1788: Thomas Bowdler vs Henry Seymour Conway, London. Thomas Bowdler offers the first example of a famous double rook sacrifice.[3]
1790: Andrew Smith vs François André Philidor, London. François-André Danican Philidor, who was quoted as saying "Pawns are the soul of chess", demonstrates the power of a superior pawn formation.[4]
19th century
1834: Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais vs Alexander McDonnell, 50th Match Game, London. Reuben Fine in The World's Great Chess Games describes it as the first great immortal game of chess. Alexander McDonnell sacrifices his queen for two minor pieces.[5]
1834:La Bourdonnais–McDonnell, 62nd Match Game, London. Perhaps the most famous win of the match (considered an unofficial world championship), Louis La Bourdonnais shows how a rolling pawn mass can overwhelm all of his opponent's major pieces, winning thereby against Alexander McDonnell.[6]
1843: Pierre de Saint Amant vs Howard Staunton, 5th Match Game, Paris. Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amantresigns in this unofficial world championship match game with Howard Staunton, in which Staunton remarked, "The latter portion of this game is conducted with remarkable skill by both parties."[7]
1844: Alexander Hoffmann vs Alexander Petrov, Warsaw. Alexander Petrov wins with a queen sacrifice and a king hunt, in a game known as "Petrov's Immortal", against Alexander Hoffmann.[8]
1852: Adolf Anderssen vs Jean Dufresne, Berlin. "The Evergreen Game". Adolf Anderssen mates with what Savielly Tartakower termed "[a] combination second to none in the literature of the game."[10]
1857: Louis Paulsen vs Paul Morphy, New York. Paul Morphy gains an advantage in development and transforms it into a powerful kingside attack with a queen sacrifice.[11]
1858: Paul Morphy vs Duke of Brunswick & Count Isouard, Paris. "The Opera Game" Morphy shows the virtue of quick development and wins by sacrificing much material, mating on the 17th move with his last two pieces.[12]
1862: Steinitz–Mongredien, London. Wilhelm Steinitz won the tournament's brilliancy prize for this game.[13]
1874: Victor Knorre vs Mikhail Chigorin, St. Petersburg. White's premature castling on the king side combined with an ineffective pin allows Mikhail Chigorin to strike back with a violent counterattack culminating in a brilliant queen sacrifice and subsequent checkmate.[15]
1883: Johannes Zukertort vs Joseph Henry Blackburne, London[16]
1889: Emanuel Lasker vs Johann Hermann Bauer, Amsterdam. This game between Emanuel Lasker and Johann Hermann Bauer was the first famous example of the double bishop sacrifice.[17]
1895: Harry Nelson Pillsbury vs Siegbert Tarrasch, Hastings. Harry Nelson Pillsbury's kingside attack breaks through by a single tempo against Black's queenside play, against Siegbert Tarrasch, then one of the strongest players of the world.[18]
1895: Steinitz–von Bardeleben, Hastings. This game is famous for its ten-move mating combination in the final position, which Steinitz demonstrated after the game.[19] The peculiar circumstance of the conclusion of this game has been subject of scrutiny.[20]
1895: Harry Nelson Pillsbury vs Isidor Gunsberg, Hastings. In the final round of this prestigious tournament, Pillsbury secures overall victory by triumphing in an instructive endgame.[21]
1896: Harry Nelson Pillsbury vs Emanuel Lasker, Saint Petersburg. Emanuel Lasker won the brilliancy prize for this game by exposing Pillsbury's king with the sacrifice of both rooks on the same square.[22]
1900–1949
1904: Emanuel Lasker vs William Ewart Napier, Cambridge Springs. Both players show great ingenuity. After a complicated web of tactics, Lasker simplifies into a winning endgame.[23]
1907:Rotlewi–Rubinstein, Lodz. Akiba Rubinstein wins this game with one of the most famous combinations ever played.[24]
1909: Akiba Rubinstein vs Emanuel Lasker, Saint Petersburg. Akiba Rubinstein's brilliant play culminates in 18.Qc1!! subsequently forcing Emanuel Lasker to enter a rook endgame down a pawn which Rubinstein wins in masterly fashion.[25]
1912:Levitsky–Marshall, Breslau. The final move of Frank James Marshall (matched against Stefan Levitsky) places his queen en prise in three different ways. The spectators are said to have showered the board with gold coins.[26]
