Amos Burn
Encyclopedia
Amos Burn was an English
chess
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 Hull
. As a teenager, he moved to Liverpool
, becoming apprenticed to a firm of shipowners and merchants. He learned chess only at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz
in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability. Aron Nimzowitsch
, 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 tournament and writing career.
In 1913, Leopold Hoffer
, the editor for over 30 years of the chess column in The Field
, the leading chess column in Great Britain
, 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.
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 Wisker
, ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne
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.
Burn's greatest tournament results were equal first at London 1887 with Isidor Gunsberg
(ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne
and Johannes Zukertort
), first at Amsterdam 1889 (ahead of a young Emanuel Lasker
), second at Breslau 1889 (behind Siegbert Tarrasch
), and first at Cologne
1898 (ahead of Rudolf Charousek, Mikhail Chigorin
, Carl Schlechter
, David Janowski, and Steinitz). He also played at Hastings 1895
, the strongest tournament held up to that point, finishing in joint twelfth place with 9½ points out of 21.
(1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4). The line had been played before, including by Albert Clerc
against Adolf Anderssen
at Paris 1878. Burn's first known game with the variation was against Charles Locock at Bradford
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 IM Richard Forster published the 972-page Amos Burn: A Chess Biography. Viktor Korchnoi
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."
against the young Alexander Alekhine
:
Burn–Alekhine, 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 offhand games. At first blush, Black's position looks resignable: it appears that his bishop
, attacked twice and pinned
to his king
, will fall and he will soon be checkmate
d. Burn produced the staggering 33...Qg4!!, leaving his queen
en prise to three different white pieces. However, if 34.Bxg4 or hxg4, Black wins with 34...Bxd2. If 34.Qxg5+, 34...Qxg5 35.Rxg5+ Kh6 and 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 Krabbé
considers 33...Qg4!! one of the ten most fantastic moves ever played, noting that it is a rare example of the Novotny theme in practical play.
England
England 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, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
chess
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...
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 Hull
Kingston upon Hull
Kingston upon Hull , usually referred to as Hull, is a city and unitary authority area in the ceremonial county of the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It stands on the River Hull at its junction with the Humber estuary, 25 miles inland from the North Sea. Hull has a resident population of...
. As a teenager, he moved to Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool 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 shipowners and merchants. He learned chess only at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion 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...
in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability. Aron Nimzowitsch
Aron Nimzowitsch
Aron Nimzowitsch was a Russian-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 tournament and writing career.
In 1913, Leopold Hoffer
Leopold Hoffer
Leopold Hoffer was an English chess player and journalist.He left Budapest for Switzerland. From 1867, he lived in Paris, where he won matches against, among others, Ignatz von Kolisch, Samuel Rosenthal and Jules Arnous de Rivière...
, the editor for over 30 years of the chess column in The Field
The Field (magazine)
The 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 Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
, 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.
Tournament history
His first tournament, in 1867–68, was a handicapChess handicap
A 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
British Chess Championship
The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...
(London 1870), where he surprised the pundits by tying for first with John Wisker
John Wisker
John Wisker was an English chess player and journalist. By 1870, he was one of the world's ten best 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 Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "The 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.
Burn's greatest tournament results were equal first at London 1887 with Isidor Gunsberg
Isidor Gunsberg
Isidor Arthur Gunsberg began his career as the player operating the remote-controlled chess automaton Mephisto, but later became a chess professional....
(ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne
Joseph Henry Blackburne , nicknamed "The 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 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...
), first at Amsterdam 1889 (ahead of a young Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker
Emanuel Lasker was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher who was World Chess Champion for 27 years...
), second at Breslau 1889 (behind Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert Tarrasch
Siegbert 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 Cologne
Cologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany 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.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
1898 (ahead of Rudolf Charousek, Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...
, Carl Schlechter
Carl Schlechter
Carl 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 1895
Hastings 1895 chess tournament
The 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.
Legacy
Burn is the eponym of the Burn Variation of the French DefenceFrench Defence
The French Defence is a chess opening. It is characterised 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 Clerc
Albert Clerc
Albert 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, Saint-Denis-en-Val) was a French chess master.-Chess career:He won...
against Adolf Anderssen
Adolf Anderssen
Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world's leading chess player in the 1850s and 1860s...
at Paris 1878. Burn's first known game with the variation was against Charles Locock at Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern 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 IM Richard Forster published the 972-page Amos Burn: A Chess Biography. Viktor Korchnoi
Viktor Korchnoi
Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi ; pronounced in the original Russian as "karch NOY"; Ви́ктор Льво́вич Корчно́й, born March 23, 1931 is a professional chess player, author and currently the oldest active grandmaster on the tournament circuit...
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."
Sample games
In one of Burn's last tournaments, he won as WhiteWhite and Black in chess
In 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 Alekhine
Alexander Alekhine
Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was the fourth World Chess Champion. He is often considered one of the greatest chess players ever.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...
:
Burn–Alekhine, Karlsbad
Karlovy Vary
Karlovy Vary is a spa city situated in western Bohemia, Czech Republic, on the confluence of the rivers Ohře and Teplá, approximately west of Prague . It is named after King of Bohemia and Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, who founded the city in 1370...
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 offhand games. At first blush, Black's position looks resignable: it appears that his bishop
Bishop (chess)
A 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 pinned
Pin (chess)
In 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 king
King (chess)
In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...
, will fall and he will soon be checkmate
Checkmate
Checkmate 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 queen
Queen (chess)
The queen is the most powerful piece in the game of chess, able to move any number of squares vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Each player starts the game with one queen, placed in the middle of the first rank next to the king. With the chessboard oriented correctly, the white queen starts...
en prise to three different white pieces. However, if 34.Bxg4 or hxg4, Black wins with 34...Bxd2. If 34.Qxg5+, 34...Qxg5 35.Rxg5+ Kh6 and 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 Krabbé
Tim Krabbé
Tim 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, noting that it is a rare example of the Novotny theme in practical play.
External links
- Amos Burn download 129 of his games in pgn format.
- Statistics at ChessWorld.net