Great Players: Alexander Petrov

Every so often, someone comes up with a really cool depiction of something, and this Youtube video illustrating the top chess players through history is well worth a look:

 So naturally one of the things I did was look at it to see how it meshed with my understanding of chess history. Most of the names that had made it to #1 were very familiar to me, with a few exceptions; I knew very little of Kolisch, von der Lasa, Alexandre and this article's subject, Alexander Petrov (1794-1867).

 So who was he? His Wikipedia article gives little detail, and nor does his collection of games on Chessbase - it's the same problem I had with Philidor, where very few of his games are preserved, and those that are were not against the other leading players of his day. (In Petrov's case, this was probably an issue of travelling distance - the main centres of chess activity were clearly in Western Europe - most of the other top players were British, French or German - and in those days, travel from Russia was probably rather more difficult than it is nowadays.)

Like Philidor, I could find no instances of him playing the opening that bears his name, although I did find some games where he played against it. Again, it seems like the same situation - the opening bears his name because he, in collaboration with Carl Jänisch, did a lot of the early work analysing it.

 Looking at what games we do have, it's clear that he was part of the Romantic school of the mid-19th century; very keen on rapid development and opening lines for attacks.

 




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