English Chess Forum

While browsing in the English Chess Federation library at DMU Leicester last week, I came across the following.

I wonder can anybody identify the name of the opponent, and/or date, occasion of play and original publication.

The winning sequence is left to readers to work out for themselves.

[Event "Place and date unknown"] [Site "?"] [Date "????.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Blackburne, Joseph Henry"] [Black "NN unknown opponent"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "C44"] [Annotator "Social Chess Quarterly no.1"] [PlyCount "14"] [EventDate "1900.??.04"] [EventType "simul"] [SourceVersionDate "2023.08.06"] 1. e4 {The Social Chess Quarterly (magazine of the Empire Social Chess Club), issue 1 (October 1930), Game 9 on page 14. No date or place stated, but introduced as "Won by Blackburne. Black's play in this game is feeble, but the mating combination is of rare beauty."} e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4 Nxd4 4. Nxe5 Ne6 5. Bc4 f6 6. Qh5+ g6 7. Nxg6 Ng7 $4 {"The worst move on the board. White announced mate in seven moves"} 1-0

Sadly for fans of the Streatham and Brixton blog's series, it is not actually the Worst Move On The Board; 7...Be7, 7...Bd6 and 7...d6 would all allow mate in two.

Sorry Tim, no help here. I merged all the miniatures I could lay my hands into one DB years ago
(and now added this one! so it by no means at complete.)

I even searched just for the bones.

4kb2/3p2p1/4np2/4N3/2B5/8/8/4K3 w - - 0 1
Just in case it was a Queens Rook or Queen's Knight odds game. Sometimes these old odds games slip through as normal games.

A coincidence here is Jack mentioning 'The Streatham and Brixton blog' and one of their columns http://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.c ... -days.html
features the Empire Social Chess Club and has a picture of the magazine you appear to have been looking at.