Amos Burn (1848–1925) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer.
Burn was born on New Year's Eve, 1848, in
HullKingston upon Hull , almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located 25 miles from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary...
. As a teenager, he moved to
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, becoming apprenticed to a firm of ship-owners and merchants. He only learned chess at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion
Wilhelm SteinitzWilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. Some contemporaries and later writers described him as world champion since 1866, when he won a match against Adolf Anderssen...
in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability.
Amos Burn (1848–1925) was an
EnglishEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
chessChess is a board game played between two players. The current form of the game emerged in Southern Europe during the second half of the 15th century after evolving from a similar, much older game of Indian origin...
player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer.
Burn was born on New Year's Eve, 1848, in
HullKingston upon Hull , almost invariably referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is located 25 miles from the North Sea on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary...
. As a teenager, he moved to
LiverpoolLiverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, becoming apprenticed to a firm of ship-owners and merchants. He only learned chess at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion
Wilhelm SteinitzWilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian-American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. Some contemporaries and later writers described him as world champion since 1866, when he won a match against Adolf Anderssen...
in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability.
Aron NimzowitschAron Nimzowitsch was a Latvian-born Danish unofficial chess grandmaster and a very influential chess writer...
, in his book
The Praxis of My System, named Burn one of the world's six greatest defensive players.
Although never a professional chess player, Burn had a long career. His first tournament, in 1867-68 was a
handicapA handicap in chess is a way to enable a weaker player to have a chance of winning against a stronger one. There are many kinds of such handicaps, such as material odds, extra moves A handicap (or "odds") in chess is a way to enable a weaker player to have a chance of winning against a stronger...
tournament at the Liverpool Chess Club. Placed in the second level, where he received pawn and move odds from the four top-seeded players, and gave up to knight odds to the other players, Burn won easily, scoring 24 out of 25 possible points. Burn's first major tournament was the Third Challenge Cup of the British Chess Association (London 1870), where he surprised the pundits by tying for first with
John WiskerJohn Wisker was an English chess player and journalist. By 1870 he was one of the world's best ten chess players, and the second-best English-born player, behind only Joseph Henry Blackburne.Wisker moved to London in 1866 to become a reporter for the City Press and befriended Howard Staunton...
, ahead of
Joseph Henry BlackburneJoseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "Black Death", dominated British chess during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess career that spanned over 50 years...
and others, but lost the playoff to Wisker. His last was Breslau 1912, where he finished 12th of 18 players, scoring 7.5 out of 17 possible points.
In 1913,
Leopold HofferLeopold Hoffer was an English chess player and journalist.He left Budapest for Switzerland. Since 1867, he lived in Paris, where won a few matches, among others against Ignatz von Kolisch, Samuel Rosenthal, Jules Arnous de Rivière, etc...
, the editor for over 30 years of the chess column in
The FieldThe Field is the world's oldest country and field sports magazine, having been published continuously since 1853.The famous sportsman Robert Smith Surtees, the creator of Jorrocks, was the driving force behind the initial publication...
, the leading chess column in
Great BritainGreat Britain is an island lying to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island. With a population of about 59.6 million people, it is the third most populated island on Earth. Great Britain is surrounded by over 1000 smaller...
, died. The proprietors of
The Field took seven weeks to select a successor, finally settling on Burn. He moved to London and wrote the column until his death in 1925.
Burn's greatest tournament results were equal first at London 1887 with
Isidor GunsbergIsidor Arthur Gunsberg began his career as the player inside the chess automaton Mephisto, but later became a chess professional....
(ahead of
Joseph Henry BlackburneJoseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "Black Death", dominated British chess during the latter part of the 19th century. He learned the game at the relatively late age of 18 but quickly became a strong player and went on to develop a professional chess career that spanned over 50 years...
and
Johannes ZukertortJohannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship...
), first at Amsterdam 1889 (ahead of a young
Emanuel LaskerEmanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...
), second at Breslau 1889 (behind
Siegbert TarraschSiegbert Tarrasch was one of the strongest chess players and most influential chess teachers of the late 19th century and early 20th century....
) and first at
CologneCologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the German Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants...
1898 (ahead of
Rudolf CharousekRudolf Charousek was a Hungarian chess player. A brilliant player, he had a tragically short career, dying at the age of 27 from tuberculosis...
,
Mikhail ChigorinMikhail Ivanovich Chigorin was a leading Russian chess player. He served as a major source of inspiration for the "Soviet school of chess," which dominated the chess world in the middle and latter parts of the 20th century.-Chess career:Chigorin was born near to Saint Petersburg and moved to the...
,
Carl SchlechterCarl Schlechter was a leading Austrian chess master and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century. He is best known for drawing a World Chess Championship match with Emanuel Lasker.-Early life:...
, David Janowski and Steinitz). He also played at
Hastings 1895The Hastings 1895 chess tournament was a round-robin tournament of chess conducted in Hastings, England from August 5 to September 2, 1895.Hastings 1895 was arguably the strongest tournament in history at the time it occurred. All of the strongest players of the generation competed...
, the strongest tournament held up to that point, finishing in joint twelfth place with 9½ points out of 21.
In one of Burn's last tournaments, he won as
WhiteIn chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black." Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces." The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...
against the young
Alexander AlekhineAlexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion.By the age of twenty-two, he was already among the strongest chess players in the world. During the 1920s, he won most of the tournaments in which he played...
at Karlsbad 1911:
1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Ne4 6.Bxe7 Qxe7 7.Bd3 Nxc3 8.bxc3 c5 9.Nf3 Nc6 10.O-O c4 11.Be2 Bd7 12.Qd2 b5 13.Ne1 a5 14.a3 O-O 15.f4 b4 16.axb4 axb4 17.Rxa8 Rxa8 18.cxb4 Qxb4 19.c3 Qb3 20.Bd1 Ra2 21.Qc1 Qb6 22.Rf2 Qa7 23.Rxa2 Qxa2 24.Nc2 h6 25.Qa1 Qxa1 26.Nxa1 Na7 27.Kf2 Bc6 28.Ke3 Nb5 29.Kd2 Kf8 30.Nc2 Ke7 31.Ne3 f5 32.Bf3 Kd7 33.g4 fxg4 34.Bxg4 g6 35.Bd1 Ke7 36.Ng4 h5 37.Ne3 Kf7 38.Ng2 Kg7 39.Nh4 Be8 40.Nf3 Kf7 41.Kc2 Bd7 42.Kb2 Na7 43.Ka3 Nc6 44.Ba4 Ke7 45.Nh4 Kf7 46.Bxc6 Bxc6 47.Kb4 Be8 48.Nf3 Ke7 49.Ng5 Bc6 50.Ka3 Bd7 51.Kb2 Ba4 52.Kc1 Bb3 53.Nf3 Ba4 54.Nh4 Kf7 55.Ng2 Bd7 56.h4 Be8 57.Kb2 Ba4 58.Ne3 Ke7 59.Ka3 Bc6 60.Kb4 Kd7 61.Ka5 Kc7 62.Nc2 Kb7 63.Nb4 Bd7 64.Na6 Be8 65.Nc5+ Kc6 66.Nxe6 Bd7 67.Ng5 Bf5 68.Kb4 Bg4 69.Ka3 Kd7 70.Nf7 Be6 71.Nd6 Kc6 72.Kb2 Bg4 73.Kc2 Kd7 74.Kd2 Ke6 75.Ke3 Bh3 76.f5+ gxf5 77.Kf4 Bg4 78.Kg5 Bh3 79.Ne8 Kf7 80.Nf6 f4 81.Kxf4 Be6 82.Kg5 1-0
At right is a surprisingly little known position from one of Burn's games. At first blush, Black's position looks resignable: it appears that his
bishopA bishop is a piece in the board game of chess. Each player begins the game with two bishops. One starts between the king's knight and the king, the other between the queen's knight and the queen...
, attacked twice and
pinnedIn chess, a pin is a situation brought on by an attacking piece in which a defending piece cannot move without exposing a more valuable defending piece on its other side to capture by the attacking piece...
to his
kingIn chess, the King is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that he would not be able to avoid capture . If a player's king is threatened with capture, he is said to be in check, and the player must move so as to remove the threat of capture...
, will fall and he will soon be
checkmateCheckmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
d. Burn produced the staggering 33...Qg4!!, leaving his
queenThe queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of their first rank next to their king. The white queen starts on a white square, and the black queen on a black square, thus the mnemonic "queen gets her color" or "queen on...
en prise to three different White pieces. However, if 34.Bxg4 or hxg4, Black wins with 34...Bxd2. If 34.Qxg5+, Qxg5 35.Rxg5+ Kh6, Black wins a piece and the game. MacDonald instead tried 34.Rxg4 Nf3+ 35.Kg2 Nxd2 36.Rxg5+ Kh6 37.h4 Nxb3 38.Rf5 Nxa5 and Burn won in 11 more moves. Burns' biographer Richard Forster calls the move "without doubt the most extraordinary of his career." Chess journalist
Tim KrabbéTim Krabbé is a Dutch journalist and novelist.Krabbé was born in Amsterdam. His writing has appeared in most major periodicals in the Netherlands. He is known to Dutch readers for his novel De Renner , first published in 1978...
considers 33...Qg4!! one of the ten most fantastic moves ever played.
(scroll down to No. 258), noting that it is a rare example of the Novotny theme in practical play.
Burn is the eponym of the
Burn Variation of the
French DefenceThe French Defence is a chess opening. It is characterized by the moves:The French has a reputation for solidity and resilience, though it can result in a somewhat cramped game for Black in the early stages...
(1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4). The line had been played before, including by
Albert ClercAlbert Clerc was a French chess master.-Chess career:He won at Paris 1856, tied for 9-10th at Paris 1878 , took 2nd, behind Samuel Rosenthal, at Paris 1880 , took 4th at Paris 1881 Albert Clerc (January 1830, Besançon – June 1918, St Denis en Val) was a French chess master.-Chess career:He won at...
against
Adolf AnderssenKarl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world leading chess player from 1851 to 1858, and from 1861 to 1866...
at Paris 1878. Burn's first known game with the variation was against Charles Locock at
BradfordBradford is a city and metropolitan borough in West Yorkshire, England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
1888. However, Burn "was the first to adopt it regularly and with good results", scoring nine wins, one draw, and five losses with it.
In 2004, the Swiss International Master Richard Forster published the 972-page
Amos Burn: A Chess Biography.
Viktor KorchnoiViktor Lvovich Korchnoi Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi (also Korchnoy, Kortchnoy, Kortschnoi, etc.; pronounced in the original Russian as "karch NOY"; Ви́ктор Льво́вич Корчно́й, born March 23, 1931, in Leningrad, USSR, defected to the Netherlands, and has resided in Switzerland for...
observed in its foreword that "this work accords [Burn] the recognition he deserves, painstakingly assembling and analysing all available games and biographical material about him".
External links