Attacking Chess After The Romantic Era

It's 1873, and a chess tournament is being played in Vienna, Austria.

The tournament featured 11 of the world's top players. After all the rounds were completed, 2 players tied for first place. One was Joseph Henry Blackburne. The other was Wilhelm Steinitz. Blackburne and Steintz ended up playing a match, which Steinitz won 2-0.

Steinitz was already being seen as the world's best player after defeating Adolf Anderssen in a match in 1866, so his win over Blackburne is hardly surprising. What was notable at this tournament was not Steinitz's victory, but how he achieved it. Before this tournament, Steinitz followed the style popular at the time, known as Romantic Chess. The Romantic style was notable for its attacks and for its combinations. However, at this tournament, Steinitz switched his style to a more positional approach.

Steinitz ended up winning with this new positonal style, laying down the foundations for chess as we know it. The aim of this blog is to explore the impact Steinitz and his successors had on attacking chess, and those players who favored tactical over positional chess.

The Romantic Era

The Romantic style was the dominant style of the 1800s. It focused on attacks and tactics. To players of this style, Chess was not a science, it was an art. One consequence of this is that beauty was of high value. It wasn't enough to just win, you had to win with style.

Common openings included the King's Gambit and the Evans Gambit. Almost no game started with anything other than 1. e4. Playing 1. d4 was considered to be disrespectful, and declining a gambit was considered to be corwardly.

A signature game of Romantic Era is the Immortal Game, played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky in 1851 between rounds of the London 1851 tournament.

The Immortal Game features gambits, sacrifices, and a beautiful checkmate. However, many people believe the reason these attacks succeeded was because players focused on attacks and didn't know how to defend. In the 1870s, that changed.

The End Of Romantic Chess

One of the first players to question the ideas of this style of chess was Louis Paulsen. Paulsen believed that the reason that the Romantic attacking style worked wasn't because of the strength of the attack, it was because of the weakness of the defense. Therefore, players should develop a good position and weaken their opponents defense before launching a full attack. The game below, from Round 1 of the Bristol 1861 tournament, showcases Paulsen's ideas.

Paulsen played in the 1857 American Chess Congress, but lost to Morphy. In 1862, he drew a match against Anderssen. Ultimately, Paulsen was not able to demonstrate the superiority of positional ideas, and so Romantic chess continued.

Despite Paulsen's losses, his ideas were eventually studied by Wilhelm Steinitz. Originally, Steinitz was a follower of the Romantic style, which he won with in many matches in the 1860s. The game below was a game he played at the London 1862 Tournament.

This changed in 1873. In that year, another world exhibition was held, this time in Vienna, Austria. During the exhibiton, a chess tourmament was played. As I said at the start of this blog, Steinitz won after defeating Joseph Henry Blackburne 2-0 in a tiebreaker after both of them tied for first. This was the tournament in which Steinitz switched styles, going from tactical to strategical, from attacking to defensive. His new style is known as Classical or Modern, and it signaled the end of the Romantic Era.

Contrast the game above with the game below, which Steinitz played during Round 5 of the Vienna tournament:

Even though players before Steinitz, most notably Paulsen, used positional ideas in their games, they could not fully defend against the Romantic style, and so it remained dominant. It was Steinitz who showed that positional chess was actually more effective.

Nowhere is this more evident than his clash against Johannes Zukertort, a clash so intense that it is known today as the "Ink War." Zukertort was one of the greatest attackers of the era, but his attacking skill was unable to counter Steintiz's positional skill, as shown in the game below, game 9 of a match Steinitz played against Zukertort in 1886, widely regarded as the first official World Chess Championship:

This game is the ultimate demonstration of positional vs aggressive chess, and shows how Steinitz changed the game. For more information on the different styles, I refer you to this blog.

Attacks After 1873

After 1873, as we have seen, Steinitz continued to demonstrate that positional chess is a counter to romantic chess. However, not everybody was accepting of this new style right away.

One thing to note is that Steinitz still used romantic ideas when feasible, although not as frequently as the players of the Romantic Era, as shown during a game he played in round 10 at the Hastings 1895 tournament:

The above game shows that attacking and tactical ideas fit into Steinitz's positional scheme. The goal is not to refuse to attack, but to establish a position to make sure your attack succeeds. Still, this started a shift away from tactics and attacks.

