Wilhelm Steinitz was the first undisputed official world chess champion. He was also a highly influential writer and chess theoretician. In 1873, he released a new approach in chess, the positional and published a chess book entitled “The Modern Chess Instructor” which explain the principle of modern chess.
He was born on May 14, 1836 at Prague, Kingdom of Bohemia (now Czech Republic). He came from not well-known family and 13th in his family. He learned chess at the age of 12 and played seriously at twenties. He started his chess career when he placed third at Vienna 1859 behind Carl Hamppe and Eduard Jenay and became first on 1961 on the same tournament. In 1962, he was sent to represent Austria at 1862 London Chess Tournament, he placed sixth but he received the brilliancy prize against Augustus Mongredien.
His statistical rank among the World Chess Champions was low due to long breaks in the competitive chess tournaments but remained undefeated in the matches from 1862 to 1894.
On 1866, he was able to arrange a match with Adolf Anderssen, the strongest active player at that time with high prize GBP 100 for winner and GBP20 for loser which is huge amount of money before equivalent to more than GBP57, 000 today.
His first victory in a high class tournament was on 1872 at London ahead of Blackburne and Zukertort. Next year, at Vienna Chess Tournament, Steinitz played a new style of play (positional approach-which is now the basis in chess) and succeeded at the event, 1st place. After that, Steinitz stopped playing chess until 1882 (9 years) only one match with Blackburne with 7-0 result which included in the Guinness book of records in chess for matches.
In 1882, he returned at chess and played at 1882 Vienna Chess Tournament and awarded as 1st place.
The 1st Official World Chess Championship match was played between Steinitz and Zukertort at New York in 1886, and the winner will be the one who get higher points out of 20 games. Steinitz got the victory with 12.5-7.5 and awarded as 1st official world chess champion. He became world champion until 1894 when he lost his crown to Emanuel Lasker.
In August 12, 1900, he died and buried at Cemetery of Evergreen in Brooklyn New York.
There are 767 games listed in the chessbase.
Let's see one of his best games.
https://www.chess.com/blog/GMG29/the-untouchable-rook
By Coach Gerald Ferriol