A Game Lost In History
The 1886 London International Chess Tournament played host to some of the greatest players of its day and left us with many interesting games to analyze over the years. One participant of interest was an up and coming American chess player by the name of Samuel Lipschutz, who had the seemingly unfortunate luck of having to face the legendary Johannes Zukertort in the second round on the Black side of the board.
Lipschutz had never participated in an international tournament up to this time and his only true experience against a player of this caliber was in a match that same year against fellow American, George Henry Mackenzie (losing +3, -5, =5).
Earlier in 1886, Zukertort had lost the historical match to determine the first official world chess champion against Wilhelm Steinitz (+5, -10, =5). The strain of the match was said to have taken a toll on his health, but he was still considered one of the very best players in the world and had been competing at the highest possible level of chess since 1862.
My lone source for this game was from the July 14th, 1886 edition of the New York Times and the moves were published in English descriptive notation. Some of the moves published in this article were translated incorrectly into moves that would have been quite impossible. I played through the game myself several times and worked through what I thought to be the correct moves, eventually analyzing the game with both the Chessmaster and Fritz chess engines. Of particular note were the following discrepancies:
NY Times: 15…Na5 My Analysis: 15…Ne5
NY Times: 36. Bc4 (which is already on that square) My Analysis: 36. Rf4 (i.e. R to B4, as opposed to B to B4)
The actual game notes from the NY Times are shown below, as well as the interface to play through this particular game. Please feel free to analyze and comment on any of my mistakes or perceived errors from the actual newspaper article.









