Ignatz Kolisch
- November 17, 2025
Chessmetrics Ranking: World Number One 1867-1868
Tournament Career: Winner of one super-tournament:
Paris 1867 chess tournament
Matches: Kolisch vs Rosenthal 7:1
Kolisch vs Shumov 6:2
What earned him this status:
According to retrospectively calculated rankings, the best player in the world at the turn of 1867-1868, Baron Ignatz Kolisch, was not a chess professional. He was primarily a businessman and banker, and a very successful one at that. He became a millionaire and used this status to organize and sponsor a large number of chess tournaments. He himself was not a frequent participant, but in the few he did attend, he almost always achieved success. His greatest success was winning in Paris 1867, where he finished ahead of Steinitz, Winawer, Neumann, and others.
He was also very strong in match play. He often crushed weaker opponents, but was an equal match for the biggest stars: he lost to Anderssen by only one point in a tough match, and drew a match with Paulsen. It is therefore quite clear that his real level was entirely in the same spheres as the best players of that time.
He died at the young age of fifty-two, and the chess world thus prematurely lost a great patron and elite player.
Best Games:
Ignatz von Kolisch vs Adolf Anderssen
London 1861
Share
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.