Winner's POV Chapter 6: Birmingham 1858

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 6: Birmingham 1858

The next three tournaments that we'll look at will be the three Chess Association tournaments that followed after the reasonable success at Manchester in 1857. While far from the most exciting or prestigious tournaments we'll cover, as mentioned, I think there's some merit to showcasing these smaller tournaments in a time when there are so few (the next major tournament, for example, wouldn't be until 1862).

This tournament was especially helped by the European tour of Paul Morphy. He was slated to take part in this tournament, however due to issues related to setting up a match with Howard Staunton, he refused to play. As it turned out, Morphy's eight-board blindfold simultaneous exhibition would end up being more remembered than the tournament taking place at the same venue. I'd be a fool to think I'm realistically evening the exposure of the two, but since we're here to talk about the tournament, we'll do just that.

Format and Prizes

Sixteen-man knockout bracket, similar to previous tournaments, with a first-to-two wins match system. The finals were increased to be a first-to-three, and since there were only two cash prizes, this made some sense.

There was no tournament book created (Staunton was placed in charge of this, but for a handful of reasons, this never formally came to pass). However, it's known that the first prize was 60 guineas, second prize was 20. A guinea was apparently worth £1.05, leading to prizes of £63 and £21. £63 in 1858 would be worth roughly £8700 today, and was on the higher end of prizes in tournaments covered thus far (London 1851 had a grand prize of £183, which would go unmatched for some time).

Players

The lack of a tournament book means the lack of a convenient list to screenshot, but it does give me the freedom to pick a more readable format than previous screenshots gave. In alphabetical order, the starting cast was:

Beetlestone (I can't definitively claim what their first name is)

Henry Bird

Robert Brien

Ernst Falkbeer

Thomas Hampton

Hesketh Hughes (probably)

Clement Ingleby

James Kipping

Johann Löwenthal

Paul Morphy

John Owen

Pierre Saint-Amant

George Salmon

Charles French Smith

Howard Staunton

Djuro Szabo

This takes up more room, but is ideally more readable.

Morphy had indeed given verbal confirmation that he would participate, however he arrived in Birmingham the day after the tournament had began. Apparently this was intentional - he didn't want the tournament results to affect his chances of getting a match with Staunton, so he made sure such an obstacle wouldn't present itself. One can imagine that we'd be telling a very different story had Morphy decided to compete.

Aside from Morphy, the strongest players present according to Edo's 1857 list were Staunton (6th), Löwenthal (8th), Falkbeer (20th), Bird (21st), Salmon (28th) and Brien (29th).

The Winner: Johann Löwenthal

Löwenthal thus becomes the first person to be the subject of two Winner's POV chapters, with the caveat that I did skip a tournament that would have made this not so (Adolf Anderssen won two tournaments at London in 1851, though as I mentioned, the other tournament was arguably more lackluster than these - I invite you to read about it here). With this tournament following shortly after Löwenthal's match loss against Morphy, you can imagine how much this win meant to him. With that, it's time to look at the Birmingham 1858 tournament from the Winner's POV.

Round 1: vs. James Kipping

Kipping was the secretary of the Manchester Chess Club, and so he naturally took an interest in many of the activities of the Chess Association. He had quite the achievement here in Birmingham: when Morphy gave his eight-board blindfold simul, Kipping was the only person to get a win, contributing to Morphy's overall score of 6.5/8.

Kipping had played the Evans Gambit against Morphy upon the latter first arriving in Birmingham, so it makes sense that he went for it here as well. Löwenthal, however, declined the gambit with 4... d5, and Kipping immediately allowed Löwenthal to take over the game after the error 6. Nxe5. Soon Löwenthal had an extra pawn, the exchange, a passed pawn, Kipping couldn't castle... although the game lasted over 40 moves, it was over before move 20.

Kipping was probably the one who surprised out of the opening in their second game, utilizing the Owen Defense to avoid theory. However, without the hypermodern school and its principles to guide him, Kipping had trouble dealing with Löwenthal's natural space advantage. With cramped pieces and a tactically vulnerable position, it was only a matter of time before Kipping slipped, giving Löwenthal a relatively painless ticket to the second round.

