Monday, April 29, 2019

Eric Andersen Revisited

     “You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5 and the path leading out I only wide enough for one.” (Mikhail Tal) 
     As astute reader “Cribb” pointed out, my post on Eric Andersen on February 4th contained a faux pas on my part in which I described one game and posted another one, a loss no less! 
     After playing over several of Andersen’s games the one I had decided to post (given below) was hardly one of his “best,” but it was an exciting one. Chessgames.com had a discussion of it in which one reader thought it was a great game with a masterful finish worthy of a puzzle of the day. Another disagreed, pointing out that based on engine analysis, it was a comedy of errors.
     It doesn’t matter. If one is looking for perfection, one can play over the games of modern day correspondence champions with their engine assisted near perfect games. If one is looking for spill and thrills, play over games like Andersen’s win over Wagner in the following game! 
     Andersen’s sacrifice was unsound in that it should have resulted in no more than equality and at move 30 black missed the winning line. Then on the very next move, he resigned in a position in which Andersen had no more than a perpetual check! 
     OK, so the game was far from perfect and black got lead into the forest where 2+2 actually did equal 4; the path leading out was wide enough for two, but it was too dark for the players to discern it!
     Heinrich Wagner (August 9, 1888 – June 24, 1959) was a German player. He was awarded the IM title because of his 3rd= placing with Akiba Rubinstein after Efim Bogoljubov and Aron Nimzowitsch at Breslau in 1925. He also played on the German Olympiad teams of 1927, 1928, 1930 and 1931, but retired from chess when the Nazis came to power. 

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