Evening star., 1909-04-18
KEEN CHESS IN
GAMB|T TOURNEY
Many Close Games With Fa-
nous Rice Opening-Moor-
man Wins Championship.

Some very clever chess exhibitions have
been given during the week by the lead
ing players In the annual Rice gambit
tournament now in progress at the Chess
Club. The majority of the contestants
are becoming quite well acquainted with
the intricacies Of the famous chess OPEN
ing which this tourney is intended to test.
the result being that the runaway vic
tories so frequently scored in the early
stages of the contest are no longer In EVIL
dence.
The weeks play has brought about some
change in the relative positions of the
leading players. Landry has still a COM
Portable lead over the rest of the field.
though 1t has been cut down consider alb iy
since the last report He has met sew
eral tough opponents recently. his record
losses. which brings down his percentage
from .s1S to 1873
BY far the best performance Of the
week was by SEE, who. won no less than
seven games against only two losses. This
young player has evidently found his
stride, and hereafter will be hard to beat
Another good performance must be cred
tied to Zapoleon. who. with four wins and
only two losses, has advanced to second
place and has. In fact. begun to threaten
the leaders position. He Is several games
behind, however. so that II will be at best
a stern chase of the hardest kind before
he will be able to overhaul Landry.
Huntington Beats Landry.
One Of the most interesting games yet
played was the one between Huntington
and Landry. the former having the black
pieces. The defense employed was a sac.
riicing variation of the l.. d. Cohn open
ing. which Is brought about by abandon.
ing knight when capturing the white
kings rook pawn with queen. He also
castled on the kings side. The resulting
and in spite of his best efforts Hunting
! tons attack on the kings side finally be-
came irresistible and won handily.
A somewhat similar use of this defense
has been most successfully made by an
other Of the players. Mundelle. His varia.
tion is in fact. considered SO strong by
the local analysts that satisfactory
method Of replying to 1t has yet to be
found.
Another fine game was the recent en-.
counter between Zapoleon (white) and
Landry (biack). This proved to be dis
tinct triumph for the Rice attack, and In
particular demonstrated whites resources
with the center pawns. when vigorously
handled. On this occasion Landry tried
rodsky defense. the main point about
which is that the black king moves to
bishops square instead of to queen $
square, as is usual in the other varia-
tions This enables the attack to pro-
ceed with pawn takes bishop instead of
rook takes bishop, which avoids giving
up the exchange.
The variation is a dificult one for both
sides and on this occasion resulted in q
stubbornly contested game. neither OF
the players being able to claim any tangi-
BILE advantage until the ending with
rook and pawns was we'll advanced Here
whites strong center enabled him to win
by a very close margin.
The net result Of the weeks play turn
ed out to be less favorable to the gam
bit than il was the previous week. The
attack won only s1a games against 1oh
by the defense. The principal scores to
date are as below: