Lord of the flies

It is often said that the great chessboard artist, Polish Grandmaster Akiba Rubinstein, was afflicted during tournament play by an imaginary fly, which he sought in vain to swat away. As is the nature of imaginary beings, a case in point is the A Bao A Qu, the first entry in the bible of such entities, The Book of Imaginary Beings by Jorge Luis Borges, they remain undetectable to the uninitiated. The A Bao A Qu, of course, lived invisibly on the stairway of the Tower of Victory in Chittor, Rajasthan, imperceptible to all but those who had attained perfect Nirvana. It was not widely seen.
 
Similarly, the offending fly was visible only to poor, distracted Rubinstein. The wise of the time saw in this the incipient lunacy which was to cause him to abandon chess for the three decades remaining to him after his last major tournament, the Chess Olympiad of Prague, 1931.
 
I have, though, now reached a quite different conclusion about the apparent manifestation of the intrusive airborne insect. Rubinstein may well have sunk into an inner immigration of the mind from the early 1930s, but the fly was, I believe, not a portent of mental retreat to come. It was, in fact, the symptom of a physical condition, posterior vitreous detachment, whereby the jelly-like membrane of the eye detaches itself from the retina and black specks appear to float across the eye, giving the impression that an importunate fly was hovering around one’s head.
 
This week, two samples of Rubinstein’s play at its best.
 
Rubinstein-Hromadka; Mährisch Ostrau 1923; King’s Gambit
 
1 e4 e5 2 f4 For a great strategist, such as Rubinstein, reverting to this venerable 19th-century favourite might seem perverse, but Rubinstein allegedly scored over 86% with the King’s Gambit in serious tournament play. 2 … Bc5 3 Nf3 d6 4 Nc3 Nf6 5 Bc4 Nc6 6 d3 Bg4 7 h3 Bxf3 8 Qxf3 Nd4 Black has declined the gambit which he might have accepted with 2 … exf4, in the hope of a seemingly quieter life.