all pgn format minis consolidated, over 37,000 games! in one file

December 08, 2019

What miniature refers to in chess?

In chess, “miniatures” are short games — generally 25 moves or fewer. A person on the losing end usually has made at least one critical error that has quickly led to a hopeless position.

It might be assumed that miniature losses happen only to inexperienced players, or in games in which one player is vastly superior to the other. But even world-class players can make mistakes, and some of the best have lost a miniature.

In a 1993 game, Anatoly Karpov, the former world champion, blundered a piece on Move 12 against Larry Christiansen, an American grandmaster, and promptly resigned.

The shortest miniature might have been a 1984 game in the United States Championship between Kamran Shirazi, an Iranian-born international master, who was playing White, and Jack Peters, another international master. The game, in its entirety, went 1 e4 c5 2 b4 cb4 3 a3 d5 4 ed5 Qd5 5 ab4? Qe5, and Shirazi resigned because he would lose his rook on a1.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/crosswords/chess/25chess.html?_r=0