The Philidor Defence is named after François-André Danican Philidor, the leading chess master of the second half of the 18th century and a pioneer of modern chess strategy.

The two began in the Sicilian Defense, an opening that the book “ Modern Chess Openings ” assures is “active and unsymmetrical.” (In other words, lots of action, with very different setups ...

Italian researchers suspect the hand-drawn chess diagrams discovered in the only-known copy of “De Ludo Scacchorum” were done by Leonardo da Vinci, La Repubblica reported this week.