Preston Ware Jr. was a U.S. chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 player. He is best known today for playing unorthodox chess opening

Chess opening

A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

s.

Ware was born in Wrentham, Massachusetts

Wrentham, Massachusetts

Wrentham is a town in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 10,955 at the 2010 census.- History :Wrentham was first settled by the English in 1660 and officially incorporated in 1673. It was burned down during King Philip's War 1675-1676. For a short time, it was the...

, and died in Boston, Massachusetts.

Boston Mardarins

Ware was an influential member of the "Mandarins of the Yellow Button" in Boston. The "Yellow Button" was a pin worn in the hats of Chinese imperial officials to indicate high rank in the civil service. The Boston Mandarins were a group of chess players in the late 19th century, including John Finan Barry, L. Dore, C. F. Burille, F. H. Harlow, Dr. Edward Mowry Harris, C. F. Howard, Major Otho Ernst Michaelis, General William Cushing Paine, Dr. H. Richardson, C. W. Snow, Henry Nathan Stone, Franklin Knowles Young, and Preston Ware. The group was the foundation of what would become the modern Deschapelles Chess Club in Boston.

Chess career

Ware was an avid tournament player and played in the Second International Chess Tournament

Vienna 1882 chess tournament

The second international Vienna 1882 chess tournament was one of the longest and strongest chess tournaments ever played. According to the unofficial Chessmetrics ratings, the tournament was the strongest tournament in history, on the basis that nine of the ten top players in the world...

, Vienna 1882, the finest chess tournament of its time. He finished in sixteenth place of eighteen scoring a total of 11 points out of 34, but he did beat Max Weiss

Max Weiss

Miksa Weisz was an Austrian chess player born in the Kingdom of Hungary.Weiss was born in Sereď. Moving to Vienna, he studied mathematics and physics at the university, and later taught those subjects....

 and the winner of the tournament, Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...

 in a game lasting 113 moves. At the time, Steinitz had not lost or drawn a game for nine years prior to this tournament and was the unofficial World Champion. Ware also competed in the first, second, fourth and fifth American Chess Congresses.

Legacy

Ware's other claim to fame was his eccentric opening play. He used the Ware Opening

Ware Opening

The Ware Opening or Meadow Hay Opening, is an uncommon chess opening in which White opens withIt is named after U.S. chess player Preston Ware, who often played uncommon openings...

(then known as the Meadow Hay Opening), the Corn Stalk Defence (sometimes known as the Ware Defence), and the Stonewall Attack

Stonewall Attack

The Stonewall Attack is a chess opening; more specifically it is a variation of the Queen's Pawn Game. It is characterized by White playing 1.d4, 2.e3, 3.f4 and 4.c3, usually playing 5.Bd3 as well, even though the moves are not always played in that order . The Stonewall is a system White sets up,...

.
Around 1888 he reintroduced the Stone-Ware Defence to the Evans Gambit

Evans Gambit

The Evans Gambit is a chess opening characterised by the moves:The gambit is named after the Welsh sea Captain William Davies Evans, the first player known to have employed it. The first game with the opening is considered to be Evans - McDonnell, London 1827, although in that game a slightly...

, named also for Henry Nathan Stone (1823–1909). (It had originally been played by McDonnell

Alexander McDonnell

Alexander McDonnell was an Irish chess master, who contested a series of six matches with the world’s leading player Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais in the summer of 1834.- Early life :...

 against La Bourdonais

Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais

Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais was a French naval officer and administrator, in the service of the French East India Company.-Biography:...

 in 1843.)

External links

• Preston Ware's games at ChessGames.com
  Chessgames.com
  ChessGames.com is a large chess community on the Internet, with over 156,000 members. The site maintains a large database of historical chess games where every game has a distinct message board for comments and analysis. Basic membership is free and the site is open to players at all levels of...
  
  
• http://www.chesscafe.com/text/spinrad08.pdf (Includes a biography of Ware).