From: "World Chess Championship", INTERNET:newsletter@mark-weeks.com Date: 00/07/01, 13:59 Re: Chess History on the Web (2000 no.13) The next review, continuing the second pass through the Chess History bookmarks, is for 'La storia, personaggi e biblio' by Marco A. Alberti. This site, like the last two sites ('Max Euwe Centrum' & 'Schach-Ereignisse') I'll be doing in this series of reviews, is not written using the English language. There's no denying that sites written in other languages need more effort to understand the content. I only review them if I feel the content is worth the effort. The Alberti site is at address... http://www.queen.it/web4you/noprofit/keres/storia.html ...and is well worth the effort. Because the site is written in Italian, I used the translation service at translator.go.com, which translated the site name to 'the history, personages and biblio'. Unfortunately, an annoying error has crept into the Go.com service since I last used it. Go now presents the results in a framed page, where the top frame is the Go logo and the bottom frame is the translated page. The great value of the Go service is that links on the translated page are automatically set to translate the linked page -- you just have to click on the link to have the next page translated. When I clicked on these links I received another double frame page with the Go logo plus the translated page, but this in the bottom frame of the previous page. This meant that I was now looking at two Go logos plus the translated page. Clicking on another link gave me three Go logos, with very little space to present the translated page. I groaned, complained to no one in particular, and continued. The Alberti site has eight main pages. It is primarily a text site, although there is a small image in the upper right corner of each page. The texts have no margins and no paragraph breaks, which makes the pages somewhat hard to read. Large blocks of unbroken text make an ugly sight on a computer screen. Go.com translates the title of the first page as 'Le origini...'. It covers the origins of the game, its early introduction to the Mediterranean countries of Europe, and the first great players of the modern game, who were Italian. The page ends with a description of the matches between Leonardo da Cutro and the Spaniard Ruy Lopez. The second page, 'School romantica' according to the Go.com translation, continues with the exploits of the early Italian players. Paolo Boi is given credit as the inventor of the Sicilian Defence and Gioacchino Greco ('il Calabrese') is called the last great Italian player of the era. Despite another century of talented Italians like Lolli & del Rio, chess prowess spread from Italy to other parts of Europe. The 18th century saw Stamma, Philidor, Allgaier, and Deschapelles, with Philidor the strongest player before the 19th century. 'The first tornei' covers the 1851 London international tournament won by Anderssen, the phenomenal Morphy, and the scientific theories of Steinitz. It continues with the start of the world championship matches, through the 1921 Capablanca - Lasker match. 'First the 900' (sic, 'IL PRIMO 900' in the original), covers Alekhine's matches, the void left by his death, and the rise of FIDE. It continues with Botvinnik's win in 1948, and gives an overview of the Soviet world champions through Spassky. 'Towards the end of the century' covers Fischer's 1972 match with Spassky and his abdication of the chess crown. It ends with the Karpov - Korchnoi matches. 'The race to the title' is the shortest of the eight main pages. It covers Kasparov's stunning victories in the 1982-1983 world championship cycle, up to his win over Smyslov in the final candidates match. 'Champion of the world' covers the first two Kasparov - Karpov matches, through Kasparov's win in the 24th game of the second match. The page also lists the world champions, starting with Anderssen in 1851. 'Our days' overviews the events since 1985, mentioning many of the best players of the 1990s. It gives credit for the material on the site to the 'historical bibliography draft from "The HANDBOOK Of CHESS" by Sergio Mariotti'. This is the only site I know of, in any language, which outlines the evolution of chess from its ancient origins to the Kasparov era. Most of the material is well known to amateur chess historians, and if there were nothing more than the eight main pages, I might not have included it on the list of Chess History bookmarks. What makes this site interesting is that, at appropriate points, the main pages link to other pages on the same site. Each of the 51 other pages presents a biography of one great player. Since this is an Italian site, and since Italian players dominated the game during the first two centuries of the modern game, it is no surprise that the early era is covered in more depth than later eras. Let's take a look at the Italian players linked from Alberti's first two pages. Here they are, ordered by birthyear of the player:- Boi, Paolo 1528-1598 Polerio, Giulio 1550-1610 Cutro, Leonardo da 1552-1597 Salvio, Alessandro 1570-1640 Carrera, Pietro 1573-1647 Greco, Gioacchino 1600-1634 Lolli, Giovan Battista 1698-1769 Del Rio, Ercole 1720-1800 Many of the dates are approximate. A few dates are missing from Alberti's site, so I took them from Hooper & Whyld's 'Oxford Companion to Chess'. That's an impressive list of players by any standard, but others who could have been included are:- Damiano, Pedro ????-1544 (b. Portugal) Gianutio, Orazio 15xx-16xx Ponziani, Domenico 1719-1796 How did these players come to be considered as the first greats of the modern game? Sometime toward the end of the 15th century, the rules of chess as we know it were introduced. The moves of the queen and bishop were extended to their current powers and the right of all pawns to move two squares on the first move was standardized. In 'Chess - the History of a Game', Eales writes, 'it is ironic that the game of chess experienced the only major change in its internal structure in over a thousand years of documented history through a single and dramatic shift in its rules of play'. The rule changes made the game more lively than its medieval predecessor. While there is no evidence proving that the new rules of chess came from any particular place, it was almost certainly in a Mediterranean country. Along with the Italian players, the Spaniards were also good players -- the names of Luis Lucena (14xx-15xx) and Ruy Lopez (1530-1580) are well known even today. Are there other Web sites that cover this period of chess history? I used SurfWax at www.surfwax.com to search on 'Paolo Boi'. Not many relevant pages popped out, but I did find:- http://leoncini.freeservers.com/boi.html (Italian) http://friuli.qnet.it/scacchi/manuale/storia.htm (Italian; another history site) http://aurora.eexi.gr/~ippotis/proten.html The last link is a list World Chess Champions, which includes a list of 'unofficial' champions. The list starts with the names:- 1560-1575 Lopez, Ruy 1575-1587 Cutri, Giovanni Leonardo 1587-1598 Boi, Paolo 1598-1621 Salvio, Alessandro 1621-1634 Greco, Gioacchino 1730-1747 De Kermeur, Legall 1747-1795 Philidor, Francois 1798-1824 Deschapelles, Alexandre 1824-1840 Bourdonnais, Louis de la I only show the names up to the 1834 Labourdonnais - McDonnell matches, where most chess historians start to agree on unofficial world champions. Many of the first names are also on the list of great Italian players derived from Alberti's site. By coincidence, I recently received an email from a correspondent who offered a similar list of champions:- 1559-1575 Lopez de Segura, Ruy 1575-1598 Boi, Paolo 1598-1640 Salvio, Allesandro 1728-1755 de Kermeur, Sire Legall 1755-1795 Philidor, Francois Andre Danican 1795-1802 del Rio, Domenico Ercole 1802-1804 Verdoni 1804-1819 Sarratt, Jacob Henry 1819-1825 Lewis, William 1825-1834 de la Bourdonnais, Louis Mahe While there are many similarities between the two lists, there are also significant differences. The gaps on the first (1634-1730, 1795-1798) and second (1640-1728) lists beg to be filled. It would be an interesting & revealing exercise to match the names & dates against the historical record, to fill the gaps, and to identify the controversial areas where chess historians disagree. I'll leave that as a future task. Bye for now, Mark Weeks