1912:Edward Lasker–Thomas, London. With a queen sacrifice, Edward Lasker exposes Black's king and with a series of checks drives it all the way to the other side of the board before checkmating with an advance of his king.[27]
1914: Emanuel Lasker vs Jose Raul Capablanca, St Petersburg. Lasker defeats José Raúl Capablanca in a positional game where his winning strategy seemed to flow right out of the opening to the end. Capablanca, himself renowned as a master of simple positions, was sufficiently rattled to lose in the next round as well, handing the tournament victory to Lasker.[28][29]
1918: Jose Raul Capablanca vs Frank Marshall, New York. In the main line Ruy Lopez, Frank Marshall surprises José Raúl Capablanca with a bold pawn sacrifice. Capablanca accepts the challenge fully aware of the fierce attack he is about to face.[30]
1920: Edwin Ziegler Adams vs Carlos Torre Repetto, New Orleans. Likely composed by Carlos Torre as a tribute to his benefactor E. Z. Adams, this game features the most famous back-rank mate combination in chess literature, involving six consecutive offers of the queen.[31]
1922:Alekhine–Bogoljubov, Pistyan. This game is referred in the famous novella The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig, which inspired multiple movies, theater plays and musical performances. In the story the position after 38. d6 is being reproduced in a game between the fictional world chess champion and a group of outmatched amateur players who are on the verge of promoting their c-pawn, when an unknown spectator frantically intervenes and explains how white will beat them in 9–10 moves after 38... c1Q 39. Bxc1 Nxc1 40. d7. He proposes 38... Kh7 instead, correctly predicting that 39. h4 will follow and after 39... Rc4 he maneuvers the game for 7–8 more moves until the world champion settles for a draw.[32]
1922: Efim Bogoljubov vs Alexander Alekhine, Hastings. Irving Chernev called this the greatest game of chess ever played, adding: "Alekhine's subtle strategy involves manoeuvres which encompass the entire chessboard as a battlefield. There are exciting plots and counterplots. There are fascinating combinations and brilliant sacrifices of Queens and Rooks. There are two remarkable promotions of Pawns and a third in the offing, before White decides to capitulate." (The Chess Companion, Chernev, Faber & Faber Ltd, 1970).[33]
1924: Richard Réti–José Raúl Capablanca, New York. The game that ended Capablanca's eight-year run without a single loss in tournament play.[35]
1924: Jose Raul Capablanca vs Savielly Tartakower, New York. One of the most famous and instructive endgames ever played. Capablanca sacrifices two pawns with check to support his passed pawn.[36]
1925: Richard Reti vs Alexander Alekhine, Baden-Baden. Alekhine initiates a stunning combination and foresees the final position resulting more than 15 moves later.[37]
1929: Glucksberg vs Miguel Najdorf, Warsaw. In this game, dubbed the 'Polish Immortal', Black sacrifices all four minor pieces for victory.[38]
1934: Canal–Unknown, Budapest. "The Peruvian Immortal", sees Peruvian master Esteban Canal demolish his amateur opponent with the sacrifice of two rooks and queen.[40]
1935: Max Euwe vs Alexander Alekhine, 26th Match Game, Zandvoort. This decisive game from the 1935 match for the world championship was dubbed 'The Pearl of Zandvoort' by Tartakower.[41]
1938: Mikhail Botvinnik vs Jose Raul Capablanca, Rotterdam. In this game from the AVRO 1938 tournament, Botvinnik obtains a strong initiative against Capablanca and brings the victory home with a long combination.[42]
1938: Frank Parr vs George Wheatcroft, London. Irving Chernev and Fred Reinfeld described this as "one of the greatest combinative games on record!" (Fireside Book Of Chess, Simon & Schuster, 1949, pp. 392–93)[43]
1943: B Molinari vs Luis Roux Cabral, Montevideo. This game from the 1943 Uruguayan Chess Championship, dubbed the "Uruguayan Immortal", sees Luis Roux Cabral sacrifice the exchange twice, followed by sacrifices of two minor pieces. After 33 moves, all three of his remaining pieces are en prise—and his opponent cannot stop checkmate.[44]
