The first Blunderprone: Kieseritzky

I decided to shift gears slightly and created an account on chess.com to post my games as this post will reference four games. I am continuing my series of blunderprone analysis of the games of the first international chess tournament in London 1851. Today, I will focus on French chess master, Lionel Kieseritzky.

Lionel Kieseritzky has to be related to me from a chess genealogical sense because of his famous choking under tournament pressure ( I'll get into that shortly). Prior to the London 1851 event, he became a chess professional in Paris, giving lessons or playing games for five francs an hour at the Cafe de la Regence, and editing a chess magazine ( La Régence) which was the 19th century equivalent of a blog. He became one of the four leading French masters of the time, alongside Louis de la Bourdonnais, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant and Boncourt, and for the few years before his death was among the top two players in the world along with Howard Staunton. His knowledge of the game was significant enough to make contributions to chess theory, but his career was somewhat blighted by misfortune and a passion for the unsound. His popularity was jaded by his narcissistic nature as he self-proclaimed being the "Chess-Messiah".

The first game ( with blunder's annotations here) finished in 20 minutes with a gross blunder:



20 Rg3???

Lionel Kieseritzky was so focused on delivering a king side attack on his own opponent that he neglected the mate threat on his own f2 square. Howard Staunton even went on to comment about this first game as having been "never equalled even among beginners of the game"!

Being a best of three elimination, the second game ended in a surprising draw. I think Kieseritzky should have won the endgame given the final position after Anderssen offers his rook:



Game 2 Position after 55. Rxc3

Why was a draw accepted or offered by Lionel? Clearly, the rook can stop either rook pawn. Was he that rattled after game one?

With only a 1/2 point going into the third match against Anderssen, a similar scenario to the first game presented itself in the next game that lasted only 17 moves before he dropped a bishop and resigned.

To add insult to injury to this self proclaimed "Chess-messiah", to warm up for the tournament, he decided to play a game at the Simpson's-in-the-Strand Divan, a local pub and eatery in London known to host casual games of chess. The game later became know as the Immortal Game for the stellar sacrifices that Anderssen played to deliver the final blow on move 24. The game start by making Anderssen look like a patzer having him move his king so he can't castle and obliterating his king side pawns. Later and calmly, Anderssen develops and abandons a Bishop, both rooks and a queen.... yes all his heavy hitting pieces... in a clever way to deliver a 3 piece suit of a mate. Incidentaly, in true blunderprone form, Kieseritzky posted his game on his "blog" otherwise known as the French chess magazine La Régence published in July 1851.

That is why, from this day forward, Lionel Kieseritzky, in my mind will be forever dubbed " Blunderprone the first"