Loser's POV: Isidor Gunsberg (1881-1889)

The people have spoken, and they have said that Johannes Zukertort is our first finalist. He won the previous vote (see here) and moves on to contest one more head-to-head; his fallen antagonist, Isidor Gunsberg, is thus the subject of today's discussion. Hopefully this discussion is one you'll all enjoy.

Isidor Arthur Gunsberg was born on 1 November 1854 in Pest, Hungary. His father must have taught him the game when he was a boy, as the two made an appearance at the Paris 1867 tournament. The frequenters of the Café de la Régence "considered [him] a second Morphy," according to Hoffer's testimony in The Chess-Monthly, which earned him a minor amount of fame. Samuel Rosenthal exchanged games with him, offering quite large odds (either a Rook or Queen, depending on the source), though I've not seen anything definitive regarding the score. Regardless, this was the last time Gunsberg's name was heard for almost 10 years.

It wasn't until the summer of 1876 that Gunsberg reappeared, traveling to London "in search of work and better chess opportunities." Tim Harding, in Eminent Victorian Chess Players, explains that both of these goals were fulfilled due to the Jewish Working Men's Club, which set up its members with contacts for both employment and recreation. While I'm not sure exactly what Gunsberg's occupation was during this time, he was afforded regular chess practice with the club's strong members, and he soon found his first real chess job: operator of the chess automaton Mephisto in the summer of 1878.

What set Mephisto apart from its predecessors, the automatons The Turk and Ajeeb, was that the player controlling it wasn't housed within the device. Rather, electromagnetism allowed the operator to be in a different room entirely (the exact mechanisms were never revealed). Mephisto also holds the distinction of being the first automaton to enter, and win, a chess tournament. It was entered into the Counties Chess Association (CCA) tournament of 1878, a 16-player handicap knockout tournament, and it (or he, if we want to give Gunsberg the credit) won all four games. I include the three that have been published below, but they're not very high quality—Gunsberg's relative lack of experience, combined with the high degree of excitement (at the cost of accuracy) with which he was expected to play during Mephisto's exhibitions, mean that these games shouldn't be gone over with too fine-toothed a comb.

Gunsberg continued operating Mephisto until about 1883, during which time he also started his journalism career, writing articles and publishing games under Mephisto's name. This was also the period during which Gunsberg's professional chess career started with three very important (but relatively unsuccessful) events. The first was a match against Blackburne in the spring of 1881. The match was for the first to seven wins, and despite conceding a two-game handicap, Blackburne won the match +7-4=3 (officially 7-6). The second was the Vizayanagaram tournament of the London 1883 congress. Despite a debate about whether he and George MacDonnell were too strong to compete, both were permitted and both ultimately finished behind Bernard Fisher (who twice terrorized Burn at CCA events, see here) and winner Curt von Bardeleben (see here). Lastly, his international debut took place at Nuremberg 1883. While he did beat the winner, Szymon Winawer, in the first round, he only scored 5/18 overall.

Like with Max Weiss (see here), 1885 seemed to inexplicably cause Gunsberg's strength to surge, as his results suddenly became world-class. He began by winning the first BCA tournament in London, scoring 14/15 and finishing two points ahead of Bird and Anthony Guest. Later that month, he scored his first "grandmaster norm" (according to Harding) by winning the Hamburg 1885 tournament (see here). Thankfully for everyone else, he slowed down at the Hereford 1885 tournament that August, scoring only 5.5/10.

With his spot in the world's elite secured, Gunsberg went on to compete in every important tournament through 1890. What did he manage? Well:

• =3rd at London 1886 (8/12 with Jean Taubenhaus, half a point behind Blackburne and Burn)

• =3rd at Nottingham 1886 (6/9 with Zukertort)

• =14th at Frankfurt 1887 (oof)

• =1st at London 1887 (see here, followed by 2.5-2.5 in the playoff)

• 1st at Bradford 1888 (see here)

• 3rd at New York 1889 (28.5/38, half a point behind Chigorin and Weiss)

• =4th at Breslau 1889 (10/17 with Bardeleben, Johann Bauer and Louis Paulsen)

• 5th at Amsterdam 1889 (4/8, though his original plans were to be a reporter rather than a player)

• =1st at London 1889 (7.5/10 with Bird, second on Sonneborn-Berger score)

