Anderssen's 21.Qxd7+ — The Evergreen Queen Sacrifice 1852

Berlin, 1852: A Master and His Pupil

The Evergreen Game was not played for a title or a prize. It was a casual game, contested in Berlin in 1852 between Adolf Anderssen, then the strongest player in the world, and Jean Dufresne, a Berlin journalist, chess author, and Anderssen's own pupil. Anderssen had won the great London tournament of 1851, the first international tournament in chess history, organised by Howard Staunton. That victory, together with his Immortal Game against Kieseritzky the same year, had made him the standard-bearer of the Romantic school: open games, rapid development, and attacks pressed at any material cost.

Dufresne was no pushover. He was a strong master who would later write some of the most widely read chess primers of the nineteenth century. But against Anderssen in this mood, strength was not enough. The game that followed became one of the two pillars of Anderssen's fame, sitting alongside the Immortal Game in every collection of famous chess games ever assembled.

The Evans Gambit and the Road to Move 21

The opening was an Evans Gambit, the quintessential Romantic weapon: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4. White gives up a pawn to seize the centre and open lines for the bishops. Anderssen developed with furious energy, sacrificing further material, while Dufresne grabbed pawns and counterattacked on the queenside and against g2. By move 19 the position was a knife fight. Black's queen and rook were aimed at White's king, and Dufresne threatened mate himself.

Here Anderssen played the move that analysts would argue about for a century: the quiet 19.Rad1, calmly bringing his last piece to the centre while his own king stood under fire. Dufresne replied 19...Qxf3, taking a knight and threatening immediate mate on g2. Anderssen answered 20.Rxe7+ Nxe7, and the stage was set. Everything in White's position now pointed at the Black king on e8: the rook on d1, the bishops on a3 and d3, and a queen ready to give herself up.

21.Qxd7+: The Queen Falls and the Net Closes

21.Qxd7+ is one of the purest queen sacrifices in the literature of chess tactics. The capture is check, so Dufresne had no choice: 21...Kxd7. Then came the point, 22.Bf5+, a double check from the bishop arriving on f5 and the rook already standing on d1. Double check is the most violent mechanism in chess. The king cannot capture both attackers and nothing can block two lines at once, so the king must move.

After 22...Ke8 Anderssen played 23.Bd7+, and now both 23...Kf8 and 23...Kd8 are met by 24.Bxe7 checkmate, the dark-squared bishop travelling the full diagonal from a3 to deliver the final blow. The alternative 22...Kc6 would have allowed 23.Bd7 mate at once. Four moves, every Black reply forced or futile, and a king hunted from e8 into a mating net woven by two bishops and a rook. The geometry is so clean that the finish is still used to teach double check and forced mating sequences in modern courses on chess strategy.

Was It Sound? A Century of Argument

Beauty invited scrutiny. The final combination from move 21 is flawless and forced, but the build-up was questioned almost immediately. Johannes Zukertort, who knew Anderssen personally and later contested the first official world championship match against Steinitz in 1886, published detailed analysis of the game. In the 1890s Paul Lipke subjected 19.Rad1 to deep examination, and Emanuel Lasker, the second holder of the crown contested in the World Chess Championships, argued that Dufresne could have defended better with 19...Rxg2+ and that White's nineteenth move may not have been objectively strongest.

The debate ran for generations and was only settled by computer engines. Modern analysis confirms that Anderssen's attack was sound in the essentials: White stands clearly better in the critical lines, though the win after the best defence is far harder than the game continuation. The most resilient try was 20...Kd8 instead of 20...Nxe7, declining the rook, when White must still find precise moves to convert. Once Dufresne recaptured on e7, the mate was forced and no defence existed.

The Aftermath and the Naming

For Dufresne, defeat became a strange kind of fame. He published and annotated his own loss, and the game appeared in his bestselling instruction manuals, which taught generations of German-speaking players. For Anderssen, the game confirmed what London 1851 had already established: that he was the supreme combinational artist of his age, a standing he held until Paul Morphy's visit to Europe in 1858.

