Introduction
Throughout history, the strategic battles on chessboards have been likened to the violence of war (mostly by people with questionable chess experience).
Unfortunately, sometimes the violence isn’t confined to the chessboard, as the game can spark immense frustration. We’ve all felt the urge to slam the table like Magnus Carlsen, or stand upon it like Nimzowitsch, after a bad loss. Hopefully, though, we have not felt the urge to murder our opponent with an axe, as one Soviet researcher reportedly did after a 1959 chess game at an Antarctic station. (That’s a story for a different blog.)
But in tournament play, including CITL’s upcoming tournament this June 13th, it’s probably better not to release wrath through tables or axes, and instead lose with dignity after hanging all your pieces. This sportsmanlike spirit was carried by one Edward Lowe, as I gathered from his biography:
Edward Lowe, chess master, left an unassuming legacy, as evidenced by his absence from the first page of Google results for his own name. But the few among his games which survived show that he was one of the foremost masters of his day. He held his own in play against Staunton, Anderssen, and Boden, and at the peak of his powers received an invitation to the legendary London 1851, the first international chess tournament.
After being knocked out of said tournament by Marmaduke Wyvill, he rematched him two years later, and that game will be the subject of today’s bloig.
Wyvill-Lowe, 1853
The game begins 1.e4 e5, as most games at the time did. Wyvill opened with the Scotch Gambit: 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Bc4.
The two main responses are 4…Nf6 and 4…Bc5. Nowadays, the latter has fallen out of favour because of 5.c3, with the idea of 5…dxc3? 6.Bxf7+, winning a pawn and preventing castling. Black’s best fifth move turns out to be 5…Nf6, leading to positions similar to 4…Nf6 but a teeny-tiny bit worse. But Lowe, ignoring my sage guidance, played 4…Bc5 anyway.
The game continued 5.O-O d6 6.c3.
Both sides prepare to activate more pieces, and White poses an immediate question of the center. What should Black do with his d4-pawn?
Generally, when your opponent introduces pawn tension, you have three options:
- Capture the pawn right away. In the above position, not such a good idea because White plays Nxc3 activating the knight, and gets open lines for his other pieces.
- Push the pawn, giving it up on d3.
- Defend the pawn. Black could play Qf6 to do so, but this could block the knight from going to f6, and also allow White to develop with tempo, via Bg5. Another way is Bg4, pinning the f3-knight to tactically defend the pawn, while also developing a new piece. This may be Black’s best, but a downside is that Qb3 is difficult to defend against.
Edward Lowe chose to return his pawn, playing the 6…d3 push which appears to lose material for no reason. The idea is to dampen White’s piece activity. In particular, the c3-pawn now looks dumb for advancing, as it blocks in the knight from going to c3.
But Wyvill chose violence. Completely ignoring this generous pawn donation, he played 7.b4! Bb6 8.Qb3, lashing out with two threats. But they’re not simple one-move threats; these moves gain queenside space and develop new pieeces. (The move b4 seems to call for the follow-up move a4, but oddly Wyvill hesitates to play this natural continuation.)
Lowe defends the threat on the f7-pawn, playing 8…Qe7. This possibly prepares queenside castling. Wyvill’s next one-move threat, 9.Bg5, is less powerful because Black probably intended to play his 9…Nf6 reply anyway. The bishop is not well-placed on g5, as Lowe will demonstrate shortly.
White continues 10.Nbd2.
One thing sticks out to me in this position. It’s the literal sore thumb of a Black pawn, camouflaging itself among its White counterparts. Lowe must’ve felt it fitting to hang onto this pawn as punishment for White’s reluctance to capture it, but there’s no direct way to defend it. Instead, he plays 10…Be6, pinning the White bishop to the queen and stopping the immediate Bxd3.
Wyvill responds with 11.Kh1, getting the king off the Black DSB’s diagonal, ostensibly for some f-pawn push that I don’t see happening.
Note the characteristics of the resulting position. Black hasn’t castled yet, but White has a bishop on g5 pinning the f6-knight. Such positions should call for an h6-g5 blitz, gaining space on the kingside, without weakening the king because it hasn’t castled there yet. This is common as a potential plan but rarer to actually appear on the board (perhaps people are scared to make aggressive pawn pushes), so it should be on your radar. It was on Lowe’s; he found 11…h6 12.Bh4 g5! 13.Bg3 Nh5.
