Lionel Kieseritzky

Lionel Kieseritzky
Lionel Kieseritzky
Full name	Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky
Country	Russian Empire France
Born	(1806-01-01)1 January 1806 Tartu, Livonia, Russian Empire
Died	18 May 1853(1853-05-18) (aged 47) Paris, France
Title	Master

Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky (1 January 1806 [O.S. 20 December 1805] in Tartu – 18 May [O.S. 6 May] 1853 in Paris) was a Baltic German chess master, famous primarily for a game he lost against Adolf Anderssen, which because of its brilliance was named "The Immortal Game".

Kieseritzky was born in Dorpat (now Tartu), Livonia, Russian Empire into a Baltic German family. From 1825 to 1829 he studied at the University of Dorpat, and then worked as a mathematics teacher, like Anderssen. From 1838 to 1839, he played a correspondence match against Carl Jaenisch – unfinished, because Kieseritzky had to leave for Paris. In Paris he became a chess professional, giving lessons or playing games for five francs an hour, and editing a chess magazine.

Kieseritzky became one of the four leading French masters of the time, alongside Louis de la Bourdonnais, Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant, and Boncourt, and for the few years before his death was among the top two players in the world along with Howard Staunton. His knowledge of the game was significant and he made contributions to chess theory of his own, but his career was somewhat blighted by misfortune and a passion for the unsound. In 1842 he tied a match with Ignazio Calvi (+7 −7 =1). In 1846 he won matches against the German masters Bernhard Horwitz (+7 −4 =1) and Daniel Harrwitz (+11 −5 =2). He enjoyed a number of other magnificent victories across his career, but his nerve was lacking when it came to tournament play.