Steinitz Against The French Defence. Part Three.

Afternoon everyone!

Managed to get everything together for the final part of this before we go away.

What do you get here? Well, it's a 'bits and pieces' of Steinitz's other experiments against the French. Steinitz  - like Paulsen, Simagin, Igor Glek and others, reminds me of the Bob Dylan line ''I got a head full of ideas and they're driving me insane.'' You get some of his thinking, some of his wonderful annotations, and to finish a game of his which is a special favourite for various reasons- one of his last great games, which I have tried to annotate objectively. 

Having to blitz through this, so apologies for errors, and lack of general discussion. As before, the real stuff is in the game notes.

Let's go to the chess!

I mentioned previously that Steinitz had experimented with Tarrasch's 3.Nd2. I don't think it really suited him, but he was always open to new ideas.

He tried it out in a forgotten tournament, where he also tried out the 'Steinitz Defence Deferred' in the Ruy Lopez. We have his games, but I have found very little on the tournament itself - Pillsbury, who didn't magically appear from nowhere at Hastings 1895, also took part.

His opponent was an interesting minor figure - Jacob Halpern.

He wrote a trilogy of books - a copy of the very rare last one has come to light recently, and is, according to the finder, quite a wonderful thing! I am jealous now - would love to see it.

The game.

The whole debate resurfaced in his match with Schiffers, which I mentioned previously.

Bradshaw image. Hastings 1895. I am recycling here due to lack of time!

Well, by that time the other main defence to 3.Nd2 was already known from Tarrasch's games. Steinitz had a new approach to that. Sadly for him the first to walk into it was a rather good player called Lasker, who very rarely played the French, because he felt that it was a defence where Black struggled to create winning chances. Why he played it in this game I really couldn't say, but it worked out just fine!

Before Paulsen came up with 3.Nc3, there were 2 moves against the French. 3.exd5 and 3.e5. late in his career Steinitz started looking at 3.e5 - Paulsen - despite introducing 3.Nc3 - played it a lot. Steinitz had, as you would expect by now, his own ideas.

It may surprise some of you to learn that Havana was at one time one of the most important chess centres of the world - Steinitz called it 'The El Dorado of Chess'. All the best players travelled there to make money, and the two leading Havana players - Vazquez and Golmayo ( Golmayo Zupide) played them all in matches of some description.

In 1888 Steinitz played them both under such conditions, and had an experiment in hand.

Let's give this one first against Vazquez.

Some more on Vazquez here :-  

https://chesscom-chesscoach.blogspot.com/2016/04/ajedrez-en-mexico-al-final-del-siglo_12.html  

We saw Golmayo Zupide  earlier in this series.

So, onto the feature game - the main reason I put this together to be honest. I just love this game! There is a famous quote of Steinitz which, from memory, emanates from the great Vienna 1898 tournament. ''I may be an old lion, but if someone sticks their head in my mouth, I can still bite!''. 

Perhaps that came about because of this game. His opponent, Jackson Whipps Showalter ( I did a blog on him once, and he could play!

was known as 'The Kentucky Lion'. Here he gets his head bitten off. Wonderful game by the 'Old Lion'.

That's it for this stuff! I will be back with some digging into a goody bad after holiday time.

take care everyone.