Swindling the best!

Here's a wonderful and I daresay instructive finish to a game between two storied opponents. One a great champion, and the other, a great hustler, and... the hustler comes out on top.

There was a lively chess scene in the cafes of Edwardian London and the upscale Cafe Vienna was a prime spot for the better (but ever-hungry) chess hustlers to eke out a living, a schilling at a time, from well-heeled patron-patzers.  The Dutch-born player Rudolf Johannes Loman (pictured at right) was a regular hustler at the Cafe Vienna... But in 1903, during a simul, he managed a remarkable win against a player no one could call a patzer -- The World Champion Dr. Emanual Lasker!

From the postion below it is White to Move and Win... give it a try. Lasker, playing White, gets a won game with a brilliant passed pawn (that's a hint) -- and then in most unLaskerlike fashion he lets his guard down -- the wily Loman, a true coffee shop genius finds a saving resource to win...  the annotations add some details.

Here's a link to a chesscafe article in which Jacques Davidson (another Dutch-born chess player who hustled the Cafe Vienna) discusses his mentor, R.J. Loman, and his advice about the unspoken rules of chess hustling in turn of the century London.

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