A Diemer scoresheet

Since first becoming interested in the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit—almost forty years ago now—I’ve collected just about anything I could find on the opening, on Blackmar, on Diemer. Books, magazine articles, photos. correspondence, whatever. Scoresheets—here’s one I scanned from the original.

This is Diemer's scoresheet of one of a series of BDGs he played with Manfred Kloss in August 1959. On the back page he wrote:

A typical BDG game!
The sword of Damocles has won more victories than the sword of Caesar. (Khrushchev)
The goddess of victory surrenders only to he who courts her with strong will. (de Gaulle)

That’s heavy stuff, but I think it’s still okay to play the game just for the fun of it. No, really!

Of course, there are exceptions...

The winning of a pawn among good players of even strength often means the winning of the game.--Jose Capablanca.

But stay away from poisoned pawns!—Jose Capablanca’s momma.

Another photo quiz

Recently I posted a photo of the contestants taken during the game Motta-Greer from the 1988 Montana Open and asked readers to identify the move pending on the board. Among the first to correctly do so were Günter Brunold, Richard Westbrook, and Matt Lasley. The clock in that photo indicates Black is on the move. Black’s queen is clearly on f7  and is only there for one move during the game. The answer then is that it is Black’s move after 21.e6.

Now, a new photograph, a somewhat different quiz. I’ll give you the move number: the gentleman on the left raises his hand after having played his 12th move. You tell me the players, the event, the date. Here’s the photo, generously provided by Günter Brunold and used with his permission.

Did I make it too easy?

Catching up with Klaus Nickl

Back in the 1980s Austria’s Klaus Nickl was a formidable opponent in Blackmar-Diemer thematic correspondence tournaments. After I included several of his Lemberger Countergambits in my last post I decided to see what sort of chess he’d been up to recently. No straight BDGs turned up, although Nickl seems to still be quite active over the board. As he approaches his 70th birthday (he was born in 1942) his ELO has fallen a bit from a high of just over 2250 some years ago.

He had a very successful outing this past July in the 9th International Senior Tournament in Ramsau am Dachstein, Austria, finishing clear first, with 6 points in 7 rounds, ahead of several FIDE Masters. I have no games from that event, but found an interesting one from the European Seniors this past April. It’s a Veresov. It’s also a BDG by transposition. You can try, but you can’t get away from the BDG.