Lasker v Bauer, Amsterdam 1889: the double bishop sacrifice

Emanuel Lasker, who would be world champion five years later, played this game in the first round of the Amsterdam tournament of 1889, his first top-level closed tournament. He finished second, a point behind Amos Burn. His opponent was Johann Hermann Bauer. The game is famous for one idea: two bishop sacrifices on h7 and g7 that strip away the pawns in front of the king. Players have used it ever since, Nimzowitsch against Tarrasch in 1914 among them.

The whole game

What Stockfish makes of it

We had Stockfish check every move. It finds mistakes by both players before the sacrifice, including a stronger move Lasker missed.

11...Nxe5 and 12.Bxe5: one mistake each

Bauer exchanged knights with 11...Nxe5, and that gave White the better game: Stockfish rates 11...g6 about level, and 11...Nxe5 about one and a half pawns worse. But Lasker recaptured with the bishop. 12.fxe5, opening the f-file for his rook, would have kept about one and a half pawns. After 12.Bxe5 the position is level again.

13...a6??: the move that allowed it

13...g6 would have given Black a solid, level position, and Stockfish agrees: about level. Bauer played 13...a6, a queenside move that does nothing to protect his king. After it, White is about two pawns better, and the sacrifice is on.

15.Bxh7+! and 17.Bxg7!: both bishops

Both sacrifices were the only moves that kept White's advantage. At move 15 the next best move leaves the position level; at move 17 every other move leaves White worse. Refusing the second bishop doesn't help Black: Stockfish finds mate after the alternatives to 17...Kxg7.

After 19.Rf3 the rook is coming to h3 with mate. 19...e5 is Black's only move that avoids it, and it costs the queen: 20.Rh3+ Qh6 21.Rxh6+ Kxh6.

22.Qd7: the fork, and another way

Lasker now has a queen and two pawns against a rook and two bishops, and 22.Qd7 attacks both bishops, winning one of them. The annotations on Wikipedia's page say that without this move Black would have had enough for the queen. Stockfish disagrees: 22.Qh3+ is just as strong, about four and a half pawns better for White, so Lasker had more than one way to win.

How we checked

• The moves are from Wikipedia's page on the game. We replayed every one with python-chess: all are legal.
• The engine: Stockfish 16.1 checked every move at depth 22, and the key moments again at depth 28. "A pawn better" is Stockfish's measure of the position, not a count of material.
• The history and the named opinions are from the Wikipedia article.

More famous games

• The Immortal Game
• The Evergreen Game
• The Opera Game
• Zukertort v Blackburne, London 1883
• Steinitz v von Bardeleben, Hastings 1895
• Rotlewi v Rubinstein, Łódź 1907
• Levitsky v Marshall, Breslau 1912
• Edward Lasker v Thomas, London 1912
• Lasker v Capablanca, St Petersburg 1914
• Capablanca v Marshall, New York 1918
• Adams v Torre, 1920
• The Immortal Zugzwang Game
• Réti v Alekhine, Baden-Baden 1925
• Euwe v Alekhine, 1935, game 26
• Botvinnik v Capablanca, AVRO 1938
• The Game of the Century
• Polugaevsky v Nezhmetdinov, Sochi 1958
• Tal v Smyslov, Candidates 1959
• Spassky v Bronstein, 1960
• Tal v Botvinnik, 1960, game 1
• Robert Byrne v Fischer, 1963
• Petrosian v Spassky, 1966, game 10
• Spassky v Petrosian, 1969, game 19
• Larsen v Spassky, Belgrade 1970
• Fischer v Spassky, 1972, game 6
• Karpov v Spassky, 1974, game 9
• Liu Wenzhe v Donner, 1978
• Karpov v Kasparov, 1985, game 16
• Kasparov v Karpov, Seville 1987, game 24
• Shirov v Judit Polgár, Buenos Aires 1994
• Topalov v Shirov, Linares 1998
• Kasparov's Immortal
• Kasparov v Kramnik, 2000, game 3
• Kramnik v Leko, Brissago 2004, game 14
• Anand's Immortal
• Anand v Carlsen, Chennai 2013, game 9
• Wei Yi v Bruzón, Danzhou 2015
• Carlsen v Karjakin, 2016, tiebreak game 4
• Carlsen v Nepomniachtchi, 2021, game 6

Ways to train

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• Analyse your chess games
• Master moves