WILHELM STEINITZ (born May-14-1836, died Aug-12-1900, 64 years old) Austria (federation/nationality United States of America) PRONUNCIATION: [what is this?] William (né Wolfgang, aka Wilhelm) Steinitz, born Prague BOH (Austrian Empire); died New York, NY USA. Wilhelm Steinitz is the earliest World Champion of chess recognized by FIDE. Background The last of thirteen sons of a hardware retailer, he was born in Prague in what was then the Kingdom of Bohemia within the Austrian Empire and which is now within the Czech republic. Like his father he was a Talmudic scholar, but then he left to study mathematics in the Vienna Polytechnic. He eventually dropped out of the Polytechnic to play chess professionally. Soon after, he played in the London tournament of 1862, and then settled in London for over twenty years, making his living at the London Chess Club. He emigrated to the USA in 1883, taking out US citizenship, living in New York for the rest of his life, and changing his first name to "William". Matches He was recognized as the world's leading player, and considered to be the world champion by many, after he defeated the then-acknowledged number one chess player in the world (now that Paul Morphy had retired), Adolf Anderssen, in a match in 1866 which he won by 8-6. However, it was not until his victory in the Steinitz - Zukertort World Championship Match (1886) – where he sat beside a US flag - that he was recognised as the first undisputed world chess champion. He successfully defended his title three times in the Steinitz - Chigorin World Championship Match (1889), the Steinitz - Gunsberg World Championship Match (1890), and in the Steinitz - Chigorin World Championship Rematch (1892). In 1894, Emanuel Lasker won the crown from Steinitz by winning the Steinitz - Lasker World Championship Match (1894) and retained it by winning the Lasker - Steinitz World Championship Rematch (1896). Steinitz was an extremely successful match player. Between 1860 and 1897, he played 36 matches, winning every serious match with the exception of his two matches against Lasker. Some of the prominent players of the day that he defeated in match play other than in his world championship matches included Max Lange, Serafino Dubois, Frederick Deacon, Dionisio Martinez, Joseph Blackburne, Anderssen, Augustus Mongredien, Henry Bird, Johannes Zukertort, George Mackenzie, and Celso Golmayo Zupide. Tournaments Steinitz was more adept at winning matches than tournaments in his early years, a factor, which alongside his prolonged absences from competition chess after 1873, may have prevented more widespread recognition of his dominance of chess as world champion until the first "official" world championship match in 1886. Nevertheless, between 1859 and his death in 1900, the only tournament in which he did not win prize money was his final tournament in London in 1899. His wins include the Vienna Championship of 1861 which he won with 30/31 and earned him the nickname the "Austrian Morphy", the London Championship of 1862, Dublin 1865 (equal first with George MacDonnell), London 1872, equal first at Vienna 1873 and 1882 (the latter was the strongest tournament to that time, and Steinitz had just returned from 9 years of absence from tournament chess), and first in the New York Championship of 1894. Other successes include 3rd and 2nd at the Vienna Championships of 1859 and 1860 respectively, 2nd at Dundee in 1867, 3rd in Paris in 1867, 2nd in Baden Baden in 1870, 2nd in London in 1883, 5th at the Hastings super tournament in 1895, 2nd at the sextuple round robin St Petersburg quadrangular tournament behind Lasker and ahead of Harry Pillsbury and Mikhail Chigorin, 6th at Nuremburg in 1896, and 4th at Vienna in 1898. Steinitz's Legacy The extent of Steinitz's dominance in world chess is evident from the fact that from 1866, when he beat Adolf Anderssen, to 1894, when he relinquished the world crown to Emanuel Lasker, Steinitz won all his matches, sometimes by wide margins. His worst tournament performance in that period was third place in Paris in 1867. This period of Steinitz's career was closely examined by Chessmetrics exponent and advocate, Jeff Sonas, who wrote an article in 2005 in which he found that Steinitz was further ahead of his contemporaries in the 1870s than Robert James Fischer was in his peak period (1970–1972), that he had the third-highest total number of years as the world's top player, behind Emanuel Lasker and Garry Kasparov, and that he placed 7th in a comparison the length of time great players were ranked in the world's top three. Despite his pre-eminence in chess for those decades in the late 19th century, Steinitz's main contribution to chess was as its first true theoretician. He rose to prominence in the 1860s on the back of highly competent handling of the romantic attacking style of chess that had been popularised by Morphy and Anderssen and which characterised the style of the era. However, in the Vienna tournament of 1873, he introduced a new positional style of play which not only commenced his run of 25 consecutive high level victories, but profoundly transformed the way chess was played from shortly after that time, when its efficacy was embraced by the chess world. It enabled him to establish