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Aug-06-03
 | | Honza Cervenka: Chessgames.com, games from 1852 saved in this file were played by Elijah Williams. |
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| Jul-05-05 | | Knight13: He was one of the very strong players in London. |
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| Sep-25-05 | | biglo: Is this the Williams of Williams Gambit fame?
[Opening "Bird's opening: Williams gambit"]
[ECO "A03"]
1. f4 d5 2. e4
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| May-01-06 | | EmperorAtahualpa: <Is this the Williams of Williams Gambit fame?> <biglo> I don't think so. Check here: Repertoire Explorer: Elijah Williams (white) |
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May-01-06
 | | TheAlchemist: <EA>
There are only 2 games in the DB with this opening (http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches...), one from 1985 and one from 2001. To me, this seems more of a 19th Century opening and judging by Williams' career span, he seems a worthy candidate for its invention. Maybe the scores of his games were just lost. Also, I found this site: http://www.chessdirect.co.uk/acatal... and I quote it:
<WILLIAMS GAMBIT(CODE x3350)
William L Williams
Analysis and games in the obscure gambit 1.f4,d5; 2.e4!? named after the 19th century player Elijah Williams. The author examines only the gambit accepted (2..dxe4) and presents his material in MCO style tables of variations with notes. There are 15 example games with brief annnotations.
Pub. 1997, softback, 64 pages.> |
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| May-01-06 | | EmperorAtahualpa: <TheAlchemist> Well I guess you and <biglo> are right then! Now all we need to do is find some of his games. I'll check out some other databases. |
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| May-01-06 | | EmperorAtahualpa: Hmmmmm....I can only find Williams gambit games by the author William L Williams, not by Elijah Williams. :) |
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| Mar-20-07 | | Akuni: According to Chernev, he played so slowly that his opponent, a man named Buckle, wrote two chapters of "History of Civilizations" while waiting for him to move. |
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Mar-20-07
 | | keypusher: Buckle is also alleged to have burst out to a tardy opponent (not Williams, I hope), "Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable!" |
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Apr-29-07
 | | tamar: Jeremy Spinrad writes a typically interesting inquiry into whether Williams was really the "Bristol Sloth" as he became known because of Staunton. http://www.chesscafe.com/spinrad/sp... |
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| Apr-29-07 | | vonKrolock: Thanks, <tamar> - part two of an article very interesting, with a link to part one (PDF) - (there is to be noted that the *typical* mistake of giving Bird's portrait as if it was Buckle's is repeated) Another chesscafe.com , E. Grivas, rescussited recently the player *Beratende* (repeating a mistake of who translated Pachman's "Strategy" for a Dover Edition) |
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| Apr-29-07 | | vonKrolock: erratum - it should be "ressuscited", from 'ressuscitare' (sorry if there's not an English verb 'to ressuscite' - what's is current here can be rare, ecclesiastical or even non-existent for anglo-american ears...)
another of my mistakes was to confound two of those Dutch 'van der Etc' players, in Kamsky's page |
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| May-08-07 | | WarmasterKron: <TheAlchemist> I happen to own that monograph on the Williams Gambit, in which William L. Williams refers to an entry in the Oxford Companion to Chess on the aforementioned gambit: "Williams Gambit, a curious experiment in the Bird Opening, an opening to which Elijah Williams showed great partiality in the 1840s and 1850s", and points out that 'no game scores are cited'. Perhaps the gambit was named in honour of Elijah Williams, but I don't know of any games prior to 1975, which is when William L. Williams first played it. More likely, the writers of the OCtC simply assumed that it was named after the strong 19th Century player who sometimes played 1.f4. As recently as the early 1990s there was a thematic correspondence tournament, including a handful of correspondence masters. |
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| Feb-17-08 | | Knight13: How come this guy don't show up in chess books? He got 3rd in 1851 that's really hard to get! It's not like he sucked or anything... |
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| Feb-26-08 | | Knight13: E Williams came really close to Staunton in their match in 1851 http://www.chessgames.com/perl/ches... |
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| Sep-23-09 | | kramputz: How come he never played Paul Morphy? |
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| Sep-23-09 | | DrCurmudgeon: Unlike Staunton, Williams came up with a good excuse not to play Morphy. He died four years before Morphy came to England. |
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| Feb-13-10 | | Rumi: I have a question about Williams' book "Horae Divanianae", a collection of games played at the "Grand Divan", published in 1852. The games are presented in two columns, each column headed by a player's name and piece-color. In most games the left-hand column is labeled "White", as one would expect. In many games, however, the left-hand column is labeled "Black", and notes to these games clearly indicate that these are indeed Black's moves. How are we to understand this? Did Black move first in these games? Or what? (In his earlier book "Souvenir of the Bristol Chess Club", published in 1845, the left-hand columns are always labeled "White".) |
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| Feb-13-10 | | Calli: Players in those days often used the Black pieces set up as white (the black Q on d1). Some books recorded this and others ignored it as really doesn't matter. |
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| Feb-16-10 | | Rumi: Thanks for the clarification. I was beginning to suspect that this might be the case, as I subsequently noted that Staunton often did the same thing in the pages of CPC. Now I can just ignore this when entering 19th Century games into a database. |
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| Aug-26-11 | | JimmyVermeer: Rumi, the famous "Immortal Game" between Anderssen and Kieseritzky was played with the black pieces moving first. In those days, it was not a strongly enforced rule that White had to move first.
According to Wikipedia, Staunton once told Williams, "You're not just supposed to sit there. You're supposed to sit there and think." Good thing we have chess clocks nowadays. |
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Jun-27-12
| | tamar: I have been curious how Elijah Williams contracted cholera. Did he live near the Broad Street pump, which is believed to be the source of the outbreak? All I see recorded is that he died at Charing Cross Hospital 2 days after experiencing violent pain in the Strand. (The Oxford Chess Companion to Chess, Hooper & Whyld) It says he left a note on his door, after cholera had broken out, offering preventive medicine, for free. Does anyone know more of the story? I know Simpson's Divan is near Charing Cross Hospital, so I am assuming he was in the Strand for chess. |
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| Oct-08-13 | | thomastonk: <tamar: .. so I am assuming he was in the Strand for chess.> From Löwenthal's chess column in "The Era", September 17, 1854: "It is with much regret that we announce the death of Mr. E Williams, so well-known to the Chess World as a player of considerable ability. We understand that the unfortunate gentleman was pursuing his favourite amusement on the afternoon of Monday last, when he was suddenly seized with a fatal attack of cholera, Requiescat in pace." |
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Oct-08-13
| | tamar: <thomasstonk> Many thanks for the information. As that outbreak of cholera was associated with the Broad Street pump, I was trying to trace how Elijah Williams could have received that water. Was he just unlucky or did he live on the affected streets? Johnson, Steven (2006). The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How it Changed Science, Cities and the Modern World. Riverhead Books. pp. 195–196. ISBN 1-59448-925-4. |
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| Oct-08-13 | | TheFocus: <the unfortunate gentleman was pursuing his favourite amusement on the afternoon of Monday last> So did this amusement take place in a brothel? Perhaps he should have been playing chess instead. |
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