On the sidelines of the great international tournament of 1851 in London, the beginning of modern chess tournament history, many casual games were played. Most of the players probably sat together in the famous chess café Simpson's-in-the-Strand, including Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky, who played a small match there.
In the game that later entered chess history as the "Immortal Game", Anderssen had the black pieces but the first-move advantage. At the time, it was not yet standard practice for the player moving first to always have the white pieces. Later, the colour allocation was adapted to modern rules and the game was presented with Anderssen as White.
As the author explains in the introductory video, knowing the classic games from the past enriches your chess understanding in general, and helps to improve the level of your own games.
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Robert Hübner once analytically dissected the game for ChessBase Magazine and, of course, found numerous errors and possible improvements. This does nothing to diminish the fascination of a game played in the spirit of chess Romanticism. Modern engines would surely find many more inaccuracies. But what do computers know about romance and beauty...
The chess tournament organised in London by Howard Staunton on the occasion of the Great Exhibition was held as a series of knockout matches. Staunton, a Shakespeare expert and strong master, would in fact have liked to see himself as the winner. But the Breslau mathematics teacher Adolf Anderssen won all his matches - including against Staunton in the semifinal - and emerged as the winner of the tournament.
With this victory, Anderssen was then regarded as the best player in the world. The tournament marked the beginning of modern tournament chess and, if one wishes, also the first World Championship, although the term did not yet exist in chess at the time.
In this video course experts examine the games of Steinitz. Let them show you which openings Steinitz chose, where his strength in middlegames were, how he outplayed his opponents in the endgame & you’ll get a glimpse of his tactical abilities!
Williams Steinitz, 1st World Chess Champion (1886-1894) The match between William Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort in 1886 was the first chess match for the ‘World Chess Championship’. Steinitz won, and has since been considered the first official world champion in chess history.
Free video sample: The Steinitzian method of restriction
Free video sample: Strategy Introduction
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