Winner's POV: London 1884 Handicap
In Winner's POV, we take a look at tournaments from the 19th century and see the games that allowed the top player to prevail. Some tournaments will be known and famous, others will be more obscure - in a time period where competition is scarce, I believe there is some value in digging for hidden gems in the form of smaller, less known events.
London 1884: The Last Handicap Tournament of the Series
The time between the 1883 and 1885 German Chess Federation tournaments is a bit of an awkward one as far as this series is concerned. The intersection between "tournaments that are worth looking at" and "tournaments with the majority of games surviving" is basically empty. On top of the lack of well-documented competition, 1884 was the year the world finally lost Paul Morphy for good. Things aren't great, folks, I'll be honest.
In my attempt to show one tournament per year until the end of the century, I decided to showcase this handicap tournament played in the Spring/Summer months of 1884. It's been 22 years since we've done a handicap tournament (see here), and this time we'll actually take a look at many more odds games, giving us a much better look at this chess variant.
Format and Prizes
With 20 total entrants, the field was divided into two groups of 10, who each played a round robin within themselves. The winner of each group played a first-to-two match for the top two prizes, and the runners-up in both groups did the same for the next two. The time control was optional, but if both players consented, it was 20 moves per hour.
For giving odds, the players were divided into five classes. If the players are in the same class, there are no odds; if there's a difference of one class, the stronger player gives pawn-and-move odds; if there's a difference of two, pawn-and-two odds; three, Knight odds; four, Rook odds (see the above link for a more detailed explanation of giving odds).
The prize amounts were based primarily on entrance fees, with the top four prizes being as follows: £8 8s, £5 5s, £3 3s, £2 2s. The entrance fees were about 10s per person, so this was still a reasonable payoff, despite the actual amount being rather low (but not bad for a not-master tournament).
Players
The players being organized into classes gives us a very straightforward look into who the best players are. The top two names are probably not a surprise regardless.
The top two names in the second group should also not be a surprise. I'm not super sure the exact methodology used to put players in the classes, but it's interesting to note that there's no class 4 player in this group.
Since there are two groups, it makes sense to take a look at each of them individually to start. Thus, let's explore what games we can of the London 1884 handicap tournament from the Winner(s)'s POV(s).
The Group A Winner: Antony Guest
This was apparently Guest's first ever important-ish documented event, so welcome Guest into our little historical tour. His future events seem to mostly be either amateur tournaments or events within the British Chess Club, so subsequent appearances will be limited. But let's take a look at what we can, yeah?
Since the players were at their leisure to play at their own pace, and since dates aren't available for every game, I'm scrapping the concept of rounds and showing off games in whatever order I want. Let's start with the only game played at Knight odds, which Guest gave to "Keough." The only commentary I want to give is that I find it interesting that Guest played without his King's Knight; I've previously only seen games without the Queen's Knight, but I'm certainly not an expert in this particular subfield.
Next up is the only surviving game where Guest gave pawn-and-move odds, against the future British Chess Federation President John Thursby. This game was very back and forth, with Thursby's attack proving to be incorrect, but Guest's refutation not being super precise. The resulting endgame should have been drawn, but a last-minute blunder changed all of that.
Finally, we have the one surviving game Guest played at no odds. It was a Scotch game against Alfred Hirsch, who was also primarily a British Chess Club match player in future events. I found this game very weird, however, especially the business at move 23. It's pretty lightly commented, so I'll let you make your own conclusions.
Alright, with the fluff out of the way, let's discuss the real important members of this group.
vs. Joseph Blackburne
This game showed off the competing characteristics of an odds game quite well. Black, as a consequence of having no f-pawn, has essentially two main options: completely concede the center (as Qh5+ picks up whatever pawn is played), or go into some Advance French-esque opening with no freeing f7-f6 break available. Blackburne chose the former in this game, using the first two moves favoured by Andre Philidor himself a century prior.
Guest had a very strong early initiative that he turned into a Kingside attack, but Blackburne's 12th move won him a pawn for his troubles. The resulting endgame was still much better for White, but with Blackburne being (at least from my point of view) the best endgame player in the world, it wasn't an insurmountable obstacle. Indeed, despite Guest's best efforts and apparent progress, his falter on move 40 allowed Blackburne to simplify into a theoretically drawn endgame (and as this isn't Titled Tuesday, Guest didn't try to win R+N vs. R).
vs. Isidor Gunsberg
Guest's approach to this game was much different, as his setup gave him no initiative, and Gunsberg took this opportunity to get very active pieces in exchange for a White passed pawn. This worked quite well, as future attempts to set up an attack were swiftly refuted by the master player, and pieces slowly left the board as the players got closer to the endgame. Guest's 33rd move is the real turning point of the game, with Gunsberg regaining his pawn and transitioning into a balanced endgame.
