Greatest Chess Players of the 16th Century.

Rank the best chess players of the 1500's from one to ten.  Please justify your responses.  Thanks.

I really don't know much about it.

The list wouldn't be very long... Ruy Lopez, Damiano, Polerio, Boi... how many others?

Vizzini

Ruy Lopez because, well, he invented the Ruy Lopez

I don't think there are many known chess players from that time.

Now this at least is original. 

Ruy Lopez is often mentioned, but was he really one of the best players or is he just known for 3. Bb5?  Are there surviving games of his?

Looks like we're gonna have to be paging batgirl pretty soon...

I read somewhere (pardon me but I'm pretty goofed up on a mixture of things) that Ruy Lopez didn't even "invent" the Lopez opening, he just wrote a treatise on it.  Is that true?

I can say with confidence that Pedro Damiano didn't "invent" the infamous (and bad) "Damiano Opening" -- he just wrote a treatise on it saying how much it sucked, and unfortunately the name stuck.

Actually I've already messaged her, so...

I think Korchnoi started out around then, right?

Here is my list.

[1.] Leonardo Da Vinci . He did everything else. So he must have played chess. In 1503 he painted the Mona Lisa.

[2.] Henry VIII : He ascended the English throne in 1509. Surely he played chess.

[3.] Akbar the Great: he became Mogul Emperor of India in 1556. He must have played chess.

Another 7 ???????? What do you think I am? An expert on the 1500's??

John,if you have a list we can try to rank them with you? I would mention Lucena and Ruy but there must have been many great players in the nobility...

If you want to mention problems, have a look at this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_1500–1799

Between the wars and the muggings, you had to be a monk, a jester or a noble beauty to get away with chess.

There are only fifteen existing game scores from the 16th century. My picks:

1. Polerio

2. Leonardo (even though he played the Damiano Defence)

3. Lopez

Ruy Lopez wrote about the opening in his book.  According to Wikipedia, it's known to have exsisted around 60 years before he wrote the book.  A strange thing though, if wikipedia is correct, is that he was the first to write about the King's Gambit, so why isn't this the Ruy Lopez?

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libro_de_la_invencion_liberal_y_arte_del_juego_del_axedrez

Estragon, Aljechin invented and played his defence quite regularly. Have a look on chessgames.com where you find an extract of some 16 games where he plays his defence.

There is a Wikipedia article speculating that Leonardo illustrated a chess manuscript, de ludo scachorum, and may have composed one of the problems in it.  He is said to be a known friend of the author, Pacioli.

So good guess linuxblue.  :)

Okay, batgirl said she was busy, but she did pass along these two links:

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Renplayers.html

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/printing.html