The Immortal Game

The Immortal Game was played in a London coffee house in June 1851, between two rounds of the first international chess tournament. Anderssen — that tournament’s winner — and Kieseritzky, one of the strongest players of the romantic period, sat down for a casual game. The result became the most quoted attacking combination in the history of chess.

Anderssen sacrifices a bishop on move 11, both rooks across moves 18 and 19, and the queen on move 22, all in pursuit of a mate that arrives on move 23 with the modest bishop on e7. Black has captured nearly every white major piece. None of it matters; the mate is forced.

The game is taught in every introductory tactics book because it is one of the clearest demonstrations of the romantic-era principle that initiative — kept alive at any cost — can overwhelm material in an unprepared defense. Modern analysis has shown that Kieseritzky’s defense was not perfect, but the game’s combinational beauty has never been in doubt.

The closing combination

After 22.Qf6+ Nxf6 23.Be7#, every Black piece outside the king is either captured or hopelessly passive, and the king sits on d8 with no escape squares. The bishop on e7 covers d8 along the diagonal and is itself defended by the knight on d5 — a quiet final move after twenty-two moves of sacrifice.

Game record

This game between Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky was played at the Casual game in London in 1851. The opening was the King’s Gambit Accepted, Bishop’s Gambit (ECO C33). The game lasted 23 moves, ending with White winning. It is part of the nineteenth-century chess record.

Opening context

The King’s Gambit Accepted, Bishop’s Gambit (ECO C33) belongs to the open group of the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings. The opening sequence runs 1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Bc4 Qh4+ 4.Kf1 b5, after which the game enters its specific theoretical line. ECO classification group C covers a span of roughly 100 different openings, of which C33 is one entry on the tree.