1890 Chigorin - Steinitz Cable Match

Chess by Telegram!

Happy Saturday Everyone,

The richness and depth of chess history always astounds me. I have been a chess coach for over a decade and an avid player for 25+ years but until this very day, I had never paid much attention to the 1890, Wilhelm Steinitz - Mikhail Chigorin, cable match. I was recently reading Matthew Sadler and Natash’s Regan’s great book on AlphaZero and they included this position from the round 2 game that Chigorin won (he also won the match!).

White to Move:

***Scroll Down for the Answer***

17.Bc1! Ng8 18.Ba3 c5 and Black team was in quite a bind. This was the second, brilliant, bishop retreating move of the game. A game, that was played in one of the first trans-Atlantic chess matches ever.

In our age of internet chess, it is incredible to see Chigorin and Steinitz play a “modern” game in the spirit of initiative and great positional maneuvering. The electric telegraph has clearly become obsolete but chess can carry on the wonder of it. The games were likely transmitted by Morse Code over thousands of kilometers of electric cable. They were then recorded and eventually uploaded to the internet!

We should all enjoy the marvel of a wonderful game of chess passed down over 130+ years of history.