Winner's POV Chapter 1: Ries' Divan 1849

In Winner's POV, we take a look at tournaments from the 19th century and see the games that allowed the top player to prevail. Some tournaments will be known and famous, others will be more obscure - in a time period where competition is scarce, I believe there is some value in digging for hidden gems in the form of smaller, less known events.

Chapter 1: Ries' Divan 1849

The first leg of our journey begins with, as far as I am aware, the first ever fully recorded tournament. Although there exists evidence of a proper chess competition all the way back in 1574, played in the court of King Phillip II of Spain, the documentation of this tournament is complete and comprehensive. Thus, it is an excellent candidate for the flagship entry into this series.

The significance of this tournament is primarily in its originality as the first properly organized tournament. For starters, it showed that a chess tournament is a very reasonable competition to construct (seeing as chess professionals only ever played matches against each other, a tournament to properly compete against each other was desired all around). In addition, it showcased the knockout format as a reasonable format for an era where draws were relatively rare. As knockout would be the format of choice for the majority of tournaments in the 1850s, we can safely attribute its popularity to this tournament.

Format and Prizes

As stated, the tournament was a knockout, with the winner in each match being the first to win two games. As there were 12 entrants, the progression was a little irregular; the first two rounds were played as normal (12 -> 6 and then 6 -> 3), with the final segment being played out much like that of the 2021 US Championship tiebreaks. More on that later.

There was no prize fund explicitly given, however in Howard Staunton's "Chess Player's Chronicle," we're provided with some of the rules and regulations regarding this issue:

At minimum, the total prize fund would have been 60s, or £3 in 1849 currency. The inflation calculator I used gave a value of about £406 in 2022. Obviously not the most lucrative prize fund ever, but not at all bad for literal "coffeehouse players."

Players

Staunton's book also provides a list of all of the players:

According to Edochess, the strongest players in 1849 present were Henry Buckle (9th in the world), Elijah Williams (24th), Edward Löwe (40th), George Medley (45th) and 19-year-old Henry Bird (50th). While this certainly wasn't an exceptionally strong field, it's doubtless that there were some very dangerous players, as is expected for the most popular chess coffee house in all of Britain.

The Winner: Henry Buckle

Henry Thomas Buckle was the overall winner of this first-of-its-kind tournament, and the majority of the rest of this will be devoted to looking at his games. Despite not being a chess professional (he received a large inheritance and spent most of his life studying history), his understanding of positional concepts seem incredibly out of place in the romantic era. It's time to look at the Ries' Divan 1849 tournament from the Winner's POV.

Round 1: vs. Charles French Smith

Mr. Smith was another young player (roughly 21) and a rival of Henry Bird. His first games in the database are against Buckle, so from a seeding perspective, this is a reasonable first matchup.

An opening with mutual mistakes left Buckle on the receiving end of a potentially dangerous attack. As Smith struggled to find the most efficient way forward, Buckle gradually built up counterplay around Smith's shaky centre. When it became clear that Smith's attack was losing merit, he desperately sacrificed a Rook, leading to a series of checks which ultimately proved irrelevant.

The second game was all Buckle. After Smith's incredibly passive 11... Nd8, Buckle immediately cramped Smith's game and created threat after threat. This game has many fewer notes than the last, but looking over it will hopefully show how natural Buckle's play was, and how few options Smith really had at any point.

With two wins, Buckle advanced to round 2.

Round 2: vs. Elijah Williams

With Elijah Williams being the second-highest "rated" player in the field, this could be seen as an unfortunate pairing. However, as the third round would be a sort of all-play-all, this is the only real opportunity for these two to play a proper match, if only to two wins.

If I hadn't known ahead of time how strong Williams was in regards to British players, I wouldn't have guessed it from this game. After a weird looking position out of the Dutch, Williams made a crucial error on move 10, allowing Buckle a huge advantage that was easily convertible. Observe how nicely Buckle uses his pieces to augment his Rooks' domination of the d-file, and allow for a nice tactical shot on move 26. 

The second game was too wild to adequately explain in a single paragraph. A mistake by Buckle in the opening allowed Williams to go for a strong Kingside attack, and finding the impressive 14. Qh5 allowed him to win the exchange. Immediately after, the extremely unnecessary 18. fxg5 gave Buckle a very pleasant game, and he was even pushing for the win. Despite mutual blunders leading to a drawn endgame, Williams made the final mistake, allowing Buckle's King into the position and sealing the match. With the #2 player dispatched, Buckle was certainly in a good position heading into the final round.

Round 3: vs. George Medley and John Medley

The brothers Medley were the other two to survive the rounds of knockout play, and all three were thus entitled to a share of the prize pool. Unlike Buckle, who had won four consecutive games, the Medleys each had a blip on their record: older brother George dropped a round one game against Henry Bird, while John played four games against Edward Löwe to win 2.5-1.5. Buckle was definitely the favourite, but there was chess to be played regardless.

George Medley was up first, with the two only playing a single game; the winner would then switch colours and play John Medley. After Medley traded a Bishop for the Knight on f3, Buckle allowed himself to play more aggressively than usual, bringing the action to the Kingside and refusing Queen trades to keep the pressure high. The game plan could hardly have worked better, as after Medley sacrificed a pawn for less than nothing, his position collapsed. A really anticlimactic game, unfortunately, for the final round of a tournament.

Buckle's openings as Black had been subpar in previous rounds, so there was certainly hope for John Medley. What happened, however, was him sacrificing a piece right out of the opening to give a single, inconsequential check. After walking his King to the Queenside and easily deflecting the attempted attack, Buckle was officially the winner of the third round - it's equally as accurate to say that his opponents defeated themselves, truthfully.

Conclusion

While the games may not have been of the highest quality, it's important to remember that this tournament was a pioneer in a few ways: it was the first fully recorded chess tournament in Britain (at least, recorded with records available today), and it was the first tournament in this potential series, giving me a chance to see if this is worth doing. I had fun writing it, and I hope you all enjoyed seeing it.

This would mark the end of Buckle's competitive career, for lack of a better term. As the story goes, he arrived at the London 1851 tournament a day after it had started, and quit playing chess shortly after to focus on researching and writing about history. He was clearly a cut above the other competitors here, as his records against stronger international masters reflects. 

Stay tuned for Chapter 2, if I ever remember and/or get the energy to write it. Cheers!