La Bourdonnais–McDonnell Chess Matches
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La Bourdonnais–McDonnell Chess Matches
In 1834, chess masters Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais of France and Alexander McDonnell of Ireland played a series of chess matches. These matches confirmed La Bourdonnais as the leading chess player in the world. Having been played decades before the title of World Chess Champion existed, they are sometimes seen as having unofficially decided the world's best player. It was the first match of importance in the history of chess and is sometimes referred to today as the World Championship of 1834. The games were published widely, and were annotated and discussed by enthusiasts all over Europe. In the course of the mammoth encounter, both players introduced several new innovations, a few of which are still seen today. McDonnell, for instance, introduced the McDonnell Gambit variation of the already popular King%27s Gambit. Considered obsolete by MCO (Modern Chess Openings), this variation is rarely seen today. La Bourdonnais won the first, third, fourth and fifth matches; M ...
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William Lewis (chess Player)
William Lewis (1787–1870) was an English chess player and author, best known for the Lewis Countergambit. He may have been the first player ever described as a Grandmaster of the game. Life and works Born in Birmingham, William Lewis moved as a young man to London where he worked for a merchant for a short period. He became a student of chess player Jacob Sarratt, but in later years he showed himself to be rather ungrateful towards his teacher. Although he considered Sarratt's ''Treatise on the Game of Chess'' (1808) a "poorly written book", in 1822 Lewis published a second edition of it three years after Sarratt's death in direct competition with Sarratt's own superior revision published posthumously in 1821 by Sarratt's poverty-stricken widow. In 1843, many players contributed to a fund to help the old widow, but Lewis' name is not on the list of subscribers. Around 1819 Lewis was the hidden player inside the Turk (a famous automaton), meeting all-comers successfully. He ...
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1834 In Chess
Events January–March * January 1 – Zollverein (Germany): Customs charges are abolished at borders within its member states. * January 3 – The government of Mexico imprisons Stephen F. Austin in Mexico City. * January – The Wilmington and Raleigh Railroad is chartered in Wilmington, North Carolina. * February 3 – Wake Forest University is founded as the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute in Wake Forest, North Carolina. * February 12 – Freed American slaves from Maryland form a settlement in Cape Palmas, it is named the Republic of Maryland. * February 13 – Robert Owen organizes the Grand National Consolidated Trades Union in the United Kingdom. * March 6 – York, Upper Canada, is incorporated as Toronto. * March 11 – The United States Survey of the Coast is transferred to the Department of the Navy. * March 14 – John Herschel discovers the open cluster of stars now known as NGC 3603, observing from the Cape of Good Hope. * March 28 – Andrew Jackso ...
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Chess In London
Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no elements of chance. It is played on a square board consisting of 64 squares arranged in an 8×8 grid. The players, referred to as "White" and "Black", each control sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns, with each type of piece having a different pattern of movement. An enemy piece may be captured (removed from the board) by moving one's own piece onto the square it occupies. The object of the game is to "checkmate" (threaten with inescapable capture) the enemy king. There are also several ways a game can end in a draw. The recorded history of chess goes back to at least the emergence of chaturanga—also thought to be an ancestor to similar games like and —in seventh-century India. After its introduction in Persia, it spread to the Arab world and then to Europe. The modern rules of chess emerged in Europe a ...
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Chess Matches
This is a list of notable chess games sorted chronologically. Pre-1800 * 1475: Francesc de Castellví vs. Narcís de Vinyoles, Valencia 1475. The first documented chess game played with the modern queen and bishop moves; the moves were described in the poem Scachs d'amor. * 1623: Greco–NN, London 1623. Gioachino Greco mates on the eighth move with a queen sacrifice. * 1788: Thomas Bowdler vs Henry Seymour Conway, London. Thomas Bowdler offers the first example of a famous double rook sacrifice. * 1790: Andrew Smith vs François André Philidor, London. François-André Danican Philidor, who was quoted as saying "Pawns are the soul of chess", demonstrates the power of a superior pawn formation. 1800s * 1834: Louis Charles Mahe De La Bourdonnais vs Alexander McDonnell, 50th Match Game, London. Reuben Fine in ''The World's Great Chess Games'' describes it as the first great immortal game of chess. Alexander McDonnell sacrifices his queen for two minor pieces. * 1834: ...
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McDonnell Versus De La Bourdonnais, Match 4 (16), London 1834
The McDonnell Aircraft Corporation was an American aerospace manufacturer based in St. Louis, Missouri. The company was founded on July 6, 1939, by James Smith McDonnell, and was best known for its military fighters, including the F-4 Phantom II, and crewed spacecraft including the Mercury capsule and Gemini capsule. McDonnell Aircraft later merged with the Douglas Aircraft Company to form McDonnell Douglas in 1967. History James McDonnell founded J.S. McDonnell & Associates in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1928 to produce a small aircraft for family use.J.S. McDonnell & Associates, Early years: 1927-1938 (part 1)
, Boeing.com.
The economic depression from 1929 ruined his plans and the company collapsed. He went to work for
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Chess Opening
The opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established Chess_theory#Opening_theory, theory. The other phases are the chess middlegame, middlegame and the chess endgame, endgame. Many opening sequences, known as ''openings'', have standard names such as "Sicilian Defense". ''The Oxford Companion to Chess'' lists 1,327 named openings and variants, and there are many others with varying degrees of common usage. Opening moves that are considered standard are referred to as "book moves", or simply "book". When a game begins to deviate from known Chess theory#Opening theory, opening theory, the players are said to be "out of book". In some openings, book lines have been worked out for over 30 moves, such as some lines in the classical King's Indian Defense and in the Sicilian Defense, Najdorf Variation, Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defense. Professional chess players spend years studying openings, and they continue doing so throughout their careers ...
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