Today in 1989, two players in a chess tournament faced off, and set a record for the longest tournament chess match of all time.
The match took place in Belgrade between two then-Yugoslavian players, Ivan Nikolić vs. Goran Arsović.
Analysts describe this match as extremely defensive.
If you know chess at all (and, for the record, I don’t) you know that players will often move pieces to protect others.
These two were apparently putting every defensive move they could think of into action.
And that makes sense, except that at some point someone has to go on offense or the match will just keep going on and on and on.
The two players did end up slowly capturing each other’s pieces, so that after more than a hundred moves, one of them had just a king, rook and bishop left, and the other was down to a rook and a king.
And, at that point, the pieces were in positions where they couldn’t capture each other without being captured themselves or putting their own kings in danger.
So the players just kind of moved their remaining pieces back and forth, each possibly hoping the other would make a colossal blunder that would lead to a checkmate.
But no! They just circled around each other over and over.
Now chess games typically have something called the fifty-move rule, which means that if you have a situation where no one captures a piece or moves a pawn for 50 moves is declared a draw.
But according to Chess.com, the International Chess Federation had an exception to that rule in place at the time for this particular configuration of pieces.
These guys could go on for 100 moves!
Which is what they did, until, after 20 hours and 15 minutes of chess, most of it stuck in that final configuration, the match ended with no winners and two presumably very tired chess players.
Today in 1921, a nun in St. Paul, Minnesota made educational history.
According to Atlas Obscura, Sister Carmela Hanggi got some eighth graders to help younger kids cross the street from their school to the Cathedral of Saint Paul.
That’s where school crossing guards and safety patrols got their start.
And there’s a flagpole and a plaque to mark the spot where it all began.
The Longest Tournament Chess Game (Chess.com)
School Patrol Flagpole (Atlas Obscura)
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