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Jan-19-05
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| percyblakeney: Burn quotes from Richard Forster's aforementioned monster of a book, which arrived in the mail today: "The player who combinates is lost!"
"Never move your queen's bishop unless you cannot help it." |
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| Aug-26-05 |
| Chessman1: This guy did beat those nice champions a long time ago but if he was still alive at this time he wouldin't be the world champion, well that's what I think. But if he was alive he would still have to face Robert James Fischer and Garrry Kasparov and those other good players to see if he would be a world champion in chess. |
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| Aug-26-05 |
| RookFile: The quote about the queen's bishop
actually shows a very modern undestanding of the game. Most masters today develop that piece late. |
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| Sep-04-05 |
| Averageguy: Everyone says that Burn was a tight defensive player, but I think that he was also a brilliant tactician when he wanted to be, for example ckeck his game against Blackburne in England, 1866. |
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| Dec-20-05 |
| error: It would be great to have a photo of Burn with his large beard in this site. |
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| Feb-06-06 |
| offramp: That is a wacky picture of Burn. It looks like he is trying to escape from The Village. |
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Jun-25-06
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| percyblakeney: In 1890 William Sonneborn published a statistical survey over the relative strength of tournament players. It included all the big tournaments from Paris 1867 to New York and Breslau 1889 (in all 19 tournaments). Apart from a “simple” calculation of the winning percentage of the players there was also a more complicated evaluation based on the strength of the opponents. Here is the top dozen of the more “refined” ranking (from Richard Forster’s <Amos Burn – A Chess Biography>): 1. Steinitz
2. Burn
3. Blackburne
4. Tarrasch
5. Winawer
6. Gunsberg
7. von Bardeleben
8. Zukertort
9. Mackenzie
10. Weiss
11. Chigorin
12. Lipschütz
Only counting winning percentage it looks like this, with the number of tournaments given in parenthesis: 1. Steinitz 76.07 (7 tournaments)
2. Blackburne 68.60 (16 tournaments)
3. Burn 67.77 (7 tournaments)
4. Tarrasch 67.59 (3 tournaments)
5. Winawer 66.01 (7 tournaments)
6. Zukertort 65.91 (9 tournaments)
7. Mackenzie 64.10 (8 tournaments)
8. Lipschütz 64.00 (2 tournaments)
9. von Bardeleben 63.38 (4 tournaments)
10. Gunsberg 63.25 (10 tournaments)
11. Weiss 62.59 (6 tournaments)
12. Chigorin 60.62 (4 tournaments)
Zukertort would have been higher placed if not for some bad results in his last years, as Tarrasch and Chigorin would have if the survey had been made a few years later. |
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| Oct-11-06 |
| Plato: I already posted this on the Marshall vs Burn, 1900 page, but thought it made sense to post it here as well: Amos Burn is largely forgotten nowadays (just one page of kibitzing at the time of my writing this!), and it's a pity that he seems best remembered for being the loser of "the pipe game" against Marshall, when he didn't have a chance to finish lighting his pipe (or so the story goes). In fact, Burn was one of the best players in the world for many years, with lifetime plus scores against top players like Steinitz (+1 =3 -0), Blackburne (+6 -4 =6), Gunsberg (+4 -3 =5), Pillsbury (+2 -1 =2), Charousek (+1 =1 -0) Bernstein (+3 -1 =0), Alekhine (+1 -0 =0), etc., and equal records against the likes of Zukertort, Chigorin, Maroczy, Spielmann, Nimzowitsch, etc. |
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Oct-11-06
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| keypusher: <plato> agree with you, but <gypsy> has posted some nice and informative posts about Amos Burn. Here's one: <Gypsy: I decided to find out for myself where or, better, how Burn got the points for his high ratings. His games from the Burn variation of French are quite illustrative. You probably will not like some of them, unless you you also find pleasure in games of Michael Adams; or, say, in games of Karpov or of Petrosian himself. Burn was a great 'spider'.Relative the standards of his era, Burn was a superb defender and a superb endgame player. Like Petrosian, he was also a good tactician, and he did attack when the position warranted it. But most of Burn tactics served subtle defensive and endgame objectives. He was a fine master of combining the defense with a counterattack. And I found him surprisingly Karpovian in the way he used dominance in the ways Karpov defines and uses the concept. In a typical Burn game, he survives opening with a worse but playable position. Then he defends throughout the middlegame and strikes back with one or two sorties. His pieces return just in time to cover the danger brewing around his king. This brings on a tour-de-force transition into an endgame -- and the transition itself is the finest aspect of Burn's play. Burn's play in the endgame is of a very high standard, but so often there is simply nothing much left to do, but give oponent enough time to examine the position and realise that it can be safely resigned. And if there is something left to do, Burn is usually up to the task. No need to play this endgame:
