The Charousek Combination

Rudolf Charousek was still a law student in his early twenties, largely unknown outside Hungary, when he played this casual game against a much weaker opponent, Jakob Wollner, in his home town of Kassa (now Kosice) in 1893. Within a few years Charousek would be considered a genuine rival to the world's best, before tuberculosis killed him at only twenty six, and games like this one are a large part of why his reputation still stands.

The game is a Danish Gambit, an opening that offers two pawns for fast development, and Wollner accepts the challenge without finding an accurate defence. Charousek builds a mating attack around the black king with a sequence of forcing moves, and the finish is a small miracle of geometry: 17.Qe8+ Rxe8 18.fxe8=Q+ Bxe8 19.Bxd6 is checkmate, delivered by a bishop that has done almost nothing all game, arriving on the only square that both gives check and cuts off every flight square left to the black king.

For a club player the value is in seeing how a two pawn gambit investment can be converted into a mating attack against a king that never quite reaches safety. It is also a reminder that a quiet-looking bishop move is sometimes the most dangerous one on the board.