Chess before the Theory of Moral Sentiments

Posted on October 4, 2010 by Nicholas Gruen
Posted in Chess

Black to play
C Lolli vs D Ercole Del Rio 18. ...? See game for solution. Difficulty Scale
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OK, so it's not hard to work out the answer, but it's cute, and it happened in Modena in 1755. Before Adam Smith finished The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 there was, obviously enough, a fair bit of waiting around. So they played chess. Click through for the answer if you can't work it out.

6 Comments

  1. TimT
    October 6, 2010

    You've probably already seen it but somewhere there on that chessgames site there should be record of a game between Jean Jacques Rousseau and David Hume. Good one too. (I first played it over years ago in an old Iving Chernev book that my uni library had.)

  2. Nicholas Gruen
    October 6, 2010

    Thanks for that Tim, I'd never seen it.

    I've lost all respect for David Hume. What a patzer!

    http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1336207

  3. Oktay
    October 6, 2010

    Kasparov-Palatnik 1978
    Palatnik missed the opportunity at 11 and he ended up loosing the game.

    http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1069723

  4. Nicholas Gruen
    October 6, 2010

    What opportunity?

  5. Oktay
    October 7, 2010

    11-… Qxd4 12-Qxd4 cxd4 13 Rxf7 Bxe5 In this situation black has better positions.

  6. TimT
    October 7, 2010

    Oh you know, the pleasure of those classic games of chess usually arises because one side has the good grace to lose in an utterly extraordinary fashion. Didn't the Immortal Game happen with Anderson beating Kieseritzky in a line of the Kings Gambit that Kieseritzky specialised in?