Almost The Longest Game Ever Played At European Club Cup

With three rounds to go, four teams still have a perfect score at the European Club Cup, now underway in Montenegro. In the women's section, two teams are tied for first place.

The competition for club teams is a seven-round Swiss, without a rest day. The location is the Karisma hotel in Ulcinj, about 10 km from the Albanian border.

One of the games in the open section went on for 236 moves, one of the longest games in chess history. More on that below. 

Open

In the open group, where teams of six players compete, 66 teams are playing. There's a total of 457 players from 48 federations; 119 of them are grandmasters.

Four clubs have started with four victories, including the reigning champion Mednyi Vsadnik (St. Petersburg). The club bears the same name as a statue of Peter the Great in their city and of a famous Aleksander Pushkin poem: the Bronze Horseman.

Then there is Vugar Gashimov of Azerbaijan, a club named after the Azerbaijani grandmaster who died too young; Obiettivo Risarcimento, the Italian team from Padova and SK Joly Lysa nad Labem of the Czech Republic.

The third round was marked by the game between David Howell and Pentala Harikrishna, the top boards for their teams Valerenga of Norway and Novy Bor of the Czech Republic respectively. (Note that last year's top board for Valerenga, Magnus Carlsen, is not playing this year.)

The Howell-Hari game was special for its sheer length: 236 moves! At move 54 the following endgame was reached.

Howell was forced to play a pawn on move 104 to avoid the 50-move rule. On move 153 he played another pawn move, then on move 165 another one and then on move 200 "action" started, after White had played his king back and forth to the queenside and kingside several times.

A most curious game:

According to Tim Krabbé's list, just three games in history lasted longer. Using the TWIC database, this author found one more: Felber-Lapshun, New York 1998 (238 moves).

The longest chess game in history, played over the board by humans, is still Ivan Nikolic vs. Goran Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, in which the infamous RB-vs.-R endgame appeared at a time when one still had 100 moves without captures to try and win it, instead of 50. Arsovic held the draw, by the way.

Chess.com reached out to Howell. His comment:

Yes, I understand the game looks odd. Guess it's just my warped sense of chess enjoyment. 😓 At first I was playing on so that our board six, a young player (17-year-old IM Tor Fredrik Kaasen) didn't feel alone. But then I realized it's very rare to get the chance to go for 200 moves, so I couldn't resist continuing.

"I'm just annoyed at myself for not going for the world record (which would have been easily attainable if I hadn't pushed h5 or b4 so soon and then sacrificed my knight on c7).

After the game Howell had a somewhat unpleasant experience, about which he tweeted:

I resisted the temptation to tweet about the standard of arbiters at the European Team Champs but today's experience at the Euro Club Cup was even worse. Being shouted at aggressively, simply because I asked him to stop breathing down my neck (literally), was most unpleasant.

— David Howell (@DavidHowellGM) November 12, 2019

Oh yeah, and my game lasted 236 moves today #grindersgonnagrind

— David Howell (@DavidHowellGM) November 12, 2019

In that same third round, Bronze Horseman scored an important victory against Alkaloid of Skopje, Macedonia, the winners in 2016. The match was decided on board five, where Pavel Ponkratov, a 31-year-old GM from Chelyabinsk, defeated Yuriy Kryvoruchko from Lviv.

The next day, the team from St. Petersburg also set aside another big favorite: Novy Bor, the winner in 2013. In a similar match in terms of score, there were once again five draws and a decision on board five.

This was a tough loss for the team and especially for the Indian GM Krishnan Sasikiran, who spoiled a winning position. The winning move was tough to spot and quite similar to what Dubov missed yesterday in his second rapid game with Duda.

1) Dubov-Duda, Hamburg #GrandPrixFIDE 2019 (analysis). Best move: 69.Rh2!!

2) Sasikiran-Rodshtein, #ECC2019. Best move: 46.Rh1!!#chess #themes pic.twitter.com/JVAlck5lCZ

— Peter Doggers (@peterdoggers) November 14, 2019

In Thursday's fifth round, Obiettivo Risarcimento plays club Vugar Gashimov, and on board two it's SK Joly Lysa nad Labem vs. Mednyi Vsadnik.

2019 European Club Cup | Round 4 Standings (Top 10)

(Full standings here.)

Women

In the women's group, where teams of four players compete, 14 teams are playing, with a total of 67 players from 23 federations. Eleven of them are grandmasters, with 11 WGMs and 18 IMs.

Two teams are leading, with seven match points. In the third round, Cercle d'Echecs Monte Carlo and the Kyiv Chess Federation played 2-2, and both won in the other three rounds.

In the second round, the Italian ladies from Caissa Pentole Agnelli held their own on the first three boards, with an IM holding a GM to a draw three times. Monte Carlo ended up winning the match on the last board, with a crushing win.

The same round saw another early top clash, between Kiev of Ukraine and Ugra of Russia. The latter are playing with the Ukrainian former women's world champion Anna Ushenina, who lost to another former world champ: Mariya Muzychuk.

2019 European Club Cup (Women) | Round 4 Standings

Games via TWIC.