How to Win at Chess: Chess Openings for Beginners by Johnson Robert

Author:Johnson, Robert
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

Vienna Game

The Vienna Game looks relatively non-threatening. Rather than use the second move to attack an enemy soldier with the more common 2. Nf3, White defends one of its pawns by playing 2. Nc3. It is a fundamentally solid opening that can develop in many directions, both aggressive and quiet. One idea is to follow up with 3. f4 in the King’s Gambit (the “Vienna Attack”). Other lines see simple developing moves and the beginnings of a long-term positional game.

The Vienna Game received its name thanks to several strong Viennese players who worked on its development. Vienna was an important cultural center during the Enlightenment; Mozart played his music there and held many strong chess tournaments. Wilhelm Steinitz – the first official world chess champion – gained one of his most important early victories by winning the Vienna City championship in 1861. Steinitz was also one of the opening’s most ardent advocates.

The city of Vienna hosted the debut of a most extraordinary invention in 1770. Wolfgang von Kempelen claimed to have invented an automaton that could play a formidable chess game against a human opponent. The machine consisted of a man's life-size model in Ottoman robes, complete with moving arms and head. This figure sat at a cabinet with a large chessboard on top and three doors at the front. The Austrian court assembled at Schönbrunn Palace to witness the machine’s first game, and to the astonishment of all, this “Mechanical Turk” easily won. The Turk after traveled to the Café de la Régence in Paris and played against the world’s best player, François-André Danican Philidor, as well as the prominent statesmen Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

If you hadn’t guessed, it was a trick. Steam Age technology was not capable of the complex calculations required to play chess. The Turk concealed a strong chess-playing human operator inside the cabinet, who directed the moves to the model’s arms via interior levers. Kempelen employed elaborate misdirection to prevent the secret from being discovered. The base of the machine contained dummy gears and cogs, which appeared to be driving the operation. It also made a clockwork-like sound. The Turk survived inspection many times.

As interest in the Mechanical Turk grew, Kempelen became increasingly reluctant to expose his creation to further scrutiny. He would lie about it being under repair. He even wholly dismantled The Turk until ordered by the Emperor to rebuild it. It may seem unbelievable to us that the Mechanical Turk could fool onlookers like this. Still, it was the early industrial revolution, and all manner of new gadgets were hissing and spinning out hitherto impossible deeds. A chess-playing machine wouldn’t have seemed entirely out of the question to 18th-century minds.

The first (real) chess-playing computer programs were not developed until the middle of the 20th century. Initially, computers could now play chess at all was remarkable enough, but these first programs could be defeated even by weak human players. However, the machines became better and better over the following few decades. They

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.