Dec 25, 2025
Author's Commentary #664:
Time to talk about Chapter 664: A Troitsky-Vogt take for Christmas.
This one's a special one, and my Christmas present to all of you. Yes, I managed to put together a working game that leads to the Troitsky stalemate, all on my own.
First, let's begin with how this all started. While working on EPGM Volume 3, which adapts Season 5 and parts of Seasons 4 and 8, I decided to revise the Skaberghast encounter from Season 4, meaning I needed to add some games to the mix. The problem was that the 350-Yuzuha was up against the 2400-Mona. As such, I felt the best way to have Yuzuha not lose was for Mona to get overconfident and accidentally stalemate Yuzuha. This was further spurned by me accidentally stalemating Oscar in Duolingo, however, the problem there was that the game wasn't saved, so I had to create a new game from scratch.
Thus, I turned to searching for famous chess stalemates, and found the Troitsky one. It was perfect, aside from the fact that the moves prior weren't known. I decided to rectify this by asking for AI assistance, which I thought would solve the problem instantly. It didn't.
What I got was the AI giving me moves that were illegal and/or made achieving the position in the Troitsky game impossible. Now at this point, I was simply giving the AI the FEN of the position and nothing else, asking simply for it to list the moves that led up to it. No matter how much I pointed out the illegality of certain moves, the AI continued to fail.
Then came the moment I included the full information about the game, and well, the AI then said, "The position is illegal and not possible to achieve", or something along those lines. I then gave up on the AI and decided to try achieving the position myself, just to prove it was possible to do.
And well, I got a working game in 10 minutes, and refined it to the final product in another 5. Thus, the "15 minutes" it took Okisato to solve it, was how long it really took me to get it. Best of all, it led to the game being 30 moves in total, which is what some sources claim the length of the actual Troitsky-Vogt game was.
The only difference between that version I found and the one here is that originally, 2. e4 and 3. Nf3 were flipped. Every other move was the exact same. I went with the change to make the moves seem a bit more natural. Obviously, there are instances where the players make questionable moves, but there is some justification for it.
First, it's 1896. Second, Troitsky was never said to be a grandmaster-level player, so it's entirely possible for him to have made some questionable moves. Vogt even more so since we barely know anything about him, suggesting he might not have been a significant player of the era.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone's able to come up with a better move sequence leading up to the stalemate than me, but at least now, we know it's possible in 30 moves, and have a game to reference. That should make retrograde analysis much easier.
Finally, Merry Christmas. I hope you liked the present.
That's all for this commentary. I hope you enjoyed it.
![Escape Witch [Remake] cover](https://honeyfeed-novel-images.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/novel_image/file/14560/cover_thumb_9f88f94f-2a73-4d00-b518-6f20b53f9811.jpg)
