Harry Nelson Pillsbury was one of the world’s strongest players around the period 1895-1904, and is remembered as the hero of Hastings 1895, the strongest tournament of the 19th century. Below, I explore his life and games.
Photo: Cleveland Public Library, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Table of contents:
Biography
Early life
Harry Nelson Pillsbury was born in 1872 in Boston in the United States of America. He learned to play chess around the age of 15 following the death of his mother, as his family encouraged him to use the game as a distraction from the loss. After finishing school, Pillsbury had the good fortune of working with the problem composer Jonathan Hall as well as the experienced player Henry Nathan Stone as coaches.
Pillsbury’s early progress shone through when he played against the World Champion Steinitz in 1892. Receiving odds of a pawn and the move, Pillsbury defeated his famous opponent in a three-game match by the score of 2-1. Later that year, he defeated Stenitz again as one of the players in a 20 game simul given by the World Champion. Around this time, Pillsbury began to give impressive exhibitions where he would play multiple blindfold games at once.
Match play
1893 saw Pillsbury win a short three-game match against the German player Carl Walbrodt. This was the same year in which Walbrodt shared 1st place at the German Championship with von Bardeleben. Pillsbury then won a close match against John Finan Barry (+5 -4 =1), who would go on to challenge Showalter for the title of US Champion three years later.
New York
This match win earned Pillsbury an invitation to a tournament in New York as a representative of Boston. However, the tournament fell through. In its place came an “impromptu” tournament which saw the participation of several European masters, like Lasker and Taubenhaus. There Pillsbury achieved a respectable 7/13 and defeated the US Champion Showalter.
In December that year, he took clear first at another New York tournament ahead of several American masters, including Showalter.
1894
1894 was an interesting year for Pillsbury. He finished 2nd behind Showalter at a small tournament in Buffalo and worked as a journalist to annotate the games of the Steinitz-Lasker World Championship Match. At a masters’ tournament in New York, Pillsbury finished in shared 5th place. This was enough to convince the Brooklyn Chess Club to sponsor his trip to the strongest tournament of the 19th century: Hastings 1895.
Hastings 1895
Hastings 1895 was the strongest tournament to have ever taken place at the time. The current and former World Champions Lasker and Steinitz were there, as well as leading masters like Tarrasch, Chigorin, Teichmann, Schlechter, Gunsberg, and Blackburne, amongst others. In this incredibly strong field, Pillsbury produced a remarkable result. He took clear 1st place with 15 wins, 3 draws, and only 3 losses. It became clear that the chess world had a new star.
Battles with the best
On the strength of this result, Pillsbury was invited to the elite tournament of St Petersburg 1895-6. There he would compete with Lasker, Steinitz, Chigorin and Tarrasch. Tarrasch, however, declined his invitation, and so the event took the form of a four-player round robin where everyone played each other six times. Halfway through the tournament, Pillsbury was leading by a full point. However, he then became ill, and could not manage a win in the remaining nine games. After such a promising start, he finished a disappointing 3rd.
In 1896 Pillsbury shared 3rd place with Tarrasch, behind Lasker and Maroczy, at Nuremberg, despite feeling ill. He followed this up with another impressive performance at Budapest, where he again finished 3rd, behind Charousek and Chigorin.
US Championship
The following year, Pillsbury was part of an interesting event in which he helped prepare the US House of Representatives team for their match against the House of Commons. He also played a match for the US Championship with Showalter, eventually winning a competitive match by the score +10 -8 =3. Interestingly, after the match he did not want to accept the title of US Champion, claiming that his sights were set only on the World Championship title.
Pillsbury won another US Championship match in 1898 against Showalter (+7 -3 =2), this time accepting the title of US Champion. He followed this up with another success, shareing 1st place with Tarrasch at Vienna 1898. This was especially impressive given the strength of the field, which included famous names like Janowski, Steinitz, Schlechter, Chigorin and Burn. However, he would lose the playoff match to Tarrasch 2,5-1,5. The following year, Pillsbury shared 2nd with Maroczy and Janowski, behind only Lasker, at a strong tournament in London.
A new century
Pillsbury’s success continued into the new century, as he took 2nd behind Lasker at Paris 1900, and shared tournament victory with Maroczy and Schlechter at Münich that same year.
Around this time, Pillsbury was also proving himself to be an exceptional blindfold player. He set the world record by playing 20 blindfold games simultaneously at Philadelphia in 1900, but quickly surpassed even this by playing 21 at Hanover 1902, and 22 at Moscow later that year.
His tournament successes were not slowing down either, as Pillsbury took 1st place with an excellent 9/10 at Buffalo 1901. This solidified his reputation as being the leading player from America. He then took 2nd at Monte Carlo 1902, behind only Maroczy, and ahead of Teichmann, Janowski, Steinitz, Tarrasch, Schlechter, Chigorin and others. At Hanover 1902, Pillsbury finished 2nd behind only Janowski. Pillsbury set his new blindfold record of 21 games played simultaneously on one of the rest days.
1903 was also a good year for Pillsbury, as he performed well at Monte Carlo 1903, finishing 3rd behind Tarrasch and Maroczy. At the King’s Gambit tournament held in Vienna that same year, he took 4th place, behind Chigorin, Marshall and Marco.
Fading health
However, illness once more interrupted Pillsbury’s promising chess career. At Cambridge Springs 1904 he was ill during the tournament, finishing in shared 8th place with a minus score. Despite this, he found within himself the strength to defeat the World Champion Lasker.
As his health deteriorated, he was hospitalized in 1905, and would not recover. He died the following year at the age of just 33.
Legacy
Pillsbury is remembered for his instructive and high-quality games which generations of players have learned from. He is also know for his remarkable tournament results, equal lifetime score against Emmanuel Lasker, and his blindfold exhibitions. His name is linked to the famous tournament Hastings 1895. Additionally, the Pillsbury National Correspondence Chess Association, which was an early organization for correspondence chess, was named after the great player.
Game Analysis
Lessons from this game:
- A king which stays in the centre for too long often becomes vulnerable and a target for the opponent.
- An exchange sacrifice which eliminates an enemy bishop can be used to create a weak colour complex on the colour of squares the bishop controlled. In this game, 18…Rxd2! is a good example.
- When attacking the king, it is often worth taking the time to include as many pieces in the attack as possible.
Puzzles
Pillsbury – Tarrasch, Hastings 1895
Pillsbury – Pollock, Hastings 1895
Pillsbury – Chigorin, Nuremberg 1896
Wolf – Pillsbury, Munich 1900
Solutions
Further Reading
To find more about Pillsbury’s life and games, the following are useful sources:
Pillsbury’s chessgames.com page,
his chess.com page,
this chessbase article by André Schulz,
this collection of his tournament and match results,
this chess.com article by batgirl,
this article by Bill Wall,
this chesshistory.com article by Edward Winter,
and this chesshistory.com article by Edward Winter.
If you’d like to receive notifications when new articles are posted, consider subscribing to Chessaglow.