1946: Gusev–Auerbach, Chelyabinsk. Not to be confused with the late centenarian grandmaster and theoricianYuri Averbakh, this game, dubbed "Gusev's Immortal", was a game contested between the relatively obscure players Yuri Gusev and E Auerbach in an equally obscure minor tournament.[45] It involved a sound positional queen sacrifice from Gusev, which was blind to chess engines for 74 years, requiring Stockfish 11 six hours and 48 minutes at Depth 73/49 to recommend the queen sacrifice in 2020; Gusev went on to win. The game has been studied extensively online.[46][47][48][49] National Master Sam Copeland ranked it the second-best game of the 1940s.[50] Grandmaster Simon Williams termed the queen sacrifice in Gusev's Immortal one of the most beautiful ideas that he had ever seen.[51]
1950s
1953: Geller–Euwe, Zurich. Geller's attack seems to be sweeping Euwe off the board but the former World Champion has everything under control, uncorking an amazing sacrifice on move 22 to begin a counterattack that wins the game in only four more moves.[52]
1954: Mikhail Botvinnik vs Vasily Smyslov, 14th Match Game, Moscow. Smyslov sacrifices his queen for three minor pieces and coordinates them superbly to force Botvinnik's capitulation.[53]
1956: Donald Byrne vs Bobby Fischer, New York, "Game of the Century". Donald Byrne makes a seemingly minor mistake on move 11, losing a tempo by moving the same piece twice. Bobby Fischer uses accurate sacrificial play, culminating in a queen sacrifice. After the maneuver, Fischer has a winning material advantage – a rook and two bishops for a queen, and coordinates them to force checkmate. Fischer was 13 years old; his opponent was 26.[54]
1957: Bogdan Sliwa vs David Bronstein, Gotha. "The Immortal losing game" between Bogdan Sliwa and David Bronstein. Black has a lost game but sets some elegant traps in attempting to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.[55]
1958: Lev Polugaevsky vs Rashid Nezhmetdinov, Sochi. In one of the most celebrated games of all time, Nezhmetdinov sacrifices his queen on move 24, and goes on to win the game with a king hunt.[56]
1959: Mikhail Tal vs Vasily Smyslov, Bled. Tal initiates complications early in this game and obtains a strong attack. Smyslov defends well, but eventually stumbles with one erroneous move and Tal delivers the winning tactical blow.[57]
1959: Bobby Fischer vs Tigran Petrosian, Zagreb. The only prominent game in which four queens were on board for seven moves. Match ends with draw by agreement.[58]
1960s
1960: Boris Spassky vs David Bronstein, Leningrad, "The Blue Bird Game". Boris Spassky plays the King's Gambit and defeats David Bronstein with a sacrificial attack.[59]
1960: Mikhail Tal vs Mikhail Botvinnik, 1st Match Game, Moscow. Tal's critics said his daring, complicated style couldn't possibly work against the ironclad logic of the Father of Soviet Chess, but it did and Tal became the youngest World Champion ever.[60]
1961: Milunka Lazarevic vs Nona Gaprindashvili, Candidates Tournament, Vrnjacka Banja. On her way to a 16-year reign as Women's World Champion, the future queen of women's chess constructs a mating net with, appropriately, her king and queen.[61]
1962: Eduard Gufeld vs Ljubomir Kavalek, Marianske Lazne. Kavalek sacrifices a piece, then one exchange, then the other exchange to push his avalanche of pawns down the board. By the end of the game he has lost all seven of his pieces but kept all eight of his pawns, which roll over White's remaining rook.[62]
1963: Robert Eugene Byrne vs Bobby Fischer, New York. Fischer executes a deep sacrificial attack to win in this miniature. Many of the players in the press room thought Fischer's position was hopeless and were surprised when they heard Byrne had resigned.[63]
1966: Tigran Petrosian vs Boris Spassky, 10th Match Game, Moscow. Petrosian, the master of the exchange sacrifice, does it twice in one game with the World Championship on the line.[64]
1968:Poole versus HAL 9000. A fictional game from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, based on a tournament game between A. Roesch and W. Schlage, Hamburg 1910. Astronaut Dr. Frank Poole plays against the supercomputer HAL 9000. The computer executes a strong sacrificial attack and wins in 15 moves.
