Marmaduke Wyvill (1815 - 1896) was a leading English chess master.

He made it through to the final of the first international chess tournament, held in London in 1851, but lost to Adolf Anderssen, 4.5-2.5.

Wyvill was elected Member of Parliament for Richmond, North Yorkshire in 1847.

<Marmaduke Wyvill> war ein englischer Aristokrat, Politiker und Schachmeister.

Der Stammsitz seiner Familie war Constable Burton Hall in North Yorkshire.

In den Jahren 1847 bis 1868 war er Abgeordner im britischen Parlament. Im Jahr 1851 nahm er in London am ersten internationalen Schachturnier in der Geschichte teil und wurde Zweiter hinter dem preußischen Meister Adolf Anderssen, der fortan als weltbester Schachspieler galt. Der ansonsten mit Lob sparsame Howard Staunton bezeichnete Wyvill daraufhin als einen der besten Spieler Englands.

Wyvill konzentrierte sich anschließend auf seine politische Laufbahn und hörte auf, ernsthaft Schach zu spielen. Es war ihm bis zu seinem Rückzug vom Schach möglich, sich mit den besten Spielern seiner Zeit zu messen, hierunter mit so glanzvollen Namen wie Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais, Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritsky, Henry Thomas Buckle und Daniel Harrwitz.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marmad...

A politically educated talent AND very strong chess master.

I think he said that about Elijah Williams but he would probably have said it about Wyvill too if he had lost against him :-) Staunton meant that only his <physical suffering could explain the result, against a player he could ordinarily defeat at P+2 odds> after Williams allegedly spent hours on some positions.

Williams won a 17-game match against Horwitz, and Staunton commented about the disadvantage Horwitz suffered from when playing <any opponent who seeks to irritate or exhaust him by protracting the games unnecessarily>. According to Horwitz none of the games took more than five hours, and most of them were finished in two.

Spinrad writes in his article on the subject that many sided with Williams in the dispute, and Staunton seems to have been rather slow himself in the 1851 tournament. Anderssen wrote that a game between Staunton and Horwitz took 11½ hours, and Kieseritzky singled out Staunton as playing slow games.

Note that Staunton intended to organize the tournament in order to attract the best players from around the world, and create brilliant games so that it will be talked about for centuries to come, but most importantly, he himself walking out as the winner of the tournament.

According to posting on this site, the term "Wyvill formation" was coined by Kmoch. It does seem to be a misnomer. Here's a very early example. Staunton was playing the City of Bristol by mail. One of the leading Bristol players was Elijah Williams, so maybe that is where he got the idea.