his complete dominance over his long time rival, Johannes Zukertort, and to easily win the first official match for the World Championship. Lasker summarised Steinitz's ideas as follows: "In the beginning of the game ignore the search for combinations, abstain from violent moves, aim for small advantages, accumulate them, and only after having attained these ends search for the combination – and then with all the power of will and intellect, because then the combination must exist, however deeply hidden." Although these ideas were controversial and fiercely debated for some years in what has become known as the <Ink Wars>, Lasker and the next generation of the world's best players acknowledged their debt to him. "He was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a University. A player, as the world believed he was, he was not; his studious temperament made that impossible; and thus he was conquered by a player ..." - <Emanuel Lasker>. "He understood more about the use of squares than did Morphy, and contributed a great deal more to chess theory.' - <Bobby Fischer>. Sources <jessicafischerqueen>'s YouTube documentary http://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... - in turn sourced mainly from <Kurt Landsberger's> biography "Bohemian Caesar." References Wikipedia article: Wilhelm Steinitz https://www.findagrave.com/memorial... Last updated: 2025-04-13 18:53:01

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page 1 of 44; games 1-25 of 1,085  Game   Result Moves Year Event/Locale Opening 1. K Hamppe vs Steinitz 0-1 23 1859 Vienna C29 Vienna Gambit 2. Lenhof vs Steinitz 0-1 45 1859 Casual game C23 Bishop's Opening 3. Steinitz vs Lenhof 1-0 32 1859 Casual game C52 Evans Gambit 4. Steinitz vs P Meitner 1-0 34 1859 Casual game C52 Evans Gambit 5. E Pilhal vs Steinitz 0-1 21 1859 Casual game C53 Giuoco Piano 6. K Hamppe vs Steinitz 0-1 28 1859 Casual game C38 King's Gambit Accepted 7. Steinitz vs F Nowotny 1-0 31 1859 Vienna CC t C55 Two Knights Defense 8. Steinitz vs NN 1-0 12 1860 Unknown C25 Vienna 9. Steinitz vs Harrwitz   0-1 39 1860 Casual game B44 Sicilian 10. Steinitz vs NN   1-0 20 1860 Odds game 000 Chess variants 11. Steinitz vs NN   1-0 15 1860 Casual game C41 Philidor Defense 12. Steinitz vs NN 1-0 16 1860 Casual game C50 Giuoco Piano 13. Steinitz vs NN   1-0 18 1860 Casual game 000 Chess variants 14. NN vs Steinitz 0-1 24 1860 Casual game C59 Two Knights 15. Harrwitz vs Steinitz   1-0 25 1860 Casual game D20 Queen's Gambit Accepted 16. K Hamppe vs Steinitz 0-1 31 1860 Casual game C27 Vienna Game 17. Steinitz vs NN   1-0 20 1860 Casual game C52 Evans Gambit 18. Steinitz vs E Pilhal 1-0 17 1860 Vienna C52 Evans Gambit 19. Steinitz vs NN   1-0 24 1860 Odds game 000 Chess variants 20. H Strauss vs Steinitz 0-1 31 1860 Casual game C51 Evans Gambit 21. Steinitz vs H Strauss 1-0 33 1860 Casual game C29 Vienna Gambit 22. Steinitz vs P Meitner 1-0 26 1860 Casual game C55 Two Knights Defense 23. Steinitz vs Lang 1-0 19 1860 Casual game C37 King's Gambit Accepted 24. Steinitz vs Reiner 1-0 32 1860 Casual game C51 Evans Gambit 25. Steinitz vs Lang 1-0 29 1860 Casual game C25 Vienna  page 1 of 44; games 1-25 of 1,085

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< Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 24 OF 48 ·  Later Kibitzing> Feb-18-07    pazzed paun: <ksadler> you have played through ALL of Steinitz's games? what conclusions have you drawn ? has it helped your play? Feb-18-07    RookFile: It was very educational to watch they way Chigorin routinely slapped Steinitz around with the Evans Gambit. Feb-18-07    amuralid: <Still, Capablanca thought highly of him but wait - who's this Capablanca-guy? > <chessgames> can we have this as a quote for the day on November 19th ? Feb-20-07    Plato: <It was very educational to watch they way Chigorin routinely slapped Steinitz around with the Evans Gambit.> It is well documented that Steinitz experimented with some eccentric opening defenses to test some of his new defensive theories. He's the one responsible for moving chess theory beyond the romantic era, and like all pioneers, some of his original ideas were not too successful. Still, he did succeed in demonstrating hidden defensive resources in positions that most masters of his time considered totally lost. Overall, of course, Steinitz slapped Chigorin around more than than vice-versa. Mar-17-07    FHBradley: <RookFile:> Since you're so impressed by Chigorin's routinely slapping Steinitz around with the Evans Gambit, you might take a closer look at their first World Championship match where Chigorin routinely slapped Steinitz around with Evans ending up with the score +4 =3 -3 and Steinitz routinely slapped Chigorin around with Queen's Pawn game (plus one Reti) ending up with the score +7 =1 -0. Feel free to draw whatever conclusions you wish from this. May-14-07    vagrantlike: How tall is Steinitz?He looks no taller than 170cm in the photo.Anyway, I like his moustache which reminds me of that of James Clerk Maxwell's.:) May-14-07    FHBradley: <vagrantlike:> In fact, he was barely 5 feet or 150 cm tall; so his fights with Blackburne must have been somewhat one-sided. May-14-07    whiskeyrebel: remember, it isn't the size of the dog in the fight..it's