Ludwig Bledow - Playing Strength

Playing Strength

Assessments of Bledow's playing strength have to rely mainly on the comments of his contemporaries, as Bledow seldom recorded the moves in his games. Various sources, including Schachzeitung der Berliner Schachgesellschaft and correspondence by Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa, indicate that Bledow:

• in 1838-1839 won a slight majority of his games against József Szén, who had narrowly beaten Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais in a match in 1836.
• won a match against Carl Jaenisch in 1842.
• won the majority of his games against Henry Thomas Buckle. It is particularly unfortunate that Buckle also did not record his games, as detailed information would have made it possible to compare Bledow with leading English players such as Howard Staunton. Buckle was considered England's second strongest player after Staunton; in fact some of Staunton's enemies argued that Buckle was the better player.
• in 1845 beat Adolf Anderssen by either 5-0 or 4½-½, depending on which source is used. At this time Anderssen was 27 year old, and perhaps weaker than he was when he won the 1851 and 1862 London International Tournaments.
• defeated Augustus Mongredien +7 –4 =1, also in 1845. At that time Mongrédien appears to been a stronger player than he was in the late 1850s and 1860s. In 1845, possibly his best year, Mongrédien drew a match with Carl Mayet, and lost to Staunton by –2=3. Later he failed to win a game in matches against Paul Morphy (1859), Daniel Harrwitz (1860), and Wilhelm Steinitz (1863), and finished 11th out of 14 players in the 1862 London International Tournament (he was not invited to play in the 1851 tournament, possibly because he was on the wrong side in a dispute between some of the London clubs).

This information is insufficient to justify procaiming Bledow as the strongest player of the mid-1840s, but he would deserve serious consideration as a contender.

An 1860 article in the Atlantic categorizes Bledow as a "closed" player (like François-André Danican Philidor, Staunton, Harrwitz, Slous, Bernhard Horwitz and Szén) rather than a "heroic" player (such as Labourdonnais, Morphy, Anderssen, Carl Mayet, Max Lange, von der Lasa, Serafino Dubois, Saint Amant, Mongredien, Johann Löwenthal and several others). Bledow's surviving games support this to some extent - for example he prefers the Giuoco Piano to the Kings Gambit, and plays the Dutch Defense against 1.d4.