Originally posted by sonhouse
Looks like he didn't have to do a lot of end games. Who were his rivals, masters of his caliber? I see Lopez and Philidor. Any others?
This is long before the days of Masters, his is one of the first texts on chess ever written. I found his games (whether they are actually games or just compositions