Round 2: vs. Howard Staunton

Despite being considered the "European Champion" (and thus why Morphy was so eager to face him), both of Staunton's appearances in this series have been losses. However, returning to Löwenthal, this must have been an extra relief; the two had previously had a falling out over the lack of reporting concerning some games Staunton and Löwenthal had played - which many feel was just a means for Staunton to pad his ego - and this eventually resulted in Löwenthal losing his position at Staunton's St. George Chess Club. Given that Staunton took Löwenthal in after the Hungarian fell at London 1851, I'm sure their entire relationship was somewhat up-and-down, but this win was doubtlessly a welcome development.

For completeness: Staunton defeated Hughes 2-0 in the first round.

The first game between the two was not the best, save for a position that IM Jeremy Silman included in his popular book How to Reassess Your Chess. Staunton exchanged a Bishop and attempted to close the center, but Löwenthal's 16... f5 showed an impressive command of this important chess principle - the Bishop pair thrives in open positions. Following that, there were many errors in both attack and defense, and figuring out which ones to talk about gave me a headache. Feel free to check out the rest of the game yourself.

The second game was even more lopsided. Staunton attempted to use the Scandinavian Defense (at the time known as the Centre Countergambit), but Löwenthal's 10. Ne4 showed that he had clearly won the opening battle. It wasn't very long before Staunton got careless, failed to properly respect the attack on his Knight, and was subjected to a fatal attack. A brutal ejection of the (statistically, in retrospect) strongest player in the tournament.

Some speculate that this result was one of the driving forces behind Staunton's unwillingness to play a match with Morphy; Staunton was clearly past his prime, possibly not even a world-class player anymore, and Morphy was as strong as ever. It is all speculation, however.

Round 3: vs. John Owen

At Manchester 1857, in addition to the "Grand Tournament" (covered in chapter 4), there was also a "Minor" or "General Tournament" for players who weren't a member of the upper echelon. It was a 16-man knockout with one-game matches, and John Owen was the eventual winner. Due to that result, he evidently found himself skilled enough to enter this major tournament, with decent results up to this point: 2-0 scores against Thomas Hampton and George Salmon in rounds one and two respectively.

Here, unfortunately, is where we run into the first issue with regards to this tournament. As Staunton was put in charge of constructing a tournament book, with him failing or refusing to meet this obligation, many of the tournament games were lost. This match was reportedly won by Löwenthal +2-0=1, however I only found one game between the two. John Owen would later be present in many of the English tournaments, so you'll be seeing him again, I promise.

Round 4: vs. Ernst Falkbeer

What a tiny picture.

Falkbeer indeed did more than pioneer one of the defenses to the King's Gambit, he was a decent chess player in his own right. He had won a club tournament in London in 1856 (whose details are too sparse for me to properly write about), and his matches against strong players like Anderssen and Bird cemented his reputation as a strong master. His tournament run included a 2-0 win against Ingleby in the first round, 2-1 over Saint Amant in the second, and a relatively long 3.5-2.5 (+2-1=3) match against Brien in the semifinals.

In this match there are more games missing, however it's much more severe than the previous round. Löwenthal would win this match with 3 wins, 1 loss and 4 draws, however two of his wins are lost to me. In addition, since the players retained the move order after a drawn game (akin to the last two rounds of the New York 1857 tournament), quite a few of the draws cannot be accurately placed either. Below, I present the games in an order that makes sense to me, if nobody else.

First, here are the three draws where Falkbeer had the first move. These would be games 1, 4 and 5, though the order presented may not reflect that.

Next, the sole draw where Löwenthal was White, which I can confidently claim was game 7 (Löwenthal won game 6 with Black). This was probably the most volatile, with both players having winning positions at some point.

Now we can discuss the decisive games. First, Falkbeer's win in the second game of the match, courtesy of a nice Vienna. He won the Bishop pair early, and once the center was opened up, he unleashed an attack that was quite commonplace in the Romantic Era (but just as welcome as any).

It makes sense to conclude with Löwenthal's only recorded win, which was likely from the third game of the match. In a Philidor, Löwenthal castled Queenside, however he decided to forego an attack and instead trade off pieces rapidly. His remaining pieces did end up nicely placed, however, and he was very quick to take advantage of Falkbeer's blunder to initiate his own lethal attack. Perhaps not the most interesting final game, but it was enough.

Conclusion

Following this, Löwenthal would participate less in chess competition, instead playing a more important role in the leadership of the British Chess Association (which would be the Chess Association's name after 1861). Despite winning two Chess Association tournaments in succession, very few considered Löwenthal to be a top player, though his spot among the elite did help him obtain his organizational role down the line. 

Chapter 5 (contains links to chapters 1-4)