Studying Players from Steinitz' Time and Before

I'm beginning to systematically study games from Steinitz' time, including players who were his contemporaries, and players before.  What suggestions do you have?  I'm especially interested in players with books devoted to their games replete with annotations.  Any favorite players from the period, especially lesser known ones?  What about particularly instructive books on games from the period?

Rather surprisingly, I've found a book of annotated games played by Pillsbury, for example.

I wouldn't expect someone to have written a whole book with annotations about Pillsbury.  It's not like he was a world champion.  In light of the fact that the only collection of games by Schlechter I acquired does not have annotations, and additionally considering that he was almost a world champion (i.e., he drew the world championship match with Lasker), I find Pillsbury's book surprising.  (Also, I have mostly only studied games from much later, and so have limited experience in books featuring much older players.)

I have a Pillsbury book by Soltis. It has some nice biographical backstory and then I think 30 annotated games. I quite like Pillsbury as a historical chess figure, so am looking forward to playing through it. (First I need to finish Masters of the Chessboard!)

I think everyone in our group has multiple projects running at once.  I'm sure we are being a bad influence on one another in that way --not really.  I am moving into the third chapter of My Great Predecessors (volume 1), doing that deep analysis GTM business with Zurich '53, and, of course, doing our NY '24.  I don't have professional obligations again until March, so I'm basically doing chess all day long until then.  Throw in tactics, Muller's endings, opening study, and Mastering Chess Middlegames, and that makes for a full day.  

It's been a while since I systematically studied the old masters. I have some old books including Gelo's World Chess Championships. That's a waste of money now though since every game is available in databases and there was no commentary. Besides, the copy I have seems to be out of print. 

I also have Lesser Known Chess Masterpieces which contains games and analysis that has rather mixed quality. That covers the pre-war period, about a decade after Steinitz. I have Steinitz' complete games collection with notes, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a completist. 

Honestly, I think My Great Predecessors is probably as good as any other main-stream resource for selecting the best games of the era. 

If you're only interested in chess history, check out Batgirl's blogs here on chess.com. She covers this period as well as any book I've seen. She doesn't really go into any deep analysis of the games, but she does provide some excellent insights into the personalities of these players.

Thanks, SF.  That book on lesser known chess masterpieces looks extremely interesting.

I'm still researching, and I found a match book (actually a book on all the matches) of La Bourdonais vs McDonnell.  I think I might have a look at it.

Have a look on the site of   www.schaakboek.nl  and you will find a lot of information on titles, writers, and biographies, I am almost sure youn will find something on Zukertort, Steinitz, Anderssen, Morphy, Staunton, Fournier de Saint-Amant, McDonell, De la Bourdonnais, Deschapelles and Serratt.

Here on Chess.com is a forum called General Chess Discussion, and one post is called "Esteemed Players before 1821", giving  13 names of authors, as Sarratt, Allgaier, Ponziani, Lollo and Stamma,  all around 1745-1815, perhaps not answering your request, but worth of researching by you I think.

When you write "and before", how far back do you want to go ?  I think you will have enough hours to work on the period back to 1851 only.  Steinitz first games were in 1861-1862.

"After Steinitz" is apparently not what you want to study, that is the period of Lasker, Capablanca, Pillsbury.

I think and hope you will see books on Winawer, Charousek, Chigorin, all worthwhile  !

In 2014, I went through a pretty good chunk of Alexander McDonnell's games with the intention of going through all. I got bogged down annotating them. There's a good book on most of them. http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2014/11/mcdonnell-de-la-bourdonnais-1834-index.html

I wrote a small pamphlet on Greco and Philidor for my chess camp in 2013. It is 59 pages and concludes with 92 tactics problems all taken from the games of these two players.

Sample page:

I would love to read that pamphlet! There are very few books on the Italian game out there!

Sorry, I thought this was a post in a private forum. 

Thanks for sharing the Greco commentary Ziryab!

Many of Greco's published games were really just models. 

I learned a few interesting things by studying the McDonnell-LaBourdonnais matches. Before Morphy, the best players in the world really were afraid of Knights! They were constantly trading off their well developed Bs for Ns on f6 or c6! It was almost as if they weren't familiar with the concept of the pin! 

In spite of that, they managed to play some high class chess. 

I suspect that all of Greco's games were model games, composed for instructive purposes. However, I also suspect that a few of these model games may have been played over the board simply because they are based on common tactical patterns and openings that were popular. Although Greco did not present them as actual games, they might have been played incidently by him or others in his day.

No one was in the habit of recording games as they were played in Greco's day. Even as late as the London International tournament of 1851, the players did not record their own games.

My pamphlet has a mere eight pages on the Italian game. Send me a private message with your email, I'll send you a pdf of the pamphlet. Pages 27-29 is an analysis of Pillsbury -- Lasker 1896, which Lasker wrote about in Lasker's Manual of Chess. It represents my effort to implement Dan Heismen's Elements as a teaching rubric. I wrote that portion in 2003 for a now defunct website put up for an elementary school chess club.

Table of Contents

Player Profile: Gioachino Greco (c.1600-c.1634)......................................................................................3

Greco's Tactics.......................................................................................................................................4

Greco's Academy...................................................................................................................................9

Group 1.............................................................................................................................................9

Group 2...........................................................................................................................................10

Group 3...........................................................................................................................................11

Model Games...........................................................................................................................................12

Greco's Openings.................................................................................................................................12

Italian Opening: Giuoco Piano.......................................................................................................12

Giuoco Piano, Game 1...............................................................................................................12

Giuoco Piano, Game 2...............................................................................................................14

Greco's Games with 10...Bxd4 in the Giuoco Piano.............................................................16

Giuoco Piano, Game 9...............................................................................................................17

Italian Opening: Two Knights Defense..........................................................................................18

Two Knights Defense, Game 1..................................................................................................18

King's Gambit.................................................................................................................................20

King's Gambit, Game 1..............................................................................................................20

King's Gambit, Game 2..............................................................................................................22

Useless Checks...............................................................................................................................24

King's Gambit, Game 3..............................................................................................................24

Development...................................................................................................................................26

The Elements of Positional Analysis.......................................................................................................27

A Classic Game...................................................................................................................................27

Pillsbury's Sacrifice........................................................................................................................28

Losing Time....................................................................................................................................29

Player Profile: François-André Danican Philidor (1726-1795)...............................................................31

Philidor Explains the Power of Pawns................................................................................................32

Theory and Practice........................................................................................................................32

Bishop's Opening, Game 1.........................................................................................................33

Bishop's Opening, Game 2 [C23]..............................................................................................37

Philidor on the King's Gambit.............................................................................................................41

Additional Games....................................................................................................................................44

Greco...................................................................................................................................................44

Philidor................................................................................................................................................47

Tactical Exercises.....................................................................................................................................49

White moves first................................................................................................................................49

Black moves first.................................................................................................................................57

That's book I mentioned (post #4) that I just purchased yesterday.  I'm glad that the pick is backed by your recommendation.  Thanks for the link to your blog post on it.  I'll have a look. 

Did you publish it, by chance?

And so we've come full circle, as super GM's are afraid of knights wielded by silicon beasts.  

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on McDonnell, I look at one of your annotation on one game the knights dominated; love it.