Letter #14 -  2004

Sub:    Doubt, results 1-0
Date:   7/13/2004 4:04:38 PM MDT
From:  Csar
To:      service@chess-poster.com

To whom it may concern:

I am a beginner (I would say a rookie) and I have learned some things by only reading and most of the info has been taken through the internet mostly from your website which by the way is great.

There is something that I don't understand well because some games seem to end as if there's no winner, I mean without checkmate.

I don't get exactly how is determined who won the game between Seirawan and Ivanchuk in the openings section of the King's Indian Defense which shows a final result of 1-0, but how do I know who won and why?

If I were playing that game with a friend of mine, surely after move 22. we will keep playing many more moves afterwards.

Thanks and greetings,
Csar

Dear viewer,

In professional matches, most of the games (if not all) end in a different way other than checkmate. Thus, 1-0 means white pieces won and 0-1 means black pieces did. When no mate is produced, it may be that the losing player lost on time, or that he resigned because he realized he had not a chance to win whatsoever.

Another possibility is that the game was adjourned, drawn by the the three move rule, stalemate or draw by insufficiency of mating material. Most games in our site end in this way with the exception of a few that end in a checkmate such as Bobby Fischer -“The game of the Century”, Hal 9000 Computer, etc.

If you analyze again the game you mention in your letter, you may find that the black King had no good moves left and it was just a matter of few moves for the white Queen to checkmate it. Ivanchuk decided to resign other than be checkmated.

Thank you for visiting us,
chess-poster.com