GM Equal Positions
Dead draws from real grandmaster games – two GMs couldn’t win them. Can you?
3B2k1/6pp/4bp2/1p2p3/8/2P3P1/4PP1P/6K1 b - - 0 25Browse by grandmaster
Every position below is filtered to one player’s games – the draws they could not convert, and the ones they had to hold.
- Hikaru Nakamura233 positions
- Denis Lazavik225 positions
- Bogdan-Daniel Deac211 positions
- Anish Giri191 positions
- Fabiano Caruana184 positions
- Matthias Bluebaum172 positions
- Magnus Carlsen168 positions
- David Paravyan165 positions
- Jose Eduardo Martinez Alcantara160 positions
- Maxime Vachier-Lagrave159 positions
What is a dead draw?
A dead draw is a chess position where neither side has any realistic winning chances – the engine evaluation hovers around 0.00 and, between strong players, the game is headed for a handshake. Every position in GM Equal Positions comes from a real grandmaster game that ended in a draw, verified by Stockfish to stay level for at least eight consecutive moves – from both sides of the board.
Can you actually win a drawn position?
Against perfect play, no. Against a human or a club-strength bot, absolutely. Converting “equal” into a win – or holding a dead draw under pressure – is one of the hardest practical skills in chess, and the reason endgame technique separates grandmasters from the rest of us.
Why practice dead draws?
Because they strip the game down to pure technique. There are no tactics to memorize and no opening theory – just you, a level position, and the question of who understands it better. Pick a position, choose your engine and side, and try to squeeze water from a stone.