PHILLIDOR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 December 1940, Page 6

PHILLIDOR

MARVEL OF CHESS-PLAYING " ' WORLD. Perhaps you remember reading about Phillidor? He is famous in his own line, and though he has been eclipsed in the last half century, he remains a most interesting figure to all lovers of the ancient and royal game of chess. , He was something more than a chess-player, however. His real name was Francois Andre Danican, and he was born at Dreux in France in 1726. In youth he was one of the pages at the court of Louis the Fourteenth, and even in his early years he was well known as a distinguished musician. He wrote music for several operettas, though all are now forgotten. But his name—the assumed name of Phillidor—lingers still, and he is known, not as a musician, and not as a brilliant courtier, but as a chess player. They say he used to play imaginary games in bed when he was only eight, and there is no denying that for 40 years of the 18th century he was the marvel of the chess-playing world. No one could beat him. In France, Holland. Germany, and England he was supreme. The French Revolution drove him to England as a refugee, and it was in England that he died in 1795. Long after he had gone people talked of his book on chess, of his skill in the game, and of two things which amazed the world at that time, his ability to play chess blindfold, and his ability to keep up a lively conversation.

The first has been eclipsed, but the second has never been beaten—for Phillidor played two or three games of chess at once, and talked not merely empty talk, but brilliant conversational philosophy.