Blowing Won Positions, Mad King Walks and An Anthology Piece. My Week In Chess!

So, what chess have I been looking at this week, apart from Carlsen's superlative win against Caruana? Well, a few days ago my friend Richard James mentioned that he was researching this man - 

George Wainwright.

A fascinating sounding project, and I can't wait for the results!

Wainwright is a name that crops up a lot over the period from the early 1880's - playing in the University matches - through to the 1920's. Many times competitor in the British Championships, and the city of London Club Championships ( He won the latter in 1918, and played in the USA-GB cable matches.

That instantly brought 3 games to mind - all losses, cruelly, so I went and dug them out, as well as checking a little bit of melancholy chess history.

Two of the games were against Henry Atkins.

If you have an hour, or two, or three! to spare, I wrote an article on him that you might enjoy.  
https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan/henry-atkins-an-introduction  

One of those games was a standard anthology piece for years. A real model of a basic attacking procedure.

I have it in a lot of books, but I decided to post it here with the notes from tartakower and Du Mont's 500 Master games. It was perhaps the first Atkins game I ever looked at - via that book possibly. My copy - presented as a school prize for mathematics - is now 45 years old, and I still look at it!! The game.

The other Wainwright - Atkins game is fascinating on many levels - for example King's Indian players might like to see the very early adoption of some ideas in that opening. 

Atkin's King march is utterly insane, and Wainwright manages to botch a winning position and then blunder into a loss. A game a little out of the ordinary!

The other one that came to mind was from a simultaneous exhibition by Lasker - taking on the massed ranks of the City Of London Chess Club at that time was a daunting task - it was arguably the strongest club in the World at the time - Berliner's might argue! - and always put out a full team in such events. Lasker liked to have fun in those events, giving his opponents chances, and even playing Black in games. An exception was one at the very strong Philidelphia club, where he made a side bet that he wouldn't lose a single game, and duly pocketed the money!

The game speaks for itself.

And finally the bit of history. The great Joseph Blackburne's last tournament was the City of London Chess Club championship of 1919. He had to withdraw before the end. his first opponent was the reigning champion, George Wainwright, and the game ended in a draw.

Rather than give that game, I have decided to quickly give another between the two to show that wainwright was actually a decent player who didn't always botch things.

That's what I have been looking at this week!

With a sincere birthday wish to Boris Spassky, I hope that you all - and World Champion Spassky - are well and in good spirits. Take care everyone.