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Amos Burn
Amos Burn (31 December 1848 – 25 November 1925) was an English chess player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer.
Burn was born on New Year's Eve, 1848, in Hull. As a teenager he moved to Liverpool, becoming apprenticed to a firm of shipowners and merchants. He learned chess only at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability. Aron Nimzowitsch, in his book The Praxis of My System, named Burn one of the world's six greatest defensive players.
Although never a professional chess player, Burn had a long career of playing tournaments and writing.
In 1913, Leopold Hoffer, the editor for over 30 years of the chess column in The Field, the leading chess column in Great Britain, died. The proprietors of The Field took seven weeks to select a successor, finally settling on Burn. He moved to London and wrote the column until his death in 1925 from a stroke.
Burn's first tournament, in 1867–68, was a handicap tournament at the Liverpool Chess Club. Placed in the second level, where he received pawn-and-move odds from the four top-seeded players and gave odds of up to a knight to the other players, Burn won easily, scoring 24 out of 25 possible points. His first major tournament was the Third Challenge Cup of the British Chess Association (London 1870), where he surprised the pundits by tying for first with John Wisker, ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne and others, but lost the playoff to Wisker. His last was Breslau 1912, where he finished 12th of 18 players, scoring 7.5 out of 17 possible points.
Burn's greatest tournament results were equal first at London 1887 with Isidor Gunsberg (ahead of Blackburne and Johannes Zukertort), first at Amsterdam 1889 (ahead of a young Emanuel Lasker), second at Breslau 1889 (behind Siegbert Tarrasch), and first at Cologne 1898 (ahead of Rudolf Charousek, Mikhail Chigorin, Carl Schlechter, David Janowski, and Wilhelm Steinitz). He also played at Hastings 1895, the strongest tournament held up to that point, finishing in joint twelfth place with 9½ points out of 21.
Burn is the eponym of the Burn Variation of the French Defence (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4). The line had been played before, including by Albert Clerc against Adolf Anderssen at Paris 1878. Burn's first known game with the variation was against Charles Locock at Bradford 1888. However, Burn "was the first to adopt it regularly and with good results", scoring nine wins, one draw, and five losses with it.
In 2004, the Swiss IM Richard Forster published the 972-page Amos Burn: A Chess Biography. Viktor Korchnoi observed in its foreword that "this work accords [Burn] the recognition he deserves, painstakingly assembling and analysing all available games and biographical material about him."
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Amos Burn
Amos Burn (31 December 1848 – 25 November 1925) was an English chess player, one of the world's leading players at the end of the 19th century, and a chess writer.
Burn was born on New Year's Eve, 1848, in Hull. As a teenager he moved to Liverpool, becoming apprenticed to a firm of shipowners and merchants. He learned chess only at the relatively late age of 16. He later took chess lessons from future World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz in London, and, like his teacher, became known for his superior defensive ability. Aron Nimzowitsch, in his book The Praxis of My System, named Burn one of the world's six greatest defensive players.
Although never a professional chess player, Burn had a long career of playing tournaments and writing.
In 1913, Leopold Hoffer, the editor for over 30 years of the chess column in The Field, the leading chess column in Great Britain, died. The proprietors of The Field took seven weeks to select a successor, finally settling on Burn. He moved to London and wrote the column until his death in 1925 from a stroke.
Burn's first tournament, in 1867–68, was a handicap tournament at the Liverpool Chess Club. Placed in the second level, where he received pawn-and-move odds from the four top-seeded players and gave odds of up to a knight to the other players, Burn won easily, scoring 24 out of 25 possible points. His first major tournament was the Third Challenge Cup of the British Chess Association (London 1870), where he surprised the pundits by tying for first with John Wisker, ahead of Joseph Henry Blackburne and others, but lost the playoff to Wisker. His last was Breslau 1912, where he finished 12th of 18 players, scoring 7.5 out of 17 possible points.
Burn's greatest tournament results were equal first at London 1887 with Isidor Gunsberg (ahead of Blackburne and Johannes Zukertort), first at Amsterdam 1889 (ahead of a young Emanuel Lasker), second at Breslau 1889 (behind Siegbert Tarrasch), and first at Cologne 1898 (ahead of Rudolf Charousek, Mikhail Chigorin, Carl Schlechter, David Janowski, and Wilhelm Steinitz). He also played at Hastings 1895, the strongest tournament held up to that point, finishing in joint twelfth place with 9½ points out of 21.
Burn is the eponym of the Burn Variation of the French Defence (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 dxe4). The line had been played before, including by Albert Clerc against Adolf Anderssen at Paris 1878. Burn's first known game with the variation was against Charles Locock at Bradford 1888. However, Burn "was the first to adopt it regularly and with good results", scoring nine wins, one draw, and five losses with it.
In 2004, the Swiss IM Richard Forster published the 972-page Amos Burn: A Chess Biography. Viktor Korchnoi observed in its foreword that "this work accords [Burn] the recognition he deserves, painstakingly assembling and analysing all available games and biographical material about him."