And Is There Honey Still For Tea? by Peter Murphy

Black could have improved his defence. Through those games, I began to learn about the great masters of the past – Anderssen, Steinitz, and Morphy – and the more modern players, particularly Capablanca. I began to see how their styles of play differed from each other. It was quite obvious to me that Mr Armitage saw more in these games than simple technical proficiency. When Morphy won a game with a dazzling sacrifice of a piece, it was, to him, a thing of beauty, a work of art capable of producing feelings comparable to those evoked by van Gogh’s paintings or Mozart’s music. He never once explained himself to me in those terms, but as I listened to him speak about the games, I understood clearly the effect they had on him.
    Nonetheless, when I experienced such a feeling myself, it took me utterly by surprise.
    â€˜I want to show you a game,’ he said one evening, ‘which I think you will like. It was played not very long before you were born. It has a remarkably pretty ending.’
    He lit his pipe as I set up the board, and he showed me Edward Lasker v Sir George Thomas, a game played in London in 1912. I remember to this day the effect the game produced on me. When it ended on the 18th move with Lasker forcing checkmate, I suddenly started to cry. I could find no words. My hands were trembling. I felt my mind departing, without any conscious action on my part, for that silent limitless place I had learned to visit as a child. Now, it felt as if I were fainting away, and I dug the nails of one hand into the palm of the other to bring myself back. Mr Armitage said nothing. He respected my privacy by turning towards the window, and continued to smoke his pipe.
    What was it about this game? I have thought about that question many times since, and all I can say is that it is truly astonishing. It starts out with a routine queen’s pawn opening, a variation of the Dutch Defence. After ten moves White has some spatial advantage, but that is nothing unusual – White has the advantage of the first move – and after ten moves Thomas must have felt that he had a rather defensive, but quite playable game. Then: devastation, lightning from a clear sky. On his 11 th move Lasker sacrifices his queen – his most powerful piece – on h7. It is a move so unexpected, so apparently suicidal, that it is utterly shocking. Thomas has no option but to accept the sacrifice, taking the queen with his king, because the king is in check and has nowhere else to go. Of course, Lasker had foreseen each of the next seven moves, and calculated that Thomas had no defence against the unrelenting assault on his king that followed. But it is the way in which the checkmate is forced that is so beautiful. First White’s two knights perform a ballet, a graceful, but deadly pas de deux , circling each other, forcing the black king first to h6, then to g5, away from his place of safety. Then the remaining pieces take over, dancing together in a perfectly choreographed sequence. Two pawns stab at the king in turn, brutally direct where the knights were so subtle, giving one stab each, driving the king down the board as far as f3, into the heart of White’s territory. A bishop and rook join the chase, giving one check each, pushing the king to g1. He has travelled the full length of the board, seven squares from where he stood, unsuspecting, when Lasker began the combination with the queen sacrifice. He is completely encircled and cut off from the friendly forces that might have defended him. Finally, a casual move of the white king to d2 exposes the black king to White’s other rook, which checkmates the king without even moving from its square. The king has no more moves left. The game was an impressive piece of calculation by Lasker. But the beauty of the game lies not just in the calculation, but also in the sheer elegance of the solution; the delicate dance of the white pieces combining against the