In Praise of Kieseritzky
Saturday, July 10, 2010 at 12:13AM Lionel Kieseritzky was a very strong player in the mid-19th century, but sadly he's best known for a loss to Adolf Anderssen - the so-called "Immortal Game". Despite this negative fame, he deserves chess fame for his positive achievements. For instance, the line that's probably best for White in the King's Gambit Accepted (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5) is attributed to and named for him. He defeated both Horwitz and Harrwitz in matches (but not Horowitz or Gurevich, of course), which was no mean feat. In fact, Jeff Sonas claims that Kieseritzky was the #1 player in the world for most of the period between 1849 and 1851.
(I'm not sure I believe that - I'm inclined to chalk it up to the relative inactivity during that period of people like Pierre St. Amant, Howard Staunton and Anderssen, but still: that one can make such an argument shows that he's no slouch. Before leaving this tangent, I warn those unfamiliar with Sonas's work that his historical ratings should not be taken to correspond too closely with the numbers we're familiar with nowadays. Sonas gives K. a peak rating of 2734, but there's no way in the world that he would score 50% in a tournament like Wijk aan Zee.)
Anyway, my interest in Kieseritzky is as a type, not a token; that is, he's a representative of players who have achieved negative immortality by losing a spectacular game. A contemporary "Kieseritzky" is the Greek GM Ioannis Nikolaidis, whose name should always call to mind his incredible loss to Grigory Serper from the 1993 St. Petersburg Open. Serper sacs all of his pieces, and Nikolaidis puts up resistance all the way to the end, invariably forcing Serper to find one beautiful idea after another to win the game.
Still, while chess fans should know and remember this game, Nikolaidis shouldn't be reduced to this game; he has won some nice games and taken down some big scalps too. In fact, in the ongoing Greek Team Championship, he managed to beat the 2700+ rated David Navara, which is no mean feat. So let's give him and Kieseritzky their due. If you click here, you can see their famous losses, but you'll also get to see a couple of their wins, too. As an added (if unfortunate) bonus, we'll have a look at a second Nikolaidis game from the Greek Team event, an exciting loss to Vassily Ivanchuk*.
Can any of you think of other Kieseritzkies and games they've won that deserve to be better known?
* Speaking of Ivanchuk, he's having a fantastic event so far: 4.5/5. The Live Top List page hasn't been updated for two weeks, but I think he must be back in the top by now.
Reader Comments (13)
Topalov has been on the losing side of a two of the best games of all time. Kaspaorv - Topalov, Topalov Shirov endgame, He is not a perfect example since he is obviously very well known as a chess player and former world champion but I thought its worth a mention. There is Karpov - Topalov Linares 1994 and the 'Checker game" against Kramnik as well.
Curt von bardeleben is famous for losing to Steinitz but not many realize he was a strong player in the late 1800s.
Wouldn't Lionel Kieseritzky have been a strong player in the mid-1800s, rather than mid-1900s ? A rare mistake from you :)
Hmm, I can think of a player but not specific winning games for the player - Donald Byrne. Perhaps Geller-D. Byrne 0-1, Moscow 1955?
For Topalov I suggest his double exchange sacrifice on e4 game against Aronian, Wijk ann Zee, 2006.
Brian: I wrote a post about Topalov in that respect a long time ago - early in the days of the powerblogs blog. He has lost brilliancies to Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Karpov, Shirov (the ending, anyway), Bareev (Linares 1994) and others too. Of course Topalov has made a name for himself in other ways, so that's all water under the
porcelainbridge now.Re Von B., did he play any nice games? On the front page of his profile on chessgames.com, the two wins they give are pretty bad. The second is a straightforward win material, trade and win the endgame affair, while in the other Mieses plays like a B- or C-player. Anyway, VB has a second big strike against him - not just the loss to Steinitz, but that he was at least a partial inspiration for Nabokov's The Defense. So maybe instead of a good game, we can find some evidence of sane behavior to rehabilitate his reputation.
Signalman: Right you are. I make errors like that from time to time when I'm thinking of one locution (19th century) and then switch to another (the year). I'll fix it in a moment.
Icepick: D. Byrne is a good example of a more contemporary Kieseritzky, and that Geller game (if it's the one I'm thinking of - he was Black in a Sicilian Dragon, if I recall correctly) is a nice demonstration of what he was capable of.
Dennis, ypu've got the right game. It featured tripled pawns for Black - a rare structure for the winning side to have!
Here's the game in question, E. Geller - D. Byrne, Moscow 1955.
Bisguier is mostly remembered for getting slaughtered by Fischer over and over but he had some nice games. Here he is crushing Larsen.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1028482
Another candidate is Fritz Sämisch, mostly famous because of the zugzwang loss against Nimzovitsj. How many knows about his scalps? The list is impressive: Rëti several times, Grünfeld, Bogoljubow, Spielmann and all of them several times. Add Maroczy, Capablanca (the ugly game of Carslbad 1929) and Tartakower.
Sämisch-Grünfeld, Carlsbad 1929 is quite a good game.
I'm surprised noone has yet mentioned the redoubtable old N. Nescio. Usually and unfortunately known as a punching bag, Nescio has a series of wins against some of the world's strongest players as well. See http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=12883&result=1st for a good list.
Nescio even played a 25-game match with Alekhine in Paris in 1925, of which he only won three - the expected result according to rating - that seems forgotten by history. A training match, perhaps? I've emailed Edward Winter the question, and will post the result in this thread when I hear back.
M. Nieuweboer: Interesting choice. So many of us think of his variation against the KID and Nimzo that the "Immortal Zugzwang" game never even comes to mind. But it's true that the loss is most famous game, though the gift vs. Capa is pretty well-known too, a staple of books on the latter's career.
Paul: Good joke, made possible only by your successfully remaining in deadpan mode throughout.
Couldn't we add van Wely to this list. Super games both won and lost.
[Event "Paris m"]
[Date "1842.??.??"]
[White "Kieseritzky, Lionel"]
[Black "Calvi, Ignanzio"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C39"]
1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 h5 6. Bc4 Rh7 7. d4 d6 8. Nd3 f3
9. gxf3 c6 10. Nf4 Ne7 11. Nc3 Nd7 12. Kf2 Rh8 13. Qd3 Bg7 14. Bd2 Kf8 15. Rae1
Qb6 16. Be3 Qc7 17. Be6 b5 18. b4 Nb6 19. Bb3 a5 20. a3 a4 21. Ba2 Bb7 22. e5
d5 23. e6 Bc8 24. Bc1 Qd6 25. exf7 Kxf7 26. Ne4 Qc7 27. Ng5+ Kg8 28. Rxe7 Qxe7
29. Re1 Qf6 30. Re8+ Bf8 31. Ng6 Bf5 32. Qxf5 Qxf5 33. Ne7+ Kg7 34. Nxf5+ Kf6
35. Re6+ Kxf5 36. Bb1 mate in one 1-0
Here is an interesting game by Kieseritzky vs Ignanzio Calvi all of Kieseritzky's piece take part in the mate