Wilhelm Steinitz defeated Henry Bird 9½–7½ in a seventeen-game London match. The adopted record gives Steinitz seven wins, Bird five, and five draws.
A match with competing reports
The contest was played from September into November 1866. Edo documents several conflicting retrospective totals, but adopts +7 −5 =5 and treats the seventeenth game — unfinished when Bird left England — as a Steinitz win on contemporary evidence.
That result gives Steinitz 9½ points and Bird 7½. The five draws account for the difference between the decisive-game record and the points score.
Seventeen games
The archive holds exactly seventeen distinct standard records. Seven Steinitz wins, five Bird wins, and five draws reproduce Edo’s adopted result; the last preserves the published move record and result even though play stopped before a conventional finish.
The completeness check matters here because a thirteen- or sixteen-game subset would reinforce one of the incomplete historical score reports.
Cross table
| Player | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steinitz | 1 | ½ | 1 | 0 | ½ | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | ½ | 1 | ½ | ½ | 0 | 1 | 9½ |
| Bird | 0 | ½ | 0 | 1 | ½ | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | ½ | 0 | ½ | ½ | 1 | 0 | 7½ |
1 win · ½ draw · 0 loss — click a game number to replay it.