Winner's POV: Breslau 1889 Hauptturnier

In Winner's POV, we take a look at tournaments from the 19th century and see the games that allowed the top player to prevail. Some tournaments will be known and famous, others will be more obscure - in a time period where competition is scarce, I believe there is some value in digging for hidden gems in the form of smaller, less known events.

Breslau 1889 Hauptturnier: Lasker has Landed

Let me tell you, there is no better feeling than going from the nightmare lands that is New York 1889 to the beautiful and serene pastures of this tournament. Previously I talked about skipping the Hauptturniers, but I had to make an exception for this one, for reasons that should be pretty obvious.

If you're joining us for the first time: every two years, the German Chess Association held a congress composed of multiple tournaments - the Meisterturnier (master tournament) was the main attraction, but there was also the Hauptturnier (main tournament), the winner of which would be recognized as a master within the German circles. While not being a tournament on the level of others we'll look at, the winners (like Curt von Bardeleben and Siegbert Tarrasch) would usually go on to have very respectable careers as master players, so there's some value in looking at their origin stories.

Format and Prizes

The 20 entrants were divided into two groups, each of which played a single all-play-all. The top four finishers in each group would form a final group, which would play a second all-play-all to determine an ultimate winner. Like most German tournaments, the time control was 20 moves per hour with a three-games-every-two-days schedule.

The prizes, per the tournament book:

Four additional prizes would be added, ensuring every member of the final group would win something material.

Players

As is always the case with these minor events, if you only recognize one name on this list, that makes sense. It's the only name you really need to recognize, so you're fine.

The Winner: Emanuel Lasker

A photographer was present at this tournament who offered free portraits to any of the masters; Lasker evidently indulged. What a cute little fella. (from Edward Winter's CN 10763, sourced from the Lothar Schmid Collection).

A player like Lasker deserves our full attention, and so let us waste no more time and go through the Breslau 1889 Hauptturnier from the Winner's POV.

Group Stage

There's less to report on here than in previous entries, unfortunately. Only two of Lasker's nine games have been preserved; the first is presented without comment as it didn't even appear in the tournament book proper (a comment in a later game said "In the game Reif - Lasker..." and gave the full score) while the second is given with approximately translated comments from the tournament book, for what they're worth.

Aside from this, all we really know is that Lasker absolutely annihilated his group, scoring seven wins and two draws to win his group by over two points. The points don't carry over between rounds, but a statement has been made.

Final Stage

Only seven players participated in the final stage, as the runner-up in group two - Dr. Edward Ed (no I'm not making that name up) - had to withdraw and accept the eighth-place prize. Because of the odd number of players, as well as unrecorded games, we're going to jump around a little bit.

Rounds 1-4

Lasker's winning ways continued in this stage, as he got out to a perfect 3/3 score before receiving the bye in round four. One of these games wasn't recorded, and the other two aren't all that impressive, so I'll lump them together so we can move onto the actually good stuff.

Round 5: vs. Paul Lipke

The 19-year-old Lipke was arguably more impressive than Lasker, as he won his group with an 8.5/9 score, a half point more than Lasker. However, he was winless up to this point in the final group, so a little urgency was needed if he wanted to win his master title.

For his only recorded White game, Lasker played a Vienna where he improved upon a game by Vienna specialist Jacques Mieses, getting a slight advantage out of the opening due to his Bishop pair and annoying pawn on d5. Lipke's desire to win was made apparent with his 16th move, steering the game toward a Bishops vs. Knights endgame with Lipke up material but Lasker having very annoying pressure on the King. Things were fine up until move 29, where Lipke had to find an only move - putting his own Knight in the corner - to maintain the balance. Needless to say, he didn't find it.

Now, to cut Lipke some slack, the move he chose forced Lasker to make a very difficult decision: does he accept the perpetual check, or does he exchange into a pawn-down endgame where he seems to have the worse minor piece? Whether Lasker properly evaluated the endgame or just exchanged into it to keep playing is beyond my intuition, but his decision to do so is the thumbnail for this chapter, and the conversion is actually quite worthy of a deeper look. 

