Luis Ramírez de Lucena (c. 1465 – c. 1530) was a Spanish

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

player who published the first extant chess book. He is believed to be the son of humanist writer and diplomat Juan de Lucena.

Book

Lucena wrote the oldest surviving printed book on chess, ''Repetición de Amores y Arte de Ajedrez con CL 50Juegos de Partido'' ("Repetition of Love and the Art of Playing Chess with 150 Games"), published in

Salamanca Salamanca () is a Municipality of Spain, municipality and city in Spain, capital of the Province of Salamanca, province of the same name, located in the autonomous community of Castile and León. It is located in the Campo Charro comarca, in the ...

around 1497. The book includes analysis of eleven

chess opening The opening is the initial stage of a chess game. It usually consists of established Chess_theory#Opening_theory, theory. The other phases are the chess middlegame, middlegame and the chess endgame, endgame. Many opening sequences, known as ''op ...

s but also contains many elementary errors that led chess historian H. J. R. Murray to suggest that it was prepared in a hurry. The book was written when the rules of chess were taking their modern form (see origins of modern chess), and some of the 150 positions in the book are of the old game and some of the new. Fewer than a dozen copies of the book exist. Commentators have suggested that much of the material was copied from Francesc Vicent's now-lost 1495 work ''Libre dels jochs partits dels schacs en nombre de 100''. The Lucena position is named after him, even though it does not appear in his book. (It was first published in 1634 by Alessandro Salvio.) The smothered mate (later named ''Philidor's legacy'') is in the book.See the image of p. 201 of the book
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References

Sources

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External links

Lucena's book online

''Berliner Schach-Erinnerungen nebst den Spielen des Greco und Lucena''
by Baron von der Lasa, Leipzig 1859 - includes German translation and commentary on Lucena's work {{DEFAULTSORT:Lucena, Luis Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism Spanish people of Jewish descent Spanish chess players Spanish chess writers Spanish Roman Catholics 1460s births 1530s deaths 15th-century chess players University of Salamanca alumni People from Lucena, Córdoba