Craig Pritchett

Modern Chess: From Steinitz to the 21st Century Craig Pritchett New edition

Building on a richly dynamic, mainly direct kingside attacking, so-called 'romantic' past, Wilhelm
Steinitz (1836-1900), was not just the first great player to assert the existence of an actually emerging
'modern school', but also in the vanguard of its robust, late-19th century development. Embracing a
new spirit of rigorous scientific enquiry, Steinitz established a much firmer positional basis for chess,
a pivotal change.
Greatly inspired by his two most brilliant predecessors, Adolf Anderssen (1818-1879) and Paul
Morphy (1837-1884), who were both undeniably on much the same wave-length, Steinitz largely set
the post-romantic, early modern template to which we all still essentially defer nowadays. To Steinitz,
strategy and tactics were simply two sides of the same complex chess coin.
Unusually innovative, analytically concrete and hard-working, Steinitz reconciled profound new
insights into the game's positional-structural character with a matchless capacity to take boldly
imaginative leaps, minimise serious error and simply battle. Good judgement, planning and
manoeuvring skills were henceforth to remain as essential to the complete player's armoury as
inspired combinative flight.
Consider the following game, one of 75 main annotated games discussed (at greater length) in my
book; some old classics, others less known, each of which I hope readers will approach with freshly
critical eyes, open to new inspiration and insight. I have no particular favourite but I will admit to
having long been in awe of this game, in which Steinitz achieves one of the greatest ever chess
historical anticipations.