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Joseph Bertin

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Joseph Bertin
Full nameJoseph Bertin
Country France
 England
Born1690s
Diedc. 1736

Captain Joseph Bertin (1690s – c. 1736) was one of the first authors to write about the game of chess. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld in The Oxford Companion to Chess call his book The Noble Game of Chess "the first worthwhile chess book in the English language". B. Goulding Brown, writing in the December 1932 British Chess Magazine, called it the first original English chess book.

Bertin was a Huguenot born at Castelmoron-sur-Lot in the 1690s. He came to England during his youth, became a naturalized citizen in 1713, and married in 1719. In 1726, he joined a line regiment serving in the West Indies. He was later promoted to the rank of Captain, and ultimately was released from the Army as an invalid. In 1735 he published a small volume entitled The Noble Game of Chess. In the same year, he was recommissioned in a Regiment of Invalids and, according to Hooper and Whyld, "In all probability he died soon afterwards."

The Noble Game of Chess was sold only at Slaughter's Coffee House. It contained opening analysis and useful advice about the middlegame, and laid down 19 rules for chess play. Most of them are still useful today. Some examples:

"2. Never play your Queen, till your game is tolerably well opened, that you may not lose any moves; and a game well opened gives a good situation."
"3. You must not give useless checks, for the same reason."
"8. Consider well before you play, what harm your adversary is able to do to you, that you may oppose his designs."
"18. To play well the latter end of a game, you must calculate who has the move, on which the game always depends." (This is a reference to zugzwang.)

Bertin attached great value to maintaining White's first-move advantage. The book also contained 26 games, with each variation analyzed being treated as a separate game. They were divided into "gambets" and "the close-game".

Problem

abcdefgh
8a8 black bishopc8 black rookd8 black kinge8 black rookc7 black bishope7 black pawnf7 black knighta6 white rookd6 black pawne6 white queene5 white pawnf5 black pawnh5 black pawna4 white knightd4 white pawnf4 white pawnb3 white knighte3 black queeng3 black pawnh3 white pawng2 white pawnd1 white bishopf1 white king8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
abcdefgh
Bertin, White to play and win
abcdefgh
8c8 black rooke8 black rookc7 black bishope7 black pawnf7 black knighta6 white rookc6 white bishope6 black kingd5 white pawne5 white pawnf5 black pawnh5 black pawnf4 white pawne3 black queeng3 black pawnh3 white pawng2 white pawnf1 white king8
77
66
55
44
33
22
11
abcdefgh
Bertin, final position

At left is a chess problem from page 54 of Bertin's book. White wins with 1.Qd7+! Kxd7 2.Nbc5+ Kd8 3.Ne6+ Kd7 4.Nac5+ dxc5 5.Nxc5+ Ke8 6.Ne6+ Kd7 7.Ba4+ Bc6 8.Bxc6+ Kxe6 9.d5#.

References

  1. I.A. Horowitz, Chess Openings: Theory and Practice, Simon and Schuster, 1964, p. VII.
  2. ^ David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. 1992, p. 38. ISBN 0-19-866164-9.
  3. ^ Philip W. Sergeant, A Century of British Chess, David McKay, p. 23.
  4. H. J. R. Murray, A History of Chess, Oxford University Press, 1913, pp. 846-47. ISBN 0-19-827403-3.
  5. Hooper & Whyld, pp. 38-39.
  6. ^ Murray, p. 847.
  7. David DeLucia, David DeLucia's Chess Library: A Few Old Friends (2nd ed. 2007), p. 65.
  8. A.J. Roycroft, Test Tube Chess, Stackpole Books, 1972, p. 73. ISBN 0-8117-1734-8.
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