1969: Boris Spassky vs Tigran Petrosian, 19th Match Game, Moscow. Having fought his way to a World Championship rematch with Petrosian, Boris Spassky wins the match decisively.[65]
1970s
1970: Bent Larsen vs Boris Spassky, Belgrade. Spassky finds immediate punishment for Larsen's opening experiments, sacrificing a knight and a rook to create a passed pawn, winning the game in just 17 moves.[66]
1971: Bruce Harper vs Bob Zuk, Burnaby. The famous "Tomb Game" (Bruce Harper vs Bob Zuk) sees Black exploit two pins to drive his opponent's pieces into a corner and toward a position where White's only legal move will help Black to checkmate him.[67]
1972: Bobby Fischer vs Boris Spassky, 6th Match Game, Reykjavik. Game 6 of the highly publicized World Championship Match. Bobby Fischer surprises by opening with 1.c4 instead of his favorite 1.e4. Boris Spassky joined the audience in applauding Fischer's win and called it the best game of the World Chess Championship 1972.[68]
1972: Boris Spassky vs Bobby Fischer, 11th Match Game, Reykjavik. In Game 11 of the highly publicized World Championship Match, Boris Spassky destroys Bobby Fischer's Najdorf, giving Fischer his only loss in the poisoned pawn variation.[69]
1972: Boris Spassky vs Bobby Fischer, 13th Match Game, Reykjavik. Game 13 of the highly publicized World Championship Match. Bobby Fischer wins this complex contest, defeating Boris Spassky.[70]
1973: David Bronstein vs Ljubomir Ljubojevic, Petropolis Interzonal. Bronstein, who played a match for the World Championship before his grandmaster opponent could walk, turns back the clock, sacrifices both rooks and wins through sheer sorcery.[71]
1974: Anatoly Karpov vs Boris Spassky, 9th Match Game, Leningrad. Former World Champion Boris Spassky can't cope with future World Champion Anatoly Karpov's subtle, seemingly effortless positional mastery.[72]
1978: Liu Wenzhe vs Jan Hein Donner, Buenos Aires. "The Chinese Immortal"; at China's first olympiad, the little known Liu Wenzhe defeats the experienced Dutch grandmaster Jan Hein Donner in 20 moves with a spectacular king's side attack.[73]
1980s
1981: Garry Kasparov vs Viktor Gavrikov, USSR Championship, Frunze. One of Garry Kasparov's dynamic, attacking wins from his first Soviet Championship victory at age 18 that heralded the arrival of a new contender for the World Chess Championship.[74]
1984: Lajos Portisch vs Jozsef Pinter, Hungarian Championship, Budapest. Jozsef Pinter plays the game of his life against his famous opponent, sacrificing a piece in a queenless middlegame to draw Lajos Portisch's king into a deadly crossfire.[75]
1985: Anatoly Karpov vs Garry Kasparov, 16th Match Game, Moscow. Garry Kasparov employs a daring gambit and obtains a dominating position for his knight, stifling Anatoly Karpov's forces and finishing off with a mating attack.[76]
1986: Garry Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov, 16th Match Game, Leningrad. The most spectacular game of their third World Championship match hangs in the balance until Garry Kasparov's diabolical 37th move blows Karpov's defence away.[77]
1987: Garry Kasparov vs Anatoly Karpov, 24th Match Game, Seville. Trailing by a point before the final game of their fourth World Championship match, Garry Kasparov surprises Karpov by beginning quietly in Anatoly Karpov's own style. With Karpov running low on time, Kasparov ratchets up the tension by sacrificing a pawn for an attack. Karpov fails to find the best defence and is finally forced to resign, leaving Kasparov the champion for another three years.[78]
1989: Jeroen Piket vs Garry Kasparov, Tilburg. A typically devastating performance by Garry Kasparov, whose dominance of super-tournaments in 1989 increased his rating to 2800, the first to reach that number.[79]
1990s
1990: Anatoly Karpov vs Garry Kasparov, World Chess Championship, Lyon, 23rd Match Game. The 5th World Championship match between the two dominant players of the 1980s ends with Karpov winning the last decisive game but Kasparov winning the match to remain World Champion.[80]
1991: Vassily Ivanchuk vs Artur Yusupov, Brussels, 9th Match Game. Yusupov sacrifices his knight in his quest for the attack and breaks through after Ivanchuk's inaccuracies. In 1996, a jury of grandmasters and readers, voting in the Chess Informant, chose this game as the best game played in the years 1966–96.[81][82]
1992: Mikhail Tal vs Joel Lautier, Barcelona. In his final tournament before his death at age 55, the Magician from Riga produces one last masterpiece against a Grandmaster from the next generation.[83]
1992: Vasyl Ivanchuk vs Viswanathan Anand, Linares, 1st Match Game. Anand breaks all principles of positional chess by getting doubled pawns, trading his good bishop only to reveal the deep idea later in the game, managing to create 2 passed pawns and eventually winning the game .[84][85]
1993: Nigel Short vs Garry Kasparov, PCA World Championship, London, 8th Match Game. Although the match was one-sided, the games were hard fought. In this game Short exposes Kasparov's king with a shower of sacrifices but can't land the knockout blow.[86]
1994: Alexey Shirov vs. Judit Polgar, Buenos Aires. The attacking prowess of the strongest woman chessplayer of all time is on full display as she rips White's position apart with her pawns and routs his army with her knights.[87]
1995: Roberto Cifuentes Parada vs Vadim Zvjaginsev, Wijk aan Zee. Black wins with a series of sacrifices that force White's king up to the 6th rank. Known as "The Pearl of Wijk aan Zee".[88]
1995: Veselin Topalov vs Vladimir Kramnik, Belgrade. Foreshadowing their bitter rivalry a decade later, two future World Champions refuse to draw and throw everything at each other until only one is left standing.[89]
1998: Veselin Topalov vs Alexey Shirov, Linares. Though known for his attacking play, Alexey Shirov produces "The best move of all time"[90] on move 47 of a quiet endgame to score a seemingly impossible win.[91]
1999:Kasparov–Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999. "Kasparov's Immortal" features a rook sacrifice with a sacrificial combination lasting over 15 moves. One of the most commented chess games ever, with extensive press coverage.[92][93]
1999:Kasparov versus the World, in which Garry Kasparov, the reigning world champion, faced a group of players in consultation, who decided moves by vote. This group included 50,000 individuals from more than 75 countries. Kasparov won.
