La Bourdonnais annotates Philidor++

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As I was working on my next review, I suddenly realized that I would
not have the time to finish it before an accelerated deadline. What
to do? I searched through my backlog of unfinished projects and found
an interesting one which I had sufficient time to complete.

Louis-Charles de La Bourdonnais (1797-1840), widely considered the
unofficial world champion in the 1830s, wrote one book : 'Nouveau
Traité du Jeux des Echecs' ('New Treatise on the Game of Chess'). The
Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KNB) catalog of the Van der Linde -
Niemeijeriana collection lists two editions, 1833 & 1842.

On my last visit to the KNB, I looked at the 1842 edition and
discovered that it is a book for beginners covering chess
fundamentals : openings, simple endgames, things like that. The
longest chapter, 'Positions curieuses' ('Curious positions'), is a
collection of 60 tactical examples which La Bourdonnais considered
particularly interesting.

I photocopied chapter 3, 'Du milieu des parties' ('The middlegame'),
which consists of nine games annotated by La Bourdonnais, copied the
moves & notes into a PGN file, transformed the PGN file to an HTML
page, and loaded the page onto one of my secondary sites...

La Bourdonnais - Du milieu des parties
http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/chw02g01/chw-2g01.htm

...Terrific, no? Hélas, mais non. La Bourdonnais' notes are all in
French, and I haven't yet found the time to translate them into
English. If French is truly a foreign language to you, you'll have to
rely on...

Google Language Tools
http://www.google.be/language_tools?hl=en

...for translation. But there's a little problem here as well. The
address I gave above ('mark_weeks.tripod.com') makes Google choke and
spit out a 'Sorry, this URL is invalid' error message. You'll have to
feed another address to Google...

http://members.tripod.com/~Mark_Weeks/chw02g01/chw-2g01.htm

...which is, in fact, exactly the same page under a different name.

Unfortunately, that's not the only problem with the translation
service. The software assumes that the material is about anything
except chess. The title of the book is translated as 'New Treaty of
the Plays of the Failures', because the word 'chess' in French
('échecs') is the same as the plural for failure ('échec'); the title
of chapter 3 is translated as 'Medium of the parts' for similar
reasons. Another sentence, which could be translated as 'this Bishop,
instead of retreating, could give check', comes out as 'This insane,
instead of withdrawing itself, can give failure'. The translations
for the pieces are almost unrecognizable -- a Queen ('dame') is a
lady, a Rook ('tour') is a tower, a Bishop ('fou') is an insane, and
a Knight ('cavalier') is a rider. Only kings and pawns escape this
treatment. Mercifully, the translation stops about halfway, when
Google reaches its limit for a single translation.

Another problem comes from Tripod.com, which has decided that images
from a Tripod domain requested for a non-Tripod site
constitute 'stealing bandwidth'. Since Google.com is not Tripod.com,
this means that all of the images on the original page are displayed
on the translated page as a generic 'Image hosted by tripod' image
and are thereby lost. Sigh.

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If you happen to be one of the two or three people in the world who
is interested in the correct spelling of La Bourdonnais' full name,
the title page of the book, also shown on my Tripod.com page, offers
a hint. First, let's look at what some heavyweight chess historians
say.

In 'Chess Personalia', Gaige gives 'Louis Charles Mahé de
Labourdonnais', indexed on 'Labourdonnais'. In 'Chess World
Championships, All the Games, 1834-1984', Gelo gives 'Louis de
Labourdonnais', and refers to him as 'Labourdonnais'. In 'The Oxford
Companion to Chess', Hooper & Whyld have an entry under the
heading 'La Bourdonnais', which says only 'see Bourdonnais';
under 'Bourdonnais', they give 'Louis Charles de la Bourdonnais'.
In 'A History of Chess', Murray gives 'Louis Charles Mahé de la
Bourdonnais', indexed by 'Bourdonnais', and referred to elsewhere
as 'De la Bourdonnais'. In the only French reference I have at
hand, 'La fabuleuse histoire des champions d'échecs', Giffard
gives 'Louis Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais', referring to him
elsewhere as 'La Bourdonnais'.

