Friday 12 August 2016

Melbourne Town

Due to current work arrangements, I have visited Melbourne more time this year than in the last 25 years combined. In fact I am just starting another trip to the city, although work precludes any chess playing opportunities.
However in recognition of the long chess history that the Victorian capital has, I did some digging for a suitable game. One of the earlier games I found came from a match between Charles Fisher and Louis Goldsmith. The match was played in 1875 and ended with a narrow victory to Fisher 6.5-5.5 (+5=3-4). The game in question was the 11th game of the match, and helped Fisher tie the match at 5.5 each. Goldsmith played the Sicilian Defence, a rarity at the time, although Fisher demolished it in a very modern manner. Bc5 by Black was probably dubious (although it has been played a number of times since) and once the knight landed on d6 Black was in serious difficulties. After that it was open lines and dancing knights before Black went down in flames.


Fisher,Charles M - Goldsmith,Louis [B40]
Melbourne m Melbourne (11), 08.02.1875



1 comment:

pwa said...

Thanks for publishing this game. I wrote an article on this match for the first number of Australian Chess Lore in the late 70s. It was Australia's first great chess match and attracted a lot of attention at the time. As Robert Jamieson pointed out in a review, the games were really not of a high standard but they were quite hard-fought. Fisher and Goldsmith were interesting figures both inside and outside the chess world.