23 JUNE 1888, Page 3

One of the most remarkable of modern chess-players, Mr. Zukertort,

who could play twelve games blindfold and win them all against ordinary players, died suddenly on Wednesday morning, at the Charing Cross Hospital. On Tuesday night he was playing chess at Simpson's, in the Strand, and playing, it is said, very brilliantly, when he was attacked by apoplexy, though he was only forty-six years old. During his five best years, from 1878 to 1883, he was believed by many good judges to be the best chess-player in the world; and beyond all ques- tion he has never been equalled as a blindfold player. The curious thing is that power so wonderful, not only of calculation but of memory and imagination,—for a blindfold player must have an unequalled power of remembering and con- ceiving vividly and simultaneously a number of highly com- plicated situations,—should not oftener assist the mind that possesses it in other fields than that of chess. In point of fact, the very greatest chess-players the world has ever known, have rarely been heard of in any other department of life. Yet one would suppose at least that many of the qualities of imagina- tion and calculation which go to make a great chess-player, would also go to make a great strategist or a great critic of the strategy of others.