Various - The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 05, No. 32, June, 1860

But it is only the Indian game which has had a development equal to the development of the civilized arts. This has been chiefly through what are called by the Italian-French name of gambits . There is much prejudice, amongst a certain class of chess-players, against what is called "book-chess," but it rarely exists with players of the first rank. These gambits are as necessary to the first-rate player as are classifications to the naturalist. They are the venerable results of experience; and he who tries to excel without an acquaintance with them will find that it is much as if he should ignore the results of the past and put his hand into the fire to prove that fire would burn. If he should try every method of answering a special attack, he would be sure to find in the end that the method laid down in the gambit was the true one. An acquaintance, therefore, with these approved openings puts a player at an advanced starting-point in a game, inexhaustible enough in any case, and where he need not take time in doing what others have already done. Although we design in this article to refrain, as much as possible, from technical chess, it may be well enough to give a list of the usual openings, and their key-moves.

PHILIDOR'S DEFENCE. ( Philidor , 1749.)

White. Black. 1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. P. to Q. 3d.

GIUOCO PIANO. ( Italian .)

1. P. to K. 4th 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. Kt. to Q.B. 3d. 3. B. to Q.B. 4th. 3. B. to Q.B. 4th. 4. P. to Q. 3d or Q.B. 3d.

RUY LOPEZ'S KNIGHT'S GAME. ( Lopez , 1584.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. Kt. to Q.B. 3d. 3. B. to Q.Kt. 5th.

PETROFF'S DEFENCE. (1837.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d.

Q. PAWN OR SCOTCH GAME. ( So named from the great match between London and Edinburgh in 1826, but first analyzed as a gambit by Ghulam Xassitrt, Madras, 1829.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. Kt. to Q.B. 3d. 3. P. to Q. 4th.

SICILIAN GAME. ( Ancient Italian MS .)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to Q.B. 4th.

EVANS'S GAMBIT. ( Captain Evans , 1833.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 2. Kt. to Q.B. 3d. 3. B. to Q.B. 4th. 3. B. to Q.B. 4th. 4. P. to Q.Kt. 4th.

KING'S BISHOP'S GAMBIT.

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. B. to Q.B. 4th. 2. B. to Q.B. 4th.

KING'S KNIGHT'S GAMBIT.

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. P. to K.B. 4th. 2. P. takes P. 3. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 3. P. to K.Kt. 4th. 4. B. to Q.B. 4th. 4. B. to K.Kt. 2d.

ALLGAIER GAMBIT. (Johann Allgaier , 1795.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. P. to K.B. 4th. 2. P. takes P. 3. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 3. P. to K.Kt. 4th, 4. P. to K.B. 4th.

MUZIO GAMBIT. ( Preserved by Salvio , 1604.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. P. to K.B. 4th. 2. P. takes P. 3. Kt. to K.B. 3d. 3. P. to K.Kt. 4th. 4. B. to K.B. 4th. 4. P. to K.Kt. 5th. 5. Castles. 5. P. takes Kt.

SALVIO GAMBIT. ( Preserved from the Portuguese by Salvio , 1604.)

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 4th. 2. P. to K.B. 4th. 2. P. takes P. 3. K.Kt. to B. 3d. 3. P. to K.Kt. 4th. 4. K.B. to Q.B. 4th. 4. P. to K.Kt. 5th. 5. Kt. to K. 5th. 5. Q.to K.R.'s 5th. (ch.) 6. K. to B. Sq. 6. K.Kt. to B. 3d.

FRENCH GAME.

1. P. to K. 4th. 1. P. to K. 3d.

These gambits may be classed under what are, in common phrase, termed "open" or "close" games; an open game being where the pieces are brought out into more immediate engagement,—a close game where the pawns interlock, and the pieces can less easily issue to the attack. An instance of the former may be found in the Allgaier,—of the latter in Philidor's Defence. These two kinds of games are found in chess-play because they are found in human temperament; as there are brilliant and daring Napoleons, and cautious, pertinacious Washingtons in war, so are there in chess Philidor and La Bourdonnais, Staunton and Morphy. In examining Mr. Staunton's play, for example, one is struck with the French tact of M. St. Amant's remark, made many years ago: "M. Staunton has the solidity of iron, but neither the purity of gold nor the brilliancy of the diamond." However much Mr. Staunton's ignoble evasion of the match with Morphy—after bringing him, by his letter, all the way from New Orleans to London, a voyage which would scarcely have been taken otherwise—may have stained his reputation as a courageous and honorable chess-player, we cannot be blind to the fact, that he is the strongest master of the game in Europe. With a fine mathematical head, (more at home, however, in the Calculus than in Algebra,)—with an immense power of reserve and masterly repose,—able to hold an almost incredible number of threads without getting them entangled,—he has all the qualities which bear that glorious flower, success. But he is never brilliant; he has outwearied many a deeper man by his indefatigable evenness and persistance; he is Giant Despair to the brilliant young men. Mr. Morphy is just the otherest from Staunton. Like him only in sustained and quiet power, he brings to the board that demon of his, Memory,—such a memory, too, as no other chess-player has ever possessed: add to this wonderful analytic power and you have the secret of this Chess-King. Patient practice, ambition, and leisure have done the rest. He has thus the lustre du diamant , which St. Amant missed in Mr. Staunton; and we know that the brilliant diamond is hard enough also to make its mark upon the "solid iron."

Amongst other great living players who incline to the "close game," we may mention Mr. Harrwitz, whose match with Morphy furnished not one brilliant game; also Messrs. Slous, Horwitz, Bledow, Szen, and others. But the tendency has been, ever since the celebrated and magnificent matches of the two greatest chess geniuses which England and France have ever known, McDonnel and De la Bourdonnais, to cultivate the bolder and more exciting open gambits. And under the lead of Paul Morphy this tendency is likely to be inaugurated as the rule of modern chess. Professor Anderssen, Mayet, Lange, and Von der Lasa, in Germany,—Dubois and Centurini, at Rome,—St. Amant, Laroche, and Lécrivain, of Paris,—Löwenthal, Perigal, Kipping, Owen, Mengredien, etc., of London,—are all players of the heroic sort, and the games recently played by some of them with Morphy are perhaps the finest on record. And certainly, whatever may be said of their tendency to promote careless and reckless play, the open and daring games are at once more interesting, more brief, and more conducive to the mental drill which has been claimed as a sufficient compensation for the outlay of thought and time demanded by chess.

We have already given some specimens of the Poetry of Chess. The Chess Philosophy itself has penetrated every direction of literature. From the time that Miranda is "discovered playing chess with Ferdinand" in Prospero's cell, (an early instance of "discovered mate,") the numberless Mirandas of Romance have played for and been played for mates. Chess has even its Mythology,—Caïssa being now, we believe, generally received at the Olympian Feasts. True, some one has been wicked enough to observe that all chess-stories are divisible into two classes,—in one a man plays for his own soul with the Devil, in the other the hero plays and wins a wife,—and to beg for a chess-story minus wives and devils; but such grumblers are worthless baggage, and ought to be checked. The Chess Library has now become an important collection. Time was, when, if one man had Staunton's "Handbook," Sarratt, Philidor, Walker's "Thousand Games," and Lewis on "The Game of Chess," he was regarded as uniting the character of a chess-scholar with that of the antiquary. But now we hear of Bledow of Berlin with eight hundred volumes on chess; and Professor George Allen, of the University of Pennsylvania, with more than a thousand! Such a literature has Chess collected about it since Paolo Boi, "the great Syracusan," as he was called, wrote what perhaps was the first work on chess, in the middle of the sixteenth century.