Historical Chess Championship I

Pedro Damiano (in Portuguese, Pedro Damião; Damiano is the Italian form, much like the Latin Damianus) was a Portuguese chess player who lived from 1480 to 1544. A native of Odemira, he was a pharmacist by profession. He wrote Questo libro e da imparare giocare a scachi et de li partiti, published in Rome, Italy, in 1512; it went through eight editions in the sixteenth century. Damiano describes the rules of the game, offers advice on strategy, presents a selection of chess problems and analyzes a few openings. It is the oldest book that definitely states that the square on the right of the row closest to each player must be white. He also offers advice regarding blindfold chess principally focused on the need to master notation based on numbering the squares 1-64 (Murray 1913, 788–89).

In this book Damiano suggested chess was invented by Xerxes which would be the reason why it was known in Portuguese as Xadrez and in Spanish as Ajedrez. In fact, these words come from Sanskrit caturaṅga via Arabicšaṭranj.

The well known chess aphorism "If you see a good move, try to find a better one", sometimes misattributed to Lasker and other writers, can be found in Damiano's book; similar sentiments were expressed by al-Suli regarding Shatranj, the Arabic precursor to chess.

Text from: Wikipedia.

Libro de la invencion liberal y arte del juego del axedrez (translation: Book of the liberal invention and art of the game of chess) is one of the first books published about modern chess in Europe, after Pedro Damiano's 1512 book. It was written by Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura in 1561 and published in Alcalá de Henares.

In 1560 Ruy López visited Rome and saw Damiano's book. He disliked it and decided to write a better one. López's book contains general chess advice, rules of the game, and a discussion of the origin of the game. It also recommends some chess openings, and criticizes Damiano's games and analysis (Golombek 1977:186). The book was translated to Italian in 1584 and to French in the 17th century (Sunnucks 1970:294).

The book consists of four parts. The first part talks generally about chess, discusses the history, and gives the rules that were used in Spain at the time: stalemate was a win for the player not stalemated and a player could also win by capturing all of the opponent's pieces (except for the king). The book also introduced the fifty-move rule. In the second part, López introduces the word gambit and gives some openings that had not been previously published: the King's Gambit, some variations of the Bishop's Opening, and what is now known as the Steinitz Defense in the Ruy Lopez. The last two parts of the book are critical of the games of Damiano. After the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3, Damiano thought that 2...Nc6 was Black's best move. López considered that inferior because of 3.Bb5. This opening is now known as the Ruy Lopez, although he did not invent it (Hooper & Whyld 1992:234–35).

Text from: Wikipedia.

Gioachino Greco Cusentino (c. 1600 – c. 1634) was an Italian chess player and writer. He recorded some of the earliest chess games known in their entirety. His games, all given with anonymous opponents ("NN", for the Latin nomen nescio), were quite possibly constructs, but served as highly useful tools for spotting opening traps.

Mikhail Botvinnik considered Greco to be the first professional chess player.

Greco was also known in Italy as il Calabrese ("the Calabrian"). Some sources quote that his parents were Greeks and that he had been born at Celico, a village near Cosenza. The name Greco was given to people who originally came from that part of Calabria where they spoke a Greek dialect and lived in areas where the dialect was Latin-based.

Greco was a remarkable chess player who inhabited the era between Ruy López de Segura and François-André Danican Philidor. At that early date, no great corpus of chess knowledge had yet been amassed. It is for this reason that Greco's games should be understood as those of a brilliant inventor and pioneer rather than as guides to sound play. They are also valuable examples of the Italian Romantic school of chess, in which development and material are eschewed in favor of aggressive attacks on the opponent's king. Greco paved the way for many of the attacking legends of the Romantic era, such as Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy, and Philidor. Greco's innovation to record entire games is perhaps his greatest legacy. In 1656, years after his death, much of Greco's work was collected and republished as The Royall Game of Chesse-Play by Francis Beale in London. Games were not described in the now-familiar algebraic notation; rather, the movement of each piece was given in descriptive notation, like so:

• The Fooles Mate.
• Black Kings Bishops pawne one house.
• White Kings pawne one house.
• Black kings knights pawne two houses
• White Queen gives Mate at the contrary kings Rookes fourth house, in which "house" refers to a square on the chessboard. 

In addition to the games ("Gambetts") listed in his manuals, Greco often gave general advice to his readers and an overview of the rules of chess ("The Lawes of Chesse"). These range from the familiar ("If you touch your man you must play it, and if you set it downe any where you must let it stand") to the bizarre ("If at first you misplace your men, and play two or three draughts, it lieth in your adversaries choice whether you shall play out the game or begin it again."). Greco also describes the premodern necessity of announcing check to one's opponent and the disgrace of what he calls a "blind Mate"- a checkmate given but not noticed.

The "Lawes of Chesse" were also not entirely standardized in Greco's time; for that reason, the rules as published by Beale would have been meant for a specific population. For example, Greco specifies that when castling in France, "the Rook... goeth into the Kings house". In other countries the rules for castling were different. Modern castling, which Greco also describes, is sometimes called "alla Calabrese" in Greco's honor.

Text from: Wikipedia.