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Wilhelm Steinitz vs Adolf Anderssen
Anderssen - Steinitz (1866), London ENG, rd 2, Jul-20
King's Gambit: Accepted. Salvio Gambit (C37)  ·  1-0

ANALYSIS [x]

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sac: 47.h6 PGN: download | view | print Help: general | java-troubleshooting

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Kibitzer's Corner
Mar-10-06  Knight13: A game full of tactic trickes for Anderssen, and he fells into some of them. 46. Rf4! was brilliant.
Mar-10-07
Premium Chessgames Member
  plang: 9..Qh3+ doesn't seem to accomplish a lot and loses time; perhaps retreating the queen immediately makes more sense. I don't really understand 12 Bd2; why not 12 Be3 immediately? 19 Bf4 is clever avoiding ..d5 and keeping the initiative. 28 Bf7 is also clever avoiding premature simplification with 28 Bg4.
Jan-08-11  Llawdogg: The young Steinitz defeats the old Anderssen in the romantic style of the day. This is well before Steinitz discovered the principles of positional play and ushered in the modern era of chess. Or so I'm told.

The principle followed in this game was: When you have a lead in development, you should open up the center. Steinitz blows it open by pushing e5 and e6!

Jan-31-12  Knight13: <9..Qh3+ doesn't seem to accomplish a lot and loses time; perhaps retreating the queen immediately makes more sense.> Anderssen was trying to lure the king into a more vulnerable position in the center with a tempo (check). However, it didn't do much, as you have pointed out.
Sep-11-14  yureesystem: If the black queen goes to g2,will lose the queen, 10.Ke1 Qg2 11.Nf2 and black queen is trap, follow Bf1 and black queen is won.
Jun-17-15  TheFocus: I just played through this game for the first time, and when I played 46.Rf4!!, I sat back and laughed and laughed.

Just once in my life, I would like to play such a move.

Very nice tactical win by Steinitz.

Mar-12-17
Premium Chessgames Member
  offramp: I find this game fascinating. The style of play is so different to what we see nowadays that it is almost like a different game. Anderssen's play seems Gothic and Steinitz's seems baroque.

This was game 2 of the match. Anderssen had won game 1.

As mentioned above, 9...Qh3+ is a slight error. Black responded with 10. Ke1.


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White's threat is 11. Nf4, trapping the queen. 10....Qg2 is no good because White would devolve completely: 11. Nf2 & 12. Bf1 will win the queen:


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So Black has to go straight back with 10...Qh5. There is a difference, though. When the queen was on h4 she could have retreated directly to f6, which is a better square.

In fact the tempo-wasting in this game is amazing, it is something modern players do very rarely.

For example, Anderssen plays 6...Ng8-h6 and 15...Nh6-g8. The queen goes d8-h4-h3-h5-h6-g6-e7. Steinitz plays 12. Bd2 & 14. Be3, and his king wanders around a bit, but in general he wasn't so wasteful.

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