Traps, Tricks & Mistakes: Greco’s Legacy. King’s Gambit -III-
Gioacchino Greco (1600-1634) was an Italian chess player who recorded some of the oldest known chess games in their entirety. In his games never appears the opponent’s name, which led historians to conclude that they are in fact his constructs to demonstrate opening traps and mating patterns.
We know little about his life and all the information available comes only from his manuscripts.
Gioacchino Greco was an extremely strong player excelling not only in combinations but also in positional understanding. He played chess for money against anyone who challenged him. Because of that, Greco is considered the first professional player in the history of chess.
To his legacy belong to have discovered various tactical concepts and traps. Greco recorded and sold them in small manuscripts. After his death some of them appeared published in books like “The Royall Game of Chesse-Play (1656)” or “Le Jeu des Echets (1669)”. Those books contain short chess games, each of them demonstrating an important tactical pattern. Thanks to those books, Greco’s work reached a large audience of chess fans.
Today’s post follows a previous one and brings a couple of Greco’s patterns in the King’s Gambit Accepted, Variation of Bishop’s Gambit, where White opts for playing his king’s bishop (3.Bc4) instead of developing the knight (3.Nf3)
The King’s Gambit was very popular in the period after Greco’s death. We know that period as the Romantic Era of chess. Games from that period feature strong attacks against the opponent’s king and beautiful combinations.
The oldest record of the King’s Gambit is from a game played between Ruy Lopez de Segura and Giovani Leonardo Da Cutri in 1560.
If you enjoyed these examples about the King’s Gambit, stay tuned because his series will follow in future posts.
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