Romantic Rumble: Joseph Blackburne vs. Berthold Englisch
Mackenzie bio coming sometime closer to the New Year.
I've been informed that Santa will be gifting me the recently published George Mackenzie biography by John Hilbert, which has partially influenced me to write about this match prematurely. There are two other reasons why I'm doing this match early. The first is that the result should be pretty obvious, so we can get this out of the way; the other is that Englisch took part in the first sequence break (his match against Bardeleben, posted here, was published before Blackburne's match against Paulsen, posted here), so in the spirit of consistency, this had to be done.
Romantic Rumble: Joseph Blackburne vs. Berthold Englisch
These two have the largest number of games between them, with 11 bouts happening between 1878 and 1887; we'll "only" cover nine of them, omitting their Paris 1878 games.
We start at the start of the decade, in Wiesbaden 1880, where the players ultimately shared first place with Adolf Schwarz (see here). Through the first two time controls, the game was a textbook Blackburne game, who applied maximum pressure and refused to relinquish the initiative. He eventually won a pawn, and had to figure out how to answer Englisch's threatened counterattack along the d-file. Had he simply made some luft for his King, the attack would have continued after a short defensive shift; he instead traded Queens, maintaining his extra pawn into the endgame but never having any sort of winning chances.
Englisch skipped out on defending his "title" at Berlin 1881 (having won the first German Chess Association congress two years prior, see here), thereby saving himself from facing the most in-form Blackburne the world ever saw (see here).
Vienna 1882 continued the trend of "never having any sort of winning chances" in both games. The first has a little intrigue, as Blackburne tried way too hard to win a position he couldn't, though Englisch didn't make the most of the chance he was given as a result. Their second game is one that doesn't deserve much comment at all.
The players finished in sixth and seventh, though Blackburne's 21.5/34 won a prize while Englisch's 19.5/34 did not.
London 1883 and its unique format tried to disincentivize draws, though whether the drawing rate was actually lowered is math I leave up to somebody else. It's where our first decisive game of the day took place, though this was chiefly due to Englisch falling into a trap that had been known as far back as 1875.
While the first two draws were required to be replayed in each pairing, very few matches actually reached the third game, though Englisch was one of the worst offenders (he and Mackenzie drew six times, so they both deserve a little scrutiny). His second-cycle match with Blackburne also reached this stage, and I think it's fair to chiefly blame Englisch for this as he had the better of both draws. The first is especially egregious, with Englisch accepting a draw in a clearly better position (earning the ire of Henry Bird in the tournament book); the second is more forgivable, where Blackburne found a cute tactic to simplify into a pawn-down Rook endgame that he confidently held.
The third game should have also been a draw, with Englisch apparently offering one shortly after the opening—a bizarre decision given that he still needed to win his ongoing match with Samuel Rosenthal to even be in contention for a prize, while Blackburne's prize was already secured. Blackburne evidently refused, played a horrible 17th move, and lost the game quite badly. For those keeping score, both players had thus scored one win apiece with five draws.
Blackburne finished the tournament in third with 16.5/25 (his final match with Rosenthal was unplayed), while Englisch won his final game against Rosenthal to score 15.5/26 and nab his share of the fifth-seventh prizes.
Englisch skipped Nuremberg the following month, so the next game took place two years later at Hamburg. It's not much of a game, as after Blackburne sacrificed a pawn in an offbeat opening, Englisch responded very poorly and was dead lost before the first time control. This really could have been a Blackburne - NN game, and I almost feel bad showing it.
Both were in the five-player group on 11.5/17 that shared "second" place.
Frankfurt 1887 was their final mutual tournament, and also Englisch's last appearance outside of Austria for the next decade. This followed a similar pattern as the previous, with Blackburne playing the opening in a sacrificial way and forcing Englisch to defend, but it was nowhere near as drastic. Still, Englisch failed to find the right moves at the right time, and Blackburne overwhelmed the compromised Kingside with a couple of precise sacrifices. It's a very pretty attack, and a great game with which to end the chapter.
Blackburne again finished second, this time with 13.5/20, while Englisch's 11.5/20 left him a half point shy of the prizes.
Conclusion
As usual, the choice is yours as to who moves on and who is the subject of my next(?) post. I'll leave the poll up for about a week, but as I strongly suspect I know who the winner will be, I'll hopefully be able to get the post out relatively quickly. So if you want more content faster, choose correctly. 
Thanks for reading, and Merry Christmas.
