Howard Staunton in Birmingham, 1852

Gerard Killoran · Post by **Gerard Killoran** » Wed Apr 27, 2022 4:10 pm

From the Birmingham Journal - Saturday 05 June 1852 p.6

CHESS.- MR. STAUNTON IN BIRMINGHAM.

The members of the Edgbaston and Birmingham Chess Clubs have been recently gratified by a visit from the renowned player, Howard Staunton, Esq., the most profound living master of the science of chess. A meeting of the members of both clubs was held at the Hen and Chickens Hotel, New Street, on Thursday evening, the 20th ult., to receive their distinguished visitor, when about forty gentlemen were present. In the course of the evening the following games were played by Mr. Staunton against three gentlemen selected from the clubs in consultation, the victory in each of which, it will be seen, were achieved by Mr. Staunton :-

John Saunders · Post by **John Saunders** » Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:35 am

Good find. These games don't appear amongst the ChessBase, chessgames.com or StarBase 4.56 collections, so would appear to be newly digitised. I would have expected someone to have systematically combed through old newspapers for old Staunton games by now but apparently not. I'm not planning to do so myself since BritBase doesn't go back that far. Chessgames.com is the best place to curate Staunton games. They already have 363 of them.

On a slightly more facetious note: it seems there are three Howard Stauntons in chess. As well as the original there is someone who tweets amusingly under his name. I was even accused of being the Twitter Howard Staunton myself but I am not, though I found the accusation quite flattering.

The third Howard Staunton, or rather Howard B G Staunton, born 1954, played in the 1972 British Under-18 Championship and represented Essex in county matches. He still appeared in the ECF grading list until 2007. Perhaps he finally got sick of the inevitable attempts at humour every time he sat down at the board. His loss to Paul Littlewood in the 1972 event appears on BritBase. The StarBase 4.56 database features a win by him against the forum's most prolific poster...

Had White found 21.Qe1 (followed by 22.Bf2) it might have been a different story.

I suppose it is just possible that Howard Staunton 2 and Howard Staunton 3 might be one and the same. However, there are enough Staunton mysteries to be going on with and we don't need another so I apologise for even mentioning it.

Roger de Coverly · Post by **Roger de Coverly** » Thu Apr 28, 2022 12:52 pm

John Saunders wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:35 am
The StarBase 4.56 database features a win by him against the forum's most prolific poster...

1. e4 c6 2. d3 d5

Whilst I could make the Kings Indian Attack work against the French and Sicilian, I had a score of 1.5/5 with it against the Caro. The game with Staunton was one of several disasters. Later I used the Short system ( 1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5) after its official invention in 1990. One of the more notorious games was De Loughry - Bronstein from the 1958 Olympiad where after the gane the Irish player is alleged to have asked Bronstein what the opening was called. The line he used later reappeared in 1991 played by Nunn and Gelfand amongst others.

John Saunders · Post by **John Saunders** » Thu Apr 28, 2022 2:44 pm

Having been entirely responsible for going off-topic I feel it is now incumbent on me to return to the original theme...

Re researching Staunton: for anyone wanting to become a seeker after Staunton scores, or indeed any chess game scores, probably the easiest and best way to get started is to subscribe to The British Newspaper Archive...

https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/

... good value at £6 a month. I'm sure most of this forum's chess historians already subscribe. I think it is possible to try it without being logged in - go to the above URL and it allows you to type search parameters. If you are looking specifically for game scores, a good trick is to add "Kt" to your search parameters. Given that Kt for knight appears on the vast majority of game scores from the 1850s to relatively recently, this helps steer the search engine in the right direction. I just tried it with "Staunton Kt" and applied a filter to narrow it down to the mid-Victorian period. A number of articles with game scores popped up including the article from which Gerard extracted the two 1852 games given above. I haven't checked to see if the other games I found have yet been digitised - I'll leave the fun of discovery to someone else.

Matt Mackenzie · Post by **Matt Mackenzie** » Thu Apr 28, 2022 3:05 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 28, 2022 12:52 pm

John Saunders wrote: ↑
Thu Apr 28, 2022 11:35 am
The StarBase 4.56 database features a win by him against the forum's most prolific poster...

1. e4 c6 2. d3 d5
Whilst I could make the Kings Indian Attack work against the French and Sicilian, I had a score of 1.5/5 with it against the Caro

ISTR that Leonid Stein was a fan of this line against the Caro Kann, and got quite a few quick wins with it.

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Howard Staunton in Birmingham, 1852

Howard Staunton in Birmingham, 1852

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