Statistical rating systems give Steinitz a rather low ranking among world champions, mainly because he took several long breaks from competitive play.

By the early 1890s, Steinitz's approach was widely accepted, and the next generation of top players acknowledged their debt to him, most notably his successor as world champion, Emanuel Lasker.

Traditional accounts of Steinitz's character depict him as ill-tempered and aggressive, but more recent research shows that he had long and friendly relationships with some players and chess organizations.

[9][10] He immediately challenged the fifth-placed contestant, the strong veteran Italian Master Serafino Dubois, to a match, which Steinitz won (five wins, one draw, three losses).

[23] This "Ink War" escalated sharply in 1881, when Steinitz mercilessly criticized Hoffer's annotations of games in the 1881 Berlin Congress (won by Blackburne ahead of Zukertort).

Despite a shaky start he took equal first place with Szymon Winawer, ahead of James Mason, Zukertort, George Henry Mackenzie, Blackburne, Berthold Englisch, Paulsen and Mikhail Chigorin, and drew the play-off match.

[13] Later in 1883, Steinitz took second place in the extremely strong London 1883 chess tournament behind Zukertort, who made a brilliant start, faded at the end but finished three points ahead.

[28] This did not end the "Ink War": his enemies persuaded some of the American press to publish anti-Steinitz articles,[13][31] and in 1885 Steinitz founded the International Chess Magazine, which he edited until 1895.

He also managed to find supporters in other sections of the American press including Turf, Field and Farm and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, both of which reported Steinitz's offer to forgo all fees, expenses or share in the stake and make the match "a benefit performance, solely for Mr Zukertort's pecuniary profit".

[15][32] After the five games played in New York, Zukertort led by 4–1, but in the end Steinitz won decisively by 12½–7½ (ten wins, five draws, five losses), becoming the first official world champion on March 29.

[9][unreliable source] In 1887 the American Chess Congress started work on drawing up regulations for the future conduct of world championship contests.

[citation needed] The American Chess Congress's final proposal was that the winner of a tournament to be held in New York in 1889 should be regarded as world champion for the time being, but must be prepared to face a challenge from the second or third placed competitor within a month.

[citation needed] German Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch turned down an opportunity in 1892 to challenge Steinitz in a world championship match, because of the demands of his medical practice.

[citation needed] Around this time Steinitz publicly spoke of retiring, but changed his mind when Emanuel Lasker, 32 years younger and comparatively untested at the top level, challenged him.

Lasker had been earlier that year refused a non-title challenge by fellow German, Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch, who was at the time the world's most dominant tournament player.

[58] His chess activities had not yielded any great financial rewards, and he died a pauper in the Manhattan State Hospital (Wards Island) on August 12, 1900, of a heart attack.

[12] In 1873, however, Steinitz's play suddenly changed, giving priority to what is now called the positional elements in chess: pawn structure, space, outposts for knights, the advantage of the two bishops, etc.

Although Steinitz often accepted unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in order to demonstrate the superiority of his theories, he also showed that his methods could provide a platform for crushing attacks.

Although Steinitz's play changed abruptly, he said he had been thinking along such lines for some years: Some of the games which I saw Paulsen play during the London Congress of 1862 gave a still stronger start to the modification of my own opinions, which has since developed, and I began to recognize that Chess genius is not confined to the more or less deep and brilliant finishing strokes after the original balance of power and position has been overthrown, but that it also requires the exercise of still more extraordinary powers, though perhaps of a different kind to maintain that balance or respectively to disturb it at the proper time in one's own favor.

The comments about him in the book of the Hastings 1895 chess tournament focus on his theories and writings,[60] and Emanuel Lasker was more explicit: "He was a thinker worthy of a seat in the halls of a University.

[72] Lasker, who took the championship from Steinitz, wrote, "I who vanquished him must see to it that his great achievement, his theories should find justice, and I must avenge the wrongs he suffered.

In addition to game commentaries and blow-by-blow accounts of the negotiations leading to his 1886 match with Johann Zukertort and of the American Chess Congress's world championship project, he wrote a long series of articles about Paul Morphy, who had died in 1884.

[75] Steinitz also allegedly wrote a pamphlet entitled Capital, Labor, and Charity while confined at River Crest Sanitarium in New York during the final months of his life.

[80] Between his victory over Anderssen (1866) and his loss to Emanuel Lasker (1894), Steinitz won all his "normal" matches, sometimes by wide margins; and his worst tournament performance in that 28-year period was third place in Paris (1867).

[62] His most significant weaknesses were his habits of playing "experimental" moves and getting into unnecessarily difficult defensive positions in top-class competitive games.

[12][43] "Traditional" accounts of Steinitz describe him as having a sharp tongue and violent temper, perhaps partly because of his short stature (barely five feet) and congenital lameness.

[85] He was aware of his own tendencies and said early in his career, "Nothing would induce me to take charge of a chess column ...Because I should be so fair in dispensing blame as well as praise that I should be sure to give offence and make enemies.

[35] Steinitz strove to be objective in his writings about chess competitions and games; for example, he attributed to sheer bad luck a poor tournament score by Henry Edward Bird, whom he considered no friend of his,[84] and was generous in his praise of great play by even his bitter enemies.

"[84] At a joint simultaneous display in Russia around the time of the 1895–96 Saint Petersburg tournament, Emanuel Lasker and Steinitz formed an impromptu comedy double act.

[89] Although he had a strong sense of honour about repaying debts,[13][39] Steinitz was poor at managing his finances: he let a competitor "poach" many of his clients in 1862–63,[39] offered to play the 1886 world title match against Johannes Zukertort for free,[15] and died in poverty in 1900, leaving his widow to survive by running a small shop.