• =5th at Manchester 1890 (11.5/19 with Mason)

It makes sense for us to venture into 1890, as Gunsberg first drew a match with Chigorin in January, then he played for the World Championship against Steinitz in December. The loss of this match actually signaled the end of Gunsberg's time as a member of the elite, but not for chess reasons. His wife, Jane Isaacs, succumbed to tuberculosis in May 1891, leaving Gunsberg with three small sons to support. He remarried in 1893, but his new wife, Miriam Clarke, also fell victim to tuberculosis and passed in September 1897. While his third wife, Agnes Ramage, ultimately outlived him, her Christianity meant that Gunsberg lost the support of the Jewish circles. Financial struggles and the inability to travel restricted Gunsberg's ability to play abroad, and so he was forced to focus on his literary efforts through the 1890s, only playing select tournaments in England with rather disappointing results.

As is often the case, there isn't really a happy end to this story. While Gunsberg would have a career in both chess playing and journalism for decades to come, he never came close to re-establishing himself as he did in the mid-1880s. It's fortunate, then, that this is the decade we'll be focusing on, as we thus get the best possible look at Gunsberg as a player.

Opening

While Gunsberg ultimately joined everyone else in becoming a Ruy Lopez believer, his early career featured a lot more opening experimentation. Rising-star Gunsberg often played the Italian (and he prepared the Evans Gambit specifically for his Steinitz match) as well as the Center Game, which I highlight below. He was much more orthodox with his Black openings, playing 1... e5 and 1... e6 with approximate equality, though one very amusing phenomenon is that he played 1... b6 no fewer than seven times at New York 1889.

As far as openings bearing his name are concerned, it would appear there are three. The Gunsberg Defence in the Scotch is so named as he tried it three times in his 1881 match with Blackburne, though not exactly successfully. Similarly, the Gunsberg Counter-Attack in the Four Knights was played by him in the Vizayanagaram tournament, though contemporaries credit Steinitz for its invention (he played it successfully against Zukertort in their World Championship match). Perhaps Gunsberg's most successful opening is the simplest: 4. a3 in the Four Knights is called the Gunsberg Variation. He debuted it in his 1887 match against Blackburne, and scored four wins in six attempts (including the two we covered in the previous blog).

Middlegame

While he wasn't exactly a textbook Romantic, all those years operating Mephisto had an influence on Gunsberg's style that pulled him in that direction. He had an affinity for imbalanced King positions, as demonstrated by some of his previous, perhaps ill-timed Queenside castling experiments, but they did sometimes provide practical value. These King eccentricities often provided rich, imbalanced positions that Gunsberg played more often than anybody else, allowing him an unparalleled feeling for how they should be handled—a trait others have ascribed to Emanuel Lasker. Part of why Gunsberg was so successful as a tournament player was because he was damn near unstoppable when he got into the flow.

By the end of the decade, Gunsberg had mellowed out somewhat, adopting a more Modern opening repertoire and playing in a way that was much more aligned with Steinitz's school. With his ultimate ambition being to challenge for the World Championship, and with Steinitz's systems designed around punishing the eccentricities for which Gunsberg was known, this shift in style makes a lot of sense. The clearest example of this shift is in his Brilliancy Prize game from New York 1889, which I've previously covered and thus repost directly below. 

Endgame

Alexander Alekhine wrote a rather detailed obituary of Gunsberg in August 1930, and of interest was his focus on how Gunsberg "was talented and a great worker," which accurately describes his endgame play. His technique wasn't quite as polished as some of his fellow competitors, but what he had was a deep supply of grit, as well as a knack for being incredibly annoying. The two games I've selected for this section are far from the most accurate that we've ever seen, but they feel like textbook Gunsberg games: sharp complications, clear-cut strategy, and resourcefulness well after such opportunities should have dried up.

Conclusion

I think it's a shame that Gunsberg had such an illustrious career, yet there's no full-length biography of him. The reason, no doubt, is his rapid fall after the World Championship match reduced his status to "just another chess master." Hopefully someday, somebody rights this wrong (not me, at least not yet).

Hopefully you all enjoyed our first semifinal biography. Our next discussion will cover the match between Blackburne and Chigorin, and I have a lot to say (and relatively little time to write), so it might be a while. I'll do my best to make it worth the wait.