A Greco Game that you have not seen!

This game is one of 94 that appear in Francis Beale, The Royall Game of Chesse-Play (1656). All of these are variations of games that you can find in the database, but Beale offers substantially different variations. Only nine of Beale's Greco games are in the database, and Beale carries three of these further (more moves).

In the one I present below, the database version ends with checkmate on move 14. Beale offers several versions where Black's defense is more stubborn. This one is the longest. If not for a strategic error (pointed out by William Lewis in his version of Greco's games in 1819), Black would have been slightly better. Later, Black still had a chance for equality.

I think this game has the potential to challenge what many people think about the quality of Greco's compositions.

And another, showing the multitude of Greco's variations and the MSS as listed by Peter J. 

Monté. The Classical Era of Modern Chess. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2014.

Some serious calculations involved 😬

This game's score is incorrect in ChessBase and most everywhere else because H.J.R. Murray (1913) made a copying error. But, it is corrected on chessgames now.

Here's one that you have seen and should know because I've played it at least three times on this site.

I'm going through and translating Beale's Royall Game of Chesse Play.  I also found Greco and other early masters criminally underestimated, much to my chagrin, as explained in this blog post...

https://www.chess.com/blog/MC-hammered/could-you-beat-greco-learning-from-the-old-masters

Did Polerio invent Greco's famous classic bishop sacrifice?

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2022/03/classic-bishop-sacrifice-early-history.html

Also

http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2022/06/classic-bishop-sacrifice-before-greco.html

Wow, absolutely beautiful. Of course, Greco's analyses in the Open Italian is well known, but the game in post #1 was eye-opening. Kinda like a forerunner to the Bronstein-Rojahn game.

Greco appears to have invented the From Counter Gambit, although Black's play in the line he offers serves mostly as a lesson against bringing out the queen prematurely.

I have all of Beale's games in a database.

You won't find this game in any databases, but Gioachino Greco included it in two manuscripts: the Libretto (undated, but likely composed in Rome in December 1619) and Lorraine (1621, Nancy). Later manuscripts beginning with the Mountstephen (1623, London) offer 8...Nh6 and one game in ChessBase contains this line, although Greco's manuscripts offer several variations from that point.

This game up to White's 19th move is found in databases with the continuation that Greco presented in the Paris manuscripts of 1624 and 1625. However, a year or so earlier in England, he presented at least two manuscripts with a different Black response. These manuscripts were presented to Sir Francis Godolphin (no date, likely 1622 or 1623), and to Nicholas MountStephen (1623). Francis Beale, working from a manuscript now lost, presented the game in his The Royall Game of Chesse-Play (1656).

Greco was the first true chess master.

Have you seen how much he learned from Giulio Cesare Polerio?

No, but he was a much more imaginative in his tactics than Ruy Lopez de Segura, who is the best known master from the previous century.

You have probably seen a version of this game with a slightly different finish, as it appears in the usual sources. However, this is an older version from Greco's Libretto manuscript, one of the four from Rome 1619-1620.

This longer game, also in the Libretto MS demonstrates that a generalization frequently repeated is wrong. On Wikipedia, we read, "During his stay in London, Greco began recording entire chess games rather than single instructive positions, as had been the usual manner." There is a footnote to Murray.

In London, however, he deviated from this game on Black's move 17 and carried it all the way to checkmate. Both the Godolphin and MountStephen MSS contain the game, but you won't find it in any databases nor at chessgames.com.

Greco is known from this game, which does end with some sharp moves that players do not always find easily.

However, that entire game is the work of Giulio Cesare Polerio. Greco improved upon it with the game in the post above and this one.