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Friday 2 August 2013

The Petroff - one of the oldest

The Dictionary of Modern Chess by Byrne J. Horton tells us:

[The Petroff Defence] ... is one of the oldest defenses to the King's Knight opening which dates from the Gottingen Manuscripts of 1490. 

It was described by the English master Walker in 1841, carefully analyzed by M. Jaenisch in the Palamède in 1842, and popularized about the same time by the distinguished Russian player von Petroff. Hence, this defense is sometimes known as the Russian Defense.