My Favouite Annotators. Part Five. Wilhelm Steinitz.

Afternoon everyone. Welcome to 2025. I hope it is a good year for you all.

So, Wilhelm ( Wolf' William) Steinitz the annotator. IMHO he basically invented the art of annotating chess games ( other opinions are available!) His column in 'The Field' is the stuff of legend. ( if you search for the columns in the right places you can find the material, but it is a laborious process!) 

Yes, they are perhaps best remembered for the early 'ink wars', but the actual chess content was simply magnificent! Unlike many his status as an annotator is based more on his notes to the games of others than on writing about his own games. He was prodigious in his output. In later years when he was in New York, his newspaper columns were still of the same quality. And, of course, his book on the New York 1889 tournament is one of the great chess works - and a HUGE effort. From memory around 430 games examined and annotated. Plus his own chess magazine. His work ethic was insane.

His notes went way beyond the work of anyone before, and most afterwards (back in the day Zuckertort tried to compete ) He was always fair and objective. I admire that quality. He didn't 'annotate by result'. He explained his ideas ( The line 'that little man has taught us all how to play chess' is credited to Mason.) gave the key lines of analysis, ( see his notes to the London - Vienna correspondence match which gives a mass of analysis) and tried his best to explain the chess. 

For me, he set the bar, and very few have approached it.

So, which game notes to include here? O.K. I decided on this one from the days of his 'Field' columns. Taken from his book on the match against Blackburne

which you can download on google books - well worth the time spent. It is one of the very first Steinitz games that I ever studied - via Reti's 'Masters of The Chessboard'- some 50 years ago. ( I am old and have been doing this stuff for a long time!)

Enjoy the game and the ground breaking annotations.