John Cochrane (chess player)

His best-known opening innovations are generally regarded as dubious, although the Cochrane Gambit is still occasionally used as a surprise weapon in master chess.

[2] As a youth Cochrane was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and is said to have served aboard HMS Bellerophon when the ship transported Napoleon Bonaparte to Britain in 1815.

The downsizing of the Navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars made promotion prospects poor, and Cochrane switched to a career as a barrister, apparently joining the Middle Temple without first attending a university.

The first records of John Cochrane as a chess-player are five games (−3 =1 +1) played receiving the pawn and move from The Turk (operated, at the time, by Mouret) in 1819.

[4] In 1822 published A Treatise on the Game of Chess,[5] of which the section on odds was based on the Traité des Amateurs, written by Verdoni, Bernard, Carlier and Leger.

The best-known game of this match was the second, in which, according to Howard Staunton, the London team obtained a winning position by following Cochrane's plan, but blundered after his departure.

Naturally he spent a lot of time at the top London chess clubs, where he beat almost everyone[3] – including Pierre de Saint-Amant, who was France's strongest player.

[7] During the second part of Cochrane's career in India his main opponents were the Indian players Moheschunder Bannerjee and Saumchurn Guttack also known as Somacarana or Shyamacharan Ghatak.

[3] His enthusiasm for chess remained equally strong, although he restricted himself to casual games that typically lasted about 15 minutes – many of them with the veteran master Johann Löwenthal (1810–1876).

[3] Cochrane was one of the earliest notable British chess masters, his playing career beginning during those of Jacob Henry Sarratt (1772–1819) and William Lewis (1787–1870).

He played against Labourdonnais before anyone had heard of the Frenchman's great opponent Alexander McDonnell, and was a successful writer about the game in 1822, when Howard Staunton was a schoolboy.