Below is an article by G.H. Diggle which was originally published
in the October 1977 Newsflash and is on page 27 of the
anthology Chess Characters (Geneva, 1984):
‘Zukertort’s tremendous tournament victory of London, 1883
(first with 22 points out of 26 and three clear points ahead of
anyone else) is as well known as his famous win against
Blackburne in the sixth round of the Tournament, Zukertort
having already started off with five successive wins. What is
not so well known now, and what was never discovered then until
months afterwards, was that in the fifth of these wins, against
Rev. A.B. Skipworth, Zukertort had on his 22nd move committed a
disastrous blunder and his opponent never saw it. The position
was:
Here Zukertort (a pawn up) played 22...Q-K3?? and Skipworth
replied 23 R-Rl?? whereas 23 N-N5 would have mated or won the
queen in two moves. Amazingly, though the Tournament Room was
crowded with pressmen and “strong lookers-on”, “no dog barked or
night-owl screeched” – more incredible still, Zukertort himself
(who annotated his own games in the Book of the Tournament)
“missed it” again, passing over both “howlers” without even an
“?”. But finally, many months later, an obscure Badmaster named
Mr Marks, who was then Secretary of the Athenaeum Chess Club,
and had purchased the Tournament Book, made the “chess scoop” of
his life and “informed the Press”, clearly demonstrating Uriah
Heep’s claim that while “great scholars are often as blind as a
brickbat, us ’umble ones has got eyes in our ’eds”.
Had Skipworth won this game, what would have been the effect on
Zukertort, a fragile man and “a bag of nerves”? Thrown off
balance after a magnificent start by an absurd loss against one
of his weakest opponents, would he ever have won that brilliant
game against Blackburne in the very next round? And Skipworth?
He retired through ill-health halfway through after three wins
and nine losses. This was criticized; but the trouble was that
he was Rector of the Lincolnshire village of Tetford, six miles
from Horncastle and 150 from London, and he could not find a
cleric to stand in for him on Sundays. Consequently, during the
Tournament he had to go to and fro at weekends, getting up at
the crack of dawn on Monday mornings, driving by horse and trap
to Horncastle, proceeding by slow train via Woodhall Junction,
Boston and Spalding to Peterborough, and thence to King’s Cross
to be ready for his game at the Criterion, Piccadilly at 12
noon. This, on top of the strain of tournament play, proved too
much for him. At his best (the late J.H. Blake once told the BM)
Skipworth was “hot stuff” and both he and Thorold “had a
magnificent eye for a combination”.’
Here is the game as it appeared on pages 8-9 of the tournament
book, with Zukertort’s notes:
The ‘23 Ng5 affair’, as we are calling it, was discussed by W.H.
Watts in an article entitled ‘Some Historic Chess Blunders’ in the
Christmas 1914 issue of The Strand Magazine. The article
was reproduced on pages 107-109 of the January 1915 Chess
Amateur, and a lengthier version was published on pages of The
Year-Book of Chess 1915 and 1916 (London, 1917), which Watts
co-edited with A.W. Foster. From the Year-Book:
We have found this item on page 248 of the 2 January 1884 issue
of the Chess Player’s Chronicle:
In the light of G.H. Diggle’s reference to ‘Mr Marks’ it is
particularly relevant (though also puzzling) to note that a
subsequent issue of the Chronicle (16 January 1884, page
258) had a letter from Edward Marks (using his obvious pseudonym,
‘Skram’) which discussed Fisher v von Bardeleben (see pages
227-228 of Chess Facts and Fables) and Skipworth v
Zukertort but made no claim for himself regarding the discoveries:
Further information is sought concerning W.H. Watts’ statement
that the possibility of 23 Ng5 ‘was also overlooked by all the
annotators’ of the time (i.e. before the tournament book
appeared). Page 65 of the November 1883 Chess Monthly
announced that the book would be available by the end of that
month. (It may be significant to add that page 72 of the same
issue reported that Zukertort had sailed for the United States on
20 October.) Where was the Skipworth v Zukertort game published
between the date on which it was played (3 May 1883) and the end
of November 1883? We ask that question not merely to verify Watts’
words ‘overlooked by all the annotators’ but also, and above all,
to ascertain whether the game-score published in any earlier
sources was identical to what appeared in the tournament book.
According to the tournament book, the preceding play ...
... went 19 Qd2 Qxa2 20 Bg5 Bxg5 21 Qxg5 f6 22 Qg6 Qe6 23 Ra1. Is
it really likely that White played Ra1 when the black queen was no
longer at a2?
Finally for now, we draw attention to an important footnote on
page 124 of The International Chess Tournament London 1883 in
letters by William Steinitz introduced and edited by Harrie
Grondijs (Rijswijk, 2010). It mentions a report in the New
Orleans Times-Democrat of a claim by Zukertort that the
tournament book was wrong:
In the second line [1883] should read [1884]; we should
particularly like to see those Times-Democrat columns and
present them in a future C.N. item.
Much further investigation of the 23 Ng5 affair is clearly
needed.
(6952)
Addition on 27 November 2022:
Richard Forster (Winterthur, Switzerland) provides the following
cuttings:
New Orleans Times-Democrat,
29 June 1884, page 11
New Orleans Times-Democrat,
27 July 1884, page 10
Croydon Guardian and Surrey
County Gazette, 29 December 1883, page 6
Our correspondent furthermore notes that the 23 Ng5 affair is
discussed in ‘The mystery of Zukertort’s breakdown’, an article on
pages 70-79 of the 7/2022 New in Chess by Willy Hendriks,
who suggests that the move order may have been 22 Ra1 Qe6 23 Qg6.
An alternative proposal, put to us by Richard Forster, is 20 Ra1
Qe6 21 Bg5 Bxg5 22 Qxg5 f6 23 Qg6 Rd5.
