Philipp Stamma

His reputation rests largely on his authorship of the early chess book Essai sur le jeu des echecs published 1737 in France (English translation: The Noble Game Of Chess 1745).

Stamma was a regular at Slaughter's Coffee House in St Martin's Lane, London, a center of 18th-century English chess, and was considered one of England's strongest players.

Apart from the higher skills of Philidor, Ludwig Bledow and Otto von Oppen have suggested that his defeat could be attributed to the fact that Stamma, in Ottoman Syria, was used to playing with the Arabic rules and only after his arrival to Europe got acquainted with the Western rules.

Bledow and Oppen also commented that the match was poorly documented, being mentioned only by Philidor's biographers, who frequently contradicted each other.

A new translation of Stamma's book into modern French appeared in November 2015 under the title Les cent fins de parties de Philippe Stamma.