Jon Speelman: Forward to the past

Jon Speelman has an eye for unusual constellations and interesting chess games, and in his column he presents a game that was played recently, but brought back memories of times gone by: “Over the last few weeks, the game which has made much the greatest impression on me is the splendid rapidplay battle between Richard Rapport and Jan-Krzysztof Duda at the Superbet tournament in Warsaw. This magnificent slugfest quickly entered some sort of time portal and resurfaced in the mid-nineteenth century with White a huge amount of material down but the Black king under intense fire.” | Photo: Jan-Krzysztof Duda at the Superbet Tournament in Warsaw 2023 | Photo: Lennart Ootes