Jules Arnous de Rivière

Who was Jules Arnous de Rivière?

Jules Arnous de Rivière was the strongest French chess player from the late 1850s through the late 1870s. He is best known today for playing many games with Paul Morphy when the American champion visited Paris in 1858 and 1863.

Born in Nantes to a French father William Henri Arnous-Rivière and an English mother Marie Tobin, he awarded himself the noble "de". Arnous-Rivière finished 6th of 13 in the 1867 Paris international tournament organized in conjunction with the Exposition Universelle. Although he finished well below the strongest foreign masters, he was ahead of fellow Parisian, Polish-born, Samuel Rosenthal. Arnous-Rivière had success in some minor tournaments in Paris: 3rd in 1880, 2nd= in 1881, 2nd in 1882–3, and 3rd in the Café de la Régence tournament of 1896.

Arnous-Rivière fared poorly in his casual games against Morphy, but did well in more formal match play. He lost to Serafino Dubois in 1855, and Gustav Neumann in 1864, but he drew with Ignatz von Kolisch in 1859, and defeated Thomas Wilson Barnes in London and Paul Journoud in Paris in 1860, and Johann Löwenthal in Paris in 1867. He also lost a close match to Mikhail Chigorin by +4−5=1 in 1883.