Verdoni

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Verdoni (* unknown; † 1804 in London ) was a French - Italian chess player . After 1795 he was considered a leading European master.

Chess career

Verdoni, whose first name and year of birth are unknown, is said to have been of Italian origin. His chess work took place in Paris and later in London.

According to a report by William Lewis, Verdoni learned the game of chess late, "in middle age". But it did not take long after that until he was one of the leading masters of the famous Café de la Régence . Together with the top Paris players Bernard, Carlier and Léger, he anonymously published a highly regarded chess book in 1775. The Traité des Amateurs , as the abbreviated title was, was to be understood as a continuation of the teachings of François-André Danican Philidor .

At that time he had already relocated most of his activities to London. It wasn't until many years later, during the French Revolution , that Verdoni also moved to the British capital as a refugee. So he shared the fate of his role model, because Philidor could no longer return to Paris for political reasons. Philidor, clearly superior to all his opponents in the game, regarded Verdoni as the strongest European chess player after him. In direct comparison, he is said to have given Verdoni a pawn ; In doing so, however, he insisted on the suit in deviation from the prevailing convention (“Bauer und Zug”) . The difference in skill level between Verdoni and his teacher was therefore not great according to the understanding of the time. For this reason, after Philidor's death in 1795, the London chess club saw Verdoni as a suitable successor to fill the vacant position of professional player in Café Parsloe's.

Until his death, that is for almost a decade, Verdoni was able to maintain the leadership. However, he did not come close to the position of Philidor. Count Brühl and the mathematician George Atwood were among his well-known opponents of the game , who in addition to the games of Philidor also recorded some handicap games by Verdoni. Verdoni's most important student was Jacob Henry Sarratt , with whom the line of British masters led over into the period of William Lewis . Meanwhile, the rise of Alexandre Deschapelles began in France at the beginning of the 19th century . After the “ Interregnum ” Verdonis, he was the actual successor of Philidor in the series of unofficial world champions .

According to a somewhat inaccurate message from Sarratt ("about four years ago") Verdoni died in his London apartment in 1804.

During his lifetime, Verdoni, who was later forgotten, was a prominent figure. In his popular novel “The Adventures of Chevalier Faublas”, which appeared on the eve of the revolution, the writer Louvet de Couvray describes a battle of words in the Café de la Régence: They had lost, his opponent interrupted. - I was into profit, sir. - I would have even played this position against Verdoni. - And I against Philidor!

The "Traité des Amateurs"

Verdoni made a theoretical contribution as co-author of the Traité théorique et pratique du jeu des échecs par une société d'amateurs (“Theoretical-practical lessons in chess by a society of lovers”). The book was reprinted in 1786, eleven years after publication. Among the authors who described themselves as “great players at Europe's first chess academy (the Café de la Régence)”, Verdoni was considered the strongest master. Hence his understanding of the game was undoubtedly well expressed in the work.

Right at the beginning a distinction was made to Philidor's textbook. With all due respect “we owe the greatest player in Europe”, the authors criticized the fact that many of the variants cited by Philidor “are more instructive than correct, and that his claims about the necessary win or loss of the game are often daring, and be refuted by combination and experience ”. Regardless of this, the Verdoni group was much closer to Philidor's positional play than to the Modenese school founded by Domenico Ercole del Rio , which, unlike the French, preferred free puppet play, gambit openings and tactical entanglements.

The value of the book was, as the English translator George Walker later wrote, in the treatment of openings and game profiles of the unnamed master, the most up to Matt circuit have been executed. Because of its practical orientation, at the end of the 18th century the work was able to stand alongside Philidor's more theoretical textbook. On the other hand, posterity often judged the Traité des Amateurs and the plays shown therein as monotonous.

One of the main reasons why the Traité des Amateurs was of little importance in retrospect was the fact that the focus of the book was on the handicap games popular at the time. Only the fourth section dealt with games without specifications. Finally, game endings followed and in the sixth and final chapter fifty (of the total of one hundred) chess problems by the Syrian Philipp Stamma .

The algebraic notation used by the authors was modern , which Stamma had introduced several decades earlier without having met with any echo.

The Traité des Amateurs was outside France, particularly in Germany appeal. A translation appeared together with Stamma's “Hundred Endgames” as early as 1780 (in a second edition in 1797) with a foreword by the publisher Friedrich Nicolai , a major exponent of the Berlin Enlightenment .

Works

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b Tassilo von Heydebrand and the Lasa , in: George Allen: The Life of Philidor. Musician and Chessplayer . Philadelphia 1863, pp. 145f.
  2. ↑ Note, in: Le Palamède , 2 (1837), p. 480
  3. ^ William Lewis (under a pseudonym ): Letters on Chess , London 1848, p. 101
  4. ↑ George Walker: A Selection of Games at Chess, Actually Played by Philidor and His Contemporaries , pp. 61-74
  5. ^ JH Sarratt: A Treatise on the Game of Chess (1808), Vol. 1, p. XXII
  6. ↑ Louvet de Couvray: Vie du Chevalier de Faublas (edition 1820), vol. 2, p. 44 f.
  7. ↑ Preliminary remark, in: Traité théorique et pratique du jeu des échecs , pp. VIIIf.
  8. ↑ Quoted from theoretical and practical lessons in chess games , p. 2
  9. ↑ G. Walker: The Celebrated Traité des Amateurs , in: The Chess Player's Chronicle , London 6 (1846), p. 17
  10. ^ Anton Schmid : (tschaturangavidjâ.) Literature of the game of chess. Vienna 1847, p. 108f.
personal data
SURNAME Verdoni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French-Italian chess player
DATE OF BIRTH 18th century
DATE OF DEATH 1804
Place of death London