The Tragic Story of The First World Chess Champion
Back to TopMany iconic World Champions have been made over the years, like Garry Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen, and Bobby Fischer. But, the one who started it all never gets any respect. Meet Wilhelm Steinitz, the forgotten chess legend. His life was full of ups and downs, delusions and deaths and somehow brilliant and blunder moves alike. Today, I will be uncovering the slightly crazy but slightly brilliant story of Wilhelm Steinitz. So, sit back, get some popcorn, maybe a chocolate bar, and let’s begin.
Contents Within This Blog
1. Early Life
2. Chess Career Before The World Championship
5. Conclusion
Wilhelm Steinitz was born on May 14, 1836 to his father, Josef Salamon and his mother, Anna Steinitz. Steinitz’s mother died when Steinitz was only about 9 years old in 1845. When Steinitz was 12 years old, he learnt how to play chess and showed interest in the beautiful game. In 1857 (when Steinitz was 21 years old), he left the country he grew up in, the Czech Republic, to go to Vienna, Austria, to study mathematics at a Vienna university. He studied there for two years. In the late 1850s, Wilhelm Steinitz improved significantly in his chess skills, progressing from 3rd place in the 1859 Austrian City Championship to 1st place only 1 year later with 30/31, an astonishing performance by him. Due to his tactical insight and his rapid improvement, they called him “The Austrian Morphy”, which was a big thing since being compared to Paul Morphy is a huge compliment, as Morphy was the best player in the world at the time. Cleary, Steinitz was an upcoming talent.
Chess Career Before The World Championship
In 1862, Wilhem Steinitz competed in the London Chess Tournament, scoring 6 points and winning 5 pounds (which would be a lot more now) and even won the brilliancy prize for his game against Augustus Mongredien, which you can analyze below.
What a game!
He then soon challenged the person who placed above him in the 1862 London chess tournament, who was the strong Italian master, Serafino Dubois, to a match. Steinitz actually won with 5 wins, 1 draw, and 3 losses. This encouraged him to turn professional, and he took up residence in London. In 1862–63 Steinitz scored a crushing win in a match with Joseph Henry Blackburne. In the early to mid 1860s, Steinitz continued to pummel out win after win against some of the best players at the time.
Prior to his major successes in 1862 and 1863, Steinitz was given a chance to play a 14-game match against who may considered to be the best player in the world at the time (after his superior, Paul Morphy, retired from chess), Adolf Anderssen. Adolf was no joke; he had won the 1851 and 1862 London Chess Tournaments.
Below is one of the most crucial games in the match, game 13, where Steinitz won quite convincingly.
Why was this game crucial? Well, leading up to round 13, both players were tied 6-6 with two games to go. Steinitz won, meaning he was winning 7-6, and after that he also won the final game to make it 8-6. As a result of this match victory, Steinitz was generally regarded as the world's best player. The prize money for this match was £100 to the winner (Steinitz) and £20 for the loser (Anderssen). The winner's prize was a large sum by the standards of the times, equivalent to thousands of dollars in 2025s money due to inflation. This 14-game match truly showed Steinitz's great chess abilities, and now being the "best" chess player in the world, he was on his way to cement himself in chess history.
In the months following the match versus Adolf, Steinitz beat Henry Bird with a convincing margin in 1866 (seven wins, five losses, five draws). In 1871, he lost by a large margin in a match up against Johannes Zukertort, but he rebounded and crushed Zukertort in a rematch in 1872.
All of Steinitz's successes up to 1872 were achieved in the attack-at-all-costs kind of "Romantic" style pioneered by people like Morphy and Anderssen. But in the Vienna 1873 chess tournament, Steinitz revealed a brand new "positional" type of play which was about to become one of the key ideas in the basis of modern chess. He tied for first place with Blackburne, ahead of Anderssen, Samuel Rosenthal, Paulsen and Henry Bird, and won the play-off against Blackburne. Steinitz made a shaky start, but won his last 14 games in the main tournament (including 2–0 results over Paulsen, Anderssen, and Blackburne) plus the two play-off games- this was the start of a 25-game winning streak in serious competition.
