I was intrigued by a Facebook post by Sarah Beth Cohen, in which was shown the following picture:

The post read: “Samuel (Salomon) Lipschütz vs Jackson Whipps Showalter in game from the US Championship match played from April 20 to May 23, 1892 in the Manhattan Chess Club. Lipschütz won convincingly +7-1=7. Notice the chess clock they’re using.”

I was intrigued, because I thought maybe it would be nice to see those games they played, so I opened my Time Machine (AKA Chessbase 17)

and set the time for 1892 (AKA Megabase 2023 Filter in Chessbase 17)

The time machine took its sweet time to bring me back into the past, but it did!

The resulting crosstable of the match seems to give an odd result… since it should write +7 -1 =7 instead of +7 +1 =5, but the oddness is not finished. If they played 15 games, the result should in the end amount to 15 games. 7+1+7=15 Instead 7+1+5=13. In Chessbase Megabase I do have 15 games, as everyone can see later. So I think the result should be +7 -1 =7 But maybe they were applying relativism… LOL

Yes in chess some things never change, and the amount of draws is staggering… while in Chinese Chess (XiangQi) the game is definitely more sharp.

If time travel is something which appeals to you, then one should also discover the clocks used in that period, always taken from the Sarah Beth Cohen’s post some comments had pictures of these old clocks used in the 1800.

Here the games played between these two titans from a long forgotten past.

I hope everyone enjoyed this trip in the chess past. I definitely loved to see the games and the clocks used in that period.