Jules Arnous de Rivière
Encyclopedia
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....
– 11 September 1905, Paris) was the strongest French 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 from the late 1850s through the late 1870s. He is best known today for playing many games with Paul Morphy
Paul Morphy
Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy...
when the American champion visited Paris in 1858 and 1863.
Born in Nantes
Nantes
Nantes is a city in western France, located on the Loire River, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the 6th largest in France, while its metropolitan area ranks 8th with over 800,000 inhabitants....
to a French father and an English mother as Arnous-Rivière, he awarded himself the noble "de". Rivière finished 6th of 13 in the 1867 Paris international tournament
Paris 1867 chess tournament
World exhibitions became a new phenomenon in the West in the nineteenth century. Scientific and technical progress were shown. Ten World Fairs were organised during the second half of the nineteenth century. Seven times an international chess tournament was part of the event...
organized in conjunction with the Exposition Universelle
Exposition Universelle (1867)
The Exposition Universelle of 1867 was a World Exposition held in Paris, France, in 1867.-Conception:In 1864, Emperor Napoleon III decreed that an international exposition should be held in Paris in 1867. A commission was appointed with Prince Jerome Napoleon as president, under whose direction...
. Although he finished well below the strongest foreign masters, he was ahead of fellow Parisian, Polish-born, Samuel Rosenthal
Samuel Rosenthal
Samuel Rosenthal was a Jewish chess master. Chess historian Edward Winter wrote, "He dedicated his life to chess-playing, touring, writing, teaching and analysing...
. Rivière had success in some minor tournaments in Paris: 3rd in 1880, 2nd= in 1881, 2nd in 1882–3, and 3rd in the Café de la Régence
Café de la Régence
The Café de la Régence in Paris was an important European centre of chess in the 18th and 19th centuries. All important chess masters of the time played there.The Café' masters include, but are not limited to:* Paul Morphy...
tournament of 1896.
Rivière fared poorly in his casual games against Morphy, but did well in more formal match play. He lost to Serafino Dubois
Serafino Dubois
Serafino Dubois was an Italian chess player. He was known for his writings on the game and for his promotion of chess in Italy.-Chess career:Serafino Dubois was born in Rome...
(+8-21=3) in 1855, and Gustav Neumann
Gustav Neumann
Gustav Richard Ludwig Neumann was a German chess master.Neumann was born in Gleiwitz in the Prussian Province of Silesia. In matches he lost to Louis Paulsen at Leipzig 1864, and defeated Celso Golmayo Zúpide , and Simon Winawer at Paris 1867...
(+3-7=2) in 1864, but he drew with Ignatz von Kolisch (5:5) in 1859, and defeated Thomas Wilson Barnes
Thomas Wilson Barnes
Thomas Wilson Barnes was an English chess master, one of the leading British masters at the time of Paul Morphy's visit to the UK in 1858....
in London (+5−2=0) and Paul Journoud
Paul Journoud
Paul Journoud was a French chess master and editor.He was a member of the Café de la Régence chess club in Paris, and one of leading French masters in 1850s/1860s...
in Paris (+7−2=1) in 1860, and Johann Löwenthal
Johann Löwenthal
Johann Jacob Löwenthal was a professional chess master.Löwenthal was born in Budapest, the son of a Jewish merchant. He was educated at the gymnasium of his native city. In 1846, he won a match against Carl Hamppe in Vienna...
(+2−0=0) in Paris in 1867. He also lost a close match to Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...
by +4−5=1 in 1883.
Rivière's writings included several chess columns and books on billiards
Billiards
Cue sports , also known as billiard sports, are a wide variety of games of skill generally played with a cue stick which is used to strike billiard balls, moving them around a cloth-covered billiards table bounded by rubber .Historically, the umbrella term was billiards...
and roulette
Roulette
Roulette is a casino game named after a French diminutive for little wheel. In the game, players may choose to place bets on either a single number or a range of numbers, the colors red or black, or whether the number is odd or even....
. He also invented many games. Rivière died in Paris in 1905.