A multiplicity of Monarchs

Four queens plus

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

A Merry Christmas to everybody as we reach my final column of the year — the next will be on January 1st 2023.

Master Class Vol.15 - Viktor Korchnoi

In this video course, experts (Pelletier, Marin, Müller and Reeh) examine the games of Viktor Korchnoi. Let them show you which openings Korchnoi chose to play, where his strength in middlegames were, or how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame.

I was wondering what to do when I came across a recent blitz game (on another server) in which both sides had two queens, and I started thinking about this.

At a time often known for excess (and at the end of a year when we’ve had two different monarchs and three different prime ministers here) this seemed a fairly topical theme, so I used the material search on a database of about 3.3 million games.

I had expected this to be fairly rare, and it was, but there were still over 1200 examples. So I gradually filtered with increasing rating requirements until I got to at least 2650 ratings for both players. There were 30 of these, and I chose the ones I found most interesting. Then, out of curiosity, I made it at least two queens each and a third for at least one player (obviously losing the rating requirement) and there were 13 of these — in two of which both players had three queens!

I’ve ended up with 16 games. Three of them, rather amazingly, involving French GM Maxime Vachier-Lagrave. From number 9 onwards it’s 3 queens v 2, and the last two feature 3 v 3!

I hope you’ll enjoy the festive fare, and we can return to some leaner and less uncommon cuisine next time.

One other thing. I have a vague memory of a study found by using tablebases in which there are several queens on the board and nothing else, and it is zugzwang. Can anybody please remind me either through the comments here or email?

[Photo: Hannah McKay/Reuters]

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Mega Database 2023

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Links

• Previous column: Patterns of interference
• All Speelman’s Agony columns