Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant

Who was Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant?

Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant was a leading French chess master and an editor of the chess periodical Le Palamède. He is best known for losing a match against Howard Staunton in 1843 that is often considered to have been an unofficial match for the World Chess Championship.

Saint-Amant learned chess from Wilhelm Schlumberger, who later became the operator of The Turk. He played at the Café de la Régence, where he was a student of Alexandre Deschapelles. For many years he played on level terms with Boncourt, a strong player, and received odds of pawn and two moves from Deschapelles and Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais. In 1834–36, he led a Paris team that won both games of a correspondence chess match against the Westminster Club, then England's leading chess club. After La Bourdonnais' death in 1840, he was considered the country's best player. In December 1841 he revived Le Palamède, which ran until 1847.

He played two matches against Staunton in 1843. The first, in London, he won 3½–2½, but he lost a return match in Paris just before Christmas 13–8. This second match is sometimes considered an unofficial world championship match.