The Evergreen Game chess — played in Berlin in 1852 between Adolf Anderssen and Jean Dufresne — is a 24-move attack that ends with two White bishops landing on adjacent squares to seal every escape route around the Black king. Anderssen sacrificed a rook on move 20 and his queen on move 21, then delivered checkmate with the coordinated action of both bishops: one closing in from the queenside, the other arriving from the far diagonal across the board. The game earns its name from Wilhelm Steinitz, who called it “ein immergrünes Spiel” — a game that stays ever green. More than 170 years later, that verdict holds.
The Evergreen Game is often compared to Anderssen’s earlier masterpiece from 1851, the Immortal Game. Both are Evans Gambit attacks featuring multiple sacrifices and a bishop-driven checkmate. But they are different kinds of brilliance. The Immortal sacrifices three major pieces and requires a king hunt across the entire board. The Evergreen is tighter: fewer sacrifices, a more confined position, and a double-bishop finale whose geometry is as elegant as anything chess has produced. Steinitz was the man who would eventually end the Romantic era by proving that positional chess beat Anderssen’s improvised brilliance. That he called this game evergreen is the best endorsement it could have received.
Who played the Evergreen Game?
The Evergreen Game was a friendly game between Adolf Anderssen (White) and Jean Dufresne (Black), played in Berlin in 1852. According to Wikipedia’s biography of Adolf Anderssen, he was a mathematics teacher from Breslau who had just won the first international chess tournament, held in London in 1851. That tournament established him as the strongest player in Europe, and it was during that same London visit that he played the game now known as the Immortal Game. In 1852, back in Germany, he sat down with Jean Dufresne for what appears to have been an informal game — and produced a second masterpiece.
Jean Dufresne was a Berlin-based chess author and teacher. According to his Wikipedia biography, he co-authored popular German chess textbooks and was a regular in Berlin chess circles, but he was not in the same competitive class as Anderssen. He was a strong amateur and a willing sparring partner for the master. This matters for understanding the game: Anderssen did not produce the Evergreen under tournament pressure against a world-class opponent. He produced it in a friendly context, apparently for the pleasure of the attack itself.
The game was published in chess journals of the 1850s and 1860s and became widely known through anthologies. Wilhelm Steinitz — the man who would later defeat Anderssen in their 1866 match and establish the foundations of modern positional theory — was among those who came to know it. His label “Evergreen” transformed the game’s status from celebrated curiosity into canonical masterpiece.
What opening did Anderssen choose?
The Evergreen Game opens with the Evans Gambit: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.b4. White offers a pawn on b4 to gain rapid development, open the b-file, and accelerate the attack. According to Wikipedia’s article on the Evans Gambit, the opening was invented by Captain William Davies Evans, a Welsh ship captain, around 1827, and was at the peak of its popularity in the 1840s and 1850s. Anderssen played it regularly. Paul Morphy played it. It represented the Romantic era’s philosophy in miniature: sacrifice material, seize the initiative, and attack.
Dufresne accepts: 4…Bxb4 5.c3 Ba5. The bishop retreats to a5 after the c3 push, and after 6.d4 exd4, the game enters the accepted Evans Gambit with both sides competing for the centre.
Move seven is where the game departs from normal theory. After 7.O-O, instead of developing his pieces, Dufresne plays 7…d3 — advancing the d-pawn all the way to d3. This creative move tries to anchor the pawn deep in White’s position, blocking development and creating a long-term thorn. The trouble is that it hands White a permanent tempo advantage: while Black has invested a pawn move in disruption, White’s pieces are already converging on the centre.
Anderssen responds with 8.Qb3 — attacking both the a5 bishop and the f7 pawn simultaneously — and Dufresne is forced to react defensively with 8…Qf6. After 9.e5 Qg6 10.Re1 Nge7, the position is already unbalanced. White has a powerful pawn on e5, a rook pointing at the Black king’s file, and all his pieces ready to coordinate. Black’s queen has been shuffled around and the pieces are still undeveloped behind the d3 pawn.
At move 11, Anderssen plays 11.Ba3 — his dark-square bishop moves from c1 to a3 along the long diagonal. It looks like a simple developing move. It will matter enormously in twenty-four moves.
How did the attack build in the middlegame?
The middlegame sees Anderssen accumulate piece activity while Dufresne’s position remains passive. Move 12 features an audacious queen excursion: 12.Qxb5 Rb8 13.Qa4 Bb6. White grabs a pawn on b5, pulls the queen back, and Black’s bishop retreats to b6. After 14.Nbd2, the b1 knight finally develops, and Dufresne plays 14…Bb7 — the dark-square bishop moving from c8 to b7 through the square vacated by the b-pawn’s advance. Black’s bishops are stacked on b6 and b7, defensive but not active.
Move 15 is 15.Ne4 Qf5 — White’s knight centrises on e4, and Black’s queen retreats again. After 16.Bxd3, Anderssen finally captures the d3 pawn that Dufresne planted in move 7. The light-square bishop activates on d3. Black plays 16…Qh5, and the position is ready to explode.
