Following Greco

In the headnote to the game, Irving Chernev mentions four later publications, each with different players, that follow an eight-move miniature that he presents in The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (1955).* It would seem that this particular Gioachino Greco composition frequently occurs in actual play.

The earliest extant record of this game appears in Greco's MountStephen manuscript (1623). Chernev claims that it appeared in a book published by Greco in 1619. Greco never published a book. Nonetheless, the 1619 date appears with this game in many places. Greco's work is known through slightly more than two dozen extant manuscripts, as well as a few that were once known and were copied before they disappeared. Greco's sojourn in Rome is known through four manuscripts that were produced in 1619 or very early in 1620. But, this game appears only in later MSS: MountStephen, mentioned above, and Paris (1625), as well as a few documents derived from Greco's MSS.**

The rest of Chernev's note withstands scrutiny. The note, preceding game 23, reads:

    In 1891 the Deutsches Wochenschach published a pretty game won by Deichmann. The same game appeared in the Deutsche Schachzeitung of 1917 with K.J. as the winner. Chess Review printed the score in 1935 with Pearsall the victor over X. In his book Lehrreiche Kurzpartien, Herr Benzinger gives himself credit for the win.
    These claimants and a few others will have to step aside though and make room for a fellow known as the Calabrese, Gioachino Greco.
    Away back in 1619 he published a book of his games. This is one of the brilliants which graced this early collection. (9-10)

The game score appears in descriptive notation in Chernev's text. Here I present it in algebraic.

1.e4 b6 2.d4 Bb7 3.Bd3 f5 4.exf5 Bxg2 5.Qh5+ g6 6.fxg6 Nf6 7.gxh7 Nxh5 8.Bg6#

I often present the checkmate in two to beginning students.

Three of Chernev's four references have been digitized and are readily accessible. The game appears in Deutsches Wochenschach (December 1891), 412. An extra set of moves is included that are absent from Greco's version.

The Deutsche Schachzeitung was also easily located (158-159). It shows the initials of the player of White as K.Sz.J. A note explains that the game had been played in Budapest and was copied from a Hungarian publication. In Chess Review (July 1935), Arnold Denker comments, "Very, very old, but always amusing; the Black player had ideas" (155). The player with White, Allen G. Pearsall, is sufficiently well-known that chessgames.com has six of his correspondence games and a win against Frank Marshall from a 20-game simul in San Diego. Game 31 in Chernev is another Pearsall miniature.

Josef Benzinger, Lehrreiche Kurzpartien (1938) has not been digitized and presented on the Web, so far as I have found, but a copy exists in the Cleveland Public Library.

The "few others" referenced by Chernev must number in the thousands. Several commentators on the game at chessgames.com claim they have played this miniature. 3...f5 appears 1393 times in the FICS Database. In the overwhelming majority, however, 6...Bg7 was played instead of moving into mate in two with 6...Nf6. After 6...Nf6, ten games have 7.g7+ (an error) and 19 have 7.gxh7+. That is still 19 instances of the miniature on the Free Internet Chess Server.

An astounding 22,410 games on Lichess have the nearly fatal 3...f5 and a much higher percent (~20%) of those that continue to follow Greco's line play 6...Nf6. Alas, 7.g7+ is played nearly as often as 7.gxh7+. A total of 818 games on that site conclude with Greco's 8.Bg6#.

If the Chess.com explorer allowed full archive access in that manner afforded by Lichess, surely there would be at least another thousand or so instances of this game. One of my youngest students memorized Greco's game earlier this summer, so the repetitions should continue.


*Please see "My First Chess Book" (2012) for a description of the importance of this book to my early development as a chess player.
**My source for the early records of this and other games is Peter J. Monté, The Classical Era of Modern Chess (2014), "Part II. Openings and Games of the Classical Era of Modern Chess".