Wilhelm Steinitz, the first world champion, lived a fascinating life, and played even more fascinating games. Below, I explore both.
Photo: Cleveland Public Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Table of Contents:
Biography
Early life
Wilhelm Steinitz was born in Prague on 14 May 1836. He was the ninth child of 13 in his family, although his younger siblings died before reaching adulthood. After finishing school, he studied maths at the Vienna Polytechnic institute. However, captivated by chess, he soon dropped out of his studies.
Steinitz’s first major tournament success was first place at the Vienna Championship of 1861, achieving the astonishing score of 30/31. This success earned him the nickname the “Austrian Morphy”.
His reputation enhanced, he was invited to the very strong international tournament of London 1862, where he finished in sixth place out of 14 players, behind Anderssen, Paulsen, Owen, MacDonnell and Dubois. After the tournament, he decided to stay and live and London, which was one of the world’s most important chess cities at the time.
Unofficial crown
1863 saw Steinitz win convincingly in matches against Joseph Blackburne, Frederick Deacon and Valentine Green. This further enhanced his reputation, and a match was organized with Adolf Anderssen, who was considered to be the best active player in the world following Morphy’s decision to give up chess. This match was therefore seen to be the decider of who was the strongest player in the world.
The match took place in London, and the winner was to be the first to win eight games. Steinitz ultimately won by the score of 8-6, without a single draw. For this, he received a prize of 100 pounds, while Anderssen received 20 pounds as the loser of the match. Interestingly, Steinitz then won every match he participated in until losing to Lasker in 1894, a streak of 28 years!
Dip in results
However, Steinitz did not follow up this achievement with a string of tournament victories: he came third at Paris 1867 (17,5/22, behind von Kolisch and Winawer), second at Dundee 1867 (7/9, behind Neumann), and second at Baden Baden 1870 (10,5/18, behind Anderssen). As a result, not everyone in the chess world was eager to regard him as the best in the world, especially as Morphy was still alive, even if he had given up chess.
String of victories
1872 was a very successful year for Steinitz. He won the strong international tournament in London, ahead of Blackburne and Zukertort, and followed up this victory with a match win against Zukertort (9-3). The following year, he won the international tournament in Vienna by sharing first place, scoring 10/11 with Blackburne, and then defeating the British master in a playoff match.
Calm before the storm
In 1876, Steinitz crushed Blackburne 7-0 in a match in London, and then did not compete in a tournament or match for six years! Instead, he gave simultaneous displays, including blindfold simultaneous displays, and became the editor of the chess section of the sports magazine The Field. During this period, Steinitz also gave some chess lessons to the politician Lord Randolph Churchill, the father of… Winston Chruchill.
A strong return
When Steinitz returned to tournament chess in 1882, he shared first place with Winawer at the very strong international tournament in Vienna, with the score of 23/34. Towards the end of that year, he travelled to America, where he met Paul Morphy a few times in New Orleans. Although Morphy would not talk about chess, they discussed other topics, and Steinitz spoke highly of him. Around this time, Steinitz also lost his job working for the magazine The Field. Hoffer and Zukertort, with whom Steinitz had been engaged in a war of words on the pages of various chess publications, were hired to replace him.
Steinitz moved to America in 1883, and spent the rest of his life based in New York. Before this, however, he took part in the international London tournament of 1883, finishing second to Zukertort, three whole points behind (1. Zukertort – 22/26, 2. Steinitz – 19/26).
First chess king
A match between the two was therefore arranged, and took place in 1886. This match was the first in history in which the winner would be officially crowned World Champion! They played to the first to 10 wins. Three cities played host the this match: New York, St. Louis, and New Orleans. Although Zukertort achieved an early 4-1 lead, Steinitz managed to win in the end, with the score of 12,5-7,5, becoming the first official chess World Champion.
Steinitz defended his crown successfully on multiple occasions throughout the new few years. After becoming a citizen of America in 1888, he defended his title against the Russian master Mikhail Chigorin in Havana the following year. In the 17 games of this match, there was only one draw! Steinitz ultimately won with the score of 10,5-6,5.
1889 also saw the publication of the first volume of The Modern Chess Instructor, in which Steinitz wrote about the new principles of chess which he had developed and tested in tournament and match play. Steinitz’s games and writing illustrated to the chess world that sacrificial attacks were not the only way to win, and that positional elements, such as pawn structure, had to be taken into account. This played a major role in advancing chess thought.
This was followed by successful title defences, first against the Hungarian master Gunsberg (New York 1890/91), with the score 10,5-8,5, and then a rematch with Chigorin (Havana 1892), with a score of 12,5-10,5. However, this was a difficult period for the World Champion, as his daughter died in 1890, and his wife shortly after the second match with Chigorin.
End of an era
Steinitz lost the title in a match with Emanuel Lasker in 1894 by the score of 7-12. Age was taking its toll: by this time, Steinitz was 58, and his opponent just 25. A rematch between these same opponents in Moscow in 1896/7 yielded the same result, Lasker won with the score 12,5-4,5. However, he was still a dangerous opponent, and won the first brilliancy prize for his game against Bardeleben at Hastings 1995, a game which remains famous today.
Around the time of his second match with Lasker, Steinitz’s health began to decline. He finished a respectable fourth at the international tournament in Vienna in 1898 (23,5/36), but outside of the prizes, for the first time in his career, at London 1899. Steinitz died in New York the following year.
Game Analysis: Sellman – Steinitz, London 1883
One of Steinitz’s lesser known, but very instructive, games was his victory against the American player Alexander Sellman at London 1883.
Lessons from this game:
- A typical strategy to restrict the opponent’s knights is to take away their advanced outposts. In this game, 16…c5! is a good example.
- One can steal an open file by attacking the square which the opponent’s rooks are using to contest the file. In this game, 18…Bb3! is a good example.
- Undefended or barely defended pieces make tactical opportunities possible. In this game, 29…Bd6! wins material because white’s bishop and h4 pawn are both undefended, while the d2 knight is barely defended, attacked once and defended once.
Puzzles
Gunsberg – Steinitz, World Championship, New York 1890
Winawer – Steinitz, London 1883
Zukertort – Steinitz, World Championship, USA 1886
Steinitz – Mongredien, Match, London 1863
Solutions
Further Reading
Of course, the first volume of My Great Predecessors by Garry Kasparov is a great place to start. Other good sources include:
The chessgames.com page on Steinitz,
and this great YouTube video by Lucas Anderson.
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