George H. D. Gossip - Chess Career

Chess Career

By 1864, Gossip was appearing in London chess circles, drawing a game against Joseph Henry Blackburne at a simultaneous exhibition in April. He played in a number of chess tournaments between 1870 and 1895, usually with unimpressive results. At London 1870, the Third British Chess Association Congress (won by John Wisker after a playoff against Amos Burn), Gossip scored two of six possible points, finishing in a tie for fifth–sixth out of seven players. He had the consolation of handing Burn his only loss. At London 1872 (won by Steinitz ahead of Johannes Zukertort and Blackburne), he scored just one out of seven, finishing seventh out of eight players.

Gossip won the 1873–74 correspondence chess tournament of the Chess-Players Chronicle, after which he "was thought by some to be the strongest correspondence player known". However, playing first board for England in an 1879 correspondence chess match against the United States, he lost all four of his games to Ellen Gilbert of Hartford, Connecticut. She "caused a sensation in the chess world" by announcing mate in 21 moves in one game, and mate in 35 moves in another. Gossip responded gallantly, dedicating his book Theory of the Chess Openings to her.

In 1874, Gossip lost a match for the Championship Cup of the Provinces to Rev. John Owen, retiring because of illness after one win, two draws, and two losses. He won a local tournament at the Café de la Régence in Paris in 1880. In 1882, he beat Wordsworth Donisthorpe in a match held at Simpson's Divan in London.

Gossip's first significant success at over-the-board chess came at the 1883 London Vizayanagaram minor tournament. He scored 17½ out of 25, tying for fifth–sixth place out of 26 players with Charles Ranken, who later co-authored the treatise Chess Openings Ancient and Modern (1889). Curt von Bardeleben won with 21½ points; Isidor Gunsberg, who would narrowly lose an 1890–91 World Championship match to Steinitz, finished fourth with 19 points.

In 1885 Gossip, a year after emigrating to Australia, issued a challenge to any player in the Australian colonies to play a match with him for 20 pounds a side and the title of Australian champion. Frederick Karl Esling, a leading Melbourne player, accepted the challenge. Esling won the first game, and the second was adjourned in a position favorable to him. Gossip then pled illness and forfeited the match. Kenneth Whyld writes that the Australians probably considered Gossip a "whingeing Pom".

An Australian commentator observes, "Gossip may not have been the most popular itinerant to venture to these shores in the nineteenth century, but when he announced his challenge ... he at least brought the question of an official Chess Champion of Australia before the chess playing fraternity". In 1950, when Esling was 90, the Australian Chess Federation formally declared, belatedly, that he had become the first Australian Chess Champion by winning his 1885 match against Gossip. The Second Australian Chess Championship, a tournament, was held at Adelaide in 1887. Gossip finished third with 6½ out of 9, behind Henry Charlick (7½ points) and Esling (7 points).

After returning to America in 1888, Gossip obtained an appointment at the Columbia Chess Club. The following year, he represented England at the Sixth American Chess Congress (New York 1889), one of the greatest tournaments of the 19th century. The Congress, a double round robin that was one of the longest tournaments in history, was intended to select a challenger for the world championship title. There, Gossip had what G. H. Diggle calls "perhaps the best performance of his career". He scored 13½ out of 38 (11 wins, 5 draws, 22 losses), finishing 17th–18th out of 20 players. He won games from S. Lipschütz, Max Judd, Eugene Delmar, Jackson Showalter, William Pollock (twice), Henry Bird (twice), David Graham Baird, James Moore Hanham, and John Washington Baird. Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss tied for first with 29 points, edging out Gunsberg (28½ points).

Gossip was unable to repeat even this modest level of success in his final tournaments. He finished last in five consecutive strong events: the Master Section at London 1889 (scoring 1½ out of 10; Bird won on tiebreak over Gunsberg); the Meisterturnier (Master Tournament) at Breslau 1889 (scoring three out of ten; Siegbert Tarrasch won); the Master Section of Manchester 1890 (scoring four out of nineteen; Tarrasch won); the Master Tournament at London 1892 (scoring 2½ out of 11; future World Champion Emanuel Lasker won); and New York 1893 (scoring 2½ out of 13; Lasker won with a perfect score). Gossip's run of last-place finishes moved Diggle to dub him "the King of Wooden Spoonists". Gossip's last event was a minor tournament in Skaneateles, New York in July–August 1895, where he scored three out of six, finishing in a tie for third–fifth of seven players.

A report in the BCM in 1889 observed that Gossip suffered from great nervousness that prevented him from fully displaying his abilities at chess tournaments, where he had to stop his ears "to keep out the low hum inseparable from a large concourse of people". Bird likewise wrote that minor distractions that he would not even notice would "drive ... Gossip to despair". The BCM commentator accordingly believed that Gossip "would make a good stand in a single encounter with men who are much higher in the tournament than he is".

Following his move to Montreal, Gossip in a letter to a friend dated October 20, 1894 complained, "The French Canadian Chessplayers here are the poorest, meanest humbugs I ever met – all Jesuits." He and Pollock played a match at the Montreal Chess Club in December 1894 and January 1895; each won six games, with five draws. This was an impressive result for Gossip "in view of Pollock's undoubted strength". Later in 1895, Pollock finished 19th out of 22 players, scoring 8 out of 21 (including wins over Tarrasch and Steinitz), at Hastings 1895, arguably at that time the strongest tournament in history. Diggle writes that Gossip's drawn match with Pollock vindicates the BCM's 1889 observation that Gossip would be more at home in a match than a tournament.

Gossip was only a minor master, "a mediocre player who figured at or near the bottom of every better than average tourney in which he participated". However, during his career he played tournament games against most of the world's leading players, including World Champions Lasker and Steinitz; World Championship challengers Zukertort, Tarrasch, Chigorin, and Gunsberg; Louis Paulsen, Harry Nelson Pillsbury, and James Mason, all at some point ranked number 1 in the world by Chessmetrics; Burn, Blackburne, Bird, and Cecil de Vere (all ranked number 2); and Weiss and Wisker (both ranked number 3).