Meanwhile, in Russia, a new school of chess was being established by Mikhail Chigorin, widely seen as the last great player of the Romantic style. Chigorin agreed with Steinitz's positional ideas regarding control of the center, but disagreed with everything else. The game below is a game Chigorin played in 1874 in Russia:

Chigorin went on to challenge Steinitz for the World Championship in 1889, aiming to bring attacking Chess back to the forefront and do what Zukertort couldn't. The game below is Game 7 from that match:

Chigorin ended up losing the Championship. He challenged Steinitz in 1892, but lost again. Steinitz had an understanding of positional chess, but what about his successors? Did they follow Steinitz's style, or Chigorin's? Did they stick to the positional methods, or find a way to revive attacking Chess? For the answer, we look to Emmanuel Lasker, who succeeded Steinitz as the World Champion.

A key element of Lasker's style was playing moves that made his opponents uncomfortable and that were hard to respond to, an idea that would be used by tactical players. Although he could play confusing moves, counterattack when he lost the advantage, and create complications, his real strength was his ability to defend.

Another notable chess player from this time was Siegbert Tarrasch. Tarrasch was one of the first players to develop a complete set of Chess principles that many players today are taught when first learning Chess, further enhancing the popularity of positional ideas. The game below is a game Tarrasch played in Round 12 of the Manchester 1890 tournament:

The 1800s and 1890s saw the development of the new Classical style of Chess, seen as a counter to Romantic Chess. This style resuled in a decline in sharp attacks and sacrifices, and a new set of principles. However, this was just the beginning of the development of positional ideas, and it was their continued development in the 1920s that could signal the fate of attacking Chess once and for all.

Hypermodern Attacks

Romantic players like Chigorin and Zukertort were not the only ones bored with the Classical ideas laid out by Steinitz, Lasker, and Tarrasch. In the 1920s, some players began to argue that the chess currently being played was boring. As a reaction, they developed a style that became known as Hypermodernism.

The Hypermodern style's main change was to the idea that the center must be controlled, an idea developed by Steinitz, Tarrasch, and Chigorin. They showed that controlling the center is more strategic than controlling the Kingside, but the new style advocated instead for using Bishops and Knights to control the center from a distance. The idea is to develop those pieces, let the opponent take the center with Pawns, and then attack it and take over. Hypermodern players also challenged the idea that Chess did not have a clear set of principles, in contrast to Tarrasch's ideas. For more information, I refer you to this blog.

Unlike with the switch from Romantic to Classical Chess, there is no specific event in which Hypermodern Chess was revealed and shown to be effective. Hypermodern ideas were being explored as early as the 1850s, largely by Howard Staunton, even though, like Paulsen, he could not use his ideas to counter Romanticism. Zukertort also foreshadowed the Hypermodern school with his opening, 1. Nf3, sometimes known as the Zukertort Opening.

Hypermodern players included Richard Réti, who 1. Nf3 is also sometimes named after, and Aron Nimzowitsch, who directly clashed with Tarrasch in a rivalry similar to that of the Ink War, though it does not have a name. The game below was a game that Nimzowitsch played in round 2 of the Dresden 1926 tournament:

As the above game shows, Hypermodernism only introduced more positional concepts, rather than shifting back to tactics. However, there was still hope from other places that attacking chess could continue. Most notably, in Russia, where Chigorin had established a chess scene that would later go on to dominate the chess world. But for now, the Russian players were lurking in the shadows, ready to rise up, following Chigorin's ideas and the popularization of chess by the new Soviet government.

One player from Russia who was influenced by Chigorin was Alexander Alekhine. Although he moved to France in 1921, Russia was where he studied and developed his chess skills. He followed Chigorin's attacking ideas, and became known for his ability to attack and notice combinations. The game below is a game Alekhine played in Round 3 of the Kecskemet 1927 tournament:

In 1927, Alekhine challenged Jose Raul Capablanca, known for his positional play, in a World Championship match. This was the first match to feature a tactical player since 1892, so the fate of attacking chess was on the line. The game below is Game 11 from that match:

Alekhine went on to win the match, becoming what Zukertort and Chigorin could not: An attacking player who held the World Championship title. His  victory could signify a return to attacking chess. But in order to see how attacking chess developed, we need to look to the top players after Alekhine, many of whom played for the country Alekhine was originally from: the USSR.

The Soviet School Of Chess

Following the end of World War II, chess was dominated by the Soviet Union. The main contributor to this is arguably Mikhail Botvinnik, who established his own chess school in the USSR. Botvinnik's approach was different from Chigorin's. Instead, Botvinnik took a more positional approach, as seen in the game below, which he played in Round 11 of the AVRO 1938 tournament:

Many Soviet players, such as Vasily Smyslov, who would defeat Botvinnik and become World Champion in 1957, followed this positional style. However, this is not to say that every Soviet player followed Botvinnik's ideas, even though he was the leader of the Soviet team. The most notable is Rashid Nezhmetdinov, but even though he was known for his attacking style, he never reached the GM title. However, many Soviet top players did gravitate towards attacks, and would be seen in later decades.