the size of the fight in the dog. Still, Blackburne in pics looks like the sort of guy you wouldn't want to go fist city with..especially when he was "tapping the admiral" ( imbibing). May-14-07    vagrantlike: Thanks for the answer,FHB.In an interview Kramnik portrayed Steinitz as "Wilhelm the Experimenter" ,with indication that he is the first few of his time to find some logic behind chess games.This little giant indeed had many one-sided games and he is standing on the winning side! May-14-07    RookFile: So, I looked at the Chigorin vs. Steinitz games as a whole, and somebody looked at a subsection and found that Chigorin only had a small plus. Let's have a reality check here: Wilhelm Steinitz beat Mikhail Chigorin 26 to 25, with 8 draws. If this is the score, then common sense suggests not to make too much of FHBradley's statement regarding the "score +7 =1 -0." in Queen Pawn's games. A further look will inevitably yield some more bad news for Steinitz that hasn't been brought up yet. Recall that had Chigorin not blundered in a winning position, allowing mate (the worst blunder in World Championship play), the score would actually be Chigorin 26, Steinitz 25. I think a fair summary of Steinitz, Chigorin is: Steinitz was better in closed games, and Chigorin, at that time, was the strongest open game player. In other words, both players had their strengths and weaknesses. May-14-07    Plato: <I think a fair summary of Steinitz, Chigorin is: Steinitz was better in closed games, and Chigorin, at that time, was the strongest open game player. In other words, both players had their strengths and weaknesses.> This is probably reasonable. I'll start with a statement in which I agree with you, just to demonstrate that my intentions are good :) Still, I have to mention a couple of things: <Wilhelm Steinitz beat Mikhail Chigorin 26 to 25, with 8 draws.> As usual, this CG database cannot be trusted. The actual head-to-head score between them was +27 -24 =8, as confirmed not only in ChessBase (which is more reliable than CG but not always good about 19th century data) but by the meticulous chess historian Nathan Divinsky in his "Life Maps of the Great Chess Masters," which is a book that collects the head-to-head scores of 88 of the greatest historical players until 1994, when it was published. You might be interested in that book, by the way, even though I'm sure you'll disagree with his conclusions at the end. Still, it has a lot of interesting and reliable data that's tough to find elsewhere. And yes, the score above includes the two cable games that Chigorin won. As for the blunder, come on now. Everybody blunders sometimes, it's part of the game. If a certain player is more prone to blundering than another player (and Chigorin was more prone to blundering than Steinitz, overall), then that should rightly be regarded as one area in which the latter is superior. The score between them is as it stands, and the fact remains that when it counted Steinitz won both World Championship matches. As Alekhine once wrote about his blunder in time trouble: <"An awful move, and the fact that White was in serious time trouble in my view can just as little serve as a justification as, for example, a criminal's excuse that he was drunk at the moment he committed the crime. The inability of an experienced master to handle his clock should be considered just <as great a sin as a blunder.>"> The point isn't about the time trouble, of course, but about the fact that blundering is just another part of the game that all players are responsible for. No historian calculates head-to-head scores based on "what might have been," and rightly so. If he did he'd have to check a zillion other blunders as well. May-14-07    RookFile: Well, the real reason why Chigorin comes up is, what people care about is how Morphy would have done against Steinitz. So, you start looking at Chigorin winning the Evans Gambit against Steinitz, and it requires no imagination at all to see Morphy doing the same thing. I'm not going to get hung up on what the score was, whatever it was, it's fair to say that these guys played each other very nearly even over roughly 60 games, and Steinitz had a very small plus. Morphy was like Chigorin in open games, except that he calculated even better and was less prone to error. May-14-07    Plato: It's completely hypothetical. First of all Steinitz may have played differently (better) against Morphy, especially depending on the date of the match, second we can't say for sure that Morphy calculated better than Chigorin, that's another matter open to debate (even though I know there are a lot of fanatics who think it's obvious but are in no position to know), third this ignores how Steinitz might have scored against Morphy in his games as White, etc. etc. etc. It has some relevance, but it really doesn't prove anything. <Well, the real reason why Chigorin comes up is, what people care about is how Morphy would have done against Steinitz> Some people are willing to admit that we just don't know. In my opinion, when you come to this page and out of the blue make the comment <<It was very educational to watch they way Chigorin routinely slapped Steinitz around with the Evans Gambit>, what comes to mind for most