The truly universal simultaneous master
Harry Nelson Pillsbury, the real thing
Harry Nelson Pillsbury was
born on December 5, 1872, in Somerville, Massachusetts. At the age of 16 he
started playing chess, and two years later was beating the best players in the
city. In April 1892, Pillsbury played a match against World Champion Wilhelm
Steinitz, who gave the 20-year-old a pawn and move odds. Pillsbury won 2:1.
Soon he was challenging top players in New York. In 1897 (until his death) he
won the United States Chess Championships.
In 1895 the Brooklyn chess
club sponsored his trip to play in the Hastings 1895 chess tournament, which
he sensationally won, in spite of the fact that all the greatest players of
the time were participating (they included reigning world champion Lasker, former
world champion Steinitz and challenger Mikhail Chigorin).
Pillsbury was famous for
his blindfold skills. He could play checkers and chess and a hand of whist simultaneously,
while reciting a list of long words that had been shown to him for just a few
seconds. In 1900 he played blindfold against the 20 strongest players of the
Franklin Chess Club in Philadelphia, and won with a score of +14, =5, –1. In
1902 he played 21 simultaneous games against the players in the Hannover Tournament,
scoring +3 =11 –7.

Pillsbury before the start of a simultaneous exhibition in 1897. He was
one of the greatest simultaneous players in history, usually taking on the strongest
players in the the town or state, often in blindfold play.
Unfortunately this exceptional
talent suffered from poor health, and tragically succumbed to syphilis on June
17, 1906, at the age of only 33. He was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Reading,
MA.