Philipp Stamma

Philipp Stamma (* around 1705 in Aleppo, Syria; † around June or July 1755 in London) was a Syrian chess master. He was the author of one of the best-known older chess books, Essai sur le jeu des échecs.

Philipp Stamma was born in Aleppo, as he himself stated. His first name is spelt differently in European languages and in written documents ("Filippo", "Phillip", "Philippe"). According to more recent evidence, Stamma's original name was Fathalla, son of Safar Shtamma, and he belonged to a Syrian Catholic notable family.

There is little known about his life. As an adult, he emigrated to Europe to earn a living there as a translator and chess player. Stamma himself mentions stays in Italy and France in the Paris preface. According to the (unknown) author of the first German translation, Stamma is said to have "stayed in Londen [sic] in 1730, but subsequently in Paris for a long time".

Stamma dedicated the first French edition of his work, which appeared in 1737, to a patron, the British statesman Lord Harrington. According to the scant evidence, he lived mainly in London afterwards. There he played chess in "Slaughter's Coffee House". From July 1739, he also worked in the service of King George II as a translator for oriental languages.

Stamma against Philidor in London 1747

Stamma played a match against François-André Danican Philidor in London in 1747, which he lost. The ten games in question have not survived. Philidor is said to have always left the suit to his opponent; in addition, draws were counted as won in Stamma's favour. According to tradition, Philidor won eight games, Stamma two (one of which was a draw according to the rules mentioned above).

A few years ago, Stamma's will (opened on 28 August 1755) was discovered in the British National Archives. According to this, he died around June or July 1755 and left two sons.

The chess book 

Stamma's fame is based on the chess book he wrote, which was published in numerous editions in 18th century Europe. The first edition in Paris contained one hundred chess compositions. An improved English edition followed in London in 1745, The Noble Game of Chess, which also contained 74 game beginnings.

The work continued the tradition of artificial tasks that had been interrupted in the previous two centuries. The "chess secrets" conveyed were intended to enable the learner to use tactical means to free himself from difficult situations in a practical game. In Stamma's exercises, some of which were borrowed from older models, mate threats were usually made against the white king. These were then fended off by sacrifices and a series of check bids until mate (a typical example of a composition by Stamma can be found in the article on the chess study).

Among the openings, he emphasised the importance of the Queen's Gambit. In his famous textbook, Philidor therefore referred to the opening as the "Gambit of Aleppo" after Stamma's home town. Stamma was rather averse to the gambit openings in the narrower sense, in which a pawn is sacrificed. In any case, he criticised his predecessor Gioachino Greco's preference for the King's Gambit in particular: "Nobody plays the gambit unless he wants to lose or is playing against a beginner."

In terms of chess literature, the Syrian master is also important for another reason. Stamma was the first author to use algebraic notation with letters and numbers. The success of his book contributed to the popularisation of this notation, which is still in use today, particularly in Germany. The first German translation was published by Amand König in Strasbourg in 1754 as an appendix to Philidor's textbook. The opening section, which Amand König published separately as Tractat vom Gambitspiel, is also missing in the later German editions. Moses Hirschel then used an improved (detailed) algebraic notation in his 1784 Breslau edition Das Schach des Herrn Gioachino Greco Calabrois und die Schachspiel-Geheimnisse des Arabers Philipp Stamma.

In 1856, an edition of Stamma's "hundred endgames" based on an adaptation by Ludwig Bledow and orientated towards scientific criteria was published.

New edition of the book by Philip Stamma
In November 2015, a new edition of Philip Stamma's 1737 book was published in modernised French under the title Les cent fins de parties de Philippe Stamma[8].

Works
Philippe Stamma: Essai sur le Jeu des Echecs. Emery, Paris 1737 (digitised version).
Philippe Stamma: Essai sur le Jeu des Echecs. Antoine van Dole, La Haye 1741 (reprint of the first edition; digitised version).
Phillip [sic] Stamma: The Noble Game of Chess. J. Brindley, London 1745 (digitised version).
Des Arabers Philipp Stamma, gebürtig von Aleppo in Syrien, entdeckte Schachspiel-Geheimnisse, published by Amand König, Strasbourg 1754 (appended to Philidor: Die Kunst im Schachspiel ein Meister zu werden, from p. 231).
Philipp Stamma: Tractat vom Gambitspiel. Strasbourg 1754.
Moses Hirschel: Das Schach des Herrn Gioachino Greco Calabrois und die Schachspiel-Geheimnisse des Arabers Philipp Stamma, Breslau 1784 (reprint Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-283-00014-X).
Stamma's hundert Endspiele, edited from the 1745 edition, translated by L. Bledow and O. von Oppen, Veit & Comp, Berlin 1856.
Stamma on the Game of Chess, T. and J. Allman, Second Edition, London 1819 (complete English edition, edited by William Lewis).

Notes

A somewhat earlier date around 1700 is also possible. John Roycroft: Philip Stamma. In: British Chess Magazine 124, 2004, p. 603.
 Jean Fathi-Chelhod: Philip Stamma's Assyrian Origin, in: British Chess Magazine, 125 (2005), p. 111.
 'Preface by the translator', in the König edition (1754)
 John Roycroft: Philip Stamma. In: British Chess Magazine 124, 2004, p. 606.
 John Roycroft: Philip Stamma. In: British Chess Magazine 124, 2004, p. 547f. (with a facsimile of the will) and p. 608.
 Analyse du Jeu des Échecs, extended French edition (London 1777), p. 122.
 Quoted from the French edition (1737) in J. H. Sarratt: A Treatise on the Game of Chess, vol. 1, London 1808, p. XVI.
 Philippe Stamma: Les cent fins de parties de Philippe Stamma. Books on Demand, Paris 2015, ISBN 978-2-322-04370-5.

Source: Germain Wikipedia

Others: On Dutch Website ARVES 16 endgame studies with solution by Stamma are selected.