people isn't Morphy but rather the disrespectful tone towards the first World Champion. As for not getting "hung up on what the score was," I just think it's always important to have historical accuracy, especially since your implication was that Chigorin would have had a plus score "if only" he hadn't blundered. That they were fairly evenly matched overall -- yes, nobody would dispute this. But Steinitz was the better match player, and if we're talking about a hypothetical match with Morphy than it's only fair to look at Steinitz' score against Chigorin in matches alone. May-14-07    Plato: More importantly, Steinitz' peak probably came in the 1870s, according to Chessmetrics and just by looking at his games and results I think many would agree. The time that Chigorin came close and lost narrowly was in 1892 when Steinitz was 56 years old, in poor physical condition and not nearly in peak form. He was to die eight years later. I hardly think that's the most unbiased data one can draw on in order to "prove" that Morphy would "slap him around" ... By the way, I'm not implying that I think Steinitz would have won. I am saying that we can't know, which is what I honestly believe, and that you haven't come close to making a case otherwise because we just don't have enough information (for one thing because of the relative paucity of games from Morphy against strong opposition). You certainly can't prove anything from some of Steinitz' games in a single opening against a different player, or the result of a match (which Chigorin lost anyway, despite the Evans Gambit) when Steinitz was nearing the end of his life. If we're talking about a hypothetical Morphy-Steinitz match-up, one would hope it would take place before 1892 -- considering, aside from age -- that Morphy died in 1884. So your statistics are not really objective in my opinion, not that they would prove anything even if they were. May-14-07    RookFile: I agree. Steinitz would have defeated Morphy if the latter was dead. May-14-07    Plato: <RookFile> You're too generous :) May-14-07    Knight13: Weakest world champion ever lived. May-14-07    keypusher: <knight 13> Given the progress of chess since his time, you may be right in absolute terms, but we don't usually measure world champions that way. Measured against his opponents, given how dominant he was for 30 years, he would have to be reckoned as one of the strongest world champions. May-14-07    chancho: <I agree. Steinitz would have defeated Morphy if the latter was dead.> If Steinitz could handle tacticians such as Tchigorin and Blackburne, why couldn't he beat Morphy? What made Morphy more superior to those two if I may ask? May-14-07    RookFile: Morphy is similar to to Capablanca: chess was his 'mother tongue', something he learned a very young age. Chigorin started serious chess rather late in life, which handicapped him, even though he was a genius. It meant that Chigorin would commit a blunder more often than somebody like Capablanca or Morphy would. May-14-07    RookFile: Same thing with Blackburne, who didn't even learn chess until he was 18. May-14-07    Plato: <Knight13: Weakest world champion ever lived.> To fault Steinitz for having been weaker than 20th or 21st century World Champions is like faulting Newton for not knowing as much as the leading physicists of later generations until modern times. The comment <weakest world champion ever lived> is as demeaning (at least in tone) as it is ignorant (at least in implication). As a player, every World Champion needs to be judged in the context of his own era, and we can also try to evaluate whether he moved the game forward for later generations. Steinitz was a dominant force in his era, and his games and writings had a profound impact on the development of chess theory. Later generations of top chess players were heavily influenced by him. The least we could do is show some respect. May-14-07    chancho: <RookFile> Blackburne learned chess when he was 18, rather late yes, but in just two years after learning the moves, he was playing Steinitz in serious games and giving blindfold exhibitions. For some people learning the game late is a handicap, but can we say the same about someone like Joseph Henry Blackburne? May-14-07    RookFile: There's no question that guys like Blackburne and Chigorin were geniuses. Richard Reti, I believe, first used this analogy. Chess is like learning a language. Who is going to speak a language more fluently, more effortlessly: the person who learned it as his native tongue and has been using it all his life, or the guy who opened up textbooks at 18 and started practicing? In some ways, it makes you appreciate the genious of Chigorin and Blackburne all the more: they started with a tremendous handicap, and made it very far indeed. May-14-07    Plato: <RookFile> Very good point. To add another example, Rubinstein learned chess relatively late (compared to other top players), and played in his first serious tournament at the age of 21 -- and he's another genius who was more prone to blunders than most other elite players of his era. Jump to page #   (enter # from 1 to 48) search thread:    < Earlier Kibitzing  · PAGE 24 OF 48 ·  Later Kibitzing>

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