Chess legends series: Howard Staunton

The clash between England and France continued even after the death of Alexander Mac Donnell and Louis-Charles De la Bourdonnais, with two new protagonists: Howard Staunton (1810-1874) and Pierre Charles de Saint Amant(1800-1872).

Howard Staunton 

He got seriously into chess when he was 26 years old which is according to today's standards,quite late.He made it up for this time deficit with serious hard work and in 1843 he got to a level that we now analyse and admire.Earlier that year he beaten John Cochrane(chess theoretician and strong player of those times) in a long series of matches.Later that year he faced mentioned Pierre Charles de Saint Amant that definitively made him immortal in the memory of chess players.In this match he overplayed the French challenger with better positional play, using nowadays a highly respected English opening(which was named after him), beginning with 1.c4.The match ended with the score: 11 wins,6 losses,4 draws, which was sufficient for England to get its revenge on France. In 1846 he crushed another two challengers : Bernhard Horwitz with the score 14 wins,7 losses,3 draws and Daniel Harrwitz with the score 12 wins,9 losses,1 draw.As a studied Shakespeare scholar, it was only natural for him to participate in publishing chess articles and ultimately even fully acclaimed books.He published 4 books : "Chess Handbook"(1847),collected games of his three main matches(1849),collected games of the first international tournament in London(1852) and "Chess Practics"(1860).He also created a whole style of chess pieces that are now used worldwide.

Match with Pierre Charles de Saint Amant

In November 1843 Howard Staunton made it to the famous chess centre of the old world-"café de la Régence" in Paris.Whoever achieved 11 wins first-won.Supporters of the French player were convinced Howard is not going to be a problem for Pierre.They were terribly wrong.After 8 rounds the score was 7 wins and 1 draw in favour of Howard Staunton.After 15 rounds it seemed the end for Pierre is sealed because Englishman needed only 1 more point to win the match(score was 10 wins,3 losses,2 draws).Pierre managed in a desperate situation to resist quite admirably, scoring a win in 16th,19th and 20th round.Sadly for him the end has been indeed already sealed.This is the last 21st game.

Fischer said that Staunton was a deep opening theoretician and that his positional playing was ahead of his time.This is true however,Staunton was seemingly a quite complex player.There are games where he presented a style that was shaped into perfection by his nemesis: Paul Morphy. It is believed that Howard Staunton received a challenge from Paul Morphy but due to many different reasons(more time for preparing,Morphy sending the challenge too late etc.), he declined. Morphy fans would argue that he was simply scared of the guy, which is indeed more entertaining and not entirely impossible. Morphy at his prime was truly terrifying.This is the game Howard played against an unknown opponent which is assigned in chess terminology as N.N.