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Emil Szalanczy vs Thi Mai Hung Nguyen
"Sixth Sense" (game of the day Nov-28-2012)
First Saturday oktober IM-B (2009), Budapest, rd 2, Oct-04
Sicilian Defense: Najdorf Variation. English Attack (B90)  ·  1/2-1/2

ANALYSIS [x]

FEN COPIED

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Kibitzer's Corner
< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 2 OF 2 ·  Later Kibitzing>
Nov-28-12  Infohunter: Never before have I seen a (non-spurious) game with six Queens on the board--and it ends up a draw yet!
Nov-28-12  Gilmoy: 66..QfxP+ 67.QxQ QgxQ+ 68.QxQ QxQ+ :-O

A lot of work to win one pawn!

Nov-28-12  Abdel Irada: <Gilmoy: 66..QfxP+ 67.QxQ QgxQ+ 68.QxQ QxQ+ :-O

A lot of work to win one pawn!>

A lot of Q's, too.

Nov-28-12  vardeep: Initially...white's 22.Bc5 offering bishop seemed an unsound sac. i couldn't see any reason why black can't immediately capture with dxc5.if white responds after the capture with 23.Rd7 attacking both queen and bishop... then black can respond with the simple Rd4..white is a piece down and has no compensation for the bishop sac.. much later i realised that after Rd4.. white can reply with excellent 24.Qxd4 and now black is lost...
Nov-28-12  bengalcat47: This game reminds me of the 8 queens logic puzzle.
Nov-28-12  Garech: Impressive game! I've always hoped that I will get to play a "multiqueen" in proper tournament conditions; it's pretty cool.

I couldn't resist putting this thru Fritz just to get an idea whether anyone missed anything - to my surprise, it was accurately played by both sides - at least when all the queens were knocking about.

After 23.Bxd6, white is virtually winning, but Szalanczy followed up slightyly wrong - apparently correct was 25.Rd8+ where after ...Rxd8 26.Qxd8+ Qxd8 27. Rxd8+ Kg2 28.Nd2 Rc6 29.bxc4 white is up two pawns without much compensation for black:


click for larger view

54.Qec7, apparently, was also an inaccuracy, with Qd8 being preferable:


click for larger view

and an eval of +0.6 instead of 0.0

Nguyen, for his part, missed pretty much only 72...Ng4:


click for larger view

with an eval of -1.3 instead, again, of an almost dead level game.

Great stuff!

-Garech

Nov-28-12  Travis Bickle: Same old boring Sicilian games ya know with three Queens apiece endings. ; P
Nov-28-12  kevin86: Wow! Six queens...no waiting!
Dec-30-12
Premium Chessgames Member
  Check It Out: Talk about king's with harems!
Jan-02-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  perfidious: < Abdel Irada: <An Englishman: And it just occurred to you that it never occurred to you that it never occurred to you that you never realized that you never thought you would ever read that previous sentence.> I have to admit that sentence wouldn't have occurred to me.>

For the record, it wouldn't have occurred to me either, but that's another story for another day.

After White lets the advantage slip through his hands, as pointed out in <Garech>'s kibitz, this game eventually takes a fascinating turn from the prosaic exploitation of an advantage by the stronger player to a Daliesque bit of surrealism.

Nov-22-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  FSR: I did not know that there were any non-fake games with six queens on the board at once. But the great Tim Krabbe informs us that there is even a second one, Anton-Franco 2011, which (horribly) does not appear to be in the database. http://timkr.home.xs4all.nl/records... (click on "Most Queens")
Nov-22-13
Premium Chessgames Member
  FSR: I found and submitted the other game with six queens:

[Event "Elgoibar 21st"]
[Site "Elgoibar"]
[Date "2011.12.18"]
[EventDate "2011.12.14"]
[Round "6"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Anton Guijarro, David"]
[Black "Franco Alonso, Alejandro"]
[ECO "A17"]
[WhiteElo "2469"]
[BlackElo "2454"]
[PlyCount "163"]

