The Immortal Game: Anderssen and the eternal attack of 1851

Some games get won, and some become legend. The Immortal Game is the second kind. Adolf Anderssen gave up nearly his entire army — a bishop, both rooks and the queen — to deliver mate with what was left. Open it in the viewer above and get ready to be amazed.

Romantic chess

London, 1851. This is the era of Romantic chess: you always attack, sacrifice without fear, and declining a gambit was considered almost rude. Anderssen, with White, opens with a King’s Gambit and gives up a pawn as early as move two to launch the attack.

There’s method in the madness

The astonishing part isn’t that he sacrifices: it’s that it works. While Black busies himself capturing material (even both rooks), Anderssen does something else: he places his minor pieces — both knights and both bishops — in a mating net around the black king.

Watch the viewer: by the end, the black king is surrounded by a knight and two bishops, while the black queen and both black rooks rest far away, on the other side of the board, doing nothing at all.

The eternal lesson: what matters isn’t how much material you have, but how many pieces are actually attacking. Three active pieces deliver mate; five sleeping pieces defend nothing.

It’s the same idea as the sacrifice and piece activity, but taken to the most spectacular extreme ever seen.

Keep exploring

• The combative opening of the Romantic era: the King’s Gambit.
• The mate that names an Anderssen pattern: Anderssen’s Mate.
• Its twin sister: The Evergreen Game, also by Anderssen.
• The gem of clean attacking play: The Opera Game.

Replay it a couple of times following the viewer. More than 170 years later, it’s still the definition of playing beautifully.