<But I understand that Mr. Steinitz publicly claims the championship of the world on the ground that he beat Mr. Blackburne in a set match six years ago, and in support of his claim cites the authority of a legal friend, a well-known and accomplished writer on sports, who says that single encounters and not tournaments decide the championship in all games.>

The ISDN 1882 article is interesting. Again, we have to thank Steinitz, despite the appeal of ISDN article to chess knowledge, that match play is central to determining WCC.

<zanzibar: <chessgames> do we get a certificate of some kind, or at least a gold star, if we manage to follow all that?> You don't have to follow it at all, just let the computer do the data crunching. The one thing the editor has to be savvy to the possiblity of using a correction slip when appopriate.

<Also, how do you get to (6) from (5) given that (5) is a HALT for the very condition (6) requires first, i.e. <T> != 0 ... ?> Look more carefully, step (5) says <If (<T> is not zero) and (<E> is not "?")> and then informs the editor that there are other games that may require attention. (A purely informational service; it doesn't change data.). Step (4) only halts when <<T> is not zero, and that event is "blessed"> — so most of the time it won't halt at all. (I just want to enforce that editors can't meddle with voted-in TI events.) Step (6) is for when <T> is zero and <E> is something other than "?".

The idea is that if a tournament is decided to be designated as "?" there is no need to change other tournaments that also are "?", that's just silly. But if the tournament reads "Capablanca 40 board simul" then it's quite possible that other games need attention as well.

<Let me stop here and suggest that my preference would be to have much less automatically logic doing the changes - and instead allow the editor to submit a list of games to update.> In a way this can be done, via the correction slip. Suppose there are 100 games labeled "It" that should more properly read "Mar Del Plata" — except for 8 of them that are some other tournament. The editor can now handle those 8 exceptions by hand, and then submit a correction slip to let us do a mass-edit on the remaining 92.

Though I think your articles are getting big enough, and detailed enough, that a toc with links (and backlinks!) is in order.>

"The victory of Capt. Mackenzie at Frankfurt (1887) is of course very popular in America, as it is also in Europe. Mr. Steinitz in his magazine seems rather annoyed at the title of "Champion" being applied to the Captain and challenges him for a match of ten games up for a minimum of $1,000 a side, allowing him two games to start with."

* * * * *

Here's an online version of Bird's 1887 reply to Hoffer, as found in BCM:

https://zanchess.wordpress.com/2017...

None other than H.N. Pillsbury, writing about Steinitz, explicitly using the mysterious "twenty-eigth years", which makes perfect sense for an article written in 1895 (i.e. backdating to 1866):

<
STEINITZ AND OTHER AMERICANS.

In regard to the American players, who has not heard of the great "Bohemian Caesar" Steinitz, for many years a resident of London, now resident in the United State? For twenty-eight years he upheld in match play against Andersen, Zukertort, Tschigorin, Gunsberg and Blackburne the proud title of champion of the world, and when forced to lower his colors to a younger man, Lasker, only did so after a galant struggle. Certainly, as the pioneer in introducing new ideas into the noble game, he will always occupy a prominent page in chess history. Perhaps age is beginning to tell on him, and this may be the reason for his not reaching the highest place in the tournament. But if his actual playing powers do not return to him, his analytical powers remain as great as ever, an unfailing source of enrichment to the literature of chess. He has been called the master of modern chess in oppositlon to Paul Morphy, and the name is not undeserved. Some have taken pleasure in comparing Paul Morphy and Steinitz to Napoleon and Moltke as opponent of very different kinds of strategy. Like other masters in the past, Morphy never hesitated to sacrifice a piece or even two in developing some brillant combination of attack, whereas Steinltz was among the first to insist that no advantage should be given to one's opponent unless a gain was seen to be the result of it. He as always declared that an infinitesimal advantage if well used is suffcient to win a game, and that it is always better to draw than to lose. So he has erred on the safe side, while Morphy and the others often sacrificed soundness to brilliancy. >

THE HASTINGS TOURNAMENT: ESTIMATES OF THE LEADING PLAYERS BY THE ...
New - York Tribune (1866-1899); Sep 8, 1895;
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Tribune / Herald Tribune
pg. 19

This is a good find. I wonder if anybody has already published it?

(I be surprised if nobody has, but this might be the first in connection with this topic. Neither Pope nor Winter mention Pillsbury in their early championship research pages.)

Funny, from the same year, a Chicago paper listed it as twenty-seven years. This might be due to correcting an error on Pillsbury's part (or maybe there's the usual 1 ambiguity when subtracting calendar dates?).

< William Steinitz held the title of chess champion of the world for twenty-seven years until it was wrested front hint by Leaker two years ago. He is known as the leader of the modern school. the principles of which he defends In a series of works on chess.>

September 8, 1895
Chicago Daily Tribune p26

<Event: ____________>

For the most part, it works like "Site" does: if you see a problem, change it and press the button.

The main motivation here is to clean up horrible event tags, like "It (cat.19), Sarajevo (Bosnia & Herzegovina) (1" and so forth, but it can be used to clean up any game with an identified problem.

With that in mind, it intentionally cannot change Tournament Index games (e.g. adding to removing games from a T.I. event). If you want to change the name of a T.I. event you'll have to submit a correction slip.

A few other notes:

• It will change the PGN on the spot.
• You can't put a quotation mark in an event name. And they can't be longer than 48 characters.
• If you want to remove an event (e.g. the info provided is wrong, but the real info is unknown) you can put a "?" in the field.
• It will add a logfile entry similar to changing Site tags—including your username, so no shenanigans.

I've come across a curious case, and I'm not sure if I'm just overtired, or if this is blatant plagiarism -

Compare the Steinitz bio in J.G. Cunningham's 1894 Steinitz-Lasker match book:

https://books.google.com/books?id=G... (p4)

with the Steinitz bio in Mason and Pollock's 1895 St. Petersburg tb:

https://books.google.com/books?id=t... (p v)

Are these not identical up to the mention of Hastings?

Assuming Cunningham's work predates Mason and Pollock's, shouldn't they credit him? Do they?

Mary Mills Houlding

I don't know what to say; I'm not sure how that's possible outside of a crazy fluke (e.g. software processing the game at the exact instant you tried to make the change.) If you notice it happen again let me know.>

Here's another one:

Bell's Life in London, 1866.08.11, p12

Just think of how many wonderful games might have been played if these two met in match play in 1867?

Especially given Neumann's success at Dundee (1867).

http://www.edochess.ca/tournaments/...

http://www.chessarch.com/archive/18...

* * * * *

<jn> if I could ask, what software, if any, do you use to publish the chessgames in HTML?

Now it says <It>

Game Editor has <7th ETCh final>

Speelman vs T Wedberg, 1980