Isidor Gunsberg
- November 1, 2025
Defeated in the 1891 World Championship Match
Chessmetrics Ranking: World Number One for one month (February 1889)
Tournament Career: winner of three super-tournaments:
Hamburg 1885
London 1887
Bradford 1888
Matches: Gunsberg vs Blackburne 4:0 (=1)
Gunsberg vs Chigorin 9:9 (=5)
What earned him this:
Isidor Gunsberg was the first truly significant player from a long line of Hungarian chess players, although he spent most of his life in Great Britain. He was part of the world elite at the turn of the 1880s and 1890s. According to retrospectively calculated ratings, he was even the world number one for one month in 1889. He had a very successful tournament career, with perhaps his greatest victory coming in Hamburg in 1885, where he won the tournament ahead of Blackburne, Mason, Englisch, Tarrasch, and Mackenzie. Two years later, at a strong tournament in London, he shared the win with Burn and surpassed Blackburne, Zukertort, and Mason.
The peak of his career was the World Championship match against Steinitz in 1891, which he narrowly lost after four wins, nine draws, and six losses.
In the second half of the 1890s, his chess strength waned, as evidenced by his poor result at the Hastings tournament in 1895. He was no longer part of the elite thereafter.
Why he isn’t higher:
Gunsberg lacked longevity. He was part of the narrow world elite only in his thirties. It took him a long time to reach the top, and he left it very quickly.
Best Games:
Isidor Gunsberg vs Wilhelm Steinitz
World Championship Match, New York 1891, Round 12
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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.