Round 6: vs. Emil von Feyerfeil

Feyerfeil had been active in the Vienna chess circles since (at least) the 1860s, with this being his first proper trip abroad. He was on 2.5/3 at the time of this game, receiving one bye and having an adjourned game against Lipke left to finish (we'll talk about this next).

After declining Feyerfeil's King's Gambit (mistake #1), Lasker mistimed the development of his Bishop to e6, and Feyerfeil quickly traded on c6 and pushed f5 to lock the piece away. Lasker might have had counterplay had Feyerfeil accepted his move-13 pawn sacrifice, but he didn't and Lasker's play didn't get any better. His 16th and 20th moves are especially offensive, and with two of his pieces being locked away, Lasker had no real chance of surviving the following Kingside assault. It's actually kind of jarring to look at these two games back to back; Lasker's play dropped to a level one wouldn't have thought possible.

Round 7

This important game, played against Adolf Steif, was unrecorded, but Lasker managed to lose this one as well. Thus he ended on 4/6, and the question on everybody's mind: was that enough?

Well, the unfortunate answer is "nobody knew yet," because the aforementioned Feyerfeil - Lipke game was adjourned for a second time, and thus had to be completed after round seven. But the game is an absolute doozy, and deserves its own section for proper discussion.

Round 3: Emil von Feyerfeil vs. Paul Lipke

The playing sessions were divided into four hour chunks; after four hours (so at least 40 moves each), the game was adjourned until the next available session. We know that the following game was adjourned after move 40 but before move 52, and while you can look at the game yourself (I didn't add comments to this one), what I really want you to keep in mind is the final position.

Black is doubtlessly better in the final position, but I will continue to champion the playing on of unbalanced endgames for the entirety of my time writing this stuff. 

Here's where the story really happens: when the game was set up to be continued, the players did not set up the position by following the moves (as was sometimes practiced), but from memory. The problem, however, is that the players' memory was lacking, and that poor pawn on h2 was left in the box and off the board. Thus why Feyerfeil's next move was so sensational: he played the rule-defying 53. Rh2!!! (triple exclam, yeehaw)

Here are some pictures from the tournament book to prove I'm not making this up. Here's the position before the move was made:

And here are the moves leading up to that faithful moment:

Some people have attempted to further embellish this story by claiming that Feyerfeil had an easily drawn, and sometimes even advantageous position (like on his chessgames.com profile, frustratingly), but let it be known that he was significantly worse regardless. There's an argument to be made that the lost pawn actually benefits him as this Rh2 resource is quite convenient.

Here's the rest of the game, if you want. The game would be adjourned one more time - hence why it was the last game to finish - as Feyerfeil didn't believe that Lipke could mate with Bishop and Knight. Thankfully for Lasker, the Austrian was incorrect (though the actual mate wasn't published).

Conclusion?

That loss prevented Feyerfeil from winning the tournament outright, and thus, as the master title was on the line, a playoff had to be played.

Playoff: vs. Emil von Feyerfeil

This time it was Feyerfeil's turn to be busted right out of the opening, as he went for a variation of the "London System" that Wilhelm Steinitz confidently defeated at the London 1883 tournament. To the players' credit, the path Steinitz chose was not particularly convincing, while Lasker's novelty on move 8 kept things much more under control. While Lasker may have been no Steinitz (yet), Feyerfeil was certainly no James Mason (the victim of Steinitz), and this game was his turn to play a fair bit below his level. His maneuver on move 16 tried to double Rooks on the d-file, and all it did was allow Lasker to pick up the exchange right at the time control. The rest was simple, and with very little drama, Lasker convincingly won his master title.

I don't think I can properly describe how good it feels to write a short post again - I got this all done in a single evening! The master tournament will obviously take much longer, but it'll be well worth the wait. Following that, there are only two noteworthy tournaments left in 1889, and then we'll be done with the decade.

Very interesting things are coming, I promise you. Thanks for reading.