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Mikhail Chigorin vs Siegbert Tarrasch
Chigorin - Tarrasch (1893), St. Petersburg RUE, rd 8, Oct-23
Formation: King's Indian Attack (A07)  ·  1-0

ANALYSIS [x]

FEN COPIED

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Kibitzer's Corner
Aug-19-04  xiaolin: this could be the game of the day sumtime k ♕
Aug-19-04  I sacrifice like Tal: I don't normally play 1.e4 but on the occasion that I do it tends to be a surprise for my opponents. Even more so when I play 2.Qe2 in reply to their 1...e6. A lot of them tend to still throw the d5 pawn forward out of habit. But other than playing 2.Qe2 in blitz, I don't think it's a very good move.

Somebody should lend Tarrasch a copy of Jeremy Silman's 'Reasses your Chess.' It seems he dosn't have a clue as to what he's doing in this game.

Mar-08-06  Knight13: Thus he loses a piece and the game.
Nov-23-06  syracrophy: Check that if 34...♖g5? 35.♕xg5!! ♕xh3<35...fxg5 36.Bxd7 > 36.♕h6+ ♔g8 37.♘xe7+ ♖xe7 38.♖xe7 mates in a few moves <38...Qg4+ 39.Kh1 and there are no more checks>
Nov-23-06  Wolfgang01: <I sacrifice like Tal>Dr. Tarrasch was like we are: Mostly he talked better chess than he played it. Hahaha He went from us in 1934.
May-20-07  frank124c: If Knights are doubled it usually pays to attack both knights, this is a good way to win a piece!
Dec-04-10  JohnBoy: <Wolfgang: Dr. Tarrasch was like we are: Mostly he talked better chess than he played it.> Hardly. He was probably the best player in the world on average from 1885 until 1905. Look at his games before you make such a statement. This is hardly exemplary.
Feb-06-11  Robeson: "Somebody should lend Tarrasch a copy of Jeremy Silman's 'Reasses your Chess.' It seems he dosn't have a clue as to what he's doing in this game."

Wow, you sound like someone who knows a LOT about chess.

Feb-06-11  M.D. Wilson: <JohnBoy: <Wolfgang: Dr. Tarrasch was like we are: Mostly he talked better chess than he played it.> Hardly. He was probably the best player in the world on average from 1885 until 1905. Look at his games before you make such a statement. This is hardly exemplary.>

Why was he better than Lasker during this period?

Dec-28-14
Premium Chessgames Member
  keypusher: Tarrasch got himself into a lot of trouble after 13....e5 14.Nd5 Bxd5 (14...Nxd5 15.exd5 Qd6 16.c3 bxc3 17.bxc3 Nf5 18.c4 is given by Tarrasch in Dreihundert Schachpartien) 15.exd5 Qd6 16.Nd2. Now 16....Nxd5 is refuted by 17.Nc4 Qe6 18.Bxd4 (necessary, so Black doesn't have ...Nf3+ later) 18....cxd4 19.Bxd5 Qxd5 20.Nb6. I wonder if Tarrasch thought he could play 17....Nxe3, overlooking that 18.Nxd6 comes with check.

As many kibitzers have said, this is a great match, an incredible clash of styles. Every game is a battle. But given both men's tactical errors and occasionally questionable plans, I would guess Lasker would have beaten either one of them in a hypothetical 1893 match as badly as he beat Steinitz the following year.

Nov-30-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  keypusher: Huebner seems to agree. In his book on Lasker - Steinitz World Championship (1894) he wrote: <The general quality of play is far higher than one is accustomed to for this era. Gross tactical blunders are rare, while in the Chigorin-Tarrasch match many games were decided by crass oversights. Many new positional patterns appeared in Lasker's games, and he handled them in ways that are still valid today; in this area also his average level strikes me as far higher than that of the opponents in Chigorin-Tarrasch.>
Nov-30-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  tamar: Huebner wrote a book about the 1894 match? Really. Only in German?
Nov-30-15  TheFocus: <tamar><Huebner wrote a book about the 1894 match? Really. Only in German?>

Simple. Huebner is German, probably wrote it for a German publishing company, and there has not been an English translation yet. Why? Probably not a real big seller.

Nov-30-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  keypusher: <tamar> Only in German, as far as I know.

https://www.newinchess.com/Der_Welt...

https://books.google.com/books?id=w...

The title on the cover is a bit of a misnomer, the 1894 match takes up only about half the book. (The full title is <Der Weltmeisterschaftskampf Lasker-Steinitz 1884 und weitere Zweikampfe Laskers>.) There are descriptions and some annotations from Lasker's pre-Steinitz matches (in particular Mieses and Blackburne) and about 50 pages on Schlechter-Lasker, including extensive annotations of the 5th, 7th, and 10th games. The rematch with Steinitz and Lasker's other WC matches are mentioned only in passing.

I love the book, despite my lack of German. Huebner's admiration for Lasker goes down very well for me. He pulls together and engages with contemporary commentary on the match, which I always enjoy.

Like every German book I've ever seen, it looks great. Definitely a bit of an extravagance, but I'm happy to put some money in the pocket of a living, copyrighted author for a change.

Nov-30-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  tamar: Sounds like a gem from the impractical Huebner.
Nov-30-15  TheFocus: <keypusher> Thanks for that description. Now if it would just come out in English. I'm too lazy to learn German.
Nov-30-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  tamar: Kasparov relied on Huebner in his volume about Fischer, showing he can quote without attribution in any language...
Dec-01-15
Premium Chessgames Member
  keypusher: <tamar: Kasparov relied on Huebner in his volume about Fischer, showing he can quote without attribution in any language...>

LOL. Huebner is scrupulous about crediting Kasparov, of course, and everyone else. Even where it's clear that he's giving his own analysis, if the first move in a line was published in a magazine in the 1890s, he footnotes it. I've never seen so many footnotes outside of a law review article.

Mar-17-24  pim: Tarrasch, in 300 Schachpartien, p.424, gives 26... Nh6-g8 (not Nf6) and then quotes Hamlet in German: "Zu welch schnöden Bestimmungen wir gelangen, Horatio!".
Mar-17-24
Premium Chessgames Member
  Sally Simpson: Hi K.P.

Regarding giving sources, in 'Memorable Games of British Chess' by Neil Hickman the author lists all his sources for details, notes, comments...before every game.

chessgames gets a quite a few mentions and in the games you see quotes by C.G. posters. Understandably he cannot give full names as most use a non-revealing nickname. But those using their real name (A. J. Goldsby etc) get sourced. I appear but alas not as Sally Simpson.

That means Neil, and here I feel sorry for him, has gone through the threads of the games he used witnessing all the spats and off topic conversations and is very possibly an expert on the Fischer - Karpov affair as that off topic discussion pops up everywhere.

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