Ulster Chess Chronicle

James Alexander Porterfield Rynd first became Irish chess champion when winning the national tournament at the 1865 Dublin Chess Congress. He lost the title in 1886 when he did not compete in the 1886 Irish Chess Association Congress in Belfast, but regained it at the 1892 Hibernian Chess Congress in Dublin. He finally lost it for good in 1913 when losing a match to the Ulster player and eventually nine-time Irish champion John O'Hanlon. For many years Rynd had a chess column in the Dublin Saturday Herald. He wrote an entertaining story for his chess column of 5th January 1901 about the off-hand game given below which may well be the last Irish chess game of the 19th century. Incidentally the reader will see that the 20th century only had 99 years in it due to our premature (?) millennium celebrations.

The last of the night - of the year - aye of the century! How did it pass? That's a question to which many an interesting answer might be given according to the individuals addressed.

Let us see, for instance, how it passed at the D. B. C. chess room, St. Stephen's Green.

Towards closing time it seemed difficult to get the good folk to separate. Apparently they felt they were all more or less taking part in some important ceremony. The centuries were getting out of their teens, and therefore the befitting mood was neither that of skittish mirthfulness, nor that of mock solemnity. It was simply a time for sensible congratulation. Of course, there were still present some of the irrepressible punsters and joke-crackers who have done so much lately to adulterate true chess. There was one who asked, "Why is the new century the twentieth?" - and chuckled when he had to tell - "Because 19 and 1 (1901) make 20." These untimely jests, however, soon ceased when it was observed that two of the sterner warriors were engaged in

The command of the white forces was wielded by a once-practised hand that has not yet lost all its cunning: while that of the black pieces found exposition from undoubtedly Dublin's most improved rising young player - a quiet, unassuming, clever player - whose physique (enabling him to operate most successfully as a stalwart forward on the football field) placidly affords any amount of sustenance for the requisite intellectual strain of chess.

The preliminary moves:-

brought about a position of extraordinary interest, in which black is presented with the option of having white's queen or king's rook

Black's feeling either course fraught with danger thought it as well to bag the larger "game" as the smaller, and so proceeded:-

Now came the most exciting finish. White played

(threatening Ne7+) to which black replied

but was much surprised to find himself then subjected to a forced mate in seven moves!

The modus operandi is

Subsequent analysis proved that after the 13th move nothing could be done to further protract the game. After 15.Bxf6 white's threat of gxh7mate or (if hxg6) Rh8mate! cannot be long baffled.

Was it not a mysterious working of fate, which thus decreed that the departure of the 19th century at the St Stephen's Green D. B. C. be thus brilliantly illuminated?

Here ends Rynd's story. But had fate received a helping hand? The game seemed vaguely familiar. My attention was drawn to the "wasted" move 6.Bd2 and I started looking for the game with colours reversed and this is what I found.

In Catastrophe in the Opening by Iakov Neishtadt (Pergamon, 1980) the following game is given.

In his annotation on Black's eighth move Neistadt comments: "A daring, but absolutely correct attack, which first occurred in the game Dubois - Steinitz (1862)" and indicates that Chigorin was following an analysis by Steinitz.

As revealed on pages 200-202 of Chess Explorations by Edward Winter (Cadogan, 1996) there is some doubt as to whether Dubois played 22.Qe1 or 22.Qe2. The article also deals with some of the history of the variation and analysis of the respective positions after the alternative queen moves.

Possibly the earliest analysis of this opening variation was in an article by Löwenthal, published on pages 161-165 of the 1869 Chess Player's Quarterly Chronicle. One line given was 12 Qd2 Nd4 13 Nc3 and "Black can obviously force mate in a few moves". Steinitz also analysed this variation at pages 40-43 of The Modern Chess Instructor Part 2, Section 1 (1895), though perhaps he had published analysis of it before then also.

This sacrificial line has obviously been played many times (and with colours reversed) since the Knorre - Chigorin game. Yudovich's 1985 book "Mikhail Chigorin" gives the Knorre game at pages 14-16 and in his introduction Yudovich says that the game was first published only in 1900 in the chess journal "Niva" with a introduction by Chigorin. [In fact the game had first been published in Schakmatni Listock 1877 Number 2-3, pages 59-60.] He goes on to quote Chigorin as saying in that introduction that sometimes chess games repeat themselves from the first to the last move, that Chigorin had happened to play the Knorre game four times and that the moves of it still occurred often in amateur games.

So after our historical diversion what conclusions might we be able to draw about our off-hand game played on the last night of the 19th century? Would not as strong a player as Rynd know of the Steinitz/Chigorin variation? An argument against this supposition is that the move order used by Rynd varies slightly from the optimal one used by Chigorin. In favour of foreknowledge is that Rynd was a frequent giver of simultaneous exhibitions. Those attending such exhibitions expected to see brilliant play from the single player and undoubtedly the same trap would work on more than one occasion. Of course, customarily the single player had the white pieces in all the games. Therefore one can imagine Rynd making use of a trap played by Black by inserting a waiting move - in the case of our off-hand game the move 6.Bd2.

The questions that remain are: Did Rynd genuinely have the inspiration to play the variation at the board? Or did he seize an opportunity to create a small piece of history with a pet variation he made use of in simultaneous displays? Or finally did he concoct the whole event with OW in order to give the new century revellers something to remember and talk about in the future.