each and may draw the match. He has proved a terrible crank and has had several games by forfeit, and one "cancelled". He now has a libel suit against the chess column of the Herald. ... We have just agreed, per the committee, to call the match a draw. Whereby all parties are relieved. Chess historian Edward Winter observes that "Gossip has always been a soft target for mockery". He notes that Hooper and Whyld in the first edition (1984) of The Oxford Companion to Chess "treated him essentially as light relief"; the second edition (1992) treated him more equitably, but like the first omitted any mention of his performance at New York 1889.See Hooper and Whyld 1984, p. 131; Hooper and Whyld 1992, pp. 155–56. Yakov Damsky in The Batsford Book of Chess Records (2005), addressing the question of which player "achieved the greatest negative distinction" on the international level, opines that Gossip "can probably feel safe from competition". Mike Fox and Richard James in their book The Even More Complete Chess Addict (1993) write that, "Of players who've entered chess history, perhaps the strongest claimant for the all-time grandpatzer title is George Hatfeild Dingley Gossip (1841–1907). George had a worse record in major tournaments than anyone in history (last at Breslau 1889, London 1889, Manchester 1890, London 1892, and New York 1893: a total of just four wins, 52 losses and 21 draws)." Like Hooper and Whyld, they overlook his result at New York 1889, a major tournament where he won 11 games and finished above the bottom. In a 2001 article, Whyld himself takes notice of Gossip's result at New York 1889 and suggests that "history has perhaps given him an unfair verdict". By Arpad Elo's calculation, Gossip's strength during his five-year peak was equivalent to an Elo rating of 2310. Another assessment system, Chessmetrics, calculates that Gossip's highest rating was 2470 (number 50 in the world) in April 1889. By comparison, the world's three highest-rated players at that time had Chessmetrics ratings over 2700. Chessmetrics also ranks Gossip number 17 in the world during four one-month periods between February and July 1873, when opportunities for high-level competition were much rarer. Like Diggle, Chessmetrics considers New York 1889 Gossip's best individual performance, concluding that he scored 39% against opponents with an average rating of 2595, giving him a performance rating of 2539 for that tournament. In 1904,