Anderssen's Queen Sacrifice 22.Qf6+ — The Immortal Game 1851

London, 1851: A Game Between Rounds

The summer of 1851 was the moment organised chess began. Howard Staunton, then the most influential figure in English chess, had arranged the first international tournament in history, timed to coincide with the Great Exhibition in London. Adolf Anderssen, a mathematics teacher from Breslau, arrived as a respected but not yet feared master. Lionel Kieseritzky, a Livonian-born professional based at the Cafe de la Regence in Paris, was among the strongest players in Europe.

The game that made both men immortal was not a tournament game at all. It was an offhand encounter, played for pleasure at Simpson's Grand Divan in the Strand while the tournament was in progress. Kieseritzky had actually beaten Anderssen in casual play before, and nothing about the setting suggested history was about to be made. That informality matters: freed from tournament stakes, both players gave full rein to the attacking style of the Romantic era, in which gambits were accepted as a point of honour and defence was considered faintly disreputable. The broader story of that era is told in our guide to chess history.

The Build-Up: A King's Gambit Without Brakes

The game opened 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4, the Bishop's Gambit, and within a handful of moves both kings had surrendered the right to castle. Kieseritzky harassed the white king with his queen; Anderssen responded not by defending but by accelerating. With 11.Rg1 he simply left his bishop on b5 to be taken, judging that open lines and time were worth more than a piece. After 11...cxb5 12.h4 his pawns began hunting the black queen across the kingside, gaining tempo after tempo.

By move 18 Anderssen was ready for the conception that defines the game. 18.Bd6 placed a bishop where it attacked nothing and could be ignored, but it offered both white rooks. Kieseritzky took the first with 18...Bxg1 and, after 19.e5 cut the black queen off from the defence of g7, took the second with 19...Qxa1+ 20.Ke2. Black now stood a queen, a bishop and a rook's worth of material ahead, yet every black piece except the queen sat passively on its original square. It remains the canonical demonstration that development and initiative can outweigh almost any amount of material, a theme explored further in our guide to chess strategy.

The Move: 22.Qf6+

After 20...Na6, defending the c7 square against the threatened mate, Anderssen played 21.Nxg7+ Kd8 and then the move this page exists to document: 22.Qf6+. The white queen, the strongest piece on the board and the only major piece Anderssen had left, was placed directly en prise on a square where the knight on g8 had to capture it. There was no alternative. 22...Nxf6 was forced, and it is the forcing nature of the move that makes it so clean: this is not a speculative offer but a calculated deflection, dragging the one black piece that guarded the critical dark squares onto a square where it obstructs its own king.

With the queen gone, 23.Be7# followed. It is the purest example of the sacrificial deflection in the entire literature of chess tactics: the queen gives itself up not for material, not for perpetual check, but to spend Black's only useful defender and clear the e7 square for mate.

The Mate: Three Minor Pieces Against an Army

The final position deserves close reading. The bishop on e7 delivers check, protected by the knight on d5. The black king on d8 cannot capture it, cannot go to c7, which the d5 knight also covers, and cannot reach e8, which is controlled by the knight on g7. Black's own pieces complete the cage: the pawn on d7 and the untouched bishop on c8 seal the remaining flight squares.

Meanwhile Kieseritzky's army stood almost intact. He had his queen on a1, both rooks still on a8 and h8, a bishop and a knight. Anderssen mated him with two knights and a bishop, having sacrificed a bishop, both rooks and the queen, and having captured only three pawns all game. The game never came close to an ending; for contrast, the patient science of chess endgames belongs to a later and very different era of the game.

Aftermath and the Naming of an Immortal

Kieseritzky knew at once what he had witnessed. He sent the game to Paris, where it appeared in the journal La Regence in July 1851, and within months it had circulated across the chess press of Europe. The name arrived four years later, when the Austrian master Ernst Falkbeer published an analysis in 1855 describing it as an immortal partie. The label never came off.

Honesty requires a caveat. The earliest score, deriving from Kieseritzky, breaks off around move 20, and the concluding mate may have been demonstrated in analysis rather than played out on the board. The combination itself is sound and forced either way. Anderssen went on to win the London 1851 tournament, defeating Staunton himself in the knockout, and was recognised as the world's leading player decades before the formal World Chess Championships began in 1886. Anderssen and Kieseritzky both feature in our survey of famous chess players.

Legacy: The Standard Against Which Sacrifices Are Measured

No single move in chess is quoted more often than 22.Qf6+. It became the archetype of the Romantic sacrifice, the game every annotator reaches for when explaining what attacking chess looked like before Steinitz taught the world to defend. When Anderssen produced another masterpiece against Dufresne the following year, it was promptly christened the Evergreen Game, a deliberate echo; both sit at the head of any collection of famous chess games.

The Immortal Game has been quoted in films, restaged with living pieces, and analysed by every generation of engines, which confirm that Black could have defended better earlier but that the final combination is flawless. Played in the same city and the same summer in which the Staunton chess set was establishing itself as the equipment of serious play, it stands as the founding legend of modern chess: proof that the game could produce works of art, and that London in 1851 was where the modern chess world began.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Why is Anderssen vs Kieseritzky called the Immortal Game?

The name comes from the Austrian master Ernst Falkbeer, who published an admiring analysis of the game in 1855 and described it as an immortal partie. The label stuck because the finish embodies everything the Romantic era prized in chess: total contempt for material, an unbroken sequence of forcing moves, and a checkmate delivered by the smallest possible force. Anderssen gave up a bishop, both rooks and finally his queen, yet mated with two knights and a single bishop while Kieseritzky still had his queen, both rooks and a bishop on the board. No other game so cleanly captures the attacking ideal of its age, which is why it has been reprinted, annotated and celebrated continuously for more than 170 years.

Q: What exactly did Anderssen sacrifice in the Immortal Game?

Anderssen sacrificed four pieces. First he abandoned his bishop on b5 with 11.Rg1, allowing 11...cxb5, preferring open lines to material. Then 18.Bd6 offered both rooks: Kieseritzky took the first with 18...Bxg1 and the second with 19...Qxa1+, dragging his queen to a corner square from which it never returned to the defence. Finally came the queen itself with 22.Qf6+, a move Black was forced to accept by 22...Nxf6. In total Anderssen invested a bishop, both rooks and his queen, and in return captured only three pawns during the entire game. The mate on move 23 was delivered by two knights and a bishop, one of the most lopsided material balances ever seen in a decisive finish.

Q: Was the Immortal Game played in the London 1851 tournament itself?

No. It was a casual game, played on 21 June 1851 at Simpson's Grand Divan in the Strand while the first international tournament was taking place in London. Howard Staunton had organised that tournament to coincide with the Great Exhibition, and Anderssen travelled from Breslau to compete, going on to win the event and with it recognition as the strongest player in the world. The game with Kieseritzky was an offhand encounter between rounds, played for pleasure rather than for a prize. Kieseritzky was so struck by the combination that he sent the moves to his club in Paris, and the game was published in the journal La Regence in July 1851, spreading its fame across Europe within weeks.

Q: Is the ending of the Immortal Game historically disputed?

Mildly, yes, and honest accounts say so. The earliest published score, which derives from Kieseritzky himself, breaks off around move 20, and some contemporary evidence suggests the game ended at that point with the win conceded or the mate demonstrated rather than played out move by move on the board. The concluding sequence 21.Nxg7+ Kd8 22.Qf6+ Nxf6 23.Be7# is sound and forced, and it is the finish given in virtually every collection since the nineteenth century, but it may have been shown in analysis rather than executed at the table. There is also scholarly debate over minor move-order details earlier in the game. None of this affects the combination itself, which stands regardless of exactly when Kieseritzky stopped play.