MARK RUBERY CHESS

The amount of moves for the average chess game played at the master level would be around 40 moves although sometimes the result is arrived at only after an immensely long journey. For instance the decisive game of the Dos Hermanus Internet Blitz Championship between J Sammour Hasbun and T Petrosian (the namesake of the former world champion also was involved in a 199 move game in the previous event) ended when White was able to claim a draw under the 50 move rule at move 227! The fact it was played at a blitz pace and that the majority of the game was R v B + P and later R v B somewhat takes the sheen off what is one of the longest games on record. In matches between computers where fatigue and aimless meandering is not an issue, a number of games have gone beyond 300 moves. In the marathon match between the ground-breaking computer program AlphaZero and Stockfish8, 33 games went beyond 200 moves and all were drawn!

That the programs were not always programmed with the finer points of drawn positions was starkly demonstrated when the game between NewRival1816 - Faile06 was agreed drawn after 493 moves, of which the last 402 however, had been played with lone Kings on both sides!

The benchmark for many years was Pilnik-Czerniak, Mar del Plata 1950 drawn after 191 moves. This has since been surpassed by Nikolic-Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, which, was drawn after 269 moves and is often, quoted as the longest game in classical chess. However, on examination the players entered a R+B v R ending on move 167 and at the time this game was played, FIDE had modified the fifty move rule to allow 100 moves to be played without a piece being captured in a rook and bishop versus rook endgame. FIDE has since rescinded that modification to the rule.

From a local perspective the last round decisive encounter of the 1983 SA Closed, between MacFarlane-Rubery, was won by White after 171 moves whilst 2019 saw two GMs rated over 2700, Howell –Harikrishna, draw after 236 moves.