What could have led to Troitsky's famous stalemate against Vogt
I'm sure many here are familiar with Troitsky's beautiful stalemate in his game with Vogt. It's not only stylish, but a visual marvel as despite there being a good number of pieces on the board, White has no legal moves following the forced stalemate sequence. The only issue with this game is that only the final moves are known.
First, a little history. Reports indicate this game was played in 1896 between Alexey Troitsky and his opponent known simply as, Vogt, and first appeared publicly in 1924's 500 Endspeilstudien. Though Troitsky likely had notes containing the annotation for the full game, they were sadly destroyed during the Siege of Leningrad. Thus, the mystery of what moves could have been played leading up to this stalemate remains unsolved. I'm hoping to change that.
Retrograde analysis is the proper term used to describe the determining of moves that led up to a certain position. For a player of my low meager elo level, trying to imagine what moves could have been played seemed to out of reach. Thus, I consulted an AI chatbot. And if you've watched Gothamchess' videos on how AI chatbots like to play chess, you can probably guess how bad the AI was at solving the problem.
After being given a FEN of the position right before White moves the rook to d1, initiating the stalemate gambit, I asked the AI to tell me the moves that led up to the position. What it gave me were sequences of Illegal moves, and no matter how much I fought it and asked it to correct it, it just wouldn't give me a coherent game.
During this time, a curious debate arose regarding the nature of the game itself, two actually. First, the number of moves. through internet searches, 24 and 30 were the number of moves I saw listed with 30 appearing to be the more prominent of the two. Thus, I was able to add in more parameters for the AI, which meant Rook d1 is actually 28. Rd1, with the rest of the known moves being 28... Bh3, 29. Rxd8+ Kxd8, and 30. Qd1+ Qxd1. Thus, I could refine my prompt and ask for the AI to list moves 1-27. Of course, it didn't go well. Though I could get working moves for up to 8 turns, bigger problems arose in the fact that while the AI was suggesting legal moves, the moves it was suggesting would lead to the position before 28. Rd1 being impossible to achieve.
Now onto the second debate topic; is the position even possible to achieve? When I decided to include all the information known about the game, the AI came to the conclusion that it was an illegal position, not possible to achieve under normal play. And at that point I ditched the AI and decided to just try playing the game from scratch to try and reach the position that way.
Lo and behold, I managed to achieve it in 15 minutes. Thus, I present you with a possible way the Troitsky-Vogt game could have gone.
Some might feel the moves seem a bit janky and forced, which some indeed are in order to achieve the desired position. However, there are some defenses for it. First, the game was played in 1896. Theory was nowhere near it is today back then. Second, Troitsky himself was by no means grandmaster-level, making some of the questionable moves for White seem far more plausible than not. That all being said, we'll never know the true sequence of moves, but hopefully my theory can help those who want to see a full game with the stalemate and give retrograde analyzers more material to work with in order to craft their own Troitsky-Vogt theories.