Eight egregious elite errors

Speelman's Agony #87

In the middle of the World Championship, I'm breaking off from this column's normal business today to consider the Agony of blunders at the highest level.

The title of Grandmaster was reportedly (though there has been some dissent about this) first conferred by Tsar Nikolas II on the five finalists at the St Petersburg tournament of 1914: Emmanuel Lasker, José Raúl Capablanca, Alexander Alekhine, Siegbert Tarrasch and Frank Marshall.  But it wasn't until 1950 that FIDE, which had been greatly boosted by acquiring control of the World Championship in 1948, first formally awarded the GM title to 27 players.

In that arguably halcyon time, Grandmasters were quasi-mythical beasts and there was a fond belief among the chess public that they were almost immune to blunders. Nowadays with chess engines in the background as games are transmitted live over the net, the reverse is true. And spectators regularly berate the players for missing tactics which in reality are extremely obscure to the human eye.

The truth, of course, is somewhere in-between. Grandmasters are very much flesh and blood and we can play horrifically and miss almost anything. But we also know a huge amount about chess and on good days can create real beauty.

On Friday, I canvassed the press room in London regarding massive blunders in World Championship games. Many thanks to FIDE Press Officer Daniel King, Jonathan Tisdall, Dominic Lawson and Kedar Lele from the Marathi newspaper e-Sakal for their input which together with mine generated these eight howlers:

Click or tap any game in the list below the board to switch games

Magic of Chess Tactics 2

FM Claus Dieter Meyer has put under the microscope a comprehensive fund of topical and timeless games / fragments. On video Hamburg GM Dr. Karsten Müller has outlined corner points of Meyer's work and created 14 tests plus 10 interactive test sets.

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See also:

• Previous column: Speelman's Agony #86
• All Speelman's Agony columns