Ostend 1905

◇A marathon on the North Sea coast

The tournament was played at the fashionable seaside resort of Ostend, but was driven by the Brussels chess club and by Eugène Pécher in particular, with the veteran master Isidor Gunsberg as director. Sixteen players had been selected — the fourteen who played plus Jacques Mieses and Curt von Bardeleben, who did not appear. The fourteen contested a full double round-robin: everyone met everyone else twice, over 26 rounds and 182 games.

The prizes were substantial — 5,000 francs and a gold medal to the winner, on a graded scale down the table — with a string of brilliancy prizes on top, including one offered by the American patron Isaac Rice. The field was a who's who of the era: David Janowski, Siegbert Tarrasch, Carl Schlechter, Frank Marshall, Richard Teichmann, the ageing Mikhail Chigorin and Joseph Henry Blackburne, and Maróczy himself.

◇Maróczy pulls clear

Maróczy set the pace and never let it slip, finishing on 19½ points from 26 games — a point and a half ahead of the chasing pack. Janowski and Tarrasch shared second place on 18, and Carl Schlechter turned in one of the tournament's quiet marvels, staying unbeaten for twenty-two rounds before back-to-back defeats in rounds 23 and 24 dropped him to fourth on 15½.

For Maróczy the victory was, in the judgement of later historians, perhaps the most important of his career. It confirmed the form that had already brought him Monte Carlo titles in 1902 and 1904, and pushed him to the front of the queue of would-be challengers to World Champion Emanuel Lasker.

◇The peak of a career

Ostend 1905 was the high point of Géza Maróczy's playing career. Later the same year he shared first at Barmen, and negotiations began for a world championship match with Lasker. That match was never played. The plans fell through and Maróczy soon stepped back from top-level play, so his big win on the Belgian coast remains the clearest evidence of how strong he had become.