Between 1873 and 1882, Steinitz was very inactive played absolutely no tournaments and only one match (a 7–0 win against Blackburne in 1876, damn that's pretty brutal). His other games during this period were in simultaneous and blindfold exhibitions, which contributed an important part of a professional chess-player's income in those days (for example in 1887 Blackburne was paid 9 guineas for two simultaneous exhibitions and a blindfold exhibition hosted by the Teesside Chess Association; this was equivalent to thousands of dollars at modern values). Some could say blindfolded masters like Steinitz were the pioneers of all the blindfold speedruns and YouTube videos we see today! Instead of chess in the early 1880s, Steinitz concentrated on his work as a chess journalist, most known for working for The Field, which was Britain's number one sports magazine.
Steinitz had a lot of heated debates, most notably the "Ink War" with Zukertort in the Chess Monthly. This led to them being rivals... and to put it simply, kind of hate each other 😂.
Steinitz was back in town to serious competitive chess in the Vienna 1882 chess tournament, which has been described as the strongest chess tournament of all time at that point. Despite a shaky start he took equal first place with Szymon Winawer, ahead of James Mason, Zukertort, George Henry Mackenzie, Blackburne, Berthold Englisch, Paulsen and Mikhail Chigorin, and drew the play-off match.
Steinitz even visited the United States at one point, mainly the Philadelphia area, from December 1882 to May 1883. He was given an enthusiastic reception. Steinitz played some exhibitions, a lot casual games, and a match for stakes of £50 with a very wealthy amateur. He also won three more serious matches with two new professionals, Alexander Sellman (Steinitz won both) and the Cuban champion Celso Golmayo Zúpide. The match with Golmayo was abandoned when Steinitz was leading (eight wins, one draw, one loss). His hosts even arranged a visit to New Orleans, where Paul Morphy (the legend) lived.
A bit later in 1883, Steinitz took second place in the extremely strong London 1883 chess tournament behind Zukertort, who made a brilliant start, but then brutally titled at the end but then went back up finished three points ahead. Steinitz finished 2½ points ahead of the third-placed competitor, Blackburne. Zukertort's victory again led some commentators to suggest that Zukertort should be regarded as the world chess champion, while others said the issue could only be resolved by a match between Steinitz and Zukertort.
Eventually it was agreed that in 1886 Steinitz and Zukertort would play a match in New York, St. Louis and New Orleans, and that the victor would be the player who first won 10 games. At Steinitz's insistence the contract said it would be "for the Championship of the World". After the five games played in New York, Zukertort led by 4–1, but in the end Steinitz won decisively by 12½–7½ (ten wins, five draws, five losses), becoming the first official world champion on March 29. The epic fall of Zukertort, who won only one of the last 15 games, has been described as "perhaps the most thoroughgoing reversal of fortune in the history of world championship play."
Steinitz continued to win the World Championship until 1894, where he lost the World Championship title to Emanuel Lasker.
Around this time Steinitz publicly spoke of retiring, but changed his mind when Emanuel Lasker, 32 years younger and comparatively untested at the top level, challenged him.
The match was played in 1894, at venues in New York, Philadelphia and Montreal, Canada. The 32-year age difference between the combatants was the largest in the history of world championship play, and still is so today. Steinitz had previously declared he would win without doubt, so it came as a very big shock when Lasker won the first game. Steinitz responded by winning the second, and was able to maintain the balance until the sixth. However, Lasker won all the games from the seventh to the 11th, and Steinitz asked for a one-week rest (how is that allowed though lol). When the match resumed, Steinitz looked in better shape and won the 13th and 14th games. Lasker struck back in the 15th and 16th, and Steinitz was unable to compensate for his losses in the middle of the match. Hence Lasker won with ten wins, five losses and four draws. Some commentators thought Steinitz's habit of playing "experimental" and possibly weird and inaccurate moves in very serious competition was quite a large factor in his downfall, even though he has won with unorthodox lines before.
The following year, Steinitz was mentally struggling but somehow played one of the best chess games ever to be played in all time.
In February 1897, The New York Times prematurely reported his death in a New York mental asylum. Some authors claim that he contracted syphilis, which may have been a cause of the mental breakdowns he suffered in his last years. In the months prior to his death, he spent some time in institutions as a result of his failing mental health.
In 1900, aged 64, Steinitz, sadly, died (so, many, commas💀) because of a heart attack. He was then buried in the Cemetery of the Evergreens.
Steinitz didn't just change the game- he introduced new forms of play (positional play), he won the first ever, let me get that across. FIRST EVER, world chess championship and played some amazing games. Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next time.
Bye!