17.Nf6+ — the e4 knight leaps to f6, giving check. This sacrifice begins the forcing sequence. Dufresne must take: 17…gxf6. After 18.exf6, a White pawn stands on f6, cutting off Black’s g-rook from the kingside and sealing the Black king’s escape route toward g7. Dufresne plays 18…Rg8 to activate the rook, but Anderssen is already calculating the finish.
19.Rad1 — the a1 rook moves quietly to d1. This is the last preparatory move before the combination. The rook will support the final battery. Black, perhaps underestimating the threat, plays 19…Qxf3 — capturing Anderssen’s Nf3, which has been on that square since move 2. The queen takes the knight and threatens mate on g2.
Anderssen had already seen what comes next.
What were the decisive sacrifices?
20.Rxe7+ is the first thunderbolt. The e1 rook captures the knight on e7 and gives check simultaneously, sacrificing the full rook. After 20…Nxe7 — the c6 knight recaptures on e7 — the Black king remains on e8, boxed in by the pawn on f6, the rook that just arrived on e7, and the pieces that are about to flood in.
21.Qxd7+ is the queen sacrifice — the move that makes the game a classic. Anderssen’s a4 queen moves to d7, giving check to the king on e8 along the diagonal. According to Wikipedia’s Evergreen Game article, this sacrifice is the centrepiece of the combination, forcing the king into the open. After 21…Kxd7 — the Black king takes the queen on d7, stepping into the centre of the board — Anderssen’s remaining pieces execute the checkmate with precision.
22.Bf5+ — the d3 bishop advances to f5, attacking the king on d7 along the f5-d7 diagonal. The king flees: 22…Ke8. Now comes 23.Bd7+ — the same f5 bishop advances again to d7, giving check to the king on e8 via the d7-e8 diagonal. The king has only one square: 23…Kf8.
And now the finale: 24.Bxe7#. The Ba3 — Anderssen’s dark-square bishop, placed on a3 on move 11 and silent for thirteen moves — travels the full length of the long diagonal. From a3 to b4 to c5 to d6 to e7: five squares in one move, capturing the Black knight and delivering checkmate.
Adolf Anderssen vs Jean Dufresne, Berlin 1852 — The Evergreen Game
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What makes the double-bishop checkmate unique?
The double-bishop finish of the Evergreen Game is special for a specific geometric reason. After 24.Bxe7#, two White bishops occupy adjacent squares on the seventh rank — d7 and e7 — and together they seal every escape route around the Black king on f8. Neither bishop alone could deliver checkmate. Together, they cover every square the king might use.
The Bd7 (the light-square bishop, which travelled from d3 through f5 to d7 across moves 22 and 23) controls the diagonal toward e8, cutting off the king’s retreat. The Be7 (the dark-square bishop, arriving from a3 via the long diagonal) delivers the direct check from e7 to f8 while controlling f6 and g5 on the other diagonal. The pawn on f6 blocks g7. The Black rook on g8 blocks g8. The Black pawn on f7 blocks f7. There is no square remaining.
What elevates this beyond a standard checkmating pattern is the journey of the Ba3. Placed on a3 in move 11, it was a quiet piece for the entire middlegame. It controlled its diagonal — a3-b4-c5-d6-e7-f8 — but no action seemed to require it. It was not part of any exchange, not involved in any tactical operation. Then on move 24, it travelled five squares in one move to deliver the final blow. The bishop that had been waiting for thirteen moves decided the game in thirteen moves’ time.
This kind of latent piece coordination — where a piece is positioned precisely and then participates in the final combination long after it was developed — is a hallmark of Anderssen’s best games. The Ba3’s long journey also illustrates a principle that every student of chess encounters: pieces on good diagonals can be decisive even when they appear to be doing nothing. An open diagonal is potential energy. The Evergreen Game shows what happens when that potential is released.
Were the sacrifices objectively sound?
Modern engine analysis confirms that the Evergreen Game combination is fundamentally sound. After 20.Rxe7+, Black has no route to avoid checkmate with best play — the king is too exposed and White’s remaining pieces coordinate too efficiently for any defence to survive.
The critical error was Dufresne’s 7…d3, which handed White a development advantage that Anderssen never relinquished. By the time Black played 19…Qxf3, the position was already objectively lost. The queen captured a knight, but White’s two bishops, the f6 pawn-barrier, and the open diagonals created a mating net that no amount of material could unpick.
The evaluation bar — if one had existed in 1852 — would have shown White steadily increasing the advantage from around move 9 onward. Anderssen did not simply stumble into a lucky combination; he built it move by move, placing each piece on the square it would need when the time came. The Rad1 on move 19, the Ba3 on move 11 — these were not tactical moves, but they enabled the tactics.
