http://xoomer.alice.it/cserica/scac...

I have to say, this choice remark is nearly sig material. Ah, I enjoy surgical removal of context, like organ transplants.

Pity that Pillsbury didn't follow up his Hastings tour de force and win 2nd (or 1st!) at Petersburg 1896, considering he was leading in the first half of the event. Damn syphilis!

Four weeks later, Steinitz's mind went, and he was sent to a psychiatric clinic. He was soon found to be hopelessly mad.">

<5691. Lasker v Steinitz (C.N. 5687)

From Michael Clapham (Ipswich, England):

‘I have a typescript of a book on the second world championship match between Lasker and Steinitz, although no book was ever published on this match. The title page states that the games were taken from Deutsches Wochenschach with annotations by Siegbert Tarrasch. I do not know who compiled the typescript, but there are the occasional “Translator’s Notes” which may provide some clues.’>

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...

Not only is this nonsense, it doesn't even quote the source correctly. The relevant extract from the link is:

After his release from the Morosov Institute in Moscow on March 12, 1897, Steinitz went to great lengths to convince the world that he had never once "gone mad" in Moscow, and that he had in truth been held against his will.

In a perhaps bizarre public letter, Steinitz blamed his incarceration on the angry uncle of a teenage Russian secretary named "Polly" with whom he claimed to have had a notorious romantic affair. Steinitz reports that Polly demanded that he divorce his wife, which he refused to do. Polly then wrote his wife directly "offering to purchase me."

The affair ended badly- very badly for Steinitz, if he's to be believed- since Polly's complaints, conveyed through her uncle, to Moscow authorities led to his unwilling, and unjustified detention in the Morosov clinic.

It should be noticed that the first line of Steinitz's account of this tale is

"It sounds like a fairy tale..."

It would not be till after his return to New York after the London 1899 tournament that Steinitz actually "went mad."

On February 13, 1900 Steinitz was committed to Bellevue Hospital and transferred 4 days later to the Ward's Island State Mental Asylum. Due to strenuous efforts on the part of his friends, the New York newspapers, and the Manhattan Chess Club to raise sufficient funds, he was moved to much more amenable quarters at the private River Crest Sanitarium in Astoria, New York.

On April 7, 1900, he was released to the care of his family.

On April 27 he was recommitted to Bellevue Hospital, where he died on August 12.

On the afternoon of the day of his death, one of the worst electrical storms in New York history devastated Manhattan, killing several people by fire and flood and wounding hundreds more.

A befitting end, perhaps, to the "King Lear" of chess history.

I found the preceding information in the following source:

<"William Steinitz, Chess Champion. A biography of the Bohemian Caesar"

by Kurt Landsberger

Part One: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-TY...

Part Two: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1-d...

Part Three: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEJ3...

Part Four: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIBK...

Part Five: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTor...

This is a bad joke! I provided a photo of the 1908 title match but you continue to use the strange non-match photo on that page.

I also pointed out that the photo of the 1937 match that you have posted is actually of the 1935 match but nothing has been done about that either.

£200 = approximately £21,700 in 2015.

<Lasker v. Steinitz.>

The match between Lasker and Steinitz for the championship of the world is fixed to come off the Moscow Club on 1st to 12th October.

The winner receives £200 and the loser £100, these sums, together with cost of hotel and travelling expenses, being provided by the Club. Besides this, however, there is personal stake on the result the match between the players themselves, or rather their backers, of not less than £50 nor more than £400.

<Steinitz at present is engaged in a "practice” match with Pillsbury> in preparation for the grand event.

I suspect the Dundee Advertiser report is based on this news item from the Brooklyn Daily Eagle:

<Henry Nelson Pillsbury has announced his intention of entering the great International tournament of the world's chess masters at Nuremberg, where he will represent America, and in a peculiar sense, Brooklyn, let it be hoped, as worthily as he did at Hastings. No chess player has ever attached himself so strongly to the affections of Brooklyn chess enthusiasts as has Pillsbury, and his plan, therefore, of a practice match with the veteran Steinitz, prior to his departure for Nuremberg, will secure for it the interest and co-operation of many public spirited citizens. The games must be played during the present month and it is proposed, if possible to have some of them contested at such great social clubs as the Hamilton, the Union League, the Crescent and others of the same standing, as well as at the Brooklyn Chess club.

Such a match should be a splendid fitting for Pillsbury for the work before him at Nuremberg, where he will have to meet not only Tarrasch and Tschigorin and the other great masters, but probably also the world's champion, Lasker.

As the Brooklyn lad's victory will add fame and honor to Brooklyn it is to be hoped that five or six of the games of the match may be arranged for here, with the co-operation of the social clubs, details being easily obtainable of Pillsbury by addressing him, care Brooklyn Chess club.