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Four Reasons for One Move

Boris Spassky vs David Bronstein, 27th USSR Championship, Leningrad 1960 · King's Gambit Accepted, Modern Defence · 1-0

Model game for the King's Gambit course

Coach

Bronstein had played a world championship match and drawn it, which left the title where it was, and he had long argued that the King's Gambit was no worse an opening than the Ruy Lopez. Then he had to sit down opposite one. Twenty-three moves later he resigned, and afterwards he told Spassky the thing he could not get past was not the sacrifice at all. What makes the game worth playing through is the note Spassky wrote about his fifteenth move. He begins by admitting the move is not the best one on the board, and then gives four separate reasons for choosing it anyway. Only the second is about the position. The rest are about the man sitting opposite and the clock beside him.

Before move one

Step through the game; it stops where a move is worth finding.

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Arrow keys step through the game. Explore tries your own moves; Stockfish answers.

  • Follow the b1 to h7 diagonal. Black opens it with one pawn move on move eight, White spends the next five moves loading it, and every tactic in the game comes down it.
  • Read the note at White's fifteenth move to the end. The first half is Spassky's own verdict that a quieter move was better. The second half is why he played this one, and three of his four reasons never mention the board.
  • Black's fifteenth move is where the game is decided, not White's. Spassky gives the defence in full: it hands the piece straight back and leaves the black king in the middle, and he says it holds.
  • Keep the clock in view. Bronstein had twenty minutes for twenty-six moves when the complications began, and Spassky counted that as one of his reasons for starting them.
  • The mate that never happened is the point of the combination. Take the knight on move sixteen and Black's own pieces seal his king in for a smothered finish.
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