Hastings 1895: A Deposed Champion with Something to Prove
Hastings 1895 was the strongest tournament the world had yet seen. Twenty-two masters gathered on the English coast, among them the reigning world champion Emanuel Lasker, the Russian challenger Mikhail Chigorin, and the man Lasker had dethroned only the year before: Wilhelm Steinitz. The first official world champion was 59 years old, in poor health, and widely written off. The event would be famously won by the young American outsider Harry Nelson Pillsbury, but its single most celebrated game belonged to the old man.
Steinitz's opponent in round ten was Curt von Bardeleben, a German master of aristocratic bearing and genuine strength who had begun the tournament impressively, defeating Lasker himself earlier in the event. Steinitz had spent two decades arguing that chess was a science, that attacks must be earned through accumulated small advantages rather than conjured from nothing. The game he now produced was the perfect exhibit for the theory: a quiet opening, a patient build-up, and then a combination of almost supernatural precision. It remains a fixture in every collection of famous chess games.
A Quiet Giuoco Piano Turns Lethal
The opening was a Giuoco Piano, the oldest of openings: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Nc3 d5 8.exd5 Nxd5. Pieces came off, the position simplified, and von Bardeleben might reasonably have expected a long positional grind. Steinitz instead noticed the one flaw in Black's camp: a king stranded in the centre, unable to castle after 13.Bxe7 Nxe7 14.Re1 f6 left the e-file half open and the e7 knight pinned to its post.
What followed was a model of Steinitzian chess strategy. He doubled on the central files, and with 17.d5! he gave up a pawn to rip open the position before Black could connect his rooks. After 17...cxd5 18.Nd4 Kf7 19.Ne6 Rhc8 20.Qg4 g6 21.Ng5+ Ke8, every white piece pointed at the black king. The black queen on d7, the knight on e7 and the rook on c8 were tied to one another in a chain of mutual defence. Steinitz had spotted that the whole chain could be broken at its strongest link.
22.Rxe7+: The Rook That Could Not Be Taken
22.Rxe7+!! The rook lands on a square defended by both the king and the queen, and yet neither can take it. If 22...Qxe7, then 23.Rxc8+ wins decisive material, since the recapture 23...Rxc8 24.Qxc8+ collects the queen behind it. If 22...Kxe7, then 23.Re1+ drags the king into the open, and 23...Kd6 24.Qb4+ Kc7 25.Ne6+ forks king and queen. Von Bardeleben found the only move, 22...Kf8, and now came the truly astonishing part.
Steinitz played 23.Rf7+ Kg8 24.Rg7+ Kh8 25.Rxh7+. For four consecutive moves the white rook sat en prise to the black king, and behind it the white queen on g4 and the rook on c1 also hung. Black, for his part, threatened Rxc8 exchanges and above all Rxc1+ with a back rank mate against White's own king. Nothing could be captured: every black capture lost by force, and every white check had to be exact, because a single quiet move would have allowed Black to mate first. Students of chess tactics still use the position as the definitive example of mutual hanging pieces held in equilibrium by calculation alone.
The Empty Chair: Von Bardeleben Walks Out
After 25.Rxh7+ von Bardeleben did not resign, and he did not play on. He stood up, left the playing hall without a word, and never returned to the board. His clock ticked down to zero and the game was scored as a loss on time. Contemporary reports suggest he found the prospect of being mated in front of the Hastings spectators intolerable; whatever the motive, the walkout was judged harshly then and has coloured his reputation ever since. Von Bardeleben remains one of the more melancholy figures among famous chess players, and his death in 1924, falling from a window in Berlin, is often said to have informed Nabokov's novel The Luzhin Defense.
Steinitz's response to the empty chair became part of the legend. Rather than simply accept the point, he remained at the board and demonstrated to the audience the full forced win he had calculated: 25...Kg8 26.Rg7+ Kh8 27.Qh4+ Kxg7 28.Qh7+ Kf8 29.Qh8+ Ke7 30.Qg7+ Ke8 31.Qg8+ Ke7 32.Qf7+ Kd8 33.Qf8+ Qe8 34.Nf7+ Kd7 35.Qd6 mate. Ten moves, every one a check, every one forced.
Why the Combination Still Astonishes
The depth of the calculation is what separates this game from other brilliancies of its era. Steinitz had to see, before playing 22.Rxe7+, that the rook would survive untouched along the entire seventh rank, that the perpetual chain of checks existed, and that it ended in mate rather than repetition. One slip, one non-checking move, and Rxc1+ would have turned the tables completely. Romantic-era sacrifices were often speculative; this one was exhaustively verified ten moves deep by a man who had spent his career preaching against speculation.
