I've checked, and other databases have the same moves. But most of it just makes no sense whatsoever, unless they'd cooked up a draw in advance and were both trying to break the deal by finding a way to *lose* ...

Heh, very funny. But it can have insidious side effects. I've seen one opening book (The French Advance, by Sam Collins) cite this game. Which is OK, as long as they were playing 'real' moves up to move 10 or so. But what if 1...e6 is a joke? Or, say, 7...Nb8?

Probably the funniest game I have ever seen.!!!!

Does anybody know in reality what went on there????

It's funny what players come up with when they're not being 'serious'. The Miles-Huebner game I mentioned (Tilburg 1985) went 1.d4 e5 2.dxe5 Qh4 3.Nf3 Qa4 4.Nc3 Qa5 5.e4, agreed drawn.

The back-story (sic) was that Miles had back problems, and took to playing his games lying horizontally on a table to ease the pain. Certain opponents (Korchnoi, Ljubojevic) objected, while others (Romanishin, Timman) 'understood' and had no problem with it. Huebner's game had to be rescheduled while the protest continued; he and Miles agreed to draw.

This became public knowledge, and the arbiter asked them to make the moves sensible. Miles agreed. But Huebner responded "Oh no, it was always my intention that the moves should be utterly stupid".

Miles: "Okay, I'll play sensible moves, you do what you like, and I'll offer a draw on move five."

I suppose it was in response to 'scandals' like this that organizers tried to bring in a no-draws-before-move-50 rules -- with the kind of result we see in the present game.

One way of checking, if anyone wants to bother, would be to look at other games from this event, and see if any short draws were allowed.

<Davolni> I agree, it's hilarious. Some of the bad moves are so terrible, they're actually subtle. *The Immortal Armenian Piss-take Game", maybe?

[Event "Dordrecht FPO"]
[Site "Dordrecht"]
[Date "1999.??.??"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Shirov,Alexei"]
[Black "Epishin,Vladimir"]
[Result "1/2"]
[Eco "B12"]
1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 Bf5 4.Nc3 e6 5.g4 Bg6 6.Nge2 f6 7.h4 fxe5 8.h5 Bf7 9.dxe5 c5 10.Ng3 Be7 11.Bg2 Nc6 12.0-0 Nh6 13.f4 g5 14.f5 Nxe5 15.fxe6 Bxe6 16.Nxd5 Nhxg4 17.Nxe7 Qxe7 18.Ne4 Rd8 19.Bxg5 Rxd1 20.Raxd1 Rg8 21.Nd6+ Qxd6 22.Rxd6 Rxg5 23.Rxe6+ Kd7 24.Ref6 Nxf6 25.Rxf6 Rxh5 26.Bxb7 Rg5+ 27.Kf1 Rg6 28.Rf5 Ke6 29.Bc8+ Kd6 30.Rf2 h5 31.Bf5 Rf6 32.Ke2 Nc6 33.c3 Ke5 34.Bd7 Rxf2+ 35.Kxf2 1/2

I read a nice article about him in his page, which I reposted the link for others to see as well.

Keeping in mind that Sergei is very modest guy, I think it's quite possible that he didn't wanna get anywhere with the game, and decided to play like 1-year-olds would. Or the opposite, may be Vaganian liked Sergei so much, that he didn't want to get a decisive result against the 21 y/o Sergei at the time.

I am interested to find out. If you ever find that out, please let me know.

The game is worth watching again though.

Looking over his games now, there are many beautiful wins as black in the French. The famous 1975 destruction of Reshevsky is a personal favourite. But his White games, playing Reti or King's Indian Attack type openings, were often scrappy affairs.

His candidates match with Sokolov - he lost three games in the ...Ba5 variation of the Winawer (it's been called both the Swiss and Armenian variation, so I call it the SWARM for short) set him back, and he declined in the 1990s. But there have been signs of a real revival in the last few years, eg some good games in Germany. And he's still playing the French, which makes me happy.

I haven't found out anything more about this game -- but there were some other short-ish draws in the event, which seems to rule out my arbiter idea.

I actually find it very hard to say when this game moved from being eccentric to crazy to totally surreal. Some people would regard 3...b6 or 4.h4 as weird, but these guys have played them elsewhere. White's king move, 12.Kd2, also looks crazy - but it's a way of dealing with black's threat of ...Nc2 and has no clear refutation. Even the loss/sacrifice of Vaganian's Queen might be a 'real' move -- it's only when we get to stuff like 29.Qg7 that it's clear they're playing some private game of their own, or doing dadaist chess, or whatever the reason.

1999 was during Vaganian's slump, maybe Movsesian was trying to cheer him up: - Look, you *can* win a game.
- No I can't.
- A Queen? A mate in two?
- Sorry, I'm not taking it.

Blitz was my '(mis-) interpretation', based on info's I read on page 19: http://www.msu.edu/~burnsbr/Burns04... thinking that it was a similar event as in the years 2001/2002.

Furthermore it was a <k.o.> tournament (http://szach.pl/lewyd/turnor28.htm), but what happend if it way a tie ?

Why are the real explanations of things always banal? And obvious, too, with hindsight.

Interesting to find out how you know him.