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Time
Out
'Keats' of chess Chess
Today I am back to my favourite topic - the great players
of the dim and distant past. Somehow they seem to have a greater
appeal to me than their present day counterparts. And that
may have something to do with the incisive way some chess
authors have written about them. For example, Reuben Fine
described the chess genius, Rudolph Charousek, in a very vivid
language in his book on the middlegame. What could be a greater
tribute for a player than being compared with a famous poet?
" Going through Charousek's games is like reading the
poems of John Keats, you cannot avoid feeling a deep sense
of loss… a dream unfulfilled.
Both Charousek
and Keats died young. And both of them died of tuberculosis.
The disease cut short the lives of many a budding genius in
those pre-antibiotic days.
The task
of measuring a player's real strength was perhaps easier in
those days when there was little support from theory. The
players were on their own, right from the beginning.
But don't
forget that the old games have something more than nostalgic
value. Learners should study the games where elementary tactics
and positional ideas come into play. You can watch those sacrificial
attacks and beautiful combinations. That said, most players
in those days were poor defenders. Perhaps the general mood
was that the attacker deserved to win a game! Defence was
still not a fully developed art. Of course, there were exceptions
like world champion Emanuel Lasker who won many, many games
by hanging on to apparently lost positions.
Another
feature of chess in the late nineteenth century was the bold
and lively play in the opening. Many gambits were tried by
the attacking players. Initially, they were highly successful,
but chess theorists soon found satisfactory lines for the
second player and most of the 'violent gambits' disappeared
from tournament praxis, only to be revived from time to time
by the mavericks.
Here
is a game played by Charousek.
White
-Rudolph Charousek
Black -Emanuel Lasker[C33]
Nuremberg, 1896
1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 d5 4.Bxd5 Qh4+ 5.Kf1 g5 6.Nf3 Qh5
7.h4 Bg7 8.Nc3 c6 9.Bc4 Bg4 10.d4 Nd7 11.Kf2 Bxf3 12.gxf3
000 13.hxg5 Qxg5 14.Ne2 Qe7 15.c3 Ne5 16.Qa4 Nxc4 17.Qxc4
Nf6 18.Bxf4 Nd7 19.Qa4 a6 20.Qa5 Nf8 21.Ng3 Ne6 22.Nf5 Qf8
23.Bg3 Rd7 24.Nxg7 Qxg7 25.Qe5 Qxe5 26.Bxe5 f6 27.Bxf6 Rf8
28.Rh6 Nf4 29.Ke3 Ng2+ 30.Kd2 Rdf7 31.e5 Nf4 32.Rah1 Rg8 33.c4
Ne6 34.Ke3 Nf8 35.d5 Rd7 36.e6 1-0.
Position
after 25.Qe5
-PATZER
Copyright
(R) thedailystar.net 2004
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