Schumann, Fritz · Public domain

Steinitz became the first officially recognized World Chess Champion in 1886, but his more lasting contribution was theoretical: in 1873 he abandoned the reckless all-out attacking style that had defined chess since the 1850s for a positional approach built on accumulating small, defensible advantages, a shift some contemporaries mocked as cowardly before it became the foundation of modern play. He went unbeaten in match play for thirty-two years, from 1862 to 1894, and defended his ideas in print with such combativeness that the resulting dispute became known as the "Ink War." He lost his title to Emanuel Lasker in 1894.