Rudolf Charousek

Rudolf Charousek (; 19 September 1873 – 18 April 1900) was a Czech-born Hungarian chess player. One of the top ten players in the world during the 1890s, he had a short career, dying at the age of 26 from tuberculosis. Reuben Fine wrote of him "Playing over his early games is like reading Keats's poetry: you cannot help feeling a grievous, oppressive sense of loss, of promise unfulfilled".

Life Charousek was born in Lomeček, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (today part of Úmonín near Prague, Czech Republic). At the age of five weeks, his family moved to Debrecen, Hungary, where he became a naturalized Hungarian. They later moved to Miskolc where, at the age of 16, he learned to play chess. Studying law in Kassa (today Košice, Slovakia), he is said to have copied out the voluminous Handbuch des Schachspiels by hand, unable to afford his own copy. Despite the lack of competition in Kassa, he soon became a strong player, and also qualified as a lawyer. In 1893 he entered a correspondence tournament organised by the Budapest newspaper Pesti Hírlap, in which he eventually shared first place with another up and coming Hungarian master, Géza Maróczy. He joined the Budapest chess club, where he frequently played with Maróczy and Gyula Makovetz, and convincingly defeated Győző Exner in a match.

Notable games This is Charousek's last round win over the World Champion in his international tournament debut:

Charousek—Lasker, Nuremberg 1896

Another of Charousek's games, which Grandmaster Andrew Soltis described as "one of the prettiest ever", was the basis for the story Last Round by Kester Svendsen, which Soltis called "perhaps the finest chess short story". Here is the game with punctuation marks by Soltis:

Charousek—Wollner, Kaschau 1893

A variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined is named after him.