32 Facts About Adolf Anderssen

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master.

Adolf Anderssen won the great international tournaments of 1851 and 1862, but lost matches to Paul Morphy in 1858, and to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1866.

Adolf Anderssen achieved most of these successes when he was over the age of 50.

Adolf Anderssen is famous today for his brilliant sacrificial attacking play, particularly in the "Immortal Game" and the "Evergreen Game".

Adolf Anderssen was an important figure in the development of chess problems, driving forward the transition from the "Old School" of problem composition to the elegance and complexity of modern compositions.

Adolf Anderssen was one of the most likeable of chess masters and became an "elder statesman" of the game, to whom others turned for advice or arbitration.

Adolf Anderssen was born in Breslau, in the Prussian Province of Silesia, in 1818.

Adolf Anderssen lived there for most of his life, sharing a house with and supporting his widowed mother and his unmarried sister.

Adolf Anderssen graduated from the public gymnasium in Breslau and then attended university, where he studied mathematics and philosophy.

Adolf Anderssen's career was teaching mathematics, while his hobby and passion was playing chess.

Adolf Anderssen said that as a boy, he learned the strategy of the game from a copy of William Lewis' book Fifty Games between Labourdonnais and McDonnell.

Adolf Anderssen first came to the attention of the chess world when he published Aufgabe fur Schachspieler, a collection of 60 chess problems, in 1842.

Adolf Anderssen continued to publish problems for many years, both in magazines and as a second collection in 1852.

In 1848, Adolf Anderssen drew a match with the professional player Daniel Harrwitz.

Adolf Anderssen was reluctant to accept the invitation, as he was deterred by the travel costs.

In fact Adolf Anderssen was not described as "the world champion", but the tournament established Adolf Anderssen as the world's leading chess player.

Opportunities for tournament play remained rare, and Adolf Anderssen was reluctant to travel far because of the expense.

Shortly after the 1851 London International Tournament, Adolf Anderssen played his two most famous games, both casual encounters which he won by combinations that involved several sacrifices.

Adolf Anderssen drew their match in 1860 and narrowly won in 1861.

Adolf Anderssen won the London 1862 chess tournament, the first international round-robin tournament with a score of twelve wins out of thirteen games.

Morphy had retired from chess at this time, so Adolf Anderssen was again generally regarded as the world's leading active player.

In 1866, Adolf Anderssen lost a close match with 30-year-old Wilhelm Steinitz.

Furthermore, Adolf Anderssen remained dominant both in top tournaments and in personal matches against Zukertort until 1871.

Adolf Anderssen usually beat Zukertort in matches, but his dominance came to an end in 1871.

Still at Leipzig, Adolf Anderssen lost a match against tournament winner Louis Paulsen.

Adolf Anderssen was very successful in European tournaments from 1851 to early 1878, taking first prize in over half of the events in which he played.

Adolf Anderssen's only recorded tournament failures were a one-game-per-round knock-out event in 1857 and sixth place at Paris 1878 when his health was failing and he had only about a year to live.

Arpad Elo, inventor of the Elo rating system, retroactively calculated ratings through history, and estimated that Adolf Anderssen was the first player with a rating over 2600.

Adolf Anderssen has had a more enduring influence on chess problem composition.

Adolf Anderssen started composing in the last years of the "Old School", whose compositions were fairly similar to realistic over-the-board positions and featured spectacular "key" moves, multiple sacrifices and few variations.

Adolf Anderssen was one of the most skillful composers of his time, and his work forms an early stage of the "Transition Period", between the mid-1840s and the early 1860s, when many of the basic problem ideas were discovered, the requirement for game-like positions was abandoned and the introduction of composing competitions forced judges to decide on what features were the most desirable in a problem.

Outside the field of chess problems Adolf Anderssen was not a prolific author.