Rudolf Charousek ,pronounced Kah-roo-sek, was born in 1873 and died in the year 1900, a tragic loss to chess. He began playing at the age of 16, in 1889, and in the span of less than a dozen years he made his mark as one of the most promising masters of the "young" generation. According to Hoffer, who wrote an article on him in the Chess Monthly, virtually all of the masters who met him admitted that he was a genius. Lasker is said to have remarked, "I shall have to play a championship match with this man some day." Early in 1898, Charousek contracted an inflammation of the lungs that dogged him throughout the last year and a half of his life. Although he continued to try to participate in tournaments, finishing second at the German Congress (ahead of Steinitz, Schlechter, Janowski, etc), Hoffer remarked that he looked frail and emaciated. On April 18, 1900, he was seized with a hemmorage of the lungs. He died the next day. This game was an offhand encounter between Charousek and Wollner, played at Kassa in 1893. As we play it over, keep in mind that this is a player who only learned how the pieces move four years earlier. One of the wonderful things about games from the "romantic era" of chess is the fearless gambiteering spirit the contestants so frequently display. Charousek here offers the Danish Gambit, two full pawns for glorious diagonals and fierce attacking chances. He learned to play chess at the surprisingly advanced age of 16, and that soon after that he was vanquishing all comers. By the last decade of the 19th Century, the meteoric Charousek was battling the best in the world. At his peak, retro ratings by Chess Metrics list him in seventh spot, only a few rating points behind players like Lasker,Pillsbury, and Tarrasch, but well ahead of Steinitz, Chigorn and other chess luminaries.