The Immortal Game (12 page)

It wasn’t long before he had taken over the place. Rosenthal’s young competitors in Warsaw had been among the very sharpest in Europe, and he brought to Paris a stamina and consistency that immediately overwhelmed most of his native French competitors. He won the Régence’s championship in 1865 and repeated his triumph in 1866 and 1867. As the new dean of French chess, he began drawing invitations to the leading international tournaments. He represented Paris in Baden-Baden in 1870, in Bonn in 1877, and in London in 1883, where he twice defeated the great champion Wilhelm Steinitz.
^*19
In 1884–85, Rosenthal led a Paris team against Vienna in a two-game correspondence match that lasted twenty months. (For his effort, Rosenthal was presented with a spectacular engraved gold pocket watch—the watch that entered our family lore.) In 1887 he was awarded, by the Spanish queen regent, the Charles III Order for his contributions to chess.

With his public displays, café and tournament wins, magazine columns, and private tutoring, Rosenthal was said by Wilhelm Steinitz to be one of the few chess players in the nineteenth century who made a nice living from chess. It didn’t hurt that he mentored some of the leading public figures in France—Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, the society portraitist Raimundo de Madrazo, and the powerful French banking family Pereire. His star pupil was Prince Napoleon, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte. The relationship brought into striking contrast the young immigrant and the chess-obsessed emperor: two serious chess players, habitués of the very same chess café (if decades apart). One astonished the world with his military prowess but could not—try as he might—duplicate that success on the chessboard. The other made chess his
only
battlefield, forcefully embracing the military metaphor.

Perhaps with Bonaparte in mind, Rosenthal pushed the chess–war comparison to its limit. He wrote:

Both soldiers and players, regardless of their talent, must know a certain theory and certain principles. Indeed, his theory resembles ours. Isn’t it true that it teaches him to conduct his troops on a battlefield, according to established rules, to reassemble at the opportune moment, to have them converge at a determined point, in the briefest span of time? Shouldn’t he try to make the others attack him there where he is the strongest, to change fronts when the opponent attacks him at his vulnerable point, to manage his soldiers’ lives for the ultimate moment?…

I could make an infinite number of comparisons, for the two are sisters: the path one follows, the method one uses to succeed in chess, are absolutely identical to those that the greatest commanders recommend.

Was Samuel Rosenthal one of chess’s “greatest commanders”? Yes and no. Though for three decades he was considered about the best player in France (he “reigned supreme as the leader of Parisian chess,” reported the
Chicago Tribune
after his death) and was considered one of the top two dozen players in the world, and though he managed to beat legendary players like world champion Wilhelm Steinitz, Russian champion Mikhail Tchigorin, Polish sensation Simon Winawer, and even Adolf Anderssen in a number of individual games, he never won a major international tournament and was never considered a real contender for the world championship. He captivated the French public, but could not make a permanent mark in chess history. Today he is remembered only by historians and by players who study past masters. A number of his games are included in noted books of analysis, and his own book of analysis on the London tournament of 1900,
Traité des échecs et recueil des parties jouées au tournoi i international de 1900
(a brittle, yellowed author’s copy of which was passed down to his youngest granddaughter—my grandmother—and then to me) has been judged by competitive players to be remarkably insightful.

Perhaps just as important as his play was his insistence that chess and war are “sisters.” His words frankly do not carry the same eloquence as those of Benjamin Franklin, but in his own way Rosenthal did advance a critical point about chess’s social consequence. He was echoing not just Franklin, who had described chess as battle without bloodshed, but many other observers over the years, including twelfth-century Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Ezra, who wrote of the game:

All slaughter each other

Wasting with great wrath each other

…with yet no bloodshed.

As useful as chess may have been to war commanders throughout the ages, it perhaps has been far more useful in bringing the discipline of war to the rest of us. Chess, along with other ancient competitive sports, helped to introduce the concept of nonviolent rivalry. It helped us—and helps us still—crystallize the concept of war without bloodshed. Chess, a game of war, teaches peace.

Civilization today would be lost without the option of bloodless war. The free market depends on it. All politics and diplomacy rest on it. Science, academia, and mediated culture all thrive because of it. The institutions that today give support to our complex and rich world of ideas are sustained first and foremost by brutal, yet bloodless, competition. This is a legacy of chess—not just that it helped train warriors in their art but, more importantly, that it helped transport that same all-out competitive spirit into a peaceful sphere. “For Life is a kind of Chess,” declared Benjamin Franklin, “in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with.”

THE IMMORTAL GAME
Moves 8 and 9

T
HE
R
OMANTICS LOVED TO ATTACK,
and their games were thrilling to watch. In due course, their style would be made obsolete. Other inventive players would come along and devise more whole-game, strategic styles that would suffocate the impatient, merely tactical player. But until then, the best players in the world played what they knew.

In this game, Kieseritzky (Black) was setting up for a devastating attack on Anderssen’s Kingside. His Queen was already in position. He’d already taken one of Anderssen’s Pawns on that side, and he had disabled Anderssen’s ability to castle. Finally, in move 7, he had put his Knight on h5, threatening Knight to g3 in the next move, which would simultaneously check White’s King and attack his Rook. Kieseritzky knew what he was doing. He’d done this before.

Anderssen, of course, had no choice but to respond.

8. Nh4

(White Knight to h4)

By moving his Knight to h4, Anderssen was able to blunt the attack. If Black now moved Knight to g3, White could safely capture with his Pawn on h2 without exposing his Rook on h1 to capture by the Black Queen.

But White’s smart defense couldn’t yet blunt Black’s offense. He had another attacking move in store.

8….Qg5

(Black Queen to g5)

Kieseritzky moved his Queen to g5, simultaneously threatening Anderssen’s Bishop and his Knight. Attacking two pieces at once is called a fork, and is highly desirable for obvious reasons. It is often inevitable that the opponent is going to lose one piece or the other.

9. Nf5

(White Knight to f5)

But Anderssen had the perfect defense. In an almost uncanny turn, his only real move here—maneuvering his Knight to the f 5 square, not only simultaneously protected both the threatened Knight and the threatened Bishop, but was also an attacking move that he had planned for some time. The f 5 square is known as a very strong place for the White Knight, for obvious reasons: it puts the Knight one move away from a possible check.

It looked like dumb luck, but this sort of good fortune happens routinely to players who carefully plan their moves. A move that effectively combines necessary defense with desirable offense is commonly referred to as “gaining a tempo.” The player has gained in one single move what might have ordinarily taken two or more moves to accomplish. The concept of tempo is one of the most important in chess.

Anderssen had already gained several tempi in this game, while Kieseritzky had lost a few. That said, Kieseritzky might still have felt pretty good about his position. The simple fact was that the White Kingside was in a shambles. If Black could find the time to develop some more pressure on the Kingside, he’d be in a strong position to win.

9….c6

(Black Pawn to c6)

Kieseritzky then issued another threat to Anderssen’s Bishop by pushing his c Pawn one square forward. He believed he was gaining a tempo here, forcing Anderssen into a defensive posture while making a simple developing move himself. In the next move, Anderssen’s response would indicate whether he agreed that he had just lost some of his momentum.