The Great Calalbrian

Gioachino Greco, The Calalbrian,  lived in the early 1600s and was arguable the best chess player of his age.  Many call him the first professional chess player, some consider him the father of opening theory.  

The Calabrian played a limited number of openings most of which are no longer played at the highest levels.  

In The Greco Counter- Gambit (now called the Latvian Gambit) 1e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5. The Calalbrian and subsequent players were so successful that many considered 2…Nf3 to be inferior to 2…Bc4.  James R. West in his book The Dynamic Philidor quotes Freeborough and Ranken “The idea of this defense, introduced by Philidor (1749) is to protect the advance king’s pawn against the adverse knight before proceeding with Greco’s Counter-Gambit.”  

In the King’s Gambit, Greco focused primarily on 1.e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 g5.  In his book “The King’s Gambit” John Shaw said that 3…g5 is “the toughest challenge and most complex chess of the whole book”.  

The Greco Attack line of the Giuoco Piano 

up to move 7 can still be considered the main line, with the understanding that 4 d3  and or c3 and then d3 are the Giuoco Pianissimo and not part of the Giuoco Piano.  The Greco Attack became know as the Moller Attack after Moller found an answer to the black improvement of 8…Bxc3 9 bxc3 d5!.  Moller’s improvement was 9 d5! Instead of 9 bxc3.  Greco also worked out lines in the 4. Ng5 branch of the Two Knights Defense.  

Some may asks but is Greco still relevant today? While it is true that his lines are no longer played at the highest levels, they do well at lower levels.  I consider that Greco The Calalbrian was the best ever at beating players who play like me.  I believe that most lower rated players would do better by playing in the style of Greco than in the style of present day Grand Masters.  Furthermore it is likely that playing according Greco’s Opening Theory (including some of his openings) lower rated players would improve faster than playing in accordance with modern Opening Theory.  

If we are to play in the style of Greco we must understand what that style consist of.

1. Fully understanding the position on the board, according to chess knowledge of the 17th century.
2. Tactical Mastery
3. Play the same opening moves as often as possible 
4. Knowing a number of checkmate patterns 

I just played this game. Almost every move is from Greco. I've played several variations of the same game on this site.