London 1851 Chess Tournament - Aftermath

Aftermath

Despite the obvious flaws in the knockout format of the tournament, the outcome was just as Anderssen was the best player. As provided by the rules of the tournament, Staunton immediately challenged Anderssen to a twenty-one-game match for a £100 stake. Anderssen agreed to the match, but could not play right away as he had been away from Germany and his job as a school teacher for over two months. In addition Staunton was physically unfit for an immediate contest. The proposed match was never played.

As a result of winning this tournament Anderssen was popularly recognised as Europe's best player, although as far as is known he was never described as "world champion". The idea of a world chess champion had been current at least since 1840, and the earliest known use of the term "world champion" is in 1845, referring to Staunton and published in Staunton's Chess Players' Chronicle. Wilhelm Steinitz was widely recognized as "world champion" in the 1870s, but the first formal contest for the world title was the 1886 match between Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort.

Staunton wrote the tournament book, which he titled The Chess Tournament (1852). Although an excellent description of the event, it was marred by ill grace with which he received Anderssen's victory. However Staunton's description of Anderssen as Germany's second best player after Anderssen won the 1851 International tournament may have been reasonable on the basis of what is now known about von der Lasa's skill, and Anderssen's playing strength had surged in the months preceding the tournament, as a result of training matches against strong players in Germany.

Staunton blamed his poor showing on the strain of his duties in organising the tournament, and also thought that he suffered from a weak heart since an illness in 1844. He condemned the pursuit of chess as a profession, writing

Chess never was, and while society exists, never can be a profession. It may to a great extent strengthen the mind of the professional man, but it must never become the object of his life. It is because its true character has been lost sight of by the zealous or the mercenary, that victory at any cost has become a more important object than the advancement of the science.

At least in part, this was the complaint of an ungracious loser, as most of Staunton's income was derived from his skill at chess. By this time Staunton was also a successful scholar with a long-term contract to produce editions of Shakespeare's plays.

Staunton was also concerned with the lack of time limits on play. After some experimentation, time controls would become standard in all serious tournaments some years later. The weakness of the knockout format, a kind of hybrid between match and tournament play, was eliminated by adopting the round-robin format beginning with the London 1862 tournament.

The famous Immortal Game, Anderssen–Kieseritsky, London 1851, was played as an offhand game during a break in this tournament. It was not one of the games of their first-round match.

The London Chess Club, which had fallen out with Staunton and his colleagues, organized a tournament that was played a month later and had a multi-national set of players (many of whom had competed in the International tournament), and the result was the same - Anderssen won.