Henry Charlick hones his chess moves in Adelaide from 1860s to take first Australian champion title in 1887
Australian champion in 1887, Henry Charlick's attacking style of chess, honed in Adelaide, included a gambit that carried his name. His style was shown in the 1894 match, H.W. Apperly v H. Charlick (shown at left).
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Henry Charlick, whose chess skills were nurtured in Adelaide in the 1860s, became the first chess of Australia in 1887.
Charlick was born in 1845 on Tottenham Court Road, London, to Richard and Janet Charlick, who emigrated to South Australia on the Calphurnia, arriving in 1849. He learned the chess moves at 15 at the Adelaide Mechanics' Institute and read every chess book he could find and played against every possible opponent. With a singularly retentive memory, he was soon winning every game. Before 18 and playing blindfolded, he had simultaneously beaten two strong players. He was influential in the first of the first inter-colonial competition, between Victoria and South Australia in 1864 or 1865.
Charlick was a leading Australian chess master in the 1880s. In a demonstration at Adelaide Town Hall by J.H. Blackburne in 1885 against 20-plus local players, Charlick, who had two games against the English champion, won one in five moves, and drew the other: Blackburne's only reverses.
Charlick won the second Australian chess championship (the first to award the Australian champion title) at Adelaide in 1887 with 7½ points out of nine games, ahead of reigning champion Frederick Esling (7 points) and George Gossip (6½). Charlick scored 6/8 in the third championship at Melbourne in 1888, tying for first with William Crane junior, ahead of William Tullidge (5½) but narrowly losing the playoff to Crane (1 win, 2 losses, 1 draw).
Charlick's style of chess play was compared with Paul Morphy’s as distinct from Wilhelm Steinitz. In the early 1890s, Charlick introduced the dubious chess opening 1.d4 e5?! 2.dxe5 d6, sometimes called the Charlick Gambit.. Charlick's idea was to meet 2.dxe5 with the gambit 2...d6 “with the object of preventing White from playing a close game”. Later, 1.d4 e5 was usually called the Englund Gambit, and the 2.dxe5 d6 offshoot that Charlick pioneered was usually called th Blakcburne Hartlaub Gambit. Modern theory considered 2...d6 even more dubious than the main line 2...Nc6 3.Nf3 Qe7, since White obtained a large advantage after 2...d6 3.Nf3 Bg4 4.Bg5! Qd7 5.exd6 Bxd6 6.Nbd2.
Retiring from active competition in 1893, in part to encourage younger players, Charlick was secretary of Adelaide Chess Club (with Adelaide industrialist A.M. Simpson as a longtime president) for many years and edited the chess column in the Adelaide Observer newspaper. Charlick was employed for most of his life at South Australian Register newspaper, first as a reporter then in the commercial department.