The name arrived later. Wilhelm Steinitz, writing in 1879 after Anderssen's death, described the game as an evergreen in the laurel wreath of the departed German master, a tribute all the more striking because Steinitz had built his reputation arguing against exactly this style of play. The description has sometimes been credited to Zukertort instead, and the attribution remains tangled in the literature, but the sentiment was universal. Among the famous chess players of every later era, from Lasker to Kasparov, the Evergreen has been cited as one of the most beautiful games ever played.

The Legacy of the Evergreen

The Evergreen Game endures because it is a complete argument in miniature. It shows why development matters, why open lines matter, and why material is only one currency among several. The quiet 19.Rad1 followed by the thunderclap of 21.Qxd7+ remains the classic demonstration that the strongest attacking move is sometimes the silent one that loads the gun. Players who study it absorb lessons about coordination and forcing play that no amount of theory on chess endgames or openings can replace.

There is a material footnote too. By 1852 the pieces on serious European boards were changing. The Staunton chess set, registered in 1849 and manufactured by Jaques of London, was spreading rapidly through the clubs and cafés where games like this one were played, replacing the cluttered regional patterns of the previous century. The Evergreen belongs to the first generation of masterpieces created in the era of the standardised board, and it has outlived every fashion in chess since.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is Anderssen vs Dufresne 1852 called the Evergreen Game?

The name comes from the idea that the game's beauty will never fade: it stays green forever. The phrase is most often attributed to Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world champion, who in 1879 described the game as an evergreen in the laurel wreath of the departed Anderssen. Some later writers have credited the description to Johannes Zukertort, who knew Anderssen personally and published extensive analysis of the combination, and the attribution has been muddled in chess literature ever since. Whoever coined it, the name stuck because it captured something true. More than 170 years later the final combination, beginning with 21.Qxd7+, is still printed in nearly every anthology of brilliant games and still astonishes players seeing it for the first time.

Q: What exactly happens after the queen sacrifice 21.Qxd7+?

Black is forced to capture: 21...Kxd7, since the king has no legal square that avoids taking the queen and 21...Kf8 loses at once. Then comes 22.Bf5+, a double check from the bishop on f5 and the rook on d1. Double check is the most forcing move in chess because the king must move, so Black cannot block or capture. After 22...Ke8 White plays 23.Bd7+, and whether Black answers 23...Kf8 or 23...Kd8, the move 24.Bxe7 delivers checkmate. The alternative 22...Kc6 allows the immediate 23.Bd7 mate. Every Black reply is met, every escape square is covered, and the whole sequence runs only four moves from sacrifice to mate. That forced completeness is what makes the combination so admired.

Q: Could Dufresne have defended better before move 21?

Yes, and this question fuelled one of the longest analytical debates in chess history. After Anderssen's quiet preparatory move 19.Rad1, Dufresne played 19...Qxf3, threatening mate on g2 but walking into the combination. Analysts including Paul Lipke and later Emanuel Lasker argued that 19...Rxg2+ or other defences would have given Black serious counterplay, and Lasker even suggested White's nineteenth move was not objectively best. Modern computer engines have largely vindicated Anderssen: White retains a winning or near-winning position with accurate play in the critical lines, though the win is far harder than the game continuation. After 20.Rxe7+ the most stubborn try was 20...Kd8 rather than 20...Nxe7, when White still wins but must find several precise moves. Once 20...Nxe7 appeared on the board, 21.Qxd7+ forced mate by necessity.

Q: Who were Adolf Anderssen and Jean Dufresne?

Adolf Anderssen was a mathematics teacher from Breslau who became the strongest player in the world by winning the great London tournament of 1851, an event organised by Howard Staunton. He is remembered as the supreme attacking artist of the Romantic era, author of both the Immortal Game of 1851 and the Evergreen Game of 1852. Jean Dufresne was a Berlin journalist and chess writer, a pupil of Anderssen and a strong master in his own right. Under the pen name E. S. Freund, and later under his own name, he wrote some of the most popular chess instruction books of the nineteenth century, including the famous Kleines Lehrbuch des Schachspiels. There is a fitting irony in the fact that Dufresne, a great populariser of chess, achieved immortality through a game he lost.