Luis Ramírez de Lucena was a Spanish chess player who published the first still-existing chess book. He was probably the son of the humanist writer and diplomat Juan de Lucena, from a family of Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism. Lu...

Paolo Boi was an Italian chess player. He is considered to have been one of the greatest chess players of the 16th century. He was born in Syracuse, Sicily (now Italy) and died in Naples. Historian H. J. R. Murray says he was poisoned by...

Rodrigo (Ruy) López de Segura was a Spanish priest and later bishop in Segura whose 1561 book Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez was one of the first definitive books about modern chess in Europe, preceded only by Pe...

Giovanni Leonardo di Bona or Giovanni Leonardo da Cutri, known as Il Puttino (Italian Small Child), was an early Italian chess master. Giovanni Leonardo was born in Cutro, Calabria. He studied law in Rome. In 1560, he lost a match to Ruy...

Alessandro Salvio was an Italian chess player who is considered to be the unofficial world champion around the year 1600. He started an Italian chess academy in Naples, Italy, and wrote a book called Trattato dell'Inventione et Arte Liberal...

Gioachino Greco was an Italian chess player and writer. He recorded some of the earliest chess games known. His games, all against anonymous opponents ("NN"), were quite possibly constructs (Hooper & Whyld 1992), but served as highly useful...

François Antoine de Legall de Kermeur was a French chess player. His name is variously written Kermur, Sire de Legalle, by Twiss, and Kermur and Kermuy, Sire de Legal, by others. In the List of Subscribers to Philidor's second edition it st...

François-André Danican Philidor, often referred to as André Danican Philidor during his lifetime, was a French composer and chess player. He contributed to the early development of the opéra comique. He was also regarded as the best chess p...

Alexandre Deschapelles was a French chess player who, between the death of Philidor and the arrival of Louis de la Bourdonnais, was probably the strongest player in the world. He was considered the unofficial world champion from about 1800–...

Louis-Charles Mahé de La Bourdonnais was a French chess master, possibly the strongest player in the early 19th century. La Bourdonnais was born on the island of La Réunion in the Indian Ocean in 1795. He learned chess in 1814 and began...

Howard Staunton was an English chess master who is generally regarded as having been the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Saint-Amant. He promoted a chess set of clearly distinguishabl...

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world's leading chess player for much of the 1850s and 1860s. He was quite soundly defeated by Paul Morphy who toured Europe in 1858, but Morphy retired...

Wilhelm (later William) Steinitz was an Austrian and later American chess Master player, and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. He was also a highly influential writer and chess theoretician. When discussing che...

Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy. He was called "The Pride and Sorrow of Chess" because he ha...

Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading Polish chess master. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, generally regarded as the first World...