The Danish Gambit Meets the Yellow Button.

About 6 months ago I did a study of Dr. Hans Anton Westesson Lindehn and the discovery of the Danish Gambit (in two parts, HERE and HERE, if anyone is interested). 

Earlier, I was exploring more on the Danish Gambit and stumbled upon the game below. I'm sure I've seen it before, but not while thinking about the Danish Gambit.

This interesting aspect of this, to me at least, is that Franklin Knowles Young, who played White, was a particularly peculiar chess personality. When someone compares chess to war, it's usually metaphoric. Young was a passionate believer that war and chess are synonymous. He wrote several books such as "The Field Book of Chess Generalship" and "Chess Generalship" which can be read (if you have a strong stomach) on Google Books.

Beyond that, Young was the founder of a group of chess players in the Boston area in the late 19th century who called themselves The Mandarins of the Yellow Button. This was a very excusive coterie, designed along the lines of the famous German Pleiades.  What made this group exclusive was that in order to join, a prospective member must have been an amateur chess player and must have beaten a recognized master, i.e. a professional international champion, in an even game of chess.
  
It was their custom to meet every Saturday afternoon for chess and spend Saturday evenings dining together, discussng chess.  Supposedly, "Mandarin" points toward China where the "Yellow Button" was an insignia denoting rank in the Chinese civil service.

The core members of this group (as written by F.K. Young) included: Franklin Knowles Young, Constant Ferdinand Burille, F. H. Harlow,  Dr. E.M. Harris,  C. F. Howard,  Major Otho.E. Michaelis,  Gen. W. C. Paine,  Dr. Horace Richardson,  Charles B. Snow,  Henry Nathan Stone and  G. Preston Ware, Jr.

I don't know about warfare, but this game is certainly an adventure.  At one time, it seemed to me that L. Dore, who played Black, had also been a member of the Yellow Buttons, but later I decided he wasn't quite skilled enough to have been.

Beautiful combo!

Thanks for sharing, batgirl!

Wow. Thanks for a positive comment.

No problem.

I've read a fair bit of your stuff, Batgirl. Always interesting. Sadly I forget most of it (horrible with names lol) but are you planning on writing some book about all of this some day? It'd be cool to see a lot of this in something like a chess history book.

No book... I'm a cybergurl... and a batgurl... and a chessgurl.... but not a bookgurl.

A real life smothered mate. How great!

That's all (I guess)

'Wow!' - nice example, Pikay.  Never seen this before, and it perhaps deserves an equal spot amongst those respectful and noteworthy games reminiscent of the 'Immortal' (i.e. Anderssen v Kieseritzky; London, 1851) and 'Evergreen' (Anderssen v Dufresne; Berlin, 1852) Games.

Thanks for sharing.

lol, I was pointing out that black lost the game due to a capture blunder. Had black captured the knight with his knight, he was heavily up in material and had a strong defense so it was impossible to white to crush it in.

On what move Pikay?

13th, I guess ... (pawn takes bishop)

The Danish Gambit was my first opening that I played online. I figured out really fast that you have to know how to play chess to play a good game with a gambit opening. It was a lot of fun though.

Pikay, i think after fxe5 Nxe7 Nxe7 Rxe5 followed by Qe2 wins.

Again, I might be wrong so tell me if I've missed something.

Pikay, you found 13...Nxe5 and I'm thinking this most natural move had to have been considered and rejected. Then I think you found the refutation to it too with surprising 14. Rxe5.

This is actually a pretty fascinating position.
But I don't think after 13...Nxe5 14. Rxe5 0-0 15. Nxe7+ Kh8, that 16. Bxf6 is a good follow through move. White can do a lot better with Qh5.

I looked at the game and laughed thinking. "Ha, another bunch of reckless moves that happened to be handled incorrectly."

I put it in my engine and UNBELIEVEBLY, The evaluation never goes below -1 except for 3 times, after which black makes the wrong moves and puts it back to where it was before.

That means even with perfect play, black shouldn't try to get any more out of white's crazy play than an additional pawn.

I have so much to learn and I have never been more excited to learn it.

So in the end, black can choose between two positions:

16...Qe8 variation that ends up with

Here white has to save his bishop in the next move, allowing black Bb7 that activates both his bishop and rook. The game is even with black having better chances due to more central passed pawns.

16...fxg5 variation leading to

Here again, black plays Bb7 next and the game follows with Rxg8 Rxg8. This would be a Queen versus Rook + bishop endgame. Who is better here? Hard to say, but once again, black has it's own threats with the passed pawns. If black is able to setup a bishop-pawn pair position in the center of the board, it is going to get extremely hard for white.

Once again I think it was the 13th move by black that gave the game away so easily and enabled a forced mate.

The resulting position looks pretty unclear to me too. But it's better than the position after 15. Nxe7+Kh816. Bxf6.  This is a very hard game (for me) to analyze.