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Alternative 19 ... Qh3 (defends d7) 20 Bf1 Qf5 (still defends d7) 21 Qe4! Qxf6 22 Bb5 (with threat Bxc6 and Qxe7) Kd8 23 Rxd7 Kxd7 24 Bxe7 Qe6 25 Qd3 Kxe7 26 Rxe6+ Kxe6 27 Qe4+ with Draw by perpetual check.
also
19 ... Rxg2? 20 Kxg2 Ne5 21 Qxd7+! ChessCreator (talk) 19:32, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Does 20...Nxe7 deserve a question mark? For sure, it allows an attractive mate in four, but are the alternatives any better? Analysis on chessgames.com suggests 20...Kd8 21.Rd7+! Kc8 22.Rd8+! Kxd8 (...Rxd8?? 23.gxf3) 23.Bf5+ Qxd1+ 24.Qxd1+ Nd4 25.Bh3 and white is better, and 20...Kf8 21.Rxd7+ Ke8 22.Re7+ Kd8 (...Kf8 23.Rxc7+, also transposing unless black wants to lose his bishop and both rooks in a vicious windmill), transposing to the previous line.
Until someone posts analysis that black can hold after 20.Rxe7+, I'm removing the ?.WarmasterKron 13:43, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I would like to refer to the Steinitiz citation of the game as the "evergreen in Anderssen's laurel wreath." Perhaps we should clarify what this remark actually referred to? After Anderssen won the 1851 International Chess Tournament in London, when he returned to Berlin, he was crowned with a laurel wreath by the citizenry. Steinitiz felt that game with DuFresne would give Anderssen "immortality", thus the symbolism of the "evergreen".
ChessHistorian 00:52, 28 July 2007 (UTC)
Evergreen is a way of saying "always green" like immortal, is this the basis of it's name? ChessCreator (talk) 19:38, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Is it 'Evergreen' or 'Evergreen Game'. If it's the former then the URL would make sense to be 'Evergreen (Chess)', if it's the latter then the title with the capital 'G' for Game would be appropriate. ChessCreator (talk) 15:58, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
The article refers to 'Burgess' ("...Burgess suggests Re1 instead") without a wikilink, first name or FIDE title. Perhaps it would be appropriate to, at least initially, give the commentator's full name/title, especially as s/he is not exactly a 'household name' in chess? --Smkruse (talk) 18:49, 28 March 2008 (UTC)
The animation of the game features a opposite colored chess board. All the dark squares should be light / light squares should be dark. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Qauz (talk • contribs) 21:48, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
Fixed. Winston365 (talk) 23:02, 22 March 2010 (UTC)
The article currently gives 19. Rad1 only one exclamation mark but 21. Qxd7 two. Seems the wrong way round to me; I know the queen sac is very splashy, but once the position before Qxd7 had arisen any novice could have spotted the entirely forced winning continuation, whereas spotting the win in advance on move 19 and working out that alternative moves by Black also led to a White win makes this a much more impressive move (and indeed the cornerstone of the whole game). 91.105.61.167 (talk) 00:22, 16 June 2010 (UTC)
I'm wondering about the winning Chessmaster move given in the text. After 20... Kd8 21. Rxd7+ Kc8 22. Rd8+ Kxd8, Chessmaster gives 23. Be2+ winning. After 23... Nd4, can someone tell me the winning continuation? (Thx!) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:37, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm wondering if a couple continuations might be a bit hard for casual readers to find, and should they be pointed out in the text?
And does it constitute WP:OR? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)
The result of the move request was: page moved. Andrewa (talk) 07:22, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
Evergreen game → Evergreen Game – Rich Farmbrough, 19:26, 24 May 2012 (UTC).
I have removed Jose A. Fadul's "Lessons in Chess, Lessons in Life" as a source. It is obvious from an examination of the source that he simply plagiarized an old version of the wikipedia article. Compare: [1] and [2]. MaxBrowne (talk) 01:41, 4 September 2015 (UTC)
This is what I imagine happened; lots of supposition, can't put it in the article, but it seems reasonable.
Anderssen himself probably didn't take the game very seriously. He and Dufresne were good friends and they were probably just having a bit of fun - this would explain the inaccurate but "fun" move 17.Nf6+. Seeing some entertainment value in the game, and justly proud of his combination, he published it in the Schachzeitung with only light notes. The first publication went only as far as move 18 by Black, and left it to the readers to work out how White won.
