The Most Claustrophobic Chess Game in History || The Impossible Chess Record (Unbeaten Since 1887)

Hello everyone and welcome to an incredible composition that stood the test of time. It's composed by Charles Henry Wheeler in 1887, almost 140 years ago, and it wasn't bested ever since. And the point is to achieve a stalemate for either side without capturing a single piece. And what's the quickest way to do that? So it's basically a chess stalemate speedrun. Now the fastest way it was done with capturing pieces is the famous Sam Lloyd composition. Or not a composition, it's an entire game. But we can show it, maybe I've shown it on the channel a couple of years ago, but just in case you guys forgot. So if capturing is allowed, then the current quickest record is 10 moves. And it goes like this, pawn to e3, pawn to a5, and queen to h5. So certainly not a move you would play in regular chess. Rook to a6, and now queen captures on a5. I know your brain is already hurting, but that's the point of the exercise. We have to stalemate either player as quickly as possible. h5, queen captures on c7, and now rook to h6. So white is trying to eliminate as many of black's pieces as possible, while black is trying to create a tomb where none of the pieces or pawns can move. So it's sort of a cooperation. Rook to h6, we have pawn to h4, and now pawn to f6. We have queen captures on d7, king to f7, and now queen captures on b7. Again, every move is the move you are not even looking at. Queen to d3, and now queen captures on b8. We have queen to h7, now the queen will be trapped as well. Queen captures on c8, and king to g6. And here, you can still move the pawn to e6, to e5, you can play pawn to f5, but white solves that by playing queen to e6, and it is now, as of move 10, that black got stalemated. So nothing can move, everything is completely boxed in. The king cannot go here, cannot go here, the pawn is blocked by the queen, this pawn is pinned. So this is 10 moves, the famous Sam Loyd composition. It is a bit more trickier if you are not allowed to capture any pieces, and that is why the famous Charles Henry Wheeler game has stood the test of time for 140 years. If you can best it, then do please share it with us. But I will show it now. So this is without capturing a single piece, so it's, I mean, it's just, it's impossible. If you try to construct this yourselves without using an engine, which Charles Henry Wheeler did, that's pretty amazing. And the engines also cannot do it faster than that, for the moment. So pawn to a4, we have pawn to c5. Pawn to d4, we have pawn to d6, and queen to d2. We have pawn to e5, and queen to f4, offering a queen, but of course that's not the goal of this game. Pawn to e4, we have pawn to h3, and bishop to e7. Queen to h2, so obviously we get the idea of who's getting stalemated. We have bishop to h4, and now rook to a3. Bishop to e6, we have rook to g3, offering a rook, but of course not touching that. Bishop to b3, and knight to d2. We have queen to a5, pinning that knight. Pawn to d5, and pawn to e3, attacking the knight, but of course we're not looking to capture. Pawn to c4, and now pawn to f5. We have pawn to f3, and here it comes. You can play a lot of moves, but pawn to f4, and believe it or not, white is stalemated. There is not a single move you can make. The bishops are boxed in by the pawn, so okay, also by the knight here. The knight cannot move. It's pinned by the queen. All of the pawns are blockaded, and the rook here is pinned by the bishop. The queen and rook are completely boxed in. The knight has no squares, so that is the quickest you can do it. At least that is what we think. So 10 moves, if you are allowed to capture by Sam Lloyd and Charles Henry Wheeler from 1887 in 12 moves. If you can do it faster, do share it with anyone, or you can share it with me. I will very happily show it to the world that Charles Henry Wheeler's record has been bested by you and your uncle, you know, composing on a dark night. And yeah, one thing that still hasn't been solved, it's sort of the holy grail of stalemates, is the double stalemate with all 32 pieces on the board. So for the moment, it hasn't been accomplished. It has been accomplished with 30 pieces on the board, with two knights removed, but with 32 pieces, a double stalemate has still not been achieved. It's sort of a position where you don't even have to know whose move is it, because it's stalemate whose ever move it is. So it's, you know, something inconceivable. But yeah, a bit of a different thing than we usually show, and it's very, very hard to look at these moves. I mean, every move you make, we are just hardwired to immediately look for that best candidate move, and then you have to play, you know, it's basically a cooperation between two players to create a masterpiece, something that's usually not seen in chess. Usually you try to best the other guy, sometimes we get a masterpiece, sometimes we don't, but here it's a collaboration. So yeah, that's the game, or the composition, or two compositions, if you will. Hope you enjoyed that. I would like to wish a very happy birthday to Gavin Carey, and I would like to thank Subramanian Kutapaly, Daniel Baggio, Priyadarshan Manohar, and William Gould for your contribution to my channel. Thank you a lot, I really appreciate it. As usual, you can check two of my previous videos here. Thank you all for watching, and I will see you soon, continuing to check up on your wonderful suggestions, and whatever else happens in the chess world. Thank you all, I will see you soon, and have an excellent rest of your day.