Suddenly Black seems to have a scary-looking kingside attack. After Nxg3, removing a crucial defensive piece, Black can advance the pawn storm with moves like g4 and h5. He keeps the bishop pair and the flexibility to castle on either side of the board.
Wyvill moves to thwart this with forcing moves on the other side of the board: 14.a4! a5 15.b5.
Wyvill first removes the g3-bishop with check, before playing the attacked knight to its most natural square. 15…Nxg3+ 16.fxg3 Ne5. (See that Wyvill recaptured with his f-pawn, breaking the principle of capturing towards the center, to keep his king’s pawn cover.)
Then, somewhat anticlimactically for those expecting an opposite-side-castling dual king hunt, a series of piece trades release the tension: 17.Nxe5 dxe5 18.Bxe6 Qxe6 19.Qxe6+ fxe6. And we find ourselves in an endgame.
Queenless middlegames have a reputation for being dull, but this one has several interesting imbalances.
Black is technically up a pawn, but White can win it back by force. The extra pawn is the advanced passer on d3. Although it could promote in the future, for now the d2-knight is a very strong blockade. For now, the d3-pawn is easier for White to attack than Black to defend, especially as it can’t be supported by another pawn, so Black should be cautious not to lose it.
In terms of pawn structure, both sides have doubled pawns, but Black’s e-pawns are isolated, which makes them genuine weaknesses. Moves like Rf6, Nc4, and Nf3 can immediately target/capture one of them. Black has a bishop and White a knight. Late endgame positions tend to be open, favoring the bishop. So in general, trading minor pieces wouldn’t be a good idea for Black. Black’s king in the center is better-placed, especially for defending the weak e-pawns. King activity gets more important as more pieces get traded off.
Overall, I feel Black has a slight edge because of the d-pawn and better-placed pieces.
Wyvill continues 20.Nf3, and after 20…O-O-O activating the Black rook, 21.Nxe5 winning the pawn back. Although this restores the material balance, White’s knight created an important blockade on d2, and in its absence Black is free to push the passed pawn.
The immediate threat is the Nf7 fork. Interestingly, the engine strongly recommends playing …d2!, simply giving up the exchange. In that line, a bishop on e3 can defend the d2-pawn and severely restrict White’s activity, giving Black a positional advantage as compensation.
Lowe didn’t consider this and played the weaker 21…Rh7 22.Rf6 d2, forcing 23.Rd1 to body-block the queening square. He continued 23…h5, which does take some kingside space and the g4-square from White’s pawn and knight. This does give up a pawn, though, and Wyvill immediately capitalized on this, playing 24.Nf7 Rd3 25.Nxg5 to go up material. But White isn’t necessarily better because of it. In fact, Black’s active d3-rook and the threat of Rxc3 may give him a slight edge.
Lowe moved his rook out of danger: 25…Re7. And after 26.Rf8+ Kd7, Wyvill played an innocuous-looking move, which really was a fatal mistake, costing him the game…
27.Rf3?
This is a poor move because it fails to actually contest the d3-rook. Lowe’s reply 27…Be3, which is by no means difficult to spot, blocks the challenge, defends the d2-pawn, and attacks the g5-knight all at once. Don’t play moves that give your opponent an easy counterblow!
Instead, Wyvill could’ve fought back with 27.Nf3!, which threatens a fork on e5. Black’s king is poorly placed on d7, and the threat is surprisingly quite awkward to defend. It also threatens to take the dangerous d2-passer, leaving White a clean two pawns up. Black would’ve needed to find 27…Re8! (only move) 28.Ne5+ Kd6 29.Rxe8 Kxe5 where Black is once again an exchange down but completely winning because of the passed pawn and piece activity.
But none of that interesting stuff actually happened! The game continued 28.Nf7 Rxc3, and Black threatens the crushing …Rc1. Wyvill defends this by playing 29.Ne5+ Ke8 30.Nc4.
This does stop …Rc1, because White could just take on e3 with the knight, defending the rook. But the c4-knight isn’t defended, so after 30…Rxc4 31.Rxe3, it turns out the idea of 31…Rc1 hadn’t been stopped at all. White loses because he can’t stop the d-pawn from queening, the very same d-pawn that he neglected to capture way back on move 7! And that was the final move of this game, as Wyvill tendered his resignation and the agreeable Lowe got his ‘revenge’.
the final position ^