The Immortal Game

Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky sat down for an offhand game at Simpson's Divan on the Strand on 21 June 1851, during a break in the first great international tournament. Neither man was defending a title or a prize purse. Kieseritzky, a Baltic German mathematician turned professional chess player who taught and wrote about the game in Paris, had a reputation as one of the sharpest King's Gambit players in Europe, and Anderssen obliged him with 1.e4 e5 2.f4.

What followed became the most quoted attacking game in chess history. Anderssen gives up a bishop, both rooks and his queen, keeping only three minor pieces and a pawn on the board by the final move, and still delivers checkmate. The point is not material but tempo: every white piece that stays on the board is doing useful work, while Kieseritzky's queen wanders about picking up pawns that do not matter. The finish, 22.Qf6+ Nxf6 23.Be7 mate, is delivered by a bishop and knight alone against a king with nowhere to run.

Club players usually meet this game as their first example of why material is not everything. Watch how White never stops to defend and never plays a move that fails to threaten something. Kieseritzky himself recorded the moves and published them within weeks in La Regence, the Paris chess magazine he edited, which is how a casual skittles game between tournament rounds became immortal.