Ludwig Bledow

Dr Ludwig Erdmann Bledow (27 July 1795, Berlin – 6 August 1846, Berlin) was a German chess master and chess organizer (co-founder of the Berlin Pleiades). In 1846 he founded the first German chess magazine, Schachzeitung der Berliner Schachgesellschaft, which would later take the name Deutsche Schachzeitung.

Influence on the game Several details of the game's moves and competition rules had not yet been universally agreed in Bledow's time, and some were still being debated in 1851. Bledow, influenced by Karl Schorn, agreed that a player should be allowed to have multiple queens (as a result of pawn promotions), so that chess rules in Germany fell in line with the French and English way of playing. He also argued strongly in favour of the touch-move rule. News of this may have stimulated Staunton to organize the London 1851 chess tournament, which was in fact the world's first international chess tournament. in 1838-1839 won a slight majority of his games against József Szén, who had narrowly beaten Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais in a match in 1836, +13-12=0, with de La Bourdonnais giving odds of pawn and two moves. won a match against Carl Jaenisch in 1842. won the majority of his games against Henry Thomas Buckle. It is particularly unfortunate that Buckle also did not record his games, as detailed information would have made it possible to compare Bledow with leading English players such as Howard Staunton. Buckle was considered England's second strongest player after Staunton; in fact some of Staunton's enemies argued that Buckle was the better player. in 1845 beat Adolf Anderssen by either 5-0 or 4½-½, depending on which source is used. At this time Anderssen was 27 years old, and perhaps weaker than he was when he won the 1851 and 1862 London International Tournaments. defeated Augustus Mongredien +7 –4 =1, also in 1845. At that time Mongrédien appears to have been a stronger player than he was in the late 1850s and 1860s. In 1845, possibly his best year, Mongrédien drew a match with Carl Mayet, and lost to Staunton by –2=3. Later he failed to win a game in matches against Paul Morphy (1859), Daniel Harrwitz (1860), and Wilhelm Steinitz (1863), and finished 11th out of 14 players in the 1862 London International Tournament (he was not invited to play in the 1851 tournament, possibly because he was on the wrong side in a dispute between some of the London clubs). This information is insufficient to justify proclaiming Bledow as the strongest player of the mid-1840s, but he would deserve serious consideration as a contender.

An 1860 article in the Atlantic categorizes Bledow as a "closed" player (like François-André Danican Philidor, Staunton, Harrwitz, Slous, Bernhard Horwitz and Szén) rather than a "heroic" player (such as Labourdonnais, Morphy, Anderssen, Carl Mayet, Max Lange, von der Lasa, Serafino Dubois, Saint Amant, Mongredien, Johann Löwenthal and several others). Bledow's surviving games support this to some extent - for example he prefers the Giuoco Piano to the Kings Gambit, and plays the Dutch Defense against 1.d4.

Notable games Dr. Ludwig Bledow vs Paul Rudolf von Bilguer (1838) Dr. Ludwig Bledow vs Baron Tassilo Heydebrand und der Lasa (1838)