Schlechter vs Burn, 1897
A nice queen ending:
Pillsbury vs Burn, 1898
A counterattack in the more classical style:
G Marco vs Burn, 1895>
Also, Percyblakeney has the giant Burn bio. So Old Amos has a small but dedicated following here. |
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| Oct-12-06 |
| Plato: <keypusher> Pleased to see it! :) |
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| Dec-31-06 |
| The17thPawn: I have enjoyed Burns games for many years and admire his play but like all high level players he had opponents that seemed to get the best of him most of the time. Janowski, Schlechter, Tarrasch, Rubinstein and Lasker. Marshall and Teichmann also enjoyed good results against him, but to be fair this listing is of great players during the latter half of the 19th and early 20th century and Burn was probably out of his prime in some of these contests. |
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| Dec-31-06 |
| The17thPawn: Looking at his earlier contemporaries it seems Mackenzie and Mason both had his number |
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| Dec-31-06 |
| Maatalkko: I had no idea Burn was so strong. He is almost never mentioned on the "list of best players not to win the crown", but if he had played Steinitz instead of Gunsberg it wouldn't be clear who the favorite was. |
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| Dec-31-06 |
| BIDMONFA: Amos Burn BURN, Amos
http://www.bidmonfa.com/burn_amos.htm
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| Jan-20-07 |
| Schlechter: Burn vs Mason +3 =5 -3
vs Mackenzie +5 =3 -5
From Mr Forster's book |
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Dec-31-07
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| brankat: Pity, no kibitzing here in almost a year. And Mr.A.Burn was such a fine Master. Even today, a century later, many of his games are quite enjoyable to go through and study. If I remember correctly, only a few years ago there was a new book on A.Burn published. A Swiss author (an IM), in cooperation with Korchnoi, I think. A 1,000 pages volume! Happy Birthday Mr.Burn. |
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| Dec-31-07 |
| antharis: No coincidence that burn is player of the day.... happy birthday, Amos! |
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| Dec-31-07 |
| RookFile: Happy Birthday Amos Burn.
You never did get that cigar lit against Marshall, did you? |
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Dec-31-07
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| chancho: <RookFile> He had his moments... Burn vs Marshall, 1911 |
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May-16-08
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| Knight13: Chessmetrics Player Profile: Amos Burn
Born: 1848-Dec
Died: 1925-Nov
Best World Rank: #2 (on the September 1876 rating list) Highest Rating: 2728 on the October 1900 rating list, #6 in world, age 51y10m Best Individual Performance: 2750 in Cologne, 1898, scoring 9/12 (75%) vs 2624-rated opposition |
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| Aug-26-08 |
| myschkin: . . .
Photographs:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped... http://www.endgame.nl/Burn.jpg
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| Aug-26-08 |
| myschkin: . . .
addendum to the link <cu8sfan> mentioned earlier: Excerpt from Chapter 4 of <Amos Burn – A Chess Biography> - including an annotated game against Arthur Skipworth (1873) http://www.chesshistory.com/burn/bu...
(by Richard Forster)
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| Sep-11-08 |
| myschkin: . . .
Off topic but to help a donkey :)
“A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.” ~~ Bertrand Russell Firestarter link: http://www.light-a-fire.net/quotati... |
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Sep-13-08
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| rogge: Lol, your big ego really got hurt, I can tell. What a pathetic link. But you can't ever post anything without a lame link, can you, <sniffer>. Best wishes for you and your computer, <geek>. |
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| Oct-08-08 |
| PhilFeeley: Chessbase is offering the Amos Burn biography as a prize in a contest identifying photos from Chessnotes: http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail...
It will be autographed for the winner by Anand, Kramnik and the author Forster. |
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