Nov-20-06
 | | Honza Cervenka: Finish of this game shows that even those best of best can have troubles with handling of Rook endgames. Steinitz could have won easily by playing 51.e7! Kd7 52.hxg5 hxg5 53.d6! His order of moves could have blown the win but Lasker went wrong too with 53...Ra3+? Instead of that 53...Ra8 54.Ke4 Rf8 seems to hold the game. |
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| Nov-20-06 | | euripides: <honza Steinitz could have won easily by playing 51.e7! Kd7 52.hxg5 hxg5 53.d6!> Intersting. I don't immediately see how White wins the final position in that line. I would have thought rook checks and/or the advance of the g pawn might hold ? In any case can't Black play <51.e7> Re8 e.g. 52.Re6+ Kd7 53.d6 fails to Kxe6 ? |
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Nov-20-06
 | | Calli: <euripides> In that line, 53.Rxh6 gxh4 54.d6 or 53...Rxe7 54.hxg5 |
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| Nov-20-06 | | euripides: <calli> thanks, I'd missed that. Also I'd missed that with pawns on e7 and d6 the fortress can often be broken simply by Rf8- I was thinking of some fortresses involving two connected passed pawns when one is a rooks's pawn. So 51.e7 does look right. |
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Nov-20-06
| | Honza Cervenka: Btw, my Fritz 8's database as well as a book "The Games of Wilhelm Steinitz, First World Chess Champion" edited by Sid Pickard and published by Pickard & Son, Publishers, Dallas 1995 give a different finish of this game since move 55: 55.Kf4 Ra8 56.e7 Re8 57.Kf5 g3 58.Kf6 Kd7 59.d6 g2 60.Rg1 1-0 I don't think that it can be correct as it makes very little sense. In that case 56.e7?? would be awful blunder (56.Kxg4 wins easily) and 57...g3?? (why not 57...Rxe7?) 58.Kf6?? (58.Re6+! Kd7 59.d6 or 58...Kxd5 59.Kf6 g2 60.Re1 wins) 58...Kd7?? (58...g2!=) would be pretty strange sequence of mistakes. Cg.com's gamescore looks more reasonable. |
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| Nov-20-06 | | who: Strange that Steinitz didn't try to keep the extra piece with 20.gxh4. The computer agrees that white is absolutely winning. For instance 20.gxh4 Rg3+ 21.hxg3 Bxd1 22.Ba2! (maybe this is the move Steinitz missed) Kh8 23.Raxe1 leaves white with a won position.
click for larger viewor 20.gxh4 Raf8 21.Nf4! R3xf4 22.Rxf4 Rxf4 (22...Bxd1? 23.Ba2+) 23.Qb3+ 
click for larger viewand after 23...R/Qf7 24.Ba2 wins otherwise 24.exf4 |
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Nov-20-06
| | Calli: <Cg.com's gamescore looks more reasonable.> It is correct according to Whyld's book of Lasker games. His source is the newspaper "New York Recorder" on 26-3-1894. For some reason, quite a few of the Steinitz-Lasker match games have weird scores in a lot of internet files. |
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| Feb-29-08 | | Knight13: OMG Lasker "hanged" a bunch of pieces and got away with it... And the final position is "LOL." |
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Sep-20-08
 | | whiteshark: <Honza Cervenka: ...<Instead of that 53...Ra8 54.Ke4 Rf8 seems to hold the game.>> 
click for larger viewE.g. 55.Re3 Rf4+ 56.Kd3 Ra4 57.Re2 Ra8 58.Ke4 Rf8= or 55.Kd4 g4= |
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| Jul-27-09 | | elo1xxx: Dont 22.Ra8 immediately won the game ? |
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| Nov-06-09 | | jonico: Why Black didn't play 18...Qxe3+? Please answer me... |
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| Jan-18-11 | | Llawdogg: Why didn't black play 18 ... Qxe3+? Because white simply answers 19 Kg2 and holds everything together with no problems, surprisingly enough. This is the key part of the game, no doubt about it. 19 Nxd5! and 20 Nf4! are great knight maneuvers by Steinitz. 21 Qb3+ was the only good move. But how about 22 Ra5! Silman suggests this move and it looks good to me. |
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sac: 20.Nf4