Staunton decided to have a go at this, found the move 19.Rad1 and spent hours and hours analyzing it, finding all sorts of fascinating lines, only a small portion of which he ended up publishing. The next issue of the Schachzeitung must have been a disappointment/anti-climax for him. There was no analysis, only the information that Black played the losing move 19...Qxf3 and White pulled off a beautiful combination.
Staunton didn't want all the hours he'd spent analyzing the position to go to waste so he published his analysis, apparently to prove that Anderssen couldn't possibly have worked all this out at the board (not that Anderssen ever made such a claim). Staunton claimed a win for White in all lines, but missed the three most critical defences - 19...Qh3 20.Bf1 Qf5, 19...Bd4 and 19...Rg4. Staunton's word carried a lot of weight back then though, so his assessment went more or less unchallenged for many years - for example Bird simply says that Black is lost in all lines. The game turned up in some anthologies but there's no evidence that it was particularly more famous than other Anderssen games (e.g. his awesome win with Black against Rosanes). It was only when Steinitz included it in Anderssen's obituary with the effusive commentary "an evergreen in the laurel wreath" that the game took on a "legendary" aspect. MaxBrowne (talk) 04:21, 21 September 2015 (UTC)
I find the changing consensus of the assessment of Anderssen's combination very interesting so I've tried to reflect this in the article. Here is a summary of the major annotations and articles on the game and their findings. I've added my OR (which we obviously can't use) based on engine checks. (Yes, I'm a mediocre player, what of it?)
1853 - Staunton, Chess Player's Chronicle
Prior to Lipke, I have seen no annotations (including Steinitz's and Lasker's) that significantly add to Staunton's analysis. Lipke refers to an article on the game in the London Chess Fortnightly (1892-93), where Lasker apparently recommends 15...d2! - that's a possible source if someone can track it down. (Reissued by Moravian Chess in 2001). Based on the secondary source (Lipke) all he says about 19.Rad1 is that (paraphrasing) "there are 60 variations here, all lost for Black".
1898 - Lipke, Deutsche Schachzeitung (managed to reconstruct this article from google previews, can send .txt file if wanted)
1912 - Gottschall, Adolf Anderssen, der Altmeister deutscher Schachspielkunst, Sein Leben und Schaffen. There's a scan by Batgirl (talk · contribs) here but it's too small for me to read. It looks to me like it's mostly a rehash of Lipke but I'd like to take a closer look at it, maybe cite it for the article.
1925 - Lasker, Manual of Chess. In this famous book Lasker dropped a bit of a bombshell; 19.Rad1 had previously been praised to high heaven in every annotation of the game, Lasker was the first to seriously question it.
1931 - O. Hoppe and H. Heckner, Kombinatsiya Andersena, in Shakhmatno-Shashechny Almanakh. A bit of a mystery this one, Neishtadt, Zaitsev and others refer to this work but it took a while to identify the original source. I found it by searching on the Cyrillic "О. Гоппе" and "Г. Гекнер" on google books, which got a hit on a bibliography of Soviet chess literature. Even the correct transliterations of "О. Гоппе" and "Г. Гекнер" are uncertain; "Г" could represent either G or H. The names certainly look German, but they could have been Soviet citizens. "Гекнер" could be Heckner or Hoeckner or Geckner or Goeckner. "O. Hoppe" is possibly Oswald Hoppe but no confirmation. I'd have to see the very rare original really, but unfortuantely I don't live anywhere near Cleveland.
1957-58 - Schach-Echo readers. I really want to see the original of this. This is a relatively obscure magazine and the analysis appears to have slipped under the radar at the time; it is not referenced in any of the the Soviet works. This material is second-hand from the ChessBase website.
1959 - Levenfish, Kniga Nachinayushchego Shakhmatista,, 2nd edition.
1961 - Neishtadt, Shakhmatny do Steinitsa (Nekorovannye Championy from 1975 contains largely the same material).
1963 - Christopher Becker, Exploring the Evergreen, Chess Review vol 31 issue 12
More to come. MaxBrowne (talk) 03:04, 28 September 2015 (UTC)