If you appreciate watching masters play really long games, this is the golden age of marathons.
At the Ukrainian Championship last month, Grandmaster Stanislav Bogdanovich captured the last pawn on the board at move 172. That left him with a king, rook and knight against GM Valery Neverov’s king and rook.
With best play, that’s a draw. But the rules allowed him 50 additional moves to try to deliver mate.
Neverov defended carefully, even as his king was driven to a side of the board. He blundered on the 206th move and resigned at move 210, after seven hours and 30 minutes. It was the longest decisive game on record, in terms of number of moves.
This is a trend. Earlier this year, draws at the Aeroflot Open in Moscow and the Nakhchivan Open lasted 194 and 201 moves. Seven other 220-plus-move games have been played in the past six years.
But — so far — none has approached the record-holder, Nikolic-Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, which was drawn in 269 moves and after 20 hours and 15 minutes.
Tim Krabbe, the Ripley of chess, pointed out on his Web site that the game that stood for decades in the “Guinness Book of World Records” as the longest — the 191-move PilnikCzerniak, Mar del Plata 1950 — is barely in the top 25 now.