2000s
2000: Kasparov–Kramnik, Classical World Chess Championship 2000, 3rd Match Game, London. Vladimir Kramnik revives the Berlin Defense to the Ruy Lopez (which had fallen out of favor), in which the queens are exchanged on move 8. The queenless endgame is difficult for Kramnik to defend but limits Garry Kasparov's options, and the game ends in draw by agreement.[94]
2004: Vladimir Kramnik vs Peter Leko, Classical World Chess Championship 2004, 14th Match Game, Brissago. Needing only a draw to win the World Championship, Peter Leko plays too passively and pays the price.[95]
2005: Viswanathan Anand vs Veselin Topalov, Sofia. Amazing in its complexity, this game finally ended in a hard-fought draw and was called "23rd-century chess" by Kramnik.[96][97]
2006: Sergey Karjakin vs Viswanathan Anand, Corus chess tournament, Round 1, Wijk aan zee. Viswanathan Anand played a brilliant combination against Sergey Karjakin, beginning with the sacrifice of a knight followed by sacrifice of a bishop and finally a rook mating with just a rook and a queen.[98][99]
2006: Vladimir Kramnik vs Veselin Topalov, World Chess Championship 2006, 16th Match Game, Elista. After 13 years of a divided World Chess Championship, the reunification match comes down to a final tiebreak game.[100]
2013: Anand–Carlsen, World Championship 2013, Game 9, Chennai. Two games down with only three to go in the match, Viswanathan Anand develops a dangerous kingside attack only to make a fatal blunder on move 28. One game later, Magnus Carlsen becomes the 16th undisputed World Chess Champion.[104]
2015: Wei Yi–Bruzon, Danzhou. In this game, chess prodigy Wei Yi plays a rook sacrifice that forces Black to take a king walk. Several quiet moves eventually force Black to concede defeat. This game has been compared to Kasparov's Immortal and the Game of the Century, and described as the "21st-century Immortal".[105][106]
2016: Carlsen–Karjakin, World Championship 2016, Game 16, New York. Magnus Carlsen retains his title with the most beautiful move ever to end a World Chess Championship match.[107]
2017: Bai Jinshi–Ding Liren. Ding Liren creates a stunning tactical crush of his young compatriot Bai Jinshi in just 32 moves with the black pieces, sacrificing his queen and culminating in a spectacular king hunt.[108][109]
2019: Alireza Firouzja–Murali Karthikeyan. Karthikeyan sacrifices his queen on move 9 in a known position for a knight and a bishop against prodigious Alireza Firouzja, leaving the latter's pieces uncoordinated and without decent squares.[110][111]
2020s
2021:Carlsen versus Nepomniachtchi, World Chess Championship 2021, Game 6. In this game, reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen (as White) exchanged his queen for two rooks to enter into an unbalanced endgame—which was drawn, according to the endgame tablebases, after only seven pieces remained on the board—but challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi (as Black) committed a decisive mistake on move 130 and resigned after Carlsen's 136th move.[112] It was the first decisive classical game in a World Chess Championship in more than five years, ending the longest-ever streak of 19 draws in consecutive World Chess Championship classical games,[113] and the 136-move game became the longest in the history of the World Chess Championship.[114]
2023: Nepomniachtchi–Ding, World Chess Championship 2023, Game 18. In a winner-take-all tiebreak game, Ding Liren avoids a draw with a risky self-pin on move 46. Both players make errors in the subsequent play but Nepomniachtchi makes the last one as Ding breaks through to become the 17th undisputed World Chess Champion.[115]
^Alberto Colodro, Carlos (11 March 2021). "Throwback Thursday: Kasparov's immortal". Garry Kasparov defeated Veselin Topalov in what is now known as his 'immortal game'
