thomastonk: This is one of the games in "Chess exemplified (in one-hundred and thirty-two games by the most celebrated players)" by William John Greenwell. It is game no. 31 on pages 33-34. With the exception of one opening comment on 1.. e5, all comments were quoted from Staunton's "Chess praxis", 1860, pages 441-443. Staunton called it a fine game, and since it has all phases I spent some time with it.But I would say it already at the beginning: it is a poor game! At this time both men were among the world's best players, and so we could assume some tactical finesse at least. But they both missed very much blows. BTW, Staunton found a lot of these missed opportunities.
The opening is a slow played closed one, and the first interesting moment is 14.. gxf6. I think, nowadays almost everyone would take here with the knight or the queen. Staunton is silent (and hence Greenwell, too).
Then 21.dxe4 is murky, because 21.♗xe4+ f5 22.Ld5 ♖g7 23.♘f3! should win easily. Staunton is silent.
In the following it seems that White prepares the breakthrough by g4, but when this move is winning, he didn't play it! Say 27.g4!, and it is completely over! White could have played g4 with some advantage also at two later occasions. Staunton is silent.
By 35.. ♖h8 Black threatens a simple fork, and White plays 39.♖gf1??.
Staunton calls ♖h8 "Preperatory to a beautiful and brillant manouevre." That's nonsense. If White moves the queen or exchanges the knight on h6, Black has nothing and is still worse.
Staunton remarks that "Black forgot himself" and "could have won easily" by 42.. ♕h1+ 43.♔e3 ♕e4. Well observed! But Black's 42th move was well enough, but the 43th is a mistake: 43.. ♖d6 and curtains. Staunton is silent.
Nevertheless, Black is still clearly winning in this phase, and it needs a lot of his help to bring White back into the game. But also White misses so many much better moves. Quite astonishing, because this was not a skittles game and it lasted seven hours. I will skip to Staunton's next comment on 60.. ♕b3?, where he states that 60.. ♕c4 "would have been much better". Well, to say it more decided: both moves force White to sac the queen for the rook (or to lose a4 and b5), but in one case, Black wins (60.. ♕c4), and the other case White wins! But I assume that it was just this mistake that made the game interesting for Staunton and for Greenwell!
The following moves are well played, and in particular White keeps his winning advantage almost until the very end. But then he misses 77.♗xd2! ♕xd2 78.♔b8!, which is correct observed by Staunton. In this case, I don't like to be too harsh. After such a game and so many hours ... and maybe the game didn't deserved a victor.
Kibitzing
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