2006年NPR美国国家公共电台九月-A Chess Classic: 'The Immortal Game' (4'0

This is All Things Considered from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.

Even in this era of Madden Football and Grand Theft Auto 1 of Gameboys and PlayStations, you can still read an account of Hezbollah's raid 2 across the Israeli border as Nasrallah's gambit, and you can find descriptions of the response it provoked 3 as Israel's end game. The vocabulary of chess forms a metaphorical 4 bridge between a harmless board game of strategy and the strategies of real-life war. The history of the game is recounted in a new book by David Shenk. It's called "The Immortal 5 Game". And to serious chess players, that title has an obvious double meaning: It refers to the game itself and also to a particular match that was played by two masters in 1851. David Shenk weaves the story of that match move by move throughout the larger story. Welcome to the program.

Thank you for having me.

And tell us about the immortal game of 1851.

Well, this was a remarkable 6 game because it wasn't supposed to be remarkable. Here were two amazing champions Lionel Kieseritzky and Adolf Anderssen. They were participating in really the first formal international chess tournament ever in 1851 in London and in between the formal games, these chess players of course couldn't get enough chess so they would play practice games. The actual formal games could last hours and hours and even days. So the practice games tended to be a lot shorter than that. And this was one of those practice games that really should have been a throwaway game, it shouldn't have even been remembered at all in history but it turned out to be so remarkable that the loser who I would not name was so blown away that he recorded it and it was quickly dubbed 7 the immortal game and has been studied ever since.

The lesson of this particular "immortal game" match, as best as I can make of it, is that the player who actually gave up several very, very important pieces still won, it wasn't telling that he had lost such vital pieces as two rooks and a queen.

That's the technical lesson here is that you can sacrifice an amazing amount of material ah, you know, a novice 8 would never think that you can give up a queen and still win a game but in fact if you know what you're doing you can give up far more than that and still win. The broader lesson though is that any chess game like any piece of art starts out mundane 9 and you never know if it's gonna turn into magic or not. And the players don't know either.

Part of your motivation here in writing the book was to learn something about one Samuel Rosenthalo . Won't you tell us about him?

Yes, this was a piece of family lore 10 and I really knew nothing about it. I wasn't even sure if Samuel Rosenthal existed but I had been told that he was my great-great-grandfather and that he was the, the dean 11 of all chess in France in the 19th century and that he had been given all these prizes and taught someone in the Napoleon family and really was dominant 12 for several decades and did those simultaneous 13 demonstrations 14 playing against 50 or 100 people at once and beating them all without a problem and, and would play these long, long chess matches in which he would be described as being as still as a statue.

And you met chess teachers who say Samuel Rosenthal, I've taught some of his games.

Yes, he is still known among serious chess players. Now I mean one of the interesting points to make about, about chess and where Rosenthal fits is that not too many of his games would be considered stellar today because chess knowledge like all other knowledge builds on itself. So, we can look at some of the amazing games in the 19th century and we can say well, for their time that was particularly creative and that was a new way of thinking but, but serious chess players build on top of that and actually there've been two or three schools of thought of, of how to play chess that have come along since Samuel Rosenthal's day.
------------------------------
PlayStations
a type of special computer made by Sony for playing games on
gambit
1
something that you do or say which is intended to give you an advantage in an argument
a clever debating gambit These questions are often an opening gambit (=the thing you say first) for a negotiation 15.
2
a planned series of moves at the beginning of a game of chess
以优势的开局棋法, 话题, 开始
end game
the final stage of a war, disagreement etc when everyone is trying to gain an advantage for themselves
board game
用棋盘玩的游戏
throwaway
1
throwaway remark/line/comment etc
something that someone says or writes quickly, without thinking carefully about it
It was only a throwaway comment. He claims people overreacted to a few throwaway lines in the article.
2
throwaway products have been produced cheaply so that you can throw them away after you have used them
synonym 16 disposablea throwaway cigarette lighter
3
throwaway society
used to show disapproval 17 when talking about modern societies in which products are not made to last a long time
blow sb away phrasal verb
1
to make someone feel very surprised, especially about something they like or admire
It just blows me away, the way everyone's so friendly round here.
2
to kill someone by shooting them with a gun
One move and I'll blow you away!
3
to defeat someone completely, especially in a game
Nancy blew away the rest of the skaters.
rook
n.
(象棋)车, 赌棍, 骗子
vt.
欺骗
queen
（国际象棋中的）王后，后棋
mundane
1
ordinary and not interesting or exciting
??synonym boringInitially, the work was pretty mundane.The mundane task of setting the table can be fun on holidays.
2
literary concerned with ordinary daily life rather than religious matters
synonym worldly
lore
[uncountable]
knowledge or information about a subject, for example nature or magic, that is not written down but is passed from person to person
According to local lore, a ghost still haunts 18 the castle.