London 1883 chess tournament
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Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
tournament among most of the leading players of the day. It was won convincingly by Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Zukertort
Johannes 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 match, he...
(22 points out of 26) ahead of Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...
(with 19 points). Remarkably, Zukertort was already assured of victory with three rounds to go, having scored an astonishing 22/23. He then lost his last three games against relatively weak players, probably due to exhaustion. The tournament established Zukertort as rivalling Steinitz to claim to be the best player in the world, and led to the World Chess Championship 1886
World Chess Championship 1886
The World Chess Championship 1886 was the first official World Chess Championship match contested by Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort. The match took place in the USA, the first five games being played in New York, the next four being played in St.Louis and the final eleven in New Orleans....
match between the two (the first official World Chess Championship
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....
match). The event was a double round-robin tournament
Round-robin tournament
A round-robin tournament is a competition "in which each contestant meets all other contestants in turn".-Terminology:...
. Marmaduke Wyvill contributed to organizing the tournament.
The tournament was also notable for the first use of the double-sided chess clock
Game clock
A game clock consists of two adjacent clocks and buttons to stop one clock while starting the other, such that the two component clocks never run simultaneously. Game clocks are used in two-player games where the players move in turn...
, manufactured by T.B. Wilson of Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...
.
A common story relates to an incident that occurred at the tournament banquet, when the St. George Chess Club President proposed a toast to the best chess player in the world and both Steinitz and Zukertort stood up at the same time to thank him. Research by Edward Winter
Edward Winter (chess historian)
Edward Winter is an English journalist, archivist, historian, collector and author about the game of chess. He writes a regular column on that subject, Chess Notes, and is also a regular columnist for ChessBase.-Chess Notes:...
suggests that this story has been embellished.
Crosstable
The results and standings:| # | Player | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | Total |
| 1 | /  Poland |
|||||||||||||
| 01 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 22 | |
| 2 | /  Bohemia |
10 | ||||||||||||
| 01 | 00 | 11 | 01 | 11 | 00 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 19 | ||
| 3 | /  Kingdom of England |
00 | 10 | |||||||||||
| 01 | 00 | 10 | 11 | 10 | ½1 | 01 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 16½ | |||
| 4 | /  Russia |
00 | 11 | 10 | ||||||||||
| 11 | 01 | 01 | 01 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 16 | ||||
| 5 | /  Kingdom of Scotland |
01 | 00 | 11 | 00 | |||||||||
| ½½ | 01 | 01 | 01 | 01 | 11 | ½1 | 11 | 11 | 15½ | |||||
| 6 | /  Czech Silesia Czech Silesia is an unofficial name of one of the three Czech lands and a section of the Silesian historical region. It is located in the north-east of the Czech Republic, predominantly in the Moravian-Silesian Region, with a section in the northern Olomouc Region... |
00 | 10 | 01 | 10 | ½½ | ||||||||
| 00 | ½1 | 01 | 01 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 15½ | ||||||
| 7 | /  Republic of Ireland |
00 | 00 | 00 | 10 | 10 | 11 | |||||||
| 10 | 10 | 11 | ½1 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 15½ | |||||||
| 8 | / Poland |
00 | 11 | 01 | 10 | 10 | ½0 | 01 | ||||||
| ½1 | 10 | 01 | 01 | 11 | 11 | 15 | ||||||||
| 9 | / Poland |
00 | 00 | ½0 | 01 | 10 | 10 | 01 | ½0 | |||||
| 01 | 10 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 13 | |||||||||
| 10 | / Kingdom of England |
00 | 00 | 10 | 01 | 10 | 10 | 00 | 01 | 10 | ||||
| 00 | 11 | 11 | 11 | 12 | ||||||||||
| 11 | /  Hungary |
00 | 00 | 00 | 01 | 00 | 00 | ½0 | 10 | 01 | 11 | |||
| 01 | 11 | 01 | 9½ | |||||||||||
| 12 | /  United States |
01 | 00 | 00 | 00 | ½0 | 00 | 00 | 10 | 00 | 00 | 10 | ||
| 11 | 01 | 6½ | ||||||||||||
| 13 | / United States |
01 | 00 | 00 | 01 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | |
| 01 | 3 | |||||||||||||
| 14 | / Kingdom of England |
00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 00 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| 3 |