One line worth examining is 21…Nxd7 instead of 21…Kxd7 (declining the queen and blocking with the knight). This fails to 22.Rxd7 with a crushing attack: the rook on d7, the bishop on d3, and the pawn on f6 leave White with an overwhelming position. There is no satisfactory defence once the queen is offered on d7. Anderssen calculated this in 1852 with no computer assistance, in what appears to have been a friendly informal game.
Why did Steinitz call it the Evergreen Game?
Wilhelm Steinitz, the first official world chess champion and the founder of modern positional theory, gave this game its name. The exact phrase is usually translated as “an evergreen game” — a game that never grows old and never loses its freshness.
Steinitz’s praise carries special weight precisely because his chess was the opposite of Anderssen’s. Steinitz argued throughout his career that systematic positional play — accumulating small advantages, avoiding unnecessary risks, building structures that could not be breached — was superior to the improvised brilliance of the Romantic era. He proved it by defeating Anderssen in their 1866 match. The Romantic era effectively ended when Steinitz beat its greatest practitioner.
And yet Steinitz called this game evergreen.
The explanation lies in what the Evergreen Game actually demonstrates. This is not simply a lucky attack or a beautiful coincidence: it is a precisely calculated combination, with every sacrifice prepared by piece placement from moves 11 and 19 onward. The game is structurally revealing — it shows that bishops on open diagonals can be worth more than rooks and queens in confined positions, and that a pawn barrier (the f6 pawn) can seal a king as effectively as a physical wall. These are enduring truths about chess that Steinitz would have recognised regardless of the tactical style in which they were wrapped.
When the founder of positional chess theory calls an attacking game evergreen, he is acknowledging that beauty in chess is not solely the property of one school. The Evergreen Game belongs to the Romantic era, but the principles it illustrates — piece coordination, long diagonals, king exposure — are timeless.
How does the Evergreen Game compare to other celebrated sacrifices?
The Evergreen Game belongs to a tradition of queen sacrifices that threads through the entire history of chess. Bobby Fischer’s queen sacrifice at age 13 — in what Hans Kmoch called the Game of the Century — shares the same structural logic: the queen is abandoned to activate minor pieces that then coordinate to deliver a forced checkmate. Fischer’s game came a century later, in a competitive tournament, against an international master. The positions are completely different. But the underlying insight is the same: a queen pointing at the wrong side of the board is worth less than three coordinated minor pieces pointing at the king.
The Immortal Game and the Evergreen Game, both by Anderssen and played within a year of each other, are often discussed as a pair. The Immortal features three major-piece sacrifices and a queen sacrifice that leaves only minor pieces for the final attack. The Evergreen features one rook sacrifice and one queen sacrifice, with the final blow delivered by two bishops from different angles. The Immortal is more theatrical; the Evergreen is more geometrically perfect. Both are expressions of the same principle: when the king is exposed and the opponent’s pieces are coordinated, the material count becomes meaningless.
What does the Evergreen Game teach modern players?
The Evergreen Game contains three lessons that remain as useful today as they were in 1852.
Piece activity beats material count in critical positions. Anderssen sacrificed a rook and queen — significant material — because his remaining pieces had overwhelming activity. Both bishops were pointed at the king, the f6 pawn sealed the escape route, and Black’s rooks had no open files to contest the position. When activity and material point in different directions, experienced players weight activity.
Passive pawns become structural liabilities. Dufresne’s 7…d3 looked clever — a pawn lodged in White’s half, disrupting development. But it handed White a long-term tempo advantage and became a target that Anderssen captured on move 16 to activate his bishop. The d3 pawn was passive for nine moves before White removed it on the way to the winning combination.
Quietly-placed pieces can decide games. The Ba3 was placed on move 11 and appeared to do nothing for the next thirteen moves. It controlled a diagonal, but no forcing sequence seemed to require it. Then on move 24 it came the full length of that diagonal to deliver checkmate. This is the lesson Anderssen illustrated most vividly: a piece on a good square is never wasted. It waits for the position to justify it.
To step through every move yourself — pause at the critical sacrifices on moves 20 and 21, and see what a modern engine evaluates at each junction — open the Evergreen Game in PGNBase. You can load the full PGN, use the engine to verify the combination’s soundness from both sides, and compare the double-bishop finish with other mating patterns in the database.
Conclusion
The Evergreen Game is 24 moves and one of the clearest demonstrations in chess history of what happens when two bishops are aimed at a king with nowhere to go. Anderssen sacrificed a rook and a queen in consecutive moves, then guided his two bishops to d7 and e7, where they created a mating net that covered every escape square precisely.
Wilhelm Steinitz was not a sentimentalist. He dismantled the Romantic era by proving that positional chess consistently beat tactical improvisation. When he called the 1852 game between Anderssen and Dufresne “a green immortal,” he was making a precise observation: a game that teaches something true about chess does not expire. The bishop Anderssen placed on a3 in move 11 waited thirteen moves before travelling the full diagonal to deliver the final blow. That patience, and that geometry, is what the Evergreen Game is about — and why, more than 170 years later, it still is.