1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 b6 4. g3 Bb7 5. Bg2 Be7 6. O-O O-O 7. Re1 Ne4 8. Nxe4 Bxe4 9. d3 Bb7 10. e4 c5 11. d4 cxd4 12. Nxd4 Nc6 13. Bf4 Nxd4 14. Qxd4 Bc5 15. Qd2 Qe7 16. a3 e5 17. Be3 a5 18. Rad1 Bc6 19. Bh3 Ra7 20. Bg5 f6 21. Be3 a4 22. Bf1 Qe6 23. Qd3 Rc8 24. h4 Rac7 25. Kh2 Qe7 26. Rd2 Bxe3 27. Qxe3 Qc5 28. Qf3 Rf8 29. Qg4 Rcc8 30. h5 Rce8 31. Re3 Re6 32. Qd1 Re7 33. Bh3 Rff7 34. Bf5 Qxc4 35. Rc3 Qb5 36. Kg2 Rf8 37. Qg4 Kh8 38. Rcd3 Qc4 39. Rd6 Bb5 40. Bxd7 Qf1+ 41. Kh2 Bxd7 42. Rxd7 Rxd7 43. Qxd7 h6 44. Qe7 Rg8 45. Qd6 Qe1 46. Qb4 b5 47. Kg2 Kh7 48. Rd5 Qe2 49. Rd7 Rc8 50. Rxg7+ Kxg7 51. Qe7+ Kg8 52. Qe6+ Kg7 53. Qd7+ Kf8 54. Qxc8+ Ke7 55. Qf5 Qxb2 56. Qh7+ Ke6 57. Qxh6 b4 58. Qg6 bxa3 59. h6 a2 60. h7 a1=Q 61. Qf5+ Kd6 62. h8=Q Kc5 63. Qf8+ Kc4 64. Qe6+ Kd3 65. Qfxf6 Qd4 66. Qf3+ Kd2 67. Qh6+ Kc2 68. Qc6+ Kb1 69. g4 Qab2 70. g5 a3 71. g6 a2 72. g7 a1=Q 73. g8=Q Qaa3 74. Qgg3 Qxf3+ 75. Qxf3 Qc2 76. Qb5+ Qcb2 77. Qfd3+ Qxd3 78. Qxd3+ Kc1 79. Kf3 Qd4 80. Qe2 Qd6 81. Qc4+ Kd2 82. Qd5+ 1-0

Feb-27-14  PhilFeeley: Multiple queen games are so exciting. What are the principles of analysing them without computers?
Apr-30-14  Mating Net: Wow, that was some game. The rule of thumb when both sides promote a pawn is he who gives the first check wins. In this game, both Kings were actually pretty safe with all the Queens on the board because the attacking lines were closed. The barrage of checks didn't really start until just one Queen each remained.
Jan-27-17
Premium Chessgames Member
  GrahamClayton: The board is too small for six Queens - they get in each other's way.
May-15-17  Marmot PFL: I suspect this game was "arranged" but unless one of the players says something we'll never know.
Jan-29-18  whiteshark: <FSR> --> Here you go: D Anton Guijarro vs A Franco, 2011
Jan-08-19
Premium Chessgames Member
  Penguincw: Curious what the board looked like. Some tournaments do have an extra queen piece for both sides in case of promotion. But a third queen for each side? Turn the rook upside-down?
Feb-16-19  LucB: <Penguicw:> <But a third queen for each side? Turn the rook upside-down?>

In the US, yes (I think it's a USCF allowance), or just stop the clock and ask the arbiter for another Queen.

Sep-21-19
Premium Chessgames Member
  An Englishman: Good Evening: This game, one of the most astounding in chess history, doesn't seem pre-arranged because both players would have had to memorize a large number of moves. However, it does seem possible that they got carried away: in their excitement, they might have not looked for defenses (possibly superior) that would have prevented the six Queens from happening.

And as I wrote on Nov-18-12, this still blows my mind.

Jun-25-20  Judah: <After 58.a8/Q we see three times as many Queens as pawns.>

That's not a particularly rare occurrence. It occurs at move 77 of Ulf Andersson vs H Pfleger, 1974, to give one example of many.

Jul-12-20
Premium Chessgames Member
  offramp: <vinidivici: Nice....so many queens making me dizzy.>

You mean you've lost your sense of bzalanczy.

Dec-27-20
Premium Chessgames Member
  FSR: See also E Rosen vs Sonja Lang, 2019.
Jan-04-21  ndg2: I think, this game was designed could test PGN parsers / emitters (and validators). Sometimes, a PGN writer function will output ambiguous short form notation where a long form is needed for disambiguation. Games like that can test that.
Jun-28-23  generror: Amazing and fun game :) Feels quite romantic except that nobody unsoundly sacrificed one of their queens.

Stockfish NNUE confirms <Garesh>/Fritz's analysis that this game was really well-played by both sides. I just had a quick look but besides a few relatively minor inaccuracies around moves 34-41 and 50-53, the evaluation stays within ±0.5 virtually all the time.

The biggest mistake according to Stockfish is <34...Qxf3>, after which <36.Kb3> would have given White an advantage of about +2.5.

What struck me is that once the six queens are on board, the evaluation is a very stable 0.0. So maybe a good way to draw for Black is to get six queens onto the board xD

Here's two of my favourite positions. After White's 59th move, Black has the best guarded king ever:


click for larger view

And that poor little e5-pawn after after White's 64th move is also a classic:


click for larger view

The two guys then traded 37 points of material and went on to play a few moves before agreeing to a well-deserved draw.

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