A side by side comparison...

Gaige Labourdonnais Louis Charles Mahé de
Labourdonnais
Gelo Labourdonnais Louis de Labourdonnais
Hooper & Whyld Bourdonnais Louis Charles de la
Bourdonnais
Murray De la Bourdonnais Louis Charles Mahé de la
Bourdonnais
Giffard La Bourdonnais Louis Charles Mahé de La
Bourdonnais

...reveals four variations of the surname and five variations of the
full name. So which is right? According to 'Nouveau Traité du Jeux
des Echecs', none of them! At least none of them are right about the
full name.

On the title page of 'Nouveau Traité', the author's name is given
as 'L.-C. de La Bourdonnais'. Note that the given name is hyphenated
('-'), the family name is three words, and 'de La' uses a peculiar
combination of lower and upper case first letters. A five page
biography in the book's introduction repeats the hyphenation,
introduces the subject as 'M. Mahé de La Bourdonnais', and refers to
him thereafter as 'La Bourdonnais'.

So the Frenchman Giffard was the closest to L-CdLB's preferred
spelling. 'Mahé' appears to be correct, although optional. 'Louis
Charles', however, should be hyphenated as 'Louis-Charles', which
also conforms to modern convention. I've met dozens of Frenchmen with
names like 'Jean-Marie', 'Jean-Marc', and 'Pierre-Charles', but I've
never met a single one who preferred to be called simply 'Jean'
or 'Pierre'.

In any case, 'La Bourdonnais' is clearly the preferred spelling of
the surname. I've used both 'La Bourdonnais' and 'Labourdonnais' in
the past, but will be consistent in the future.

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I also became curious about the origin of the games selected by La
Bourdonnais. He wrote, 'This chapter contains nine games. The first,
the second, the eighth and the ninth belong to Philidor. The third
was played recently by two strong French amateurs; the fourth, the
fifth, and the sixth, were played by correspondence between the club
of London and the club of Edinburgh. Lastly, the seventh was played
by an English amateur of great force and by the author of this work.'

Using the database search function at Chesslab...

Two million interactive chess games online
http://www.chesslab.com/PositionSearch.html

...I identified the five games which were not played by Philidor. The
game played 'by two strong French amateurs' is Boncourt - St.Amant,
Paris 1837; the three London - Edinburgh correspondence games are
among a total of five on the Chesslab database; and the game between
La Bourdonnais and 'an English amateur of great force' is La
Bourdonnais - Cochrane, Paris 1821, which La Bourdonnais lost, and
which is the only La Bourdonnais game on the Chesslab database played
before 1830.

If you'd like more information on the London - Edinburgh
correspondence games, which were tremendous struggles, see...

The Edinburgh vs. London Match
http://www.correspondencechess.com/games/exhibit1.htm

...What about the Philidor games? Assuming they were played by
Philidor -- 'appartiennent', literally 'belong to', could also refer
to a collection of games owned by Philidor (I admit, it's a stretch) -
- I'm not even certain which color Philidor played in each game.
Chesslab has only 15 games played by 'Philidor'; five of these are
from the 1983 World Computer Chess Championship and were played
by 'Philidor X', which finished close to the bottom of the final
standings.

A Google search on 'Philidor PGN', returned several hundred pages,
but most of these were collections of Philidor's Defense (ECO C41;
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6). A page on Schachgeschichte.de promised six games
by Philidor, but when I downloaded the file, it contained only Morphy
games. Finally, I learned on...

Philidor 1747 - 1795
http://www.worldchessnetwork.com/English/chessHistory/salute/kings/phi
lidor.php

...that 'David Levy and Kevin O'Connell, Oxford Encyclopedia of Chess
Games (Oxford University Press, 1981), contain[s] all 78 of
Philidor's surviving games and segments of games'. Now all I have to
do is locate a copy of this hard-to-find book.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks

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