Isidor Arthur Gunsberg (November 2, 1854, in Budapest, Hungary – May 2, 1930, in London) began his career as the player operating the remote-controlled chess automaton Mephisto, but later became a chess professional.
He moved to Great Britain in 1876, later becoming a naturalized British citizen on May 12, 1908.
In the late 1880s and early 1890s Gunsberg was one of the top players in the world. He was the winner at the 4th German Chess Congress in Hamburg in May 1885. In match play, he defeated Joseph Henry Blackburne in 1887 and Henry Bird in 1889. In 1890 he drew a match with Mikhail Chigorin, a former and future challenger for the world chess championship. Later that year, Gunsberg himself challenged Wilhelm Steinitz for the world title. The match took place in New York City and Gunsberg lost with four wins, six losses, and nine draws.
In 1916 he sued the Evening News for libel when they said that his chess column contained "blunders". He won the suit after the British High Court accepted a submission that in chess matters, eight oversights did not make a "blunder".
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Arpad Elo calculates that Gunsberg's best 5-year average Elo rating was 2560.[1] According to another assessment system, Chessmetrics, at his peak in July 1889 Gunsberg's play was equivalent to a rating of 2744, and he was ranked number 2 in the world, behind only Steinitz.[2][3] He was ranked number 1 in the world, albeit with a slightly lower rating, on the February 1889 rating list.[4] His best single performance was his 1887 match against Joseph Henry Blackburne, where he scored 8 of 13 possible points (62%) against a 2744-rated opponent, for a performance rating of 2784.[5]