Twenty Years Of The Rice Gambit

From – The Chess Collector – Twenty Years of the Rice Gambit: In Memoriam Isaac Leopold Rice

253 pages are devoted to analysis and variation from practical play. The remainder deals with the history of the Gambit and the various contest in which it was exclusively used; includes tributes to Professor Rice. Parts of the text appeared in previous editions. The Rice Gambit is a chess opening that arises from the King’s Gambit Accepted. An offshoot of the Kieseritzky Gambit, it is characterized by the moves 1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 g5 4. h4 g4 5. Ne5 Nf6 6. Bc4 d5 7. exd5 Bd6 8. 0-0 (instead of the normal 8.d4). White offers the sacrifice of the knight on e5 in order to get his king to safety and prepare a rook to join the attack against Black’s underdeveloped position. The Rice Gambit was heavily promoted by wealthy German-born, American businessman Isaac Rice towards the end of the 19th century. He sponsored numerous theme tournaments where the diagram position became the starting point of every game played. Such giants of the chess world as Emanuel Lasker, Mikhail Chigorin, Carl Schlechter, Frank Marshall, and David Janowski were among the participants. These events stretched from Monte Carlo, Saint Petersburg, and Ostend, to Brooklyn and Trenton Falls. In a 1905 Pillsbury National Correspondence Chess Association event, 230 amateurs played the gambit by mail. So obsessed was Rice with his pet line, he formed The Rice Gambit Association in 1904, at his home in New York. With Dr. Lasker as Secretary, the Association even published a book of all the games played in the theme tournaments.