The last of the romantic players VS the first chess theoretical scholar (WCM 1886)
1886 World Championship Match is considered by many the moment of transition form the romantic age to the modern era in the chess world. The two players involved in this match were the Austrian Wilhem Steinitz and the Polish Johannes Zukertort.
Steinitz was the first “professional” chess player, since he left University studies in mathematics in order to fully dedicate himself to it. Even during the University, he used to earn his living with chess, playing for money in Vienna’s coffee houses. After all, the humble origins didn’t allow him to do otherwise.
Steinitz’s professionalism was unpopular in the chess world: make chess a “job”, draw salaries out of it, was considered by many an offense to the romantic spirit of the game.
Owing to the necessity of gain money with chess, Steinitz needed to study it very well: if he had relied on the braveness and the extemporaneous inventiveness typical of the game of that age to win as many games as possible, he would have risked not to make ends meet
Zukertort was the opposite: first of all he was an amateur, he had noble origins and his play was adventurous and creative. Furthermore, he was considered the best player of that age, having win the strongest tournament ever in London (similar to the nowadays’ Candidates) in 1883, with 3 point of advantage on Steinitz.
The last mentioned, in that period, was trying to find laws and data that would have enabled him to make chess more sensible and less improvised: his goal was being able to understand, objectively, which player, at a certain moment, had an advantage and what he had to do in order to convert it, regardless of the individual skills.
Zukertort was sure, as most of the chess insiders, Steinitz’s “normalizing” efforts were pointless because, to him, the most important quality in chess was creativity.
As you can see, this match will be a fight between two different philosophies of chess.
In the first game Zukertort, with white, chose a queen’s gambit but he played in a chaotic way, maybe hoping that sooner or later he will have pulled the rabbit out of the cylinder. So after a couple of moves he found himself in a difficult position, with his pieces stacked on the queenside and a dangerous attack for black on the kingside. Steinitz even managed to sacrifice a knight in order to weaken the white king, something that one would have expected by Zukertort.
Zukertort tried to trick Steinitz with a final combination in the following position, but it didn't work out:
White played 45 Bxe3, black responded with 45 ...Bxe3 (he couldn't play Ke4 because of Re6 by White), then 46 Rf1+ and black correctly didn't capture with the queen (46... Qxf1) in order to avoid 47 Ng3+. Steinitz played 46... Bf4 and Zukertort resigned.
After this game, one could have argued that the methodic approach of Steinitz was clearly better than Zukertort's style, but the truth was different: it's clear that Zukertort started to play only after the knight sacrifice, which he also has istigated, becuase his goal was just to evaluate the "Steinitz method", understand it in order to be ready with countermeasurs for the following games.
Game 2 proved this theory: Zukertort this time didn't risk in the opening and slowly but surely took advantage and won with a nice final combination with Bxf3:
Game 3 followed the same cloth; this time I want to put the whole game because it's very entertaining
In the fourth game Steinitz tried to surprise his opponent, behaving like a "romantic" player, with an attempt of attack against the black castle, but then he blundered with 37 Nxc4, miscalculating a tactic.
Even game 5 was a failure for Steinitz, and the first stage of the match finished with the score of 4-1 for Zukertort.
After a long break, players were ready for the second part of the tournament, in Saint Louis and Steinitz managed to create good chances in game 6 pushing the h pawn in order to damage black's castle and, after a big semplification that started with 35 Bxg6, he gained a pawn and converted his advantage.
Game 7 was another real battle and once again Steinitz gained an advantage sacrificing a knight, in Zukertort's style. As you can see, it's a matter of which player can adapt quicker to his opponent's style, and it was Steinitz who was doing it, integrating his method with the flair and creativity typical of romantic chess.
Steinitz converted his advantage with a nice final manuever with his light square bishop and his queen.
Game 8 was a quick draw, both players allowed themselves a little bit of rest.
Game 9 was the best game of the championship so far: Zukertort played too ambitiously, with 25 Rh3 instead of the safer Nf3.
It looks like a normal move, but do you know the butterfly effect? One small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system in the long run. In fact, after the obvious 25...h6, white could no longer put his knight on f3 because this move would have cut the rook out of the action, se he had to play 26 Ng4 and then Ne3. This left the d pawn with one less defender and after black's 27...Ba4 the only move for white to keep the pawn is 28 Rd2, which left the first rank undefended (not ideal for white as the game continuation will show).
On move 32 black threated to win white's rook on g6, but Zukertort tried 33 c5! , and after a big semplification it looked like white was defending miraculosly against the threat of a backrank checkmate. But the defense falled short against 37... Rc8!. Zukertort tried one last trick with 38 Rxe4 but black simply took on e4 to force resignation. Here is the full game.
After a tasteless draw in Game 10, Game 11 marked Steinitz's overtaking on Zukertort. Once again Zukertort tried an attack that turned out to be too ambitious, with a sacrifice of the Bishop on h7; Steinitz defended without problems and managed to win the game.
In game 12 Zukertort totally changed his approch, entering a lon and slow positional battle, but he never created a chance against Steinitz, who was a master of this kind of games
Now Steinitz was leading 6 to 4, and I think it's quite easy to understand the direction where the match was going: Zukertort wasn't able to find countermeasures to Steinitz's way of playing, in fact the Austrian player will end up winning the championship with a score of 10 to 5.
To end on an high note, I'll leave you what was, to me, the best game of the match by Steinitz, the 19th.
That's the end of the blog! I hope you enjoyed this blast from the past as much as I did; it's beautiful to see the evolution of the game of chess through the centuries, isn't it?