Earlier this year we ran a small story about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange mysteriously tweeting a chess position. The position — a search of MegaBase revealed — was from a classic game played exactly 100 years ago today: Jose Raul Capablanca vs Frank Marshall from the first round of the Manhattan Chess Club Masters, which began in New York on this day in 1918. Marshall was the US Champion at the time. Capablanca was still over two years away from becoming World Champion.
What was significant about this game to Assange or his followers remains a mystery. In computer security parlance, Capablanca's name could be taken as a stand-in for "White Hat" which is slang for ethical hacking. But that seems like a stretch.
If the date of the game was of any relevance, we might have expected to see some news related to Wikileaks today, but other than suing the government of Ecuador earlier this week over new "house rules" on a variety of topics including care of his pet cat, we haven't seen any of note. Perhaps that's because Assange's Internet access in London has been severely curtailed since March.
Photo: Public Domain, Library of Congress
As for the history surrounding the game itself, today we refer to the move 8...d5 in the Ruy Lopez as the "Marshall Gambit" although, as we noted in connection with the Assange tweet, historians have uncovered prior examples of the move being played as far back as 1893. It also wasn't true that he saved this move for the fateful 1918 encounter. He'd previously avoided playing 2...Nc6 entirely against Capablanca on several occasions since their 1909 match which the Cuban had won easily.
Here is a thoroughly annotated account of the game, courtesy Chess Magazine:
Reproduced from Chess Magazine October/2018, with kind permission
Play 8...d5 against an engine of your choice and see how well you do
Note that in the above player you can practice ideas you might have found in the annotated game Capablanca-Marshall. You can pick an electronic opponent that matches your playing strength: Very weak opponent (baby mode), Serious amateur (blue tie), Club player (blue T-shirt), Master (Yay!). There are additional buttons for a New game (from the given position), Take back move, Play move forwards, Play now, Get a hint, Switch colours, Analyse with a chess engine. You can change sides by taking back an opponent's move and playing a different one yourself.