Meanwhile, in the Latvian SSR, a different school of Chess was established. In contrast to the positional style played by Botvinnik, the Latvian players continued Chigorin's system of attacks. The most well known player to come out of Latvia is arguably Mikhail Tal. Known as the "Magician from Riga," Tal was widely known for his tactics, combinations, and sacrifices, and was seen as continuing the Romantic style played 100 years earlier. The game below was a game Tal played in 1961 that showcases his style:

Botvinnik took the World Championship title back from Smyslov in 1958, before having to play a 1960 match against Tal. This match is seen as the ulitimate clash of styles. At stake is the future of the dominance of attacking Chess. The game below is Game 6 from that match:

Tal won the match, but Botvinnik regained the title in 1961, before losing it in 1963 to Tigran Petrosian, a more defensive player. Petrosian was known as "Iron Tigran" because his wall of defense was almost impossible to breach. The game below is a game he played in 1946:

Petrosian's victory was a victory for defensive chess, but Petrosian would go on to lose the title to Boris Spassky, who favored complications, although not to the same extent as Tal. In 1972, Spassky would go on to lose the title to Bobby Fischer, a player not from the USSR who singlehandely challenged the Soviet team and was even more aggressive. The game below, referred to as the Game Of The Century, was a game Fischer played in Round 8 of the Third Rosenwald Trophy tournament in 1956:

Fischer's victory over Spassky was a victory for attacking chess, but unfortunately, it did not last long, as Fischer forfeited the next championship and disappeared. Unlike Chigorin, he did not establish a chess school to continue his attacking style. With him out of the equation, the future of attacking chess lied with his successor, Anatoly Karpov, another player from the USSR. Karpov, unfortunately, did not play attacking Chess, but was more of a positional player, following in the style of Botvinnik and Capablanca.

Both the 1978 and 1981 World Championships were Karpov vs Viktor Korchnoi. However, in 1984, the challenger was instead Garry Kasparov, who was known for his dynamic and attacking style, meaning that the 1984 World Championship was another clash of styles. However, after 48 games, FIDE declared the match to be a draw.

In 1985, there was a rematch. This time, Kasparov won. Kasparov and Karpov played each other again in the 1986, 1987, and 1990 World Championships, with Kasparov winning all of them. Many see Kasparov as the greatest player of all time, and his victories meant that attacking chess was back in the equation, in contrast to Botvinnik's original style that defined Soviet Chess. However, new events would lead to another shift in chess.

Where Is Attacking Chess Today?

The rise of computers has its own impact on chess styles. Many of the top engines play more positionally than tactically, and with engines playing a major role in the study of chess, many of the top players have followed them.

Kasparov was eventually defeated by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000. Kramnik, a more positional player, went on to play in the 2006 World Championship match against Veselin Topalov, which was another clash between tactical and positional. The game below is Game 9 from that match:

Kramnik ended up winning the match, a victory for positonal chess. He would go on to lose the title in 2007 to Viswanathan Anand, who would lose it in 2013 to Magnus Carlsen, seen as another candidate for the greatest player of all time.

Carlsen does not seem to favor a specific style, as shown in the game below, which he played in Round 9 of the 2015 Tata Steel Masters:

At the start of this game, Carlsen used more positional techniques, followed by a sacrifice in the middlegame, before reverting back to positional in the end to secure his advantage. The takeaway is that he doesn't have a specific preference, although he does gravitate more towards the positional style. Many of the other top players appear to follow his lead.

However, there are some top players who prefer a more attaking style. While browsing Reddit, I found that these players were mentioned as tactical:

• Alexei Shirov
• Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
• Baadur Jobava
• Daniil Dubov
• Richard Rapport

So what does the future hold? Will any of these players manage to bring attacking Chess back to leading role it once occupied? Only time will tell.

Conclusion

So that is a brief overview of the history of attacking chess, ranging from the Romantic era all the way to the current age. Although none of the players I listed at the end of this blog are in the top of the list, throughout history, we have seen shifts from attacking chess to positional chess and back again, starting with Anderssen, on to Steinitz and Lasker, and shifting back to attacking with Alekhine, and then positional with Botvinnik, and then attacking with Tal, Fischer, and Kasparov, and back to positional with Kramnik and Carlsen. So even though the current top players are not attackers, perhaps these players will lead to another shift back to attacking chess in the near future.

I hope you all found this blog interesting, even if you are not into attacking chess. If nothing else, I hope these games have changed your mind. After all, a good strategy means nothing if you do not attack. Attacking is how you win. See you next time.

Sources: Wikipedia, Chessgames.com, Chessbase