Chess
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.With the sudden rise of chess databases, where every grandmaster wields a laptop computer with half a million games on its hard disk, it has become increasingly difficult to win games through theoretical erudition. Now everyone knows everything.
In this climate, an increasing number of players are going back to the games of the pre-database era, resuscitating old ideas and surprising the supposedly best-prepared of opponents with opening variations unnecessarily abandoned 50 years ago.
Nigel Short, on his rise to a crack at the world championship in the early 1990s, scored a string of wins with 5.Qe2 in the Ruy Lopez - abandoned as innocuous in the 1950s - and the even older Four Knights Game, ditched as drawish in the 1930s.
As Short showed, there are still new ideas to be found in the oldest of openings. And even if you can't find anything new, you can be fairly certain that your young opponents, at anything below the highest levels, will have forgotten - or never knew - the old theory.
So here's a game to inspire more delvings in ancient history.
White: JR Capablanca
Black: H Steiner
1 e4 e5 14 f4! Rg8
2 Nf3 Nc6 15 Qh5+ Kg7
3 Nc3 Nf6 16 fxe5 dxe5
4 Bb5 Bb4 17 Rxf6! Kxf6
5 0-0 0-0 18 Rf1+ Nf5
6 d3 d6 19 Nxf5!! exf5
7 Bg5 Bxc3 20 Rxf5+ Ke7
8 bxc3 Ne7 21 Qf7+ Kd6
9 Nh4 c6 22 Rf6+ Kc5
10 Bc4 Be6 23 Qxb7! Qb6
11 Bxf6 gxf6 24 Rxc6!Qxc6
12 Bxe6 fxe6 25 Qb4 mate!
13 Qg4+ Kf7
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments