An Unknown Gem

I am very interested in the history of chess, particularly that of the 19th century.  One of my favorite players in Prince Andrei Dadian of Mingrelia. Occasionally I come across a game by Dadian that I've never seen before.  I just happened to stumble upon one.  The game appeared in Steinitz'  International Chess Magazine of Jan. 1891.  I included some of his notes. The game itself  is an unusual Muzio Gambit:

Wow!

The Muzio is funny. Sometimes it looks like Black is doing nothing wrong, until White shows him the error of his ways.

I've never played it. Far too dashing for my abilities

Alcohol helps . . .

You are telling trysts?

 I often play b - e2 as my third move as black, seems to work quite well....

If 8...Qxa1, then 9.Nc3 and the queen is incarcerated for life.

Edit: Still ... Black could possibly reply 9...Bc5+, Kg1 and White would have problems cashing in on the Queen.

But at least "Alexander McDonnell's happy thought" counted against the Count.

Prince Dadian played many sparkling games. This game, as noted, was flawed and lost by white almost from the beginning.  Reading the annotations you can see Steinitz' gentle admonition that this type game is usually use against weaker players (those who couldn't tread such dark waters).  

People like to write out-of-hand that Prince Dadian was a sort of chess charlatan who either "invented" brilliancies or paid off his opponents.  Such accusations are tenuous at best and mostly based upon a cloudy accusation by Tschigorin (although Tschigorin himself was similarly accused - such accusations seem to have been the 19th century version of computer cheating). 

However, while Dadian was indeed a creative player, he was also Royal and Rich.  His "gifts" to Steinitz who eked out a meagre living on chess must have been G_d-sent.  So, Steinitz never looked too critically at Dadian's games (most of the games were sent to Steinitz via Numa Preti who received his own remunerations) and gave very gentle admonitions when he gave any at all. 

Not all Dadain's games are perfect, but none are boring (except to those blind to the beauty of artful thinking).And, as the insightful LisaV notes, they are certainly worthy of preservation such as they are.

Batgirl, you seem to know a lot about the history of chess and especially the players of old. I would be very much interested to learn more about that very subject - especially about the time span from the point where the final set of rules was first established until the first world championship (~1500-1886). Could you point me to some good books here? Thank you in advance. 

The final set of rules weren't established in 1500. In fact, with the fluctuation of the 50 move rule, one might reasonably deduce that the rules are never firmly established.  During the 1850s-70s there were meetings and letters back and forth trying to establish a uniform code. Jaenisch, Petroff, Staunton, v.d. Lasa, George Allen and others made tremendous efforts to solidify chess.  Attempts were even made to standardize chess notation.  In Morphy's time, white wasn't required to move first, parts of Europe (Italy especially where they called it alla calabrista) still hadn't accepted the style of castling common today; time wasn't generally a consideration; Jaenisch and Staunton were trying to establish a 60 move rule and many other details.  The problem really was that chess was becoming more and more international, but rules were national, even local. None of this could be ironed out until countries had influential organizations that could confer with representives of other nations with some authority.

However a little before 1500, probaby around 1475, we find the mad queen (eschés de la dame enragée, o.fr.) - a queen empowered with the range of today's queen...or the beginning of modern chess.  

I doubt you'll find many books dealing with such a wide range.  HJR Murray's History of Chess is the gold standard.  David Schenk wrote a very succinct, accurate and readable history of chess (mainly how chess helped improved any culture that embraced it) called the Immortal Game.  Richard Eales' Chess: A History of a Game, traces the popularity of chess mixed with history.  Most detailed information will be found in more focused books, such as biographies.  The internet, unlike even a decade ago, has a plethora of valuable, and accurate, resources.

Thanks batgirl, I think I'll make a start with Schenk's "The Immortal Game" then - actually, I ordered it just now. :) 

Also, in reference to the changing style and abilities of the Queen, there is a book in my university library entitled 'The Birth of the Chess Queen'. It's a third-wave feminist text, so there is a lot of focus on female players and the representative power of the different pieces, but it also provides an interesting look at how the rules and perception of the game changed throughout time.

Saw that at Amazon when I searched the book by Schenk and was quite intrigued. 

Shenk arrived! The book is better than I expected - much better, actually. He's writing very well, novel style - hard to put down. I was hooked from the prologue on (great piece about Marcel Duchamp's chess addiction). Thanks again for the recommendation, Batgirl. :)

I'm glad you like it.  I enjoyed it too.

"Addiction" yes. He seems to have shown the typical signs: taking time off chess only long enough to eat etc. He was a world class artist ("fountain", "nude descending staircase"), yet threw it all away to become a full time chess player. On a smaller level (of course!) this serves as a warning to us all to not let slide the things we are best at for what's (at the end of the day) is just a pastime. 

Duchamp was in his early 30s when the chess bug bit him hard. From 1920 when he lived in Buenos Aires until 1935 when he captained the French team in the International Correspondence Olympiad he was very much obsessed with chess, though he never abandonned art. Although even after 1938 he hovered in the periphery of chess, his interest seemed to have waned.  He edited a chess column for Ce Soir in 1938 and helped organize the famous Imagery of Chess show in 1944.  Duchamp was one of the original Dadaists and he never got away totally from that movement, but he did embrace Surrealism (most of the Imagery of Chess artists were Surrealists), even hepling edit VVV, the Surrealism magazine and stayed active in art. But by even 1944, Duchamp was 57. Still, even at that time in his life he was focusing on his Etant donnés piece, a very major artwork.  Duchamp, in fact, seemed to view chess as Art in the truest Dada sense which shifts the importance from the result to the process and with chess, the "end result is zero inthe sense that the board is swept clean."