The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess: Game 142

I am in the process of entering the games from Irving Chernev’s The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess into a ChessBase database. I do a game a day and will finish according to my daily countdown app on Tuesday, January 10, 2023. I found today’s game by William Norwood Potter to be especially beautiful. I had never heard of Potter so looked him up in my copy of The Oxford Companion to Chess, which indicates he was the leading English player of the 1870s. It also indicates he was close friends with Steinitz. Chernev introduces each game with a short statement. For today’s game he introduced it as follows: “Lasker says Steinitz was greatly influenced by Potter "who loved unusual and strange moves." Here is a bit of Potter's witchery in the form of a checkmate which is picturesque, and had that soupcon of diablerie Lasker talks about.” I like Chernev’s introductions, even though they sometimes, like today, send me scrambling for a dictionary. Hope you enjoy Potter’s witchery.