MARK RUBERY CHESS

The Great Russian novelist, Leo Nikolayevich Tolstoy (1828-1910), who wrote such classics as War and Peace and Anna Karenina, was apparently quite fanatical when it came to his chess.

‘When Tolstoy was a young officer in the Caucasus he was promised a St George Cross for bravery in the field of action. The night before the awards were to be distributed he became absorbed in a game of chess and failed to go on duty. It unluckily happened that the commander of the division visited the guns, which should have been in Tolstoy’s charge, and not finding him at his post, placed him under arrest. The next day when the crosses were distributed, Tolstoy was a prisoner and missed the coveted honour…’ (Times Weekly Edition, 3 May 1907)

During the siege of Sevastopol (18841885) he honed his game by playing dozens of games with Prince Sergei Urusov who was one of the strongest Russian players of that time (1 e4 e5 2 Bc4 Nf6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nf3 is known as the Urusov Gambit). Unfortunately there are no scores from their encounters that were played amid a backdrop of 50,000 British and French troops.

The following game was against his biographer.

Count L Tolstoy-A Maude, 1906

1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.Bc4 g4 5.Ne5 Qh4+ 6.Kf1 d5 7.Bxd5 f3 8.gxf3 Qh3+ 9.Ke1 g3 10.d4 g2 11.Rg1 Qh4+ 12.Ke2 Nh6 13.Rxg2 c6 14.Bxh6 cxd5 15.Bxf8 Kxf8 16.Qe1 Qe7 17.Nc3 f6 18.Nxd5 Qd6 19.Qg3 1-0

WHITE TO PLAY AND WIN

'One evening in Sevastopol while Tolstoy was sitting with his adjutants and the Commander of the Garrison, Prince Urusov entered the room and wished to speak to the general. When ten minutes passed Urusov left looking very glum. After he had gone the adjutant explained to Tolstoy that Urusov had come to suggest that a challenge should be sent to the English to play a game of chess for the foremost trench of the Fifth Bastion: a trench that had changed hands several times and had already cost some hundreds of lives. The Commander naturally refused to issue the challenge.’ (The Life of Tolstoy: First Fifty Years, 1908)