Joseph Bertin

Who was Joseph Bertin?

Captain Joseph Bertin was one of the first authors to write about the game of chess. David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld in The Oxford Companion to Chess call his book The Noble Game of Chess "the first worthwhile chess book in the English language". B. Goulding Brown, writing in the December 1932 British Chess Magazine, called it the first original English chess book.

Bertin was a Huguenot born at Castelmoron-sur-Lot in the 1690s. He came to England during his youth, became a naturalized citizen in 1713, and married in 1719. In 1726, he joined a line regiment serving in the West Indies. He was later promoted to the rank of Captain, and ultimately was released from the Army as an invalid. In 1735 he published a small volume entitled The Noble Game of Chess. In the same year, he was recommissioned in a Regiment of Invalids and, according to Hooper and Whyld, "In all probability he died soon afterwards."

The Noble Game of Chess was sold only at Slaughter's Coffee House. It contained opening analysis and useful advice about the middlegame, and laid down 19 rules for chess play. Most of them are still useful today. Some examples:

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