George H. D. Gossip - Manner and Reputation

Manner and Reputation

Burn's biographer Richard Forster notes that Gossip "was well-known for his exaggerated self-esteem". Philip Sergeant in his book A Century of British Chess remarks that his "play was never quite up to his own estimate of it". The New York Times portrays him at the Sixth American Chess Congress (1889) as follows:

Gossip, with his long, flowing beard, looks like one of the old-time monks. He has a good-shaped cranium, bald at the top, and is a little above the medium height. ... He believes himself to be one of the greatest chessplayers in the world, and thinks that if everything had gone on to his liking he could have beaten all the champions at the tournament. He is a deliberate player, but every now and then he takes a nip from a flask of brandy that generally stands on his table. He complained that his chair was too low, and he once attributed a defeat to that. Finally, he got a large ledger and sat upon it. He did, in fact, seem to derive some inspiration from its contents, for he played two or three excellent games afterward.

Diggle observes that Gossip "developed 'a happy knack of treading on other people's corns' by rushing into print" his occasional wins in offhand games against such leading players as Bird and Zukertort. He also vehemently denounced his critics and those with whom he disagreed. For example, in 1888 the Columbia Chess Chronicle quoted a lecture he had given two days before on the Steinitz Gambit. After condemning as "utterly worthless" the analysis of that opening published in two English periodicals, Gossip declaimed:

In order, therefore, to establish an important point of theory, and at the same time to prevent American chessplayers from being misled and deceived by the superficial analysis of incompetent British chess editors, whose object in condemning the Steinitz Gambit has obviously been mainly to depreciate the originality of its illustrious inventor, whom they invariably try to drag down to their own miserable level of shallow incompetency and self-conceit, I submit the following variations which at any rate possess the undeniable merit of exposing the hollow analytical twaddle continually published in the two London journals above named.

Hooper and Whyld note Gossip's "unusual talent for making enemies" and attribute the critical reception of his books to this, since in their opinion "his books were not significantly worse than the general run of the time, and they were better than, for example, those by Bird, who was popular". They remark on his travels that, "Disliked in England, he travelled to Australia, the United States, and Canada, where he also became unpopular." Some measure of his talent for stirring up controversy is provided by a letter Pollock wrote during their 1894–95 match:

I and Gossip are six each and may draw the match. He has proved a terrible crank and has had several games by forfeit, and one "cancelled". He now has a libel suit against the chess column of the Herald. ... We have just agreed, per the committee, to call the match a draw. Whereby all parties are relieved.

Chess historian Edward Winter observes that "Gossip has always been a soft target for mockery". He notes that Hooper and Whyld in the first edition (1984) of The Oxford Companion to Chess "treated him essentially as light relief"; the second edition (1992) treated him more equitably, but like the first omitted any mention of his performance at New York 1889. Yakov Damsky in The Batsford Book of Chess Records (2005), addressing the question of which player "achieved the greatest negative distinction" on the international level, opines that Gossip "can probably feel safe from competition". Mike Fox and Richard James in their book The Even More Complete Chess Addict (1993) write that, "Of players who've entered chess history, perhaps the strongest claimant for the all-time grandpatzer title is George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip (1841–1907). George had a worse record in major tournaments than anyone in history (last at Breslau 1889, London 1889, Manchester 1890, London 1892, and New York 1893: a total of just four wins, 52 losses and 21 draws)." Like Hooper and Whyld, they overlook his result at New York 1889, a major tournament where he won 11 games and finished above the bottom. In a 2001 article, Whyld himself takes notice of Gossip's result at New York 1889 and suggests that "history has perhaps given him an unfair verdict".

By Arpad Elo's calculation, Gossip's strength during his five-year peak was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2310. Today FIDE, the World Chess Federation, often awards the Grandmaster title to players with Elo ratings of 2500 and above, and the lesser International Master and FIDE Master titles to players rated at least 2400 and 2300, respectively.

Another assessment system, Chessmetrics, calculates that Gossip's highest rating was 2470 (number 50 in the world) in April 1889. By comparison, the world's three highest-rated players at that time had Chessmetrics ratings over 2700. Chessmetrics also ranks Gossip number 17 in the world during four one-month periods between February and July 1873, when opportunities for high-level competition were much rarer. Like Diggle, Chessmetrics considers New York 1889 Gossip's best individual performance, concluding that he scored 39% against opponents with an average rating of 2595, giving him a performance rating of 2539 for that tournament. In 1904, the Deutsche Schachzeitung, on the basis of its tabulation of players' percentage scores in all major international tournaments from London 1851 to Cambridge Springs 1904, ranked Gossip the number 62 living player in the world.

Diggle writes that despite his faults, Gossip was "a man of dauntless courage and infinite capacity for hard work", which enabled him to become a recognized author despite the disastrous reception that the first edition of his Chess-Player's Manual received. His literary style was vigorous, and shows him to be an educated and well-read man.