Why bother to bone up on Steinitz? (1/2)

Why bother to bone up on Steinitz? (1/2)

IM Craig Pritchett explains why we should all study the 19th Century Greats

The modern game wouldn’t be remotely what is today if it hadn’t been for the greatest achievements of past giants. As a young teen, I devoured innumerable books on great players of the historical past and I am absolutely certain that it improved my game vastly. Alekhine (1892-1946), that great combinative genius, was my first hero. Capablanca’s (1888-1941) languid, near effortless strategic virtuosity also hugely impressed.

I was, of course, also completely bowled over by the more recent Soviet greats, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian and Spassky, to name only the world champions, and then by Bobby Fischer’s breathtaking genius going into the 1960s. But throughout, I never ceased to draw inspiration from Alekhine and co. too, stretching all the way back to Philidor in the late 18th century. When I also discovered that Fischer was not just a keen student of 1950s and 60s Soviet chess literature, but that he had also studied many of the old 19th century classics, that clinched it. History helps!

Fischer indeed borrowed and developed many an opening idea from Steinitz and Emanuel Lasker (1868-1942), such as, for example, but not just, in the Spanish Opening: d3 Systems and the Spanish Exchange. Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) was another great influence. Downplaying a compliment by Svetozar Gligoric, in an interview for Chess Life & Review, about his ‘new’ handling of a line in an ...e6 variation of the Sicilian Defence, which he played in the decisive, final game of his 1972 world championship match, Fischer revealed that he had simply “found the idea [...] in Anderssen’s book” (Gottschall’s 1912 biography), adding, “it’s the way they used to play in the old days.”

Doubters might usefully refer to three games played by Anderssen in his match (London 1861) against Ignaz Kolisch (1837-1889). Anderssen, who won that match narrowly (+4 =2 -3), was one of the two greatest mid-century giants – the other was Paul Morphy (1837-1884) – who bestrode chess in the 1850s and 60s, before Steinitz began to make his own impressive mark (from the late 1860s/early 1870s). All three were, for a time, effectively ‘world champion’ by repute. Morphy and Anderssen had both died by the time Steinitz defeated Johannes Zukertort (1842-1888), in the first ever match for the first, formally recognised ‘title’, in 1886.

Why were these three such stand-out ‘giants’? Taken together, Morphy and Anderssen, are commonly held to have raised the art of direct, combinative attack in the old, 1 e4 gambits, especially the King’s and Evans’ Gambits, and other so-called, 1 e4 ‘Open Games’, to its mid-19th century apogee. This style of play was marked primarily by sharply tactical attempts to get at and overwhelm opponents’ kings fast. Prior to these two, Louis-Charles de la Bourdonnais (1795-1840), had set the early bar for such play in the 1830s, as, for example, against Alexander McDonnell in Game 16 (4th match, London 1834), part of an epic, 85-game summer series, won by de la Bourdonnais (+45 -27 =13).

French chess master Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais (1795–1840) was possibly the strongest player in the early 19th century.

This is a wonderful game, of course, but objectively somewhat uneven. In the next two or three decades, as chess knowledge grew, defences especially improved; and it no longer became quite so easy (or de rigueur) to seek to launch such (possibly over-ambitious) attacks with thoughts of continued success. Much more than his peers, Steinitz successfully seized on this Zeitgeist in mid-century, eventually taking the game forward into a much more nuanced, strategically based future.

Above all, Steinitz insisted that all chess games begin in a state of broad balance. From this central idea, he drew the not unnatural conclusion that the successful player (in games between peers) must therefore seek first to alter that balance, in his or her favour, before launching any all-out attacks, or risk punishment. This crucial thought was not just intrinsic to Steinitz’s game. It has also since become an accepted modern mantra.

In Steinitz’s day, it provided a particular impetus towards a much more sophisticated understanding of the significance of weak and strong pawn structures, strong and weak points, outposts and holes, planning and the manoeuvring arts, and the adoption of a wider range of Closed and Semi-Closed Games (in addition to the Open Games). It is, however, important to be clear that this ‘new’ thinking did not signal the end of tactics and imaginative, combinative attacks, merely a modern reset.

Through the 1870s and 1880s, Steinitz rightly considered himself to be in the vanguard of the development of what he termed a new ‘modern’ school, which included all of the above-mentioned principles and which was rooted in an equally distinctive ‘Steinitzian’ ethic of unceasing innovation, hard work and objective research. He contrasted this with what he termed the ‘old’ school, by which he meant the more swashbuckling, essentially open attacking style of the earlier 19th century, which typified what came to be known as the game’s ‘Romantic Age’.

Let’s unpack this a little, based on a clash between Kolisch, a player who Steinitz considered essentially ‘old’ school, and Louis Paulsen (1833-1891), whom he admired as an early ‘pioneer’ of the ‘modern’. Compared to the Bourdonnais game, it is immediately apparent that something quite different and much more heavyweight is afoot. Both players clearly have a more sophisticated grasp of the opening and come to the board with a depth of knowledge and preparation that is far in advance of their 1830s peers. Bourdonnais and his contemporaries no doubt worked as hard, both on and off the board, but chess had moved on and lost much of its earlier ‘innocence’.

Louis Paulsen (1833–1891) was one of the first players to have a recognisably ‘modern’ style and was admired by Steinitz for that.

Looking back in his International Chess Magazine, July 1891, Steinitz acknowledged a huge debt to Louis Paulsen’s then a-typically slow, defensive, manoeuvring, closed, counter-punching playing style. In this, he was persuaded by discussions on that theme, at London 1862, by the two then leading lights of the ‘old’ attacking school, Anderssen and Kolisch. Steinitz learned for the first time, he wrote, “To recognise that chess genius is not confined to [...] more or less deep and brilliant finishing strokes after the original balance [...] has been overthrown, but that it also requires [...] still more extraordinary powers [...] to maintain that balance or [...] disturb it at the appropriate moment”.

This article appeared in the October 2016 of the British magazine CHESS – part two will follow soon

CHESS Magazine was established in 1935 by B.H. Wood who ran it for over fifty years. It is published each month by the London Chess Centre and is edited by IM Richard Palliser and Matt Read. The Executive Editor is Malcolm Pein, who organises the London Chess Classic.

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