Five famous games

Adolf Anderssen – Lionel Kieseritzky · London, 1851 · White mates in 23

The Immortal Game

In the summer of 1851 London held the first international chess tournament, alongside the Great Exhibition. Its winner was Adolf Anderssen, a mathematics teacher from Breslau. Between rounds he played a casual game against Lionel Kieseritzky, a master born in the Baltic who lived in Paris and taught chess at the Café de la Régence.

It is the most romantic game in chess. Anderssen gives away a bishop, then both his rooks, then his queen, and mates with the three small pieces he has left, while Black’s whole army watches. By the usual account Kieseritzky himself sent the moves to Paris, where they were published, and a few years later the Austrian master Ernst Falkbeer named it “the Immortal Game”. (Some accounts say Kieseritzky resigned a move or two before the mate; the game is always shown to the end.)

Paul Morphy – Duke of Brunswick & Count Isouard · Paris, 1858 · White mates in 17

The Opera Game

In the autumn of 1858, Paris had a visitor everyone wanted to play. Paul Morphy, twenty-one years old and from New Orleans, had won the First American Chess Congress the year before and crossed the Atlantic to take on the best players in Europe. Within months he had beaten nearly all of them.

One evening he was the guest of Karl II, Duke of Brunswick, in the Duke’s box at the opera. The Duke had lost his throne in 1830 and lived in Paris, a keen amateur of chess; with him was another, Count Isouard de Vauvenargues. The two of them took Black together, consulting over every move, against Morphy alone. The story goes that Morphy would rather have been watching the stage (the opera is most often said to have been Bellini’s Norma, though tellings differ) and played quickly, as if to get back to it.

It is the game coaches still show first: Morphy brings out a new piece nearly every move, opens lines to the king, and finishes with a queen sacrifice and a mate by just a rook and a bishop. Two of Black’s pieces never moved at all.

Donald Byrne – Bobby Fischer · New York, 1956 · Black mates in 41

The Game of the Century

In October 1956, at the Rosenwald Memorial tournament in New York, Bobby Fischer was thirteen years old. He had Black against Donald Byrne, one of the strongest players in the United States.

On move eleven Fischer put a knight where it could be taken; on move seventeen he left his queen to be taken too. In return his bishops, knight and rook drove White’s king around the board with check after check, gathering up material, until they mated it on move forty-one. Hans Kmoch, writing in Chess Review, called it “the game of the century”. Sixteen years later Fischer became world champion.

Deep Blue – Garry Kasparov · New York, 1997 · Black resigns after 19 moves

Deep Blue against Kasparov

In 1996 the world champion, Garry Kasparov, beat IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue in a six-game match. In May 1997, in New York, they played a rematch against an improved machine. After five games the score was level, two and a half points each.

In the sixth game Kasparov chose an opening he rarely played, and on move seven made a known mistake. Deep Blue sacrificed a knight on e6, its pieces swarmed around Kasparov’s king, and after nineteen moves he resigned. Deep Blue won the match 3½–2½: the first time a computer had beaten a reigning world champion in a match at standard time controls. On the desk, fittingly, the electronic board plays Deep Blue.

Garry Kasparov – Veselin Topalov · Wijk aan Zee, 1999 · Black resigns after 44 moves

Kasparov’s Immortal

In January 1999, at the annual tournament in the seaside town of Wijk aan Zee in the Netherlands, Garry Kasparov, still world champion, had White against Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, who would later become a world champion himself.

On move twenty-four Kasparov gave up a rook, and the sacrifice set off a king hunt that dragged Topalov’s king from its corner right across the board to White’s back rank, with quiet moves and more sacrifices along the way. Kasparov had seen it all far ahead. It is often called the finest game of his career, and simply “Kasparov’s Immortal”.