Louis Blair wrote:

in Mexico". There seems to have been some confusion
about when the Staunton-Worrall games were played.

That may be because they played several games over
a period of time.

There's one 17?-game match in 1856 (or at least starting
in 1856) (London), 14 games in 1858? (London), one game in
1859?, and five games in 1860 (Cambridge).
(Source: OECG).

The only series of games tagged as a match in OECG is
the 1856?-series (p. 222). The source for the scores is
Illustrated London News from 1856 and 1857 -- it seems
reasonable to suspect this is the match mentioned
in Chess Monthly.

It's a 'fuzzy' match in so far as no final scores appear
to be known. OECG tags every result in the 'crosstable'
with ^, indicating an uncertain value. The uncertainty seems
to be only as to the order of the games, though, as the
individual scores give definite results: +8=0-4 to Staunton,
but there are 5 games scores missing.

The odds are interesting: Staunton gave Ra1 in five of
the scores, and Nb1 in six, but he also received odds
in that he played white in all of the games.

--
Anders Thulin http://www.algonet.se/~ath