A Study of 19th Century Chess

I doubt the quality of play in mid-century United States was particularly high.  That's one reason when Morphy went to England, he was expected (by the Londoners) to fall flat on his face.

As counterpoint, here is Daniel S. Roberts playing William Jame Appleton Fuller in 1856:

I had a personal blog about a year ago about the "Lend-Lease Act" for Britsh to American chess.  But I can't find it :-(

The French had some pretty good chess players in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Jamie, I hope you find it!

You're right.  That's really weird. I'll delete the first one as that one seems wrong.  Thanks.

Thank you for doing this study. It's really interesting.

Thanks for helping to keep me honest.

You're welcome.

Haha - joke's on me.  It pre-dated my blog.  I had put it in Puzzles!!

http://www.chess.com/forum/view/more-puzzles/british-american-lend-lease

Wow. Thanks! 
I actually have that book but it's been 10 years or so since I've looked at it. (right-click/view image for larger image).
Although... we have to be careful not to get ahead of ourselves.

Morphy came into to the public spotlight by winning the 1857 American congress with such ease. After that tournament he contacted Howard Staunton, probably the most well-known name in chess at that time, about the possiblitiy of Staunton coming to New Orleans for a match.  Of course, Staunon wasn't about to travel to New Orleans but countered with an invitation for Morphy to come to England. Twenty year old Paul, quite unexpectedly, was able to accept that invitation and arrived in England that June in 1858. Extending the same challenge to Staunton in person, Morphy was anticipating an acceptance. Staunton, out of practice and involved in making a living, put Morphy off but, unfortunately for his future reputaton, did not decline the challenge outright. After a lot of wasted time in face-saving machinations, Staunton finally did decline.  By that time Morphy was in France.  He have defeated his old contestant John Jacob Loewenthal in London while awaiting Staunton's decision for a time and place for a match and now in Paris, he defeated Daniel Harrwitz.  Adolf Anderssen had come to Paris during his Christmas break from the university where he taught.  Anderssen, having won the 1851 international tournament was generally considered one of the strongest , if not the strongest, players  in the world and Morphy defeated him quite convincingly.
One of the main ideas to take away is that Morphy, for whatever reasons, created a publicity splash in the mainstream press. This was unprecedented for a chess player.  In England and France but especially in the United States, Morphy sparked an interest in chess probably not seen before.  But upon returning home, Morphy, who had become disillusioned with chess players and who wanted to pursue him own career as a lawyer, started his graceful exit from public life.
People who attain the highest place in a field and in the public's opinion and who abruptly depart tend to become things of legends with an imagined aura of invincibility. Paul Morphy who did all this is a prime example.  Whatever his abilities, talents, faults or potential, he did change chess by the sheer force of his play compared to that of his comtemporaries. The need and desire to understand what Morphy could do almost innately was, in part, the impetus that drove men like Louis Paulsen and William Steinitz to develop their positional ideas. The Morphy legend lived on, long after chess had evolved and advanced beyond those times.

Morphy and Pauslen were pioneers of blindfold simuls. Paulsen demonstrated his skills against larger groups, while Morphy played against stronger groups.  These two players' accomplishments would soon be overshadowed by Blackburne, Zukertort, Pillsbury and others, but in their time, their exhibitons were the subject of great interest. 

Around 1859 we're first introduced the the secretary of Count Grigory Alexandrovich Kushelev-BezborodkoIlya of St. Peterburg, the crazy-odds giving player from Bratislava, Ignatz Kolisch (for instance, in 1861 Kolisch played 13 members of the Norwich Chess Club simultaneously, yeilding Knight-odds, winning 8, losing 3 and drawing 2.)

Here is an example of Kolisch giving Rook and move odds in 1859

Kolisch had tied a match with Adolf Anderssen in 1860 (+5-5=1) and narrowly lost matches to Anderssen (+3-4=2) and Louis Paulsen ((+6-7=18)) in 1861.  He was hoping for a match with Paul Morphy who was trying to bow out of public chess and those two loses against players Morphy had beaten conclusively gave Morphy adequate reason to turn down the challenge.  He was in Russia during the second London international tournament in 1862.  That tournament, won by Anderssen, followed by Paulsen, then John Owen (whom Morphy had beaten yeilding Pawn and two), also put on public display the Austrian player Wilhelm Steinitz who placed 6th, and Joesph Blackburne who had only learned the game a couple years before yet placed 9th. It would have been interesting had Kolisch been a liberty to attend.

Things were shaping up to turn the 1860s into a quite interesting decade.

Batgirl, do you really belief Blackburne's story about how he learned the game? It sounds like a classic con man's story to me.

I do believe Blackburne.  He had a great natural capacity for chess, maybe more so than even Morphy.

What I know about Blackburne doesn't come from Blackburne himself, at least not directly, but from P. Anderson Graham's biographical sketch. Graham said that Blackburne had been a pretty good checkers or draught player growing up and as his father traveled about as a temperance reformer, he got to play with good opponents around England, Ireland and Scotland.  Morphy's blindfold play in 1858-9 inspired Blackburne, who worked in a warehouse in Manchester, to buy a cheap chess book.  He learned the moves and soon tried his hand at playing in a coffee-house and lost miserably. Then he bought Staunton's Chess-player's Handbook and studied openings.  He improved rapidly and joined the Manchester Chess Club where we developed at a phenomenal rate. It wasn't long before he got the chance to play some games with Edward Pidar, the tranplanted Russian who was champion of the Provinces.  Blackburne beat him +2-1, then had the same results the following week.  In 1861, Blackburne won the Manchester Club Tournament ahead of Horwitz (from whom Blackburne had been receiving end-game lessons).  Re-inspired by a visit of Louis Paulsen to Manchester in 1861 where he gave a blindfold exhibition (Blackburne lost his game in that simul), Blackburne tried blindfold chess himself and before the year was out was already playing sans voir against 3 opponents. In 1862, he played 4 games and then played 10 members of the Manchester Club while blindfold. 

Much of this is documented to a degree. In February 1862, Staunton wrote in his "Illustrated London News" Column: "On this occasion the unseeing performer was a yound English amateur, who, without any previous practice in blindfold chess, succeeded with perfect ease, and with marked ability, in winning four games played simultaneously against as many opponents"  Then after his 10 board blind simul, Staunton wrote: "When it is considered that our young countryman has had very little practice in chess play of any description, and that in playing without the board he is quite a novice, this last exploit appears to us the most wonderful of its kind that has ever been recorded."

It was of these kind of results that resulted in Blackburne, who had been laid-off from his warehouse job due to a cotton famine and was then working for him father producing daguerreotypes, receiving an invitation to participate in the 1862 international tournament... with his expenses paid for.

Louis Paulsen was from a family of scientific potato farmers.  He, along with his brother Ernst and his sister Amalie, moved to Dubuque, Iowa in 1854 where they raised tobacco, made cigars and ran a distillery. His other brother Wilfried, a very strong player, remained in Germany  All the Paulsens were chess-players, having learned the game from their father, Dr. Carl Paulsen, a strong player.  Paulsen defeated the best players in Chicago, winning an invitation to the American Chess Congress in 1857.  He had a minor reputation as a blindfold player and this reputatin was spotlighted an the congress.  He also inspired Morphy to improve his multiple blindfold abitlites.  More important to the development of chess, Paulsen took a scientific approach to the game. He left the United States in 1861.

According to Hans Kmoch ("Pawn Power in Chess" 1959): 
"All three systems [the Dragon, the Ram or Boleslavky and the Duo or Schevenigen] have been worked out and bequeathed  to the chess world by Louis Paulsen; they should bear his name or some descriptive names...
     The ram-move ...P-K4 had been played now and then before Paulsen's time, but it took Paulsen to work it out to a  perfect system....The Duo system was Paulsen's main hobby during his entire life. Time and time again he  experimented  with ...P-K3, trying out with self-sacrificing zeal all kinds of supplementary ideas. Indeed, this system is named after him -  provided Black continues with ....QN-Q2.
     Paulsen's name is never mentioned in connection with the Dragon system, yet it seems that he invented  it himself. At  any rate, Steinitz made the remark in the New York 1889 tournament book that 'the new move ... P-KN3' was introduced by  Louis Paulsen at the Frankfurt tournament [1887 - batgirl].
     Paulsen's invention of the Dragon is the more likely since he generally had a strong predilection for the fianchetto of the  King Bishop, which was very strange in his time. He also most likely invented and certainly introduced the King's Indian (1  P-Q4, N-KB3; 2 P-QB4, P-KN3) some forty years before this defense began to gain popularity. Equally he contributed to  that variant of the King's Indian which today is called the Yugoslav or Pirc defense (1 P-K4, P-Q3). For there is a  documentary remark in the Nuremberg 1883 tournament book, reading: "The actual inventor of this defense is Wilfried  Paulsen but [his brother] Louis Paulsen submitted it to a closer investigation."

Wilhelm Steinitz got the chess world's attention by placing third in the 1859 championship of the Vienna Chess club, then  second place behind Kolisch in 1860 and finally first placein 1861-2.  He was invited to the 1862 London international  where he place 6th but was praised by Anderssen, the winner, "as having played the boldest and most brilliant game of the  tournament." ("The Chess Journal," Aug. 1874).  Steinitz went on to win match after match. Winning his match against  Anderssen in 1866 made Steinitz the de facto world champion. This was Steinitz, the Romanticist, playing in the style of Morphy. 
It's rather remarkable to say the least, especially in those days, that a player so successful would examine his winning methodology and try to improve upon it scientifically. It's doubtful that Morphy, had he continued playing, would have  attempted that. Early Steinitz was probably influenced by Morphy but the evolved Steinitz was probably more influenced by  Paulsen, another pioneer scientific player.

Of course, this 2 and a half year old discussion leaves holes big enough to drive through.

May I suggest Simaginfan's blog to fill in some of these holes?
https://www.chess.com/blog/simaginfan

https://www.chess.com/article/view/were-players-in-the-1800s-terrible

The quality of play in the 19th century was, of course, not up to 21st century standards. This was the age, however, when chess possibly developed the most -thanks in part to the rise in chess publications and books, chess clubs and later tournaments. The players were, to a large extent, playing from an information vacuum, only beginning to delve into the complexities and record their studies, when chess began to resemble a more science more an art.  
It was also a time where you would find Romantic Style pair-offs such as Morphy vs Anderssen or those of entirely different schools of thought such as Steinitz vs. Tschigorin.   Heady stuff in my book.