This time it was Guest's turn to hold the balance, and while his play was far from perfect, so was Gunsberg's. Move 43 was the last chance Gunsberg had to play for an advantage, but when he let his own King retreat too far, he had no chance. The endgame was drawn without much drama, which is a very good result for Guest, all things considered.
The real drama within this group occurred primarily outside of Guest's games. Blackburne and Gunsberg drew their game, and their ultimate downfall in the group occurred at the hands of the same player: William Mundell, whose biggest achievement up to this point was scoring 15/25 at the Vizayanagaram tournament the year prior (see here). While both games were very back-and-forth, hopefully it's not too controversial to say that Gunsberg "deserved" to win his game (until he didn't, of course).
Blackburne withdrew from the playoff for second due to illness, so Gunsberg was officially the runner up for this group.
The Group B Winner: James Mason
There are fewer games available for this group, as well as much less drama, so let's get this over with.
Our first game is a very convincing win against the Dutch-English master Rudolf Loman. Nothing in this game seemed to go well for Loman; his Kingside attack didn't go anywhere, his Queenside attack didn't go anywhere, then he got checkmated. I've been there.
Next up is the win over group B's eventual runner-up, Wordsworth Donisthorpe. This game was much more difficult for Mason, who had to manually walk his King over to b8 in order to avoid danger, falling far behind in development and trapping his Rook permanently in the corner. He defended well, however, and it will be seen that Donisthorpe couldn't find the right way to put the game away. His 24th move in particular was very speculative, and while it might have paid off if it worked, it didn't.
The resulting endgame saw White with three pawns to Black's Bishop, and slowly but surely, the pawns fell. There were a couple of moments where Donisthorpe might have been able to set up a drawing construction, but once the odds-giver is no longer set back, the results usually tend to go as expected. This game is no exception.
Finally, we have the one game that prevented Mason's clean sweep of the group, which was a draw against George Hooke. This was a wildly different game than anything we've seen before, as the pawn structure was locked basically throughout, and both players searched for small cracks with their pieces. Nothing really came about, and the endgame was such that the first pawns weren't traded until move 49.
The endgame was complex, and it featured more mistakes than Mason usually makes (which is to be expected when he's playing for the win while being a pawn down). Thankfully for him, Hooke made a few mistakes of his own, including one that permanently threw away the win on move 74. While this win was the only blemish on Mason's record, it could have been much worse (not that it would've impacted the final standings).
Donisthorpe, as mentioned, was runner-up in this group. He and Gunsberg ended up splitting their prizes, and with the game not being recorded, I couldn't show it even if I wanted to.
With that, all that's left to do is cover the playoff between Guest and Mason. The first person to win two games wins the tournament, so let's dive in.
Game 1
Guest received pawn-and-move odds throughout this playoff, and this game was him taking full advantage. A careless move on Mason's 8th caused him to drop his h-pawn, and from there, Guest never let off the gas. He castled Queenside, threw his h- and g-pawns at the Black King, and never gave Mason any chance to really play this game. This is easily the biggest blowout of the entire tournament (of the games I looked at, anyway).
Game 2
Guest's opening experiments continued in this game (while there wasn't as much in the way of "theory" for odds chess, starting with anything other than e4 was uncommon), though this time it was much less successful. He once again tried to throw his Kingside pawns at Mason's King, but this time, the attack was nowhere near as potent. Mason found the right defensive moves, and he forced Guest to make an important decision right at move 20 - as is often the case, he made the wrong one. As if out of nowhere, the initiative switched, and Mason was the one doing the attacking on the Queenside. It's actually quite amusing how quickly things turned around, evening up the score with one more win required to take it all.
Game 3
Guest's strategy for this final, all-important game was very different from before, as his play looked timid as early as move three. He didn't seek any sort of serious attack, rather he favoured trades and getting an endgame where he wouldn't be worse. That's a pretty easy thing to achieve in this format, and before 20 moves had been made, the players were playing a pure Rook endgame.
While Guest was able to hold his endgame against Gunsberg and push Blackburne to his limit, he was really no match for Mason in this one. After Guest's 28th move dropped a pawn, the resulting endgame was still objectively equal, but now we were in Mason's house. The absolute ease with which he converted the endgame is quite impressive, and it firmly showed why he deserved to win this tournament.
Conclusion
I'm probably never going to make another post on a handicap tournament, but I hope you all enjoyed this somewhat different type of entry. We're back to our regularly scheduled content starting with the next chapter, and if all goes well, it won't take me three months to publish the stupid thing.
Cheers
