MARK RUBERY CHESS

The following correspondence game between two chess clubs was originally published in the British Chess Magazine in 1895. This entertaining game reveals that the players from that time had a very keen eye for tactics.

CITY Brandfort - CITY Bloemfontein [C50]

Corr, 1894

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Qe2

(No doubt angling for Bxf7+)… d6 5.c3

Nge7 6.a4 (6 Ng5 now or on the next move is to be considered)…a5 7.Na3 0–0 8.Ng5 d5 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxh7!? (Now the fun begins)…nf4 11.Qe4 Bxf2+ (Entering into the spirit of the occasion) 12.Kf1 Re8 13.d4 Bh4 14.g3 g6 15.Bxf4 Bf5 16.Qd5 Bd3+ 17.Kg2 Bxc4 18.Qxc4 exf4 19.Raf1 Re4 20.gxh4 Ne5 21.dxe5 Rxc4 (21…Qd2+! 22 Kg1 f3 is to be preferred as now White gets more than enough wood for his queen) 22.Nf6+ Kg7 23.Nxc4 Qd3 24.b3 Qc2+ 25.Rf2 Qxb3 26.Rxf4 Qc2+ 27.Kf3 Qxc3+ 28.Ne3 Qxe5 29.h5 Ra6 30.h6+ Kh8 31.Neg4 Qc5 32.Re1 Re6 33.Rxe6 fxe6 34.Re4 Qf5+ 35.Kg3 (Black is helpless against White’s well-coordinated troops)… c5 36.Kh4 b5 37.axb5 1–0 ‘My relationship to the game had become externalised-by pressures from the film (‘Searching for Bobby Fischer’) about my life, by losing touch with my natural voice as an artist, by mistakes I made in the growth process. At the very core of my relationship to learning is the idea that we should be as organic as possible. We need to cultivate a deeply refined introspective sense, and build our relationship to learning around our nuance of character. I stopped doing this and fell into crisis from a sense of alienation from an art I had loved so deeply. This is when I left chess behind, started meditating, studying philosophy and psychology, and ultimately moved towards Tai Chi Chuan (where he went on to become a middleweight world champion).’ (Joshua Waitzkin)