Chess Career
Kieseritzky became one of the four leading French masters of the time, alongside Louis de la Bourdonnais, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, and Boncourt, and for the few years before his death was among the top two players in the world along with Howard Staunton. His knowledge of the game was significant and he made contributions to chess theory of his own, but his career was somewhat blighted by misfortune and a passion for the unsound. In 1842 he tied a match with Ignazio Calvi (+7 −7 =1). In 1846 he won matches against the German masters Bernhard Horwitz (+7 −4 =1) and Daniel Harrwitz (+11 −5 =2). He enjoyed a number of other magnificent victories across his career, but his nerve was lacking when it came to tournament play.
He was invited to play in the first international chess tournament, the London 1851 tournament, where he scored ½–2½ and was defeated in the first round by the eventual winner Adolf Anderssen. One of the games was finished in a mere 20 minutes after a horrific blunder Staunton described as having been "never equalled even among beginners of the game". The other loss was equally one-sided. During his time in London however, Kieseritzky also played an offhand game against Anderssen which has so thrilled generations of chess players that it has been dubbed "The Immortal Game". Despite losing, it was in fact Kieseritzky who recorded and published the game during his period as editor of La Regence.
Kieseritzky is credited with invention of the first three-dimensional chess, Kubicschach ("Cubic Chess") in 1851, but failed to attract adherents. The 8×8×8 cube format was later picked up by Dr. Ferdinand Maack in 1907 when developing Raumschach ("Space Chess").
Kieseritzky was never a popular man owing to his narcissistic character—considering himself the "Chess Messiah"—and on May 18, 1853, he died unmourned in Paris, France. He was buried in a pauper's grave, its location has been found but not his exact plot, and a memorial has been placed.
Read more about this topic: Lionel Kieseritzky
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