Thursday, May 21, 2015

Santasiere vs. Rasmussen


    While browsing the aforementioned Brooklyn Daily Eagle I ran across the following game played in the 1925 Metropolitan League Match between Anthony Sanatsiere (Marshall CC) against Charles Rasmussen (Staten Island CC). A comment was made in the article that Santasiere hoped to win a brilliancy prize with the game, but a careful analysis shows that his brilliancy was actually unsound because instead of keeping his winning advantage, his sacrifice should have lead to a draw at best. 
     Brilliancy prizes haven't been offered in a long time. Chess, as it's played today, is different; swashbuckling play belongs to the distant days of yesteryear. Besides, now anybody with an engine can tell instantly if a sacrifice is sound or not. Still, to me, something says Santasiere deserved a brilliancy prize for this game simply because of the concept plus he had the guts to play it even though he couldn't have analyzed it all out. Who cares if it was unsound?  It's fun to play over which is why most of us play chess anyway.
 

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