Philipp Stamma
Philippe Stamma - Essai sur le jeu des echecs.
Country	England
Born	c. 1705 Aleppo, Syria
Died	c. 1755 London

Philipp Stamma (c.1705–1755), a native of Aleppo, Syria, later resident of England and France, was a chess master and a pioneer of modern chess. Stamma was a regular at Slaughter's Coffee House in St. Martin's Lane (London), a center of 18th century English chess, and was considered one of England's strongest players.

His reputation rests largely on his authorship of the early chess book Essai sur le jeu des echecs published 1737 in France (English translation: The Noble Game Of Chess 1745). This book brought the Middle Eastern concept of the endgame to the attention of Europe and helped revive European interest in the study of the endgame.

Stamma was defeated quite handily by Philidor in a famous match in 1747, which marked the beginning of Philidor's rise to fame.

Stamma's book introduced algebraic chess notation in an almost fully developed form before the now obsolete descriptive chess notation evolved. Philidor's writings had more influence after his victory over Stamma, and the descriptive system based on Philidor's approach was dominant for a long time.^[1] The main difference between Stamma's system and the modern system is that Stamma used "p" for pawn moves and the original file of the piece ("a" through "h") instead of the initial letter of the piece.^[2]

His name is attached to the Stamma Gambit in the King's Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.h4).^[3]

He died in London in 1755, with two sons surviving him.

[edit] See also

• Stamma's mate

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Gaige, Jeremy (1987), Chess Personalia, A Biobibliography, McFarland & Company, pp. 403, ISBN 0-7864-2353-6 
• John Roycroft: Philip Stamma, in: British Chess Magazine, 124 (2004), pp. 544-549, 603-608

Persondata
NAME	Stamma, Philipp
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Chess master
DATE OF BIRTH	c.1705
PLACE OF BIRTH
DATE OF DEATH	1755
PLACE OF DEATH