Women's World Chess Champion fails Bishop+Knight mate

Poor Ushenina, this happened less than 24 hours ago during the Geneva Women's Grand Prix. Had a bunch of time on the clock but still failed to mate with Bishop+Knight.  This wasn't Blitz chess.  I wonder if she simply forgot?  She's the women's world chess champion!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFF5ibgB6eA

LOL

That's as bad as Anand blundering a piece on move six.

It was a great game! Very tense. This has been an exciting tournament! I wish I would have made a thread about it

It's a shame there's no way to get the past streams.  The way FIDE does these live streams now, if you're not watching the live footage then they're gone forever.  Luckily though, I found a program though that records them straight to my drive.  This was a nice find that otherwise probably woulda been lost forever.  You can feel Ushenina's frustration, and Olga's amusement.

It's hard to blame her, Bishop and Knight is a really hard checkmate to pull off in 50 moves.

I'll learn how to do it the day I need it in a correspondence game

(or the day after I need it in a live game...)

Well, its a once in a lifetime situation to get that endgame, bad luck for her that the whole world got to see this.

Poor woman, when the vid starts she´s only 3 moves away from the ideal starting position to drive the K to the right corner and she obviously knows it,but can´t remember the exact setup. And no shakehands when the torture´s over ...

magnus would have done this when he was 12

i'm not even rated in fide and i know how to do this.

That smirk at the end of the video was classic.  She could have resigned, but decided to see if the world champ could execute and it paid off.

i thought it was forced mate in 33

She should've read my blog. K+B+N vs K isn't advanced rocket science, and once you know how it doesn't matter how many moves it takes*  because it's not just a matter of memorizing moves but in understanding how the pieces work together. 

* 34 moves maximum according to BCE, although Fine's example is only a mere 33 moves long.

http://www.chess.com/blog/NimzoRoy/mate-with-kbn-vs-k---together-again-for-the-first-time

I did not follow that game when live.

And my knowledge is rudimentary, so please forgive me a possibly dumb question: But IIRC, in a B+N endgame the mate cannot always be forced?  So maybe she can be forgiven that she did not succeed? Or was the position such that the forced mate was possible in this game? I guess it just shows once more how closely together triumph and tragedy are in chess...

It can always be forced

Thank you, rooperi.

Memo to myself: Learn endgames for Christ sake!

It's not that hard once you studied it, and I would certainly expect a GM of her strength to know this almost basic stuff.

Why does everyone call it basic?

Yeah, its not too hard and all but its such a corner case that its probably not even worth putting time into learning how its done.

When you are a professional chess player and world champion, you should have found the time and put in the effort at one point in your career at least. My guess is that most 2000 ELO players can check-mate with knight and bishop.

After 81 moves, she was pretty close. She just needed to find 82. Ne2 followed by 83. Be6 and from there, I think, she would have managed to check mate.