Winner's POV: Nuremberg 1883 Hauptturnier
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.
Nuremberg 1883 Hauptturnier: Tarrasch's Career Begins
The Hauptturnier (translates to "main tournament") was a staple of many German Chess Federation Congresses, with us touching on the first important one back at the Berlin 1881 tournament (see here). This was a tournament open to German natives, and the winner would be considered a master in the eyes of the Federation, receiving an invitation to the next Meisterturnier (or master tournament). Curt von Bardeleben won the previous Hauptturnier, and we'll be seeing him next whenever I get around to working on this Congress's master tournament.
As this tournament was of secondary importance to the master one, not too many games were recorded in the tournament book. As such, we're going to change up the format of this post a little bit so that there's some actual content to show you wonderful readers. But first, the logistics, as usual.
Format and Prizes
The players were divided into three groups, and each group played a single round robin. The top two finishers from each group would move onto the winner's group, where a final round robin would determine the overall winner of the tournament. The time control was 20 moves per hour.
The prizes are semi-conveniently listed in the tournament book:
So the top prize was 300 Marks in cash, with a silver drinking horn apparently worth an additional 60 Marks. Nifty.
Players
A lot of names on there, but I think we can all agree that the one at the very bottom stands out the most. I don't think you need me to tell you who Edo places at the top of the list for this event, do I?
At this point, I would reveal who won the event, and we would begin going through their games; since only four games from this player were recorded in the book, that doesn't sound like much content. So, I think it'd be more interesting if we went through each group and did a mini Winner's POV for each. Sounds good? Then let's begin.
Group A
Group A was won by Wilhelm Bauer and Hermann Neustadtl. As none of the games of the former were recorded (and I'll speculate on why later), we'll be focusing on the latter.
Neustadtl's play in the following two games share a very similar pattern: he gets a better position and is likely winning in the middlegame, the game is traded down into an initially equal endgame, and then he needs a little luck to obtain the desired result. The best players do seem to be lucky pretty often, it seems, and it would be unwise to downplay his ability to construct these positions where it's so easy to blunder away the game.
The most critical game of the tournament came early, with Neustadtl holding a rather comfortable draw against the editor of the Deutsche Schachzeitung, Hermann von Gottschall. That's a pretty common result in the Exchange French featured in this game, but the particular way that Neustadtl denied all hope across this game is quite impressive.
Group B
Group B was won outright by Theodor von Scheve, who did so with uncompromising attacking play. In one of his recorded games from this group, he faced the dubious Dutch and showed off the power of a mobile Bishop pair. His exchange sacrifice, followed by a Knight sacrifice, each allowed him to snap off a Kingside pawn, and his attack crashed through Black's sandcastle of a defence.
von Scheve won five consecutive games in this group, bouncing back after an early loss to the eventual runner-up, Salomon Löwenthal. This game is in stark contrast to the previous, and shows Löwenthal's very different style, which revolves completely around control. Look at how tightly he applied the clamps in this game, completely dominating von Scheve's position as he floundered about without any counterplay. The Kingside attack seemed quite smooth, no doubt due to Löwenthal completely dominating the rest of the board already.
Löwenthal was undefeated like Neustadtl, and we see some of the same luck bless his chess in this game. That does seem to be the only way to describe it, as technique alone shouldn't be enough to draw an endgame down two pawns like this. I suppose it can also be attributed to White's mishandling of the position (which is objectively correct, in all fairness), but given that the winning moves don't seem too complicated, I'd say luck is a reasonable way to describe it.
Group C
Despite this group being won outright by Salomon Rocamora, none of his games were published in the book. Thus, we'll be focusing on some of the earliest games of 21-year-old Siegbert Tarrasch.
When you're going over the games, note that I wrote these notes shortly after finishing my post about the London 1883 tournament (which won Blog of the Month by the way, you should check it out 
part 1 and part 2). I had initially planned on making this post shortly after that one, but life can be funny sometimes.
Tarrasch's games also show a similar pattern as Neustadtl's, insofar as he gets very good middlegame positions, though a lot of the advantage disappears in the endgame. Where they differ, however, is that Tarrasch's endgames are not at all luck; he has a very mature understanding of how to utilize his initiative to put his opponents under pressure, and perhaps is the only 19th century player who knows how to Grind like a Grandmaster (not sponsored).
Winner's Group
Here, I believe, we see the reason why Bauer and Rocamora didn't have any recorded games in the group stage. The important storylines concern the other players, of course, so let's take a look at them instead.
Neustadtl continued his not-losing ways, and was the only player to end the tournament undefeated. However, if the rest of his games were anything like the published game against Rocamora, then it's no surprise that he didn't lose a game. Unfortunately for him, he didn't win enough of them either.
Löwenthal and von Scheve had identical results in this stage, taking advantage of the struggling players at the bottom of the crosstable and scoring wins against them both. In the games published, we see a slight rounding-off and thus an evolution of their respective styles: Löwenthal looked to actively create weaknesses in his opponent's position before attacking them, and von Scheve played actively but was overall quite patient with his winning technique.
The star of the show, of course, was Tarrasch. In the two recorded games, not only did he not have to rely much on his endgame abilities, but he also beat his opponents at their own game, so to speak. The overarching theme in the two games is, as always, don't play the French.
In the very first game, Löwenthal showcased his ambitions by grabbing a pawn early on, resulting in him moving his Queen five times in 14 moves. Tarrasch had more than enough compensation in his Knights dancing around the Kingside, though Löwenthal made threats of his own along the open long diagonal. However, it was clear that Tarrasch was better once he coerced an exchange on e4.
Once Tarrasch had the edge, it's quite amusing to see the difference between the players and their moves. Löwenthal castled Queenside, then immediately ran his King to the other end of the board; Tarrasch took that time to regain his pawn, then worked toward blasting open the Kingside with an impactful f5 break. There's a reason why only one of these players would go on to dominate the chess scene in the next decade.
Against von Scheve, we saw Tarrasch do something we've not yet witnessed up until now: attack. After castling Kingside, Tarrasch thrust forth each of the pawns in front of his King, though it was still with the usual Tarrasch correctness as none of von Scheve's pieces were in any condition to take advantage of the exposed King. This attack was pretty much the dream outcome of any player pushing Kingside pawns, as his f-pawn paved the way for Tarrasch to win his opponent's h-pawn and shatter the King's safety. As icing on the cake, von Scheve's regaining of the h-pawn allowed Tarrasch to play the brilliant move that appears on this chapter's thumbnail. At long last, a final game that I'm happy to have bookending one of these installments. You love to see it.
The Winner: Siegbert Tarrasch
We're going to be seeing those words a lot as this series continues, so I hope you like this guy's moustache.
With this win, Tarrasch had officially earned his Master title, winning prizes of cash, a silver horn, and an invitation to the next master tournament in 1885. Seeing as the slate of upcoming tournaments is rather lacking, we'll actually get to that tournament in maybe 3-4 more chapters. When those will come out is anyone's guess.
