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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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Editor: Dr Tim Harding |
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© Dr Tim Harding
Last modified:
6 November 2026
The international tournament at Hastings in the summer of 1895 was one of the most important chess events of the nineteenth century.
This series of articless has examined discrepancies between sources (particularly the two main tournament books) concerning the scores of 41 different games played in the tournament.
We did not have time to write a long article today, but the linked Microsoft Excel file tabulates and summarises the issues and our conclusions. So please download and study it if you are interested.
Summary and analysis of the research
We found that the official English tournament book, edited by Horace Cheshire in descriptive notation, was right more often than not, although ChessBase (and most other databases) have tended to follow the algebraic notation book edite dby Schallopp, with a few exceptions.
We have adopted the position that in cases where one cannot be sure, the Cheshire version should be accepted. On the other hand, it is clear that some errors have crept in because of transposition between the two forms of notation while other apparent errors arose from Cheshire's flawed method of obtaining annottaions, as explained in one of our introductory articles.
Some of the 41 cases are fairly trivial but others are serious and affect our understanding of the quality of play.
If you look at the last column in the Excel file, you will ee at least 15 cases where ChessBase follows the Schallopp version in cases where the German book is definitely or probably incorrect, but a few cases where Schallopp is right and Cheshire was wrong.
I do think that ChessBase need to take a very close look at all these cases and change their version in future. There are some where it is hard to be sure.
In several cases, the lengths of games are different in the two versions. Where it is just a matter of a repetition or two at the end of a drawn game it is of little importance, but some are larger differences. The case of Schlechter-Pollock in round 1 (23 moves versus 36) is rather strange (because Schlechter himself published a foreshortened version), but in the case of Schlechter against von Bardeleben, the AUstrian master's version (ending with a draw after 30...Re8) is surely to be preferred to the version in the tournament books, and it is corroborate din English primary sources.
in the case of Blackburne-Steinitz, it is clear that many more moves were played than appear in either tournament book, and although many of the missing moves turned up in other sources it seems that the last few moves were never preserved.
Some cases involve move order in the opening but the rest of the game is unaffected. Three of these were in the Four Knights Game. We do not believe that Steinitz ever played the Petroff Defence against masters, but it seems that Tarrasch played 2...Nc6 against Schlechter (in round 11) but 2...Nf6 against Albin, for a particular reason that we explain in our article about round 12.
Blackburne-Albin is a case where both tournament books are wrong, and ChessBase used to have a wrong score also but they have since corrected it following my Blackburne biography.
There were two cases where Cheshire gave an ambiguous move but Schallopp and everyone else has correctly identified which of the two possibilities was correct. There was at least one case (Schlechter-Chigorin in round 21) where a simple misprint in Cheshire is suspected.
If any readers have feedback, please email comments to Tim or post them in the History section of the English Chess Forum, preferably by the 15th of November.
We shall then review everything after our holiday and perhaps revise or expand the conclusion, while preparing a PGN database file for download which we hope will be more reliable than any that is currently available.