Steinitz Against The French Defence. Part Two.

Good afternoon everyone. Finally back with Part Two. A couple of apologies. Firstly for the delay - real life stuff. Secondly for the lack of general chat - time presses, and I won't be able to post this next week as I am off to Paris with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. The bulk of explanations are in the early part of the game notes.

Back in the 1860's Paulsen introduced the move 3.Nc3 - before that there was a choice - 3.exd5 or 3.e5. The greatest contributor to 3.Nc3 was Steinitz - many of his concepts formed the basis of how the positions after 3...Nf6 are played right up to the present day. Lets go to his original contributions.

Early on in the history of 3.Nc3, Steinitz played a match with Henry Bird

- worthy of an article in itself. Those interested can buy Tim Harding's book. Let's get to the chess - lots in the early notes here.

 Steinitz kept the idea in mind, and experimented with it is unimportant games. Let's give some.

Steinitz's opponent in this next game was an interesting figure in his own right. The latest of Fialla's wonderful books 'Quarterly For Chess History' takes a look at him ( I will give that volume a full write-up here when I am finished with this series) A couple of bits from the Fialla book, with thanks.

A third, from a little 'exhibition match' - Steinitz himself classed it as a 'series' - chess historians will know the difference. Back to that match in a bit!

An interesting one in it's own right - an early 'Burn Variation'.

Let's move on. In modern times 4.Bg5 has given way to 4.e5. Well, it all goes back to Steinitz! Let's go with his first approach at this point.
Some published authors who - let's be brutally frank about it - haven't got the first clue what they are talking about - will tell you that at the Vienna 1873 tournament Steinitz totally changed chess thinking. Apparently all the old 'Romantic Chess' ideas went into the bin, and overnight the 'Modern School' took over. Utter tosh! He did, however, despite being somewhat out of form, as you will see, have a bag full of new ideas. One was a massive theoretical debate comparatively recently. Let's go look. As with the 2.e5 line in my last blog, the first on the receiving end in the French was a Fleissig - I don't have a picture of him to hand, and no time to look. Sad face.

O.K. - an addition and a thank you to my friend - see the comments below - for bailing me out with a picture sourced by Hans Rennete. Cheers guys!

A few rounds later Steinitz was back with the idea - no doubt having had a look in between times.

The next year, 1896, in a match which was part of his preparation for a return match with Lasker, his opponent, Emmanuel Schiffers

Played the French a couple of times. In the context of this article, this one is interesting.

And on to Steinitz's third original contribution to the development of the 3...Nf6 lines. In the afore mentioned exhibition match/series against Sellman

he introduced a new system - again based on dxc5 - which was taken up by many. For example both Tarrasch and Lasker used it. I left it until last, because it shows the basis of Steinitz's concept which underpins both the games here, and the one in my next blog. I will give that game last, as the feature game, as it has Steinitz's wonderful notes.

Firstly I will give a brilliancy on the Bxh7+ theme against Celso Golmayo Zupide

who played many of the greats, including Steinitz and Lasker, when they visited Havana - the place Steinitz called 'The El Dorado of Chess'.

To the feature game - Steinitz doing something he knew to be totally new, with his wonderful notes.

Well, that's all you get - with the relevant apologies. I am not, and never will be, a historian, a writer, or, heaven forbid, a 'content creator', so you get this amateurish stuff. Hopefully you learned something and enjoyed it, and will go dig out the Steinitz 3.Nc3 games which I have not included here. Cheers guys.