The Rudolf Charousek Memorial Chess Congress Standard Chess

Hungarian Rudolf Charousek died on April 18, 1900. He was 26 years old. With his early death from tuberculosis, the chess world may have lost a future world champion. He learned chess in his early teenage years and it was said that he copied by hand every page of Bilguer’s Handbook because he couldn’t afford to buy it.

His first international tournament was Nuremberg, 1896. He wasn’t among the prize winners but he did defeat world champion Emanuel Lasker in their individual game. Later that year he tied with Tchigorin for first place at Budapest. The following year he won clear first in the Berlin Chess Congress. He scored only two and a half points in the first six rounds in Berlin but then ran off a string of eleven wins and two draws in the final thirteen rounds.

Lasker once remarked of Charousek, “I shall have to play a championship match with this man someday.” Perhaps in another life.