He sent me two games played by Lyudmila Rudenko
a Soviet chess player and the second women's world chess champion, from 1950 until 1953.
She was awarded the FIDE titles of International Master (IM) and Woman International Master (WIM) in 1950, and Woman Grandmaster (WGM) in 1976.
Actually, we are already in the "exploration" stage of this story, as the games I received were photocopies from The Chess Variants. C48. C57 ( Moscow, 1996). Also, the player was identified simply as "Rudenko", but it is a reasonable conclusion by Yury that she was Lyudmila.
The games, played by correspondence, are examples of the Traxler variation of the Two Knights Defense, also known as the Wilkes-Barre Variation.
Zak - Rudenko
correspondence, 1954
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 Bc5
5.Nxf7 Bxf2+ 6.Kf1 Qe7 7.Nxh8 d5 8.Bxd5 Bg4 9.Bxc6+ bxc6 10.Kxf2 Nxe4+ 11.Ke3 Qg5+ White resigned
Golovko - Rudenko
correspondence, 1955-1957
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 Bc5 5.Nxf7 Bxf2+
6.Kf1 Qe7 7.Nxh8 d5 8.Be2 Bb6 9.exd5 Nd4 10.Nc3 Nxe2 11.Qxe2 Bg4 12.Qb5+ Nd7 13.Ke1 O-O-O 14.d6 Qh4+ 15.g3 Qh5 16.dxc7 Rf8 17.Rf1 Bf2+18.Rxf2 Rxf2 19.h4 Rh2 20.Qf1 Bf3 21.Qg1 Rh1 White resigned
What I found interesting is that I could not discover either game in my ChessBase Big Database from 2016. I realize that it is not the latest version of the CB database, but it should have included these games of the Women's World Champion.
Earlier versions of chess games databases did not include many of the correspondence games from the time periods they covered, although that has been better addressed of late.
The best source for correspondence games is Dr. Tim Harding's (of Chess Mail) UltraCorr collections. Quite surprisingly, my UltraCorr 3A (2010), does not contain the Rudenko games, either. (By the way, the 2022 version of UltraCorr has just been released.)
Why all the fuss about a couple of Traxler variation games? As Yury wrote
maybe, Mr. Traxler invented his counter-attack with 5.Nxf7 Bxf2+! (with the idea 6.Kxf2!? Nxe4+!) in 1890 (or some time before) as a result of his inspiration by the Jerome gambit!
[to be continued]
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