Wilhelm Steinitz

Trivia

• Steinitz married a lady named Caroline in the 1860.
• His new style was controversial and some even branded it as "cowardly", but many of Steinitz's games showed that it could also provide a platform for attacks as ferocious as those of the old school.
• Some contemporaries and later writers described him as world champion since 1866, when he won a match against Adolf Anderssen.
• Wilhelm was an Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894.
• Most notably from 1888 to 1889 he co-operated with the American Chess Congress in a project to define rules for the future conduct of contests for the world championship title that he held.
• The debate was so bitter and sometimes abusive that it became known as the "Ink War".
• He was also a prolific writer on chess, and defended his new ideas vigorously.
• Steinitz then convincingly beat most of the leading UK-resident players in matches: Frederic Deacon, Augustus Mongredien, Green, and Robey.
• In 1862-63 Steinitz scored a crushing win in a match with Joseph Henry Blackburne, who went on to be one of the world's top ten for 20 years but had only started playing chess two years earlier.
• This encouraged him to turn professional and he took residence in London.