Earlier this month, at the Kingston Invitational, Peter Lalic won a game against 12-year-old Billy Fellowes in 272 moves. Published in full, it would take up most of this article and resemble a cryptographic message more than a game of chess. But it earns a place in the record books as the longest over-the-board game in history, eclipsing the game Nikolic-Arsovic, Belgrade 1989, which was agreed drawn after 269 moves.
Billy Fellowes-Peter Lalic
Kingston Invitational, August 2024
The first diagram, at move 18, sets the scene. With more space to manoeuvre, Black holds a clear strategical advantage. The snag is that both of the natural pawn breaks which open up the position (b6-b5 or f6-f5) would improve White’s pieces in the short term by opening lines for Ra1/Bg2 and weakening a5/e5 pawns.
International chess rules state that if each side makes 50 moves without a pawn move or a capture, a player may claim a draw. Lalic cautiously marked time until that deadline and then nudged his pawn from c7-c6 at move 66, which reset the counter back to 0. Then at move 114 came c6-c5. At move 139 the queens were traded: Qh6xd2. Finally, at move 183, Lalic felt prepared to make the b6-b5 break. White exchanged on b5, and after a5-a4 came at move 216, Lalic went on to win rather easily. Fellowes could have resigned earlier, but at that point who could blame him for staggering on until mate?
Some onlookers suggested that Lalic’s war of attrition brought the game into disrepute, noting his penchant for inviting locked positions. It may have been tiresome, in every sense, but I had to admire his dogged persistence. Running down the clock and depleting the opponent’s resources are legitimate strategies, perfectly illustrated by the fact that the decisive blunder came shortly after the a5-a4 pawn break.
One of the most gripping games in history, the sixth game of the Carlsen-Nepomniachtchi world championship in 2021, lasted for 136 moves and finished at a quarter past midnight. Nepomniachtchi made the decisive mistake at move 130. That game was featured in a book and online course, Grind like a Grandmaster, which was co-authored by Carlsen and David Howell, one of England’s top grandmasters, who is also renowned for his determination.
I’ve got my own stories too. My game (a win) against Nigel Short at the 2009 London chess Classic lasted for 163 moves and 7.5 hours, with the janitor waiting patiently to kick us out. The time to lock up arrived at move 203 of the Lalic-Fellowes game, posing an unusual dilemma for the arbiters, since the game was far from over. They declared that the game would be adjourned and resumed at 8:15 the next morning, allowing time to finish before the following round at 10 a.m.
Adjournments are a barbarous relic of chess. It was always absurd that the outcome of a game could be influenced by the friends you could call upon to help with your analysis of a position. The practice of adjourning games had all but disappeared by the 1990s, and the advent of powerful computers which indicate optimal play made it untenable. But a provision to allow them lives on in the rules, and in this case the arbiters had no better solution. (As it happens, computer analysis still provides very little insight about how to handle stodgy positions like the one above).
Commendably, Billy Fellowes rallied to score a win and a draw later on the same day. The organisers awarded him a special prize for his resilience, and he learned some wisdom that can’t be taught in any classroom.
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