with style – so much, in fact, that it was considered unsportsmanly to decline a gambit (the sacrifice of a pawn or piece to obtain an attack). It is no coincidence that the most popular openings played by the Romantics were King's Gambit Accepted and the Evans Gambit Accepted. Some of the major players of the Romantic era were Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy and Henry Blackburne. A famous game of this time is the Immortal Game between Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky, which embodies the Romantic style. The style was effectively ended on the highest level by Wilhelm Steinitz, who, with his more positional approach, defeated many of his contemporaries and ushered in the modern age of chess. Classical school Around 1860, Louis Paulsen realized that many attacks on the king succeeded because of poor defense. Wilhelm Steinitz agreed with that and rejected the prevailing notion that attack was more honorable than defense. Steinitz, who had engaged in the mid-century Romantic style of play in his youth, began to change his focus to building a strong pawn structure and seeing small advantages to capitalize on rather than sweeping assaults against the enemy king. Positional play was not a new idea and there are many examples of such games from the Romantic era, however it did not become popular or widely accepted until Steinitz won the 1873 Vienna Tournament with his ideas of defense-based chess. He is considered the first true chess world champion, and remained so for 21 years despite not playing actively for almost 15 of them. In addition, he became the first chess master to make a living exclusively from professional chess, while most players up to this time played the game merely as a hobby or way to earn extra money while having other professions as their main occupation. Steinitz's ideas were controversial and widely criticized—some older players such as Adolf Anderssen never fully accepted them. He wrote numerous articles in chess publications defending his ideas, but by the 1890s they were embraced by a new generation of young players such as Siegbert Tarrasch and Emanuel Lasker. These players also took Steinitz's ideas and improved and made them more rational and accessible. In 1894, the torch was effectively passed to Steinitz's pupils when he was defeated by Lasker for the world championship. As a result of the classical school, many of the chess openings which had been hallmarks