Emanuel (Emmanuel) Stepanovich Schiffers (russian: Эммануил Степанович Шифферс; – ) was a Russian

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

player and chess writer. For many years he was the second leading Russian player after

Mikhail Chigorin Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin (also ''Tchigorin''; russian: Михаи́л Ива́нович Чиго́рин; – ) was a Russian chess player. He played two World Championship matches against Wilhelm Steinitz, losing both times. The last great ...

. Schiffers parents emigrated from Germany. He was born in

Saint Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and also died there. Schiffers held the title of Russian champion for 10 years before finally being defeated by his student, Mikhail Chigorin, in 1880. At their first meeting in 1873, Schiffers was able to offer Chigorin (also from St. Petersburg) knight

odds Odds provide a measure of the likelihood of a particular outcome. They are calculated as the ratio of the number of events that produce that outcome to the number that do not. Odds are commonly used in gambling and statistics. Odds also have ...

. In 1878 they played on even terms, Schiffers losing the first of two matches 7–3, but winning the second 7½–6½, thus establishing himself as the second strongest player in Russia after Chigorin himself. They later played two more matches with Chigorin winning both. At

Rostov on Don Rostov-on-Don ( rus, Ростов-на-Дону, r=Rostov-na-Donu, p=rɐˈstof nə dɐˈnu) is a port city and the administrative centre of Rostov Oblast and the Southern Federal District of Russia. It lies in the southeastern part of the East ...

in 1896, he played a match against former

world chess champion The World Chess Championship is played to determine the world champion in chess. The current world champion is Magnus Carlsen of Norway, who has held the title since 2013. The first event recognized as a world championship was the 1886 match ...

Wilhelm Steinitz William Steinitz (born Wilhelm Steinitz; May 14, 1836 – August 12, 1900) was an Austrian and, later, American chess player. From 1886 to 1894, he was the first official World Chess Champion. He was also a highly influential writer and che ...

, losing 6½–4½. Schiffers played eight major foreign tournaments from

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

1887 to

Cologne Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

1898. His best tournament result was at Hastings 1895 where he finished sixth with 12/21 (

Harry Pillsbury Harry Nelson Pillsbury (December 5, 1872 – June 17, 1906) was an American chess player. At the age of 22, he won one of the strongest tournaments of the time (winning the Hastings 1895 chess tournament), but his illness and early death prevent ...

won). In 1899 and 1900/01, he took second places, behind Chigorin, in All Russian Masters Tournament (1st and 2nd RUS-ch). Schiffers was known as "Russia's Chess Teacher". In 1889, he gave the first public lectures on

chess theory The game of chess is commonly divided into three phases: the chess opening, opening, Chess middlegame, middlegame, and Chess endgame, endgame. There is a large body of theory regarding how the game should be played in each of these phases, espec ...

in Russia, at the St. Petersburg Chess Association and in other cities. He wrote the chess textbook ''Samouchitel shakhmatnoi igry'' (''Chess Self Taught'', published 1906). In November 1899 it was reported that he became insane and was taken to an asylum.

Notable game

Schiffers–Harmonist, Frankfurt 1887, has been anthologized in many game collections and was dubbed "Schiffers' Immortal Game" by

Irving Chernev Irving Chernev (January 29, 1900 – September 29, 1981) was a chess player and prolific Russian-American chess author. He was born in Pryluky in the Russian Empire (now in Ukraine) and emigrated to the United States in 1905. Chernev was a nati ...

.''

Chess Review ''Chess Review'' was a U.S. chess magazine published from January 1933 to October 1969 (Volume 37 Number 10). Until April 1941 it was called ''The Chess Review''. Published in New York, it began on a schedule of at least ten issues a year but lat ...

'', January 1955, p 10 It features a spectacular rook

sacrifice Sacrifice is the offering of material possessions or the lives of animals or humans to a deity as an act of propitiation or worship. Evidence of ritual animal sacrifice has been seen at least since ancient Hebrews and Greeks, and possibly exi ...

followed by a long winning

combination In mathematics, a combination is a selection of items from a set that has distinct members, such that the order of selection does not matter (unlike permutations). For example, given three fruits, say an apple, an orange and a pear, there are th ...

. :1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Bd2 Bxd2+ 8.Nbxd2 d5 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Qb3 Nce7 11.0-0 0-0 12.Rfe1 c6 13.a4 Qc7 14.Rac1 Nf4? 15.Ng5 Neg6 (''diagram'') 16.Re8 Rxe8 17.Bxf7+ Kh8 18.Bxe8 Ne2+ 19.Kh1 Nxc1 20.Nf7+ Kg8 21.Nh6+ Kf8 22.Qg8+ Ke7 23.Bxg6 hxg6 24.Qxg7+ Kd8 25.Qf8+ Kd7 26.Ne4 Qd8 27.Qd6+ Ke8 28.Nf6+

References

* * (gives 1906 as year of death, evidently a typo)

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schiffers, Emanuel 1850 births 1904 deaths Chess players from the Russian Empire Russian chess writers Russian people of German descent Sportspeople from Saint Petersburg 19th-century chess players Writers from the Russian Empire