Knight moves


Can anyone tell me the chess game with the knight moves that fascinated Harry?
Who played it and when? Is the game published somewhere? Thanks.

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The game was Emmerich (White) vs Moritz (Black), played in Bad Oeynhausen, Germany in the 1920s. Moritz did miss the queen sacrifice followed by the knight checks that should have ended the game. In the film Moseby said that Moritz "played something else and lost", and that "he must have regretted it every day of his life". In reality, he missed the win but eventually the game ended in a draw.

The game was previously published in GM Larry Evan's column in Chess Life and Review (now Chess Life), official publication of the U. S. Chess Federation). If you want the score, I can post it when I find it.

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Thank you Henry. Sorry it took so long to reply. I'd given up hope that anyone would be able to answer my question.

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In case anyone is still interested, I have posted the moves of the game in a new thread here entitled "Here are the moves of the chess game shown in the film".

My earlier post may need a little correction. I am sure that in the discussions in Chess Life and Review, it was mentioned that the game ended in a draw. But in the score that I found, White did win the game. So the film was probably correct after all. If you play out the moves, White indeed had a clearly winning position at the end.

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I just played the game. Fascinating. I'm not a chess expert, and of course, I have the benefit of hindsight, but still, it's hard to imagine how Moritz could have missed this. Anyway, thanks again.

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You are right in a way. If that chess position is published in a newspaper chess column under the title "Black to Mate in Four", most average chess players would be able to solve it. But it is a different matter in a tournament with your (chess) clock ticking. It is far easier to look for mate when you know it is there! Presumably Emmrich failed to see the mate too, or he would have played different moves earlier.

The film was based on Alan Sharp's novel. The following is the author's description in Chapter 1:

The rest of his attention he gave to a point in history long past, but crystallized on his traveling set, a remote, trivial moment of truth that once engaged two men he had never met just as intensely as it now did him. Emmrich and Moritz had, it appeared, played chess together in 1922 at a place called Bad Oeynhausen...Moritz had had that most flamboyant of possibilities for a chessplayer. Back to the wall, in danger of defeat, Black had a queen sacrifice leading to an exquisite mate by means of three little knight moves, prancing in interlocking checks, driving the King into the pit. Moritz, in the heat of something now cold, missed it, played defensively and lost.

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