You've Never Seen This Brilliant Chess Game - Best of the 1900s - Toupalik vs. Ort, 1907
My favorite thing in chess is discovering a new brilliant game or combination that I've never seen before. Chess is infinite, and there are ALWAYS fresh patterns and majestic ideas being discovered.
Today's blog features an utterly brilliant game that is not at all new. In fact, it is over 100 years old - a correspondence game between two players with almost no recorded games to their name. One of the victor's (Toupalik) other recorded games is a victory against the master Rudolf Spielmann, so he was clearly no slouch.
The game opens with a Petroff Defense and follows fairly modern theory until Toupalik gambles and tries to catch Ort's king in the center. Castling at the first opportunity would have leveled the game, but Ort delayed and gets greedy, targeting a proffered rook on a1. Toupalik's incredible rejoinder with 17.Bg5!! and 19.Rxc7!! proves a winning and instructive attack, but the most complicated winning line after 20...Qc6 with 23.b4!! and 24.b5!! has to be seen to be believed.
Top 10 Games of the 1900s
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- #6: Toupalik vs. Ort, 1907
- #7: Marshall vs. Capablanca, 1909
- #8: Janowski vs. Tarrasch, 1905
- #9: Krejcik vs. Krobst, 1908
- #10: Chigorin vs. Mortimer, 1900
- See also: Top 10 of the 1910s, Top 10 of the 1920s, Top 10 of the 1930s, Top 10 of the 1940s, Top 10 of the 1950s, Top 10 of the 1960s, Top 10 of the 1970s, Top 10 of the 1980s, Top 10 of the 1990s, Top 10 of the 2000s, and Top 10 of the 2010s
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I'm the Head of Community for Chess.com. I earned the National Master title in 2012, and in 2014, I returned to my home state of South Carolina to start Strategery: Chess and Games. In late 2015, I began working for Chess.com and haven't looked back since.
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