“The Keats of Chess”

Rudolf Charousek had been playing chess for only four years when he found himself facing this position against Jakob Wollner at Kaschau in 1893:

He found one of the most immortally pretty finishes in chess history — to discover it, read Kester Svendsen's 1947 short story "Last Round," which the game inspired.

Three years afterward, Charousek defeated Lasker at Nuremberg. "I shall have to play a championship match with this man someday," the master remarked, but it was not to be — the Hungarian died of tuberculosis in 1900, at only 26.