Part One took the reader briskly through the history of the game’s so-called ‘Romantic Age’, from Bourdonnais’ early 1830s’ combinative example to the high point of those two great mid-century giants, Anderssen and Morphy. By the 1860s, chess knowledge had hugely expanded and these more innocent, open attacking times were ripe for seismic change.
Steinitz eventually evolved his own theory of the accumulation of small advantages. He and others, consciously or not, had to adapt. The evergreen Anderssen, who continued to compete successfully at the very top, despite giving away two decades or more to almost all of his peers in his last two decades, was among the successful adapters. Consider the following game, whose spectacular brilliance derives far less from anything ‘romantic’ in character than from the stricter dictates of a thoroughly sound and hard-hitting opening.
Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) features in an instructive Everyman work by Pritchett, "Chess Secrets: Great Chess Romantics".
Steinitz also recognised that the great Paul Morphy would have effortlessly coped with the game’s changing trends, if he hadn’t abruptly ‘retired’ from all top-class competition, the ‘Pride and Sorrow’ of the game, at the very end of the 1850s.
Of Kolisch, who also effectively abandoned chess in the mid-1860s (eventually to become a wealthy financier, chess patron and Austrian ‘baron’), Steinitz allowed, too, not just that he “was gifted with most remarkable powers of originality, brilliancy and depth of combination [...] in the kingside attack”, but that in his most important encounters he also “showed some indications of the circumspective style which tends to hold the balance all over the board and seizes the slightest advantage at any point” (International Chess Magazine, May 1889).
Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900), the first official world champion and the subject of a fine "Move by Move" work by Craig Pritchett.
Life changes... even for ‘oldies’! In the next two or three decades, Steinitz changed his own game more radically than all of his peers and perhaps just as importantly gave expression to these momentous trends in chess not just in his many great games, but also in his incomparable writing, in The Field (1873-1882), International Chess Magazine (1885-1892), Modern Chess Instructor: Part 1 (1889) and elsewhere. Not just the world’s best player by acclaim (certainly through most, arguably all of the period, from around 1873 until the early 1890s), he was also a great teacher and, especially, chess innovator par excellence.
Contemporaries were certainly in awe of Steinitz’s remarkable facility for innovation. He pushed the boundaries of what most considered playable, at times, to extraordinary lengths. Among his greatest successes, to name but a few, must count:
His profoundly strategic reinterpretation of the long-neglected Salvio Gambit, which completely confounded Anderssen in their match, at London 1866, and his own, almost surreally conceived Steinitz Gambit, first unleashed on an unsuspecting world, at Dundee 1867.
Demonstrating the weak points in Anderssen’s favourite interpretation of Spanish: d3 Systems (generally involving an early Bxc6, followed by Nc3), and then subsequently refashioning the line (along myriad c2-c3 variants), which played an especially significant role in his world championship match victories against Zukertort (1886) and Chigorin (1889 and 1892).
Devising the first, recognisably modern anti-Isolated Queen’s Pawn defences, with which he repeatedly frustrated Zukertort’s attempts to attack (with White), in their 1886 match, and destroying Chigorin’s earliest attempts, in their 1889 match, at making his embryonic Chigorin Defence work, with a range of ideas that indicated an astonishingly accurate grasp of how to defuse such systems.
In addition to his profound chess understanding, it should also simply be stressed that Steinitz was a born fighter, who understood psychology and the value of calculated risk-taking and surprise in chess. Moreover he never lost his delight in combination or belief that tactics ultimately decide games. Far ahead of his time, Steinitz acted on the thoroughly modern principle that the scope in chess for innovation and test by concrete analysis was, in effect, near-endless. If he began to doubt any of his innovations, he would instantly ditch them.
It is scarcely possible to offer one game that provides more than the merest, limited insight into Steinitz’s great contribution to chess. Here, however, is one of my own personal favourites and one that is by any stretch of the imagination a combinational masterpiece. Any top 21st century player would be proud to play such a game, even today. It certainly takes us several other large steps from the Bourdonnais, Paulsen and Anderssen wins above to the very threshold of our own ‘modernity’.
Along with other past (as well as present) greats, Steinitz continues to inspire me. What do you think?
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About the authorIM Craig Pritchett (photo by Sally Pritchett) is a former Scottish champion and chess writer and retired Chartered Public Finance Accountant, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Dunbar, Scotland. Still an active national and senior international competitor, he narrates: "I knew long ago that I wouldn't be World Champion on that fateful day when Karpov took me out on board one at the 1974 Nice Olympiad, after I missed a winning line that, yes, was pointed out by Bobby Fischer and conveyed to the Scottish team by Tony Saidy a week or so later!" Craig was a longstanding chess correspondent for The Glasgow Herald (1972-2006) and has published ten chess books. |
The above article appeared in the October 2016 of the British magazine CHESS
CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by IM Richard Palliser and Matt Read. The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organises the London Chess Classic.
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Master Class Volume 7: Garry Kasparov
Rogozenco, Müller, Marin & Reeh; ChessBase PC-DVD, running time: 9 hours RRP £24.95 SUBSCRIBERS £22.45 ChessBase’s series on the greatest players of all time moves on to tackling one who is still very much with us, the legendary 13th world champion. Kasparov may have been retired for 11 years now, but we can, of course, still learn a huge amount from his games. As usual Müller, Marin and Reeh explore his endgame, strategic and tactical skills respectively, while Rogozenko is a welcome addition to the team as he examines one of Kasparov’s legendary strengths, his openings. Order online from |
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The 4...Nf6 Caro-Kann
Nigel Davies; ChessBase PC-DVD, running time: 4 hours RRP £24.95 SUBSCRIBERS £22.45 The Welsh Grandmaster takes a look at the main line of the Caro-Kann, 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4, proposing Black then plays an old favourite of his, 4...Nf6. After 5 Nxf6+ Davies examines both the Tartakower variation, 5...exf6, and the more dynamic Bronstein-Larsen line, 5...gxf6!?. As one would expect, Davies explains the main ideas for Black, while mapping out a repertoire with both variations which should be sufficiently detailed for the club player. Order online from |
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Pawn Structures You Should Know The experienced Slovenian, formerly Ukrainian, Grandmaster and trainer has long been a fan of Aron Nimzowitsch’s advice that one must “study typical pawn structures”. Mikhalchishin has plenty of clear examples, which help to illustrate how one should handle both sides of such common situations as the isolated pawn or the Marozcy Bind, while a number of interactive tests should serve to really drum home the lessons. Order online from |
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Trompowsky for the Attacking Player
Timur Gareyev; ChessBase PC-DVD, running time: 4 hours, 36 minutes RRP £24.95 SUBSCRIBERS £22.45 On his early summer trip to Europe, Gareyev dropped by Hamburg, recording this DVD on one of his all-time favourite openings. As one might expect, there is plenty of creative, sharp chess to be found in this Trompowsky repertoire, with gambits very much to the fore. That said, Gareyev does also show how to handle Black’s more solid defences while drawing heavily on his own praxis throughout. Order online from |
