"Dunsany, Lord - The Three Sailors' Gambit" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dunsany Lord)

I had never seen Stavlokratz before, but I had played
over nearly every one of his games in the World Championship
for the last three or four years; he was always of course
the model chosen by students. Only young chess-players can
appreciate my delight at seeing him play first hand.
Well, the sailors used to lower their heads almost as low
as the table and mutter together before every move, but they
muttered so low that you could not hear what they planned.
They lost three pawns almost straight off, then a knight,
and shortly after a bishop; they were playing in fact the
famous Three Sailors' Gambit.
Stavlokratz was playing with the easy confidence that
they say was usual with him, when suddenly at about the
thirteenth move I saw him look surprised; he leaned forward
and looked at the board and then at the sailors, but he
learned nothing from their vacant faces; he looked back at
the board again.
He moved more deliberately after that; the sailors lost
two more pawns, Stavlokratz had lost nothing as yet. He
looked at me I thought almost irritably, as though something
would happen that he wished I was not there to see. I
believed at first that he had qualms about taking the
sailors' pound, until it dawned on me that he might lose the
game; I saw that possibility in his face, not on the board,
for the game had become almost incomprehensible to me. I
cannot describe my astonishment. And a few moves later
Stavlokratz resigned.
The sailors showed no more elation than if they had won
some game with greasy cards, playing amongst themselves.
Stavlokratz asked them where they got their opening. "We
kind of thought of it," said one. "It just come into our
heads like," said another. He asked them questions about
the ports they had touched at. He evidently thought as I
did myself that they had learned their extraordinary gambit,
perhaps in some old dependancy of Spain, from some young
master of chess whose fame had not reached Europe. He was
very eager to find out who this man could be, for neither of
us imagined that those sailors had invented it, nor would
anyone who had seen them. But he got no information from
the sailors.
Stavlokratz could very ill afford the loss of a pound.
He offered to play them again for the same stakes. The
sailors began to set up the white pieces. Stavlokratz
pointed out that it was his turn for the first move. The
sailors agreed but continued to set up the white pieces and
sat with the white before them waiting for him to move. It
was a trivial incident, but it revealed to Stavlokratz and
myself that none of these sailors was aware that white
always moves first.
Stavlokratz played them on his own opening, reasoning of