World Chess Championship matches have not had an on-board checkmate since 1929 | Hacker News Reader

World Chess Championship matches have not had an on-board checkmate since 1929

en.wikipedia.org

10 pointshaunter10 comments

The match itself https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1012600

> Due to an overwhelming amount of malicious activity, we are no longer allowing VPN, Tor nodes, proxies.

I wonder what kind of malicious activity could be targetting that website?! Run of the mill scans?

The walls have really been closing in recently with lots of sites blocking VPNs now. It's getting pretty annoying. Although it did help me finally quit Reddit - every time I click a Reddit link and that smug fedora-wearing avatar appears on the screen and tells me I've been blocked, I can just close out and do something else rather than getting sucked up into it.

Do they usually end with mate-in-1? Or mate-in-2?

I know at that level they're generally capable of identifying "probably a mate in 9 or so" and knocking off rather than wasting time. I wonder how much closer it gets.

How would the game change if resignation were banned? (Retaining the special case for looping endings, of course.)

It would be more boring to watch at the end, and frustrating for the loser to be forced to play a losing position.

It would make the game worse for players and spectators.

What would the supposed benefit be?

BTW the “special case for looping endings” I think you’re talking about is to do with drawing by 3-fold repetition or the 50 move rule.

A player who realized they’ve lost would play a few really bad moves (e.g. giving check by moving their queen next to the enemy king, forcing their opponent to take the queen) and get checkmated in no time.

Their opponent could prolong the game by playing bad moves, too, but why would they? Once their opponent has mentally given up the game, making extra moves isn’t physically or mentally exhausting.

Q: Has there been many World Chess Championship matches with premature resignation?

"Premature" is subjective, especially in high-level play.

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