Famous chess players: Luis Ramirez de Lucena
| LUIS RAMIREZ DE LUCENA (born 1465, died 1530, 65 years old) Spain |
CHESSGAMES BIOGRAPHY |
| Luis Ramirez de Lucena (Loo-THAY-na) was a leading Spanish chess player and the author of the oldest existing chess book, Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con cl Iuegos de Partido, published in Salamanca in 1497. His name is associated with a fundamental rook ending, commonly called "the Lucena Position", although this attribution may be a misnomer, as it does not appear in his book.(1) However, the smothered mate often referred to as Philidor's Legacy is in the book.
(1) John Roycroft, British Chess Magazine, 1982, pp 160-161 |
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As you can see from this biography, Lucena was one of the oldest chess masters of all time. HIs book also contained eleven chess openings, but because there were many elementary errors, the chess historian H.J Murray states that the book was probably written in a hurry. Some of the 150 positions in the book were about the old game, before the modern chess rules took form. Fewer than a dozen copies of the book exist.
Here are his only two known games:
Finally, Lucena is responsible for creating the smothered mate:
