Gioachino Greco, also known as Il Calabrese, was born around 1600 in Celico, Italy near Cosenza in Calabria. In 1619 in Rome, Greco started keeping a notebook of tactics and games, and he took up the custom of giving copies of his manuscripts to his wealthy patrons. These manuscripts offer the most definite facts about his life. There are four Roman manuscripts, two of uncertain date, but the other two clearly dated to February 1620. 1621 finds him in Nancy, France where he dedicated a manuscript to the Duke of Lorraine. He may have visited Paris in 1622, as most histories claim, but the evidence is thin. By 1623, he was in London, where his manuscripts begin to include longer games. In 1624-1625, Greco was in Paris, and his manuscripts from this visit show the continuing refinement of his game.(1)
Details concerning the rest of his life are speculative, relying almost entirely upon a brief account by Alessandro Salvio. According to Salvio, Greco ended up at the court of King Philipp IV in Spain, and from there followed a Spanish nobleman to the West Indies, where he died. As Salvio's text was published in 1634, that is given as the year of his death. Salvio also reports that he bequethed his fortune to the Jesuits. It is also possible that he was robbed to or from his visit to London, and restored his fortunes in Paris. There is speculation contrary to Salvio's claims, based on a 1734 description of a manuscript that is no longer extant, that Greco was back in London in 1632. If true, it gives credence to the long discredited assertion of William Lewis that he died at an advanced age.(2)
Greco published his analysis of the contemporary chess openings (Giuoco Piano, Bishop Opening, King's Gambit, etc.) in the form of short games in manuscripts 1620-1625, but several extant manuscripts are of uncertain date. In 1656, Francis Beale transcribed 94 of Greco's games into a text that was published by Henry Herringman in London.(3) Whatever manuscript was Beale's source no longer exists. A French edition of Greco's games, based on still extant manuscripts, was published in 1669. This text formed the basis of the collections published by William Lewis (1819) and Louis Hoffmann (1900), which in turn formed the sources for today's databases. Both Lewis and Hoffmann offer many variations that are not yet collected in databases. Lewis found 146 variations, which he reduced to 47 games. Hoffmann expanded the number of games to 77, reducing the number of variations appended to each one. Greco's games are regarded as classics of early chess literature and are often taught to beginners.
Jeremy Silman observed, "There are many games which show Greco toying with his hopelessly over-matched opponents, and one gains the impression that he was a master of tactics and of open games, and that he was so far beyond other players of his time that it was, in effect, a case of a grandmaster versus players rated between 1000 and 1800. Once in a while, Greco would face someone who could fight back, which allows us to see Greco's positional skills. It is possible that some, or even all, of the games were fabricated, but even if they were inventions they still show a chess understanding centuries ahead of his time. . . . There never was, and never will be again, a player so far ahead of his time."(4)
(1)Wikipedia article: Gioachino Greco
(2)Peter J. Monté, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (McFarland 2014)
(3)Wikipedia article: Francis Beale (writer)
(4)https://www.chesshistory.com/winter...
Kibitzing
