The Unknown Greco

ChessBase Mega 2020 contains 82 games credited to Gioacchino Greco, most dated 1620 (which seems an arbitrary date). At the time of this writing, Chessgames.com has 90 games credited to the famous Calabrese. In "Gioachino Greco on the Game of Chess" (2013), I wrote about the abundance of Greco's variations that can be found in William Lewis's 1819 text of that name. The better known and more accessible (the notation is standard English descriptive) 1900 text by Angelo Lewis, writing under the penname Professor Hoffmann, also has variations that are absent from databases.

Peter J. Monté, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (McFarland 2014), which I described in "Monumental Scholarship" (2020), offers far more detail from Greco's manuscripts, and also permits the diligent reader to separate Greco's contributions from lines he learned from others. In Part I of the book, Monté describes manuscripts and history from Lucena to Greco, concluding with a discussion of the development of castling and the pawn's leap. Part II. Openings and Games of the Classical Era of Modern Chess is a thoroughly documented move tree (439-530). The so-called Greco Attack is documented across four pages (462-465).

The Greco Attack begins with the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 (In some of Greco's manuscripts 2.Bc4 Bc5 is played, and the knights deployed on the following move) 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.c3 Nf6 5.d4 exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ 7.Nc3.

Black to move

Play continues:

7...Nxe4 8.O-O Nxc3

8...Bxc3 is the mainline today, and offers a very good reason not to play the Greco Attack.

9.bxc3 Bxb3

9...d5 or 9...Be7 have been recommended.

10.Qb3

A fine miniature that I learned from Leonard Barden and Wolfgang Heidenfeld, Modern Chess Miniatures (1960) continued with 10.Ba3. See Corte -- Bolbochán 1946 (2016).

10...Bxa1

Greco also has games that continue with 10...Bxd4.

11.Bxf7+ Kf8  12.Bg5

Black to move

In the ChessBase database, Greco's games all continue with 12...Ne7. Chessgames.com, however, has one game that continues with the line I present below.

12...Nxd4

This move was played against me in a rapid game on Chess.com on Sunday, and I had faced it at least four times prior.

13.Qa3

13.Qb4+? is a blunder that appears in the ChessBase database in ten games played 1996-2016.

13...Kxf7 14.Bxd8

Black to move

In 1619, Greco had access to a manuscript known today as Boncampagno -3, which contains the following variations (Monté, 277, 463). This manuscript is among those classified as the Polerio Complex. Monté dates it between 1594 and 1619. Authorship is uncertain.

A.
14...Rxd8 15.Ng5+ Kf6 (or Kg6) 16.Rxa1 Kxg5 17.Qe7+

B.
14...Nxf3 15.Qxf3+ Bf6 16.Bxc7

Black to move

Greco's original contribution to this line begins from this position and appears in two manuscripts from his sojourn in England, the Mountstephen manuscript (1623) and the Grenoble manuscript, which is undated, but believed to precede Mountstephen.

16...Re8 Qh5+ Kf8 18.Bd6+

Mountstephen ends here.

Black to move

18...Be7 19.Re1 h6 20.Rxe7 Rxe7 21.Qe5 and Qxe7 follows.

Not everything credited to Greco was his own work, and yet much of his work remains unknown to most chess enthusiasts.