English text
Up to the 1886 there was no the official
title of world champion. It was a creation of the match Steinitz-Zukertort
played in New York, Saint
Louis and New
Orleans. Before that year, excellent
players ( Ruy Lopez, Gioacchino
Greco, Philidor, Anderssen, Morphy or
Staunton, each for his proper period) were regarded in the public
opinion as leading players in the world but nobody of them claimed to a
title of world champion.
In a cold afternoon of the
1886 january 11, in a little room situed at no.80, Fifth Avenue in New York,
Wilhelm Steinitz challenged Johannes Hermann
Zukertort in the first game of a match that brought a great change
in the chess scene . About 100 years
later (in the 2000) the challenge between two players ( who defends the
title and the candidate winner of a hard contest) has been deleted by new
regulatory bodies in favour of a kind of tournament considered more
spectacular for the modern mass media. We can say that after the five
challenges between Kasparov and Karpov and the Kasparov's "quarrel"
with the Fide (like Fischer in the 1974) the rules and the
"appeal" of the challenge between the two best players changed.
Only the future will say if this was good for chess or not. Inevitably it
is a break in the old tradition of duels so fashionable among chess
fans.
On Steinitz and the next world champions
we wrote a short biography to our web-visitors may go for their searches
on chess history. But we did not forget others great masters ("near
to be" world champions), so we devoted them a page.
Please refer also to a large references
(books) for developments in the matter, from which we drawed many
informations .
 REFERENCES
J.Murray - A History of Chess - Cambridge
1913
A.Horowitz - World
Chess Championship - Estate
R.Eales - Chess: the history of a game - Batsford
H. Schonmberg - Grandmasters of Chess - Lippincott
Chicco-Porreca - Dizionario Enciclopedico
degli scacchi
Fine - La psicologia del giocatore
di scacchi
- Adelphi
E.Jakov - La parola ai campioni
del mondo
- Prisma
M.Judovich - The soviet chess school - Raduga.
F.Wilson - A Picture History of Chess - Dover
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Wilhelm STEINITZ
