Wei Yi v Bruzón, Danzhou 2015: the modern Immortal

Wei Yi, then 16, played this game against Lázaro Bruzón in round 2 of the Danzhou tournament in China on 3 July 2015. ChessBase called it a modern-day Immortal Game, and it has been called the game of the decade. Garry Kasparov's reaction was one word: "Impressive!" Like Edward Lasker's king hunt against Thomas in 1912, it drives Black's king all the way up the board.

The whole game

What Stockfish makes of it

We had Stockfish check every move.

21...Nxd5: the losing move

21.Nd5 was Wei Yi's new idea. Raymond Keene wrote that Black, blissfully unaware of what was coming, took the knight the wrong way: 21...Bxd5 was necessary. Stockfish agrees: about two-thirds of a pawn worse for Black after 21...Bxd5, against nearly four pawns after 21...Nxd5.

22.Rxf7!!: the king hunt

Sagar Shah wrote that 22.Rxf7 couldn't be fully calculated, only judged dangerous. Stockfish rates it White's best move, nearly four pawns better for White. 25.Be4+, a decoy dragging the king to e4, was the only move that kept the attack going. Then came the quiet 26.Qf7, which Shah compared to Tal; both he and Keene noted that 26.c4 wins too, and Keene that it mates faster, though only a computer could see that. Stockfish confirms: it finds a forced mate after 26.c4.

The king walks to h3

28.Be3+, 30.Rf1+ and 31.Qd3 were each the only move that kept the win, and Shah called 29.Qb3 the only winning move; Stockfish rates it White's best. After 31...Bxg2+ Stockfish finds a forced mate. Black's king ended up on h3, and after 36.Be1 there was no defence. Bruzón resigned.

How we checked

• The moves are from ChessBase (Sagar Shah's notes) and Raymond Keene's column in The Spectator, which agree. We replayed every move with python-chess: all are legal.
• The engine: Stockfish 16.1 checked every move at depth 22, and the key moments again at depth 26. "A pawn better" is Stockfish's measure of the position, not a count of material.
• The history and the named opinions are from ChessBase, The Spectator and Wikipedia's page on Wei Yi.

More famous games

• The Immortal Game
• The Evergreen Game
• The Opera Game
• Zukertort v Blackburne, London 1883
• Lasker v Bauer, Amsterdam 1889
• Steinitz v von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895
• Rotlewi v Rubinstein, Łódź 1907
• Levitsky v Marshall, Breslau 1912
• Edward Lasker v Thomas, London 1912
• Lasker v Capablanca, St Petersburg 1914
• Capablanca v Marshall, New York 1918
• Adams v Torre, 1920
• The Immortal Zugzwang Game
• Réti v Alekhine, Baden-Baden 1925
• Euwe v Alekhine, 1935, game 26
• Botvinnik v Capablanca, AVRO 1938
• The Game of the Century
• Polugaevsky v Nezhmetdinov, Sochi 1958
• Tal v Smyslov, Candidates 1959
• Spassky v Bronstein, 1960
• Tal v Botvinnik, 1960, game 1
• Robert Byrne v Fischer, 1963
• Petrosian v Spassky, 1966, game 10
• Spassky v Petrosian, 1969, game 19
• Larsen v Spassky, Belgrade 1970
• Fischer v Spassky, 1972, game 6
• Karpov v Spassky, 1974, game 9
• Liu Wenzhe v Donner, 1978
• Karpov v Kasparov, 1985, game 16
• Kasparov v Karpov, Seville 1987, game 24
• Shirov v Judit Polgár, Buenos Aires 1994
• Topalov v Shirov, Linares 1998
• Kasparov's Immortal
• Kasparov v Kramnik, 2000, game 3
• Kramnik v Leko, Brissago 2004, game 14
• Anand's Immortal
• Anand v Carlsen, Chennai 2013, game 9
• Carlsen v Karjakin, 2016, tiebreak game 4
• Carlsen v Nepomniachtchi, 2021, game 6

Ways to train

• Chess tactics trainer
• Chess blunder trainer
• Chess pawn structures
• Chess endgame trainer
• Positional chess training
• Analyse your chess games
• Master moves