Domdaniel: Sometimes I wonder about these Old Masters, I really do. White, ie Yates, missing the threat of 21...Ng3+ is one thing (although what other reason could the black knight have for going to h5?) - it's a woeful blunder by master standards, but such things happen.It's also possible that Yates didn't actually miss the ...Ng3+ threat. His move 21.g4 suggests he was trying to be clever by inviting it, hoping for a chance to play Rh5 after the exchange sac. Which doesn't work, of course, as Maroczy demonstrates. Maybe Yates missed 22.Kg2 Nxf1 23.Rh5 Ne3+ and 24...Nxc2.
But later in the game - if the score is correct, and it seems to be: at least the version here is identical to other databases - there's a peculiar double oversight. 28.Ne5?? can be answered with 28...Qxf5+, winning the house. But Maroczy played 28...Qh6? instead, and Yates resigned anyway four moves later.
*Maybe* the score transposes a couple of moves? The sequence 28.Nxe7+ Rxe7 29.Ne5 Qh6 would reach the same position with reasonable moves.
I wish *my* opponents were so generous with blunders, if blunders is what they are. We should bear in mind that it was played in Hastings -- possibly sharing a stage, or a bear-baiting pit, with a children's pantomime and a novelty trombone drag act, in temperatures of -40° (that's Fahrenheit *and* Celsius) ... with Biffo the Clown relieving himself on the chessboard between moves.
While Yates pined for his native Yorkshire, muttering "Aye, it's grim down South" to himself. And Maroczy sat thinking "Perhaps this is a quaint old English custom, like birching the Prince of Wales, of which I have heard so much..."
Yes, it all starts to make sense now.
