Amos Burn 1848-1925
Amos Burn was a stalwart of the Lancashire team during the late 1800’s, playing for Lancashire in many matches against arch rivals Yorkshire. Rather ironic, as Burn was himself a Yorkshireman, having been born in Hull, East Riding in 1848.
More details about Burn can be found at his Wikipedia page Amos Burn Wikipedia
1898 was also Burn’s best year in terms of international tournament success, winning the Cologne (DSB-11.Kongress) tournament ahead of notable strong players such as Chigorin, Schlechter, Janowski and Steinitz a full point ahead of the field with a score of 11.5 out of 15.
We could not find a photo from the Cologne tournament, the best we have is from the Vienna tournament of that same year. Burn is on the far left standing up in the photo of players from this tournament. The Vienna tournament took place during June and July of that year, and Burn came 7th well behind the leaders. After Vienna, quite a few of those same players played in the Cologne tournament that took place between July 31st and August 19th.
Considering how far behind the leaders he was at Vienna, his achievement at Cologne was even more remarkable.
1898 – Lancashire v Yorkshire
The first match between the two arch rivals since the foundation the Lancashire Chess Association in November 1897, this was quickly followed by the foundation of the Yorkshire Chess Association. The 1898 match ended up in Lancashire’s favour, the score 20.5 to 15.5.
Board One, the first President of Lancashire Chess Association, was Amos Burn from the Liverpool Chess Club.
The game a regular QGD Semi-Tarrasch with 10. Bf4, an approach still used today, and notable that Vishy Anand played the same line in 2001.