The Hastings 1895 chess tournament was a round-robin tournament of chess conducted at the Brassey Institute in Hastings, England from 5 August to 2 September 1895.
Hastings 1895 was arguably the strongest tournament in history at the time it occurred.[1][2] All of the top players of the generation competed. It was one of the first times such a "super-tournament" was conducted.
Harry Nelson Pillsbury, a young American unknown in Europe, was the surprise winner with 16½ out of 21 points – ahead of Mikhail Chigorin (16) and world champion Emanuel Lasker (15½). The top five finishers were invited to play in the Saint Petersburg 1895–96 chess tournament.
Following the success of the event, the Hastings tournament would become an annual feature. The organizers and players produced a Book of the Tournament, in which the participants annotated their own games. Like the Tournament, the Book too became an annual feature and was of very high instructional value.
- ^ Garry Kasparov calls Hastings 1895 "the most important tournament of the nineteenth century". Kasparov, My Great Predecessors, Part I, Everyman Publishers, 2003, p. 126. ISBN 1-85744-330-6.
- ^ Arthur Bisguier and Andrew Soltis call Hastings 1895 the "greatest tournament of the nineteenth century". Bisguier and Soltis, American Chess Masters from Morphy to Fischer, Macmillan, 1974, p. 53. ISBN 0-02-511050-0.