jessicafischerqueen: <Boomie> what an excellent comment and thanks for posting it.One of the clues about this mystery is that in Kosice 1891 there were no professional chess players. In fact, there were no chess clubs either.
<Englander> was the strongest of the group, but none of them ever studied opening theory. They just played chess all the time. <Englander>, <Charousek> and dozens more of these players attended the <Academy of Laws> in Kosice at this time.
Among the local players and Kibbutzers, the <Charousek-Englander> match had "King of Kosice" as its only stake.
<Charousek> was the first in Kosice to make an exhaustive study of extant opening theory, which he was able to do because his mother had given him a copy of the fabled <Handbuch des Schachspiel> for a graduation present.
<Charousek> carried it everywhere with him, and he filled countless notebooks with variations and ideas drawn from the book.
This later led to the wholly apocryphal story that he had "copied all of the Handbuch out by hand, because he was too poor to buy one."
One of the reasons <Charousek> gravitated to Budapest was to find tougher opposition.
Budapest had a chess club- a very large, and very excellent chess club.
This would be the beginning of a momentous journey that climaxed, arguably, with him beating the World Champion of chess over the board at the great Nurnberg Tournament:
Charousek vs Lasker, 1896
Kibitzing
sac: 30.Bxb5+
