Amos Burn is largely forgotten nowadays (just one page of kibitzing at the time of my writing this!), and it's a pity that he seems best remembered for being the loser of "the pipe game" against Marshall, when he didn't have a chance to finish lighting his pipe (or so the story goes).

<Gypsy: I decided to find out for myself where or, better, how Burn got the points for his high ratings. His games from the Burn variation of French are quite illustrative. You probably will not like some of them, unless you you also find pleasure in games of Michael Adams; or, say, in games of Karpov or of Petrosian himself. Burn was a great 'spider'.

Relative the standards of his era, Burn was a superb defender and a superb endgame player. Like Petrosian, he was also a good tactician, and he did attack when the position warranted it. But most of Burn tactics served subtle defensive and endgame objectives. He was a fine master of combining the defense with a counterattack. And I found him surprisingly Karpovian in the way he used dominance in the ways Karpov defines and uses the concept.

In a typical Burn game, he survives opening with a worse but playable position. Then he defends throughout the middlegame and strikes back with one or two sorties. His pieces return just in time to cover the danger brewing around his king. This brings on a tour-de-force transition into an endgame -- and the transition itself is the finest aspect of Burn's play. Burn's play in the endgame is of a very high standard, but so often there is simply nothing much left to do, but give oponent enough time to examine the position and realise that it can be safely resigned. And if there is something left to do, Burn is usually up to the task.

No need to play this endgame:
Schlechter vs Burn, 1897

A nice queen ending:
Pillsbury vs Burn, 1898

A counterattack in the more classical style:
G Marco vs Burn, 1895>

If I remember correctly, only a few years ago there was a new book on A.Burn published. A Swiss author (an IM), in cooperation with Korchnoi, I think. A 1,000 pages volume!

Born: 1848-Dec

Died: 1925-Nov

Best World Rank: #2 (on the September 1876 rating list)

Highest Rating: 2728 on the October 1900 rating list, #6 in world, age 51y10m

Photographs:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...

http://www.endgame.nl/Burn.jpg

addendum to the link <cu8sfan> mentioned earlier:

Excerpt from Chapter 4 of <Amos Burn – A Chess Biography>

- including an annotated game against Arthur Skipworth (1873)

http://www.chesshistory.com/burn/bu...

(by Richard Forster)

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