Amos Burn
- November 15, 2025
Chessmetrics Ranking: highest world number two for one month in 1876
Tournament Career: winner of four super-tournaments:
Nottingham 1886, London 1887, Amsterdam 1889, German Chess Congress 1898
What he deserved it for:
Englishman Amos Burn was a student of Steinitz and although he was never a full chess professional, he managed to achieve several significant successes. At the end of the nineteenth century, he was part of the world elite and according to historical rankings, he was briefly even the second in the world.
He was known for his skills in defending worse positions, which he surely learned from his great master. Besides playing, he was also a frequent author of chess columns.
He won four super-tournaments, which is a great number for the nineteenth century. And he surpassed some of the greatest players of his time in them. In Nottingham 1886, Zukertort and Gunsberg finished behind him; in London 1887, he shared the first prize with Gunsberg and surpassed Zukertort, Blackburn, or Mason; in Amsterdam 1889, he finished a whole point ahead of the young Lasker, and finally at the German Congress 1898, a whole array of stars including Steinitz, Chigorin, Schlechter, or Janowski were looking up to him. To this, we can add a larger number of second and third places, and we have before us the career of a forgotten giant.
His excellent defensive reputation was confirmed, for example, in the game you can replay below. His thirty-third move is probably one of the most beautiful in chess history. He himself modestly attributed it to luck and declared this move as proof that even in chess, fortune has a say.
Best Game:
Edmund MacDonald vs Amos Burn
Liverpool 1910
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Miroslav Janeček graduated in English Philology at Palacký University Olomouc. Currently he works in Prague as a content editor for a large marketing company. His roots are in Opava - the historic and cultural centre of the Czech part of Silesia. That city is also the home of Slezan Opava, the chess club where Miroslav started to play chess, later went on to work as a youth coach and which he to this day proudly represents. As an aspiring chess publicist, he is the main author of articles on ChessDB.cz. In his free time, in addition to chess and writing, he also devotes himself to racket sports, history, and literature.