There is an irony in that, and Steinitz knew it. The father of positional play, the theorist who had ended the era of reckless gambits chronicled elsewhere in chess history, produced one of the most violent attacking games ever recorded. His own teaching resolves the paradox: the attack was justified because the advantage had been accumulated first. The game won the Hastings brilliancy prize, and it is the achievement most often cited when Steinitz's reign over the early World Chess Championships is assessed.
Legacy of a Single Move
22.Rxe7+ has appeared in virtually every anthology of great chess moves published since. Kasparov analysed the game in On My Great Predecessors; generations of coaches have set the position after move 21 in front of students and asked them to find what Steinitz found. The combination is a standard classroom text for themes of the exposed king, deflection, the back rank, and the discipline of checking sequences, and its final phase is a bridge into the precise calculation demanded by chess endgames.
It also fixed the image of Steinitz for posterity. He won no more world titles and died in poverty in 1900, but at Hastings, one year after losing his crown, he proved that his science could produce art. The game was played, as all serious games of the period were, with Staunton pattern pieces: the design registered in 1849 and manufactured by Jaques of London, named for Howard Staunton, which by 1895 had long been the universal equipment of master chess. The pieces von Bardeleben abandoned on that August afternoon would be instantly recognisable to any player today.
Jaques of London — Making Chess Sets Since 1849
By 1895, the Staunton chess set created by Jaques of London in 1849 was the universal standard for serious play, and the boards at Hastings carried exactly those pieces. Steinitz, von Bardeleben, Lasker and Pillsbury all fought their games on the pattern first turned in the Jaques workshop. The same design, from the same maker, is still in production today.
Shop Staunton Chess Sets →Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Why could Black not simply capture the rook after 22.Rxe7+?
Both captures lose by force, which is the heart of the combination. If 22...Qxe7, then 23.Rxc8+ wins material: the rook takes with check, and after 23...Rxc8 24.Qxc8+ the black queen falls next, since 24...Qd8 25.Qxd8 is hopeless. If instead 22...Kxe7, White plays 23.Re1+ and the king is dragged into the open: 23...Kd6 24.Qb4+ Kc7 25.Ne6+ forks king and queen, while 23...Kd8 24.Ne6+ does the same. Von Bardeleben therefore played 22...Kf8, sidestepping both traps, but that allowed 23.Rf7+, and the rook continued its charmed life along the seventh rank, immune for the same tactical reasons at every step.
Q: Why did von Bardeleben leave the hall instead of resigning?
After 25.Rxh7+, von Bardeleben stood up from the board, left the playing hall, and did not come back. His clock ran down and the game was forfeited on time, depriving Steinitz of the satisfaction of a resignation or a delivered mate. Contemporary accounts suggest von Bardeleben, an aristocratic and famously sensitive man, could not bear to sit through the public execution of his position in front of the Hastings spectators. Walking out was widely seen as poor sportsmanship, and the episode followed his reputation for the rest of his career. Steinitz responded in his own fashion: he stayed at the board and demonstrated the full forced mate to the audience.
Q: What was the forced mate in ten that Steinitz demonstrated?
From the final position after 25.Rxh7+, Steinitz showed the spectators the complete winning line: 25...Kg8 26.Rg7+ Kh8 27.Qh4+ Kxg7 28.Qh7+ Kf8 29.Qh8+ Ke7 30.Qg7+ Ke8 31.Qg8+ Ke7 32.Qf7+ Kd8 33.Qf8+ Qe8 34.Nf7+ Kd7 35.Qd6 mate. The sequence is remarkable because White must keep checking without pause: any quiet move allows Black to play Rxc1+ followed by a back rank mate against White's own king. Only when the king is finally driven to d7 and the knight joins the attack from f7 does the white queen deliver mate. The line confirmed that 22.Rxe7+ had been sound all along, calculated to the very end.
Q: Did Steinitz win a prize for this game, and what opening was it?
Yes. The game won the brilliancy prize at Hastings 1895, one of the strongest tournaments of the nineteenth century, and it is routinely reprinted in anthologies of the greatest games ever played. The opening was a Giuoco Piano, the old Italian Game, beginning 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4. Steinitz handled it in his characteristic scientific style, building a small structural edge before releasing the central break 17.d5. The tournament itself was won by the young American Harry Nelson Pillsbury, ahead of Chigorin, Lasker and Steinitz, but Steinitz's single game against von Bardeleben has outlived almost everything else played there.