John Herbert White (22 February 1880 – 18 November 1920,

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

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) was co-author with Richard Clewin Griffith of the first three editions of the famous

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

opening

treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions." Tre ...

Modern Chess Openings ''Modern Chess Openings'' (usually called ) is a reference book on chess openings, first published in 1911 by the British players Richard Clewin Griffith (1872–1955) and John Herbert White (1880–1920). The fifteenth edition was published in ...

''. It was first published in 1911 and is still in print. Griffith and White explained in the preface to the first edition that "the many recent master tournaments have rendered necessary an up-to-date book on the Openings" and that "the book is intended to be a guide for match and tournament players". The fifteenth edition, by

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grandmaster Nick de Firmian, was published in 2008. The book is commonly referred to as ''MCO'' today. White was the Secretary of the

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Chess Club. He died in 1920 in a

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accident. Andy Soltis, ''Chess to Enjoy'', Stein and Day, 1980, p. 103. .

Footnotes

{{DEFAULTSORT:White, John Herbert 1880 births 1920 deaths English non-fiction writers British chess writers Chess theoreticians English male non-fiction writers 20th-century English male writers Cycling road incident deaths Road incident deaths in London