Staunton was twenty-six when he took a serious interest in chess. In 1838 he played many games with Captain Evans, the inventor of the Evans Gambit, and also lost a match against the German chess writer Aaron Alexandre. He had improved sufficiently by 1840 to win a match against the German master H.W. Popert. From May to December 1840 Staunton edited a chess column for the "New Court Gazette". He then became chess editor of the magazine "British Miscellany", and his chess column developed into a separate magazine, the "Chess Player's Chronicle", which Staunton owned and edited until the early 1850s.