The second unusual opening selected initially wasn’t quite crazy enough and was voted down in favour of an obscure line of the Vienna Game refered to as Mlotkowskis variation. The Vienna Game is in fact the King’s Gambit delayed: White plays 2.Nc3 instead of the more popular 2.Nf3 in order to keep the f pawn ready to jump to f4 at the best possible moment. About 100 years ago the Vienna Game was as popular as the Ruy Lopez, but eventually went out of fashion and is almost forgotten today. Stasch Mlotkowski (1881 – 1943) was an American player whose greatest claim to fame appears to have been a win at the U.S. Open Chess Championship St. Louis 1904. Once again the first seven moves were played out on the board and the players were left to fend for themselves.
1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d5 4. fxe5 Nxe4 5. Nf3 Bb4 6. Be2 O-O 7. O-O Nc6 (diag.)
Shredder evaluates the position as 0.36 for white and suggests Na4 as the next move, although the accepted continuation is 8. Qe1 Bg4 9. d3 d4 10. dxe4 dxc3.
In the end Peter had a win as black and Stefan had a win as white in the A division (results here), while there were three black and one white win in the B grade (results here). Remember if anyone wants to join from next week they will retrospectively be given byes for rounds one and two
Hamilton Chess Club 