Thursday, December 27, 2012

A Propos the Blackburne Shilling Gambit


The opening 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nd4!? has been named the Blackburne Shilling Gambit, even though examples of Joseph Henry Blackburne playing the line have yet to turn up. Supposedly he would play off-hand games with amateurs for a shilling's stake, and such a trappy line might well speed up the master's collections.

Related to the latter, I enjoy sharing the following, from "The Chess Player" column of Yenowine's News for October 13, 1889. 

Our Milwaukee Chessist Abroad

J. L Garner, who is back from a five months' tour over Continental Europe, has been devoting his spare hours since his return to dealing out bits of precious chess gossip pertaining to his adventures among the chess lions of the Old World. All in all, he managed to win considerably more than half the games. In Paris he played two with Taubenhaus, drawing one. All the big guns were in London during his stay there, and the Milwaukeean met Blackburne, Bird, Mackenzie, Muller, Gossip and a lot of other stars at Simpson's Divan daily. He made even scores with Gossip, winning one, losing one and drawing one. He regards Gossip as below either Elliott or Treichler as a chess player. With Lee, a very strong player ,who beat both Burn and Blackburne, at the Bradford tournament, Garner had a peculiar experience. In one game he mated Lee on the move, and thinking he would not object, offered to let him take the move back. He was fooled in the man, however; he was willing enough to let the game count, and coolly pocketed the shilling which the professionals charge for a "lesson." As a rule, the chess professionals in London and Paris are a dilapidated lot of tramps, with coat sleeves out at elbows, toes projecting from their boots, hats badly caved in and a ghoulish eagerness to fasten upon some wandering amateur, and bleed him at the rate of a shilling a game...

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