, the record was held by Martinovsky - Jansa, Gausdal 1987, ½-½, 194 moves Chekhlov - Stavrinov, Riga 1988, ½-½, 209 moves (the first 200+ game),Īnd from 1989 on by the still unsurpassed 269 moves of Nikolic - Arsovic.ĭanin - Azarov, at 239 moves, is the longest decisive game.Īs of 28 March 2021, the top-10 are all 210 moves or more. It was not surpassed until 1980, by Stepak - Mashian, Israel Ch. De Freitas in that same tournament.)īy November 2013, Pilnik - Czerniak had dropped out of the top-25 longest games, but it can perhaps still be seen as the longest serious game at top level. That game was in the Guinness Book of Records as "the longest game ever played" for ages. In 1907, the record was broken by Wolf - Duras, Karlsbad (1-0), 168 moves, which held it until Pilnik - Czerniak, Mar del Plata 1950, (½-½), 191 moves. The first recorded 150+ move game was Lipschütz - Bird, New York 1889 (½-½), 159 moves. I guessed the times for some rapid and blitz games, assuming all the incremental seconds were used. The moves of games marked * are not available. Most games can be played over on the right many can be downloaded in a file recordgames.zip. It facilitated old and enabled new searches, prompting a few new categories. Computer games are out.Īrticle) was a major help. Records set by correspondents themselves will be examined with suspicion.
I'm open to new records and suggestions for new categories, but only "serious and verifiable tournament games", although that is an elastic concept, will be considered. Some of these records, like Longest Game and Most Queens, have been the subject of publications for a century others are meant as an opening bid. "This is the record" means: "this is the record as known & recognized by me." This inventarisation is limited to the practical game no longest winning streaks youngest grandmasters selfmates in 418, tablebase wins in 517, greatest number of bald players in a tournament.