The King's Long Walk

Nigel Short's win over Jan Timman at the 1991 Interpolis tournament in Tilburg is remembered for one of the strangest sights in serious chess: a king marching up the board as an attacking piece while both queens were still on it. After trading down to a favourable position with active pieces, Short judged that his king had no safety concerns of its own and simply advanced it, 31.Kh2, 32.Kg3, 33.Kh4 and 34.Kg5, straight toward the heart of the position.

The point was concrete rather than showy: from g5 the king supported an attack against Timman's king that Black's remaining pieces, tied down elsewhere, had no way to meet in time. Timman resigned immediately, with commentators showing afterwards that 35.Kh6 would have left no way to prevent mate on the following move.

The game is now a fixture in king-safety instruction specifically because the march looks reckless until you check the calculation: at every step Black's pieces simply had no way to generate a check or threat quick enough to punish White's king for leaving its usual shelter. It remains one of the most quoted examples of a side using its own king as an attacking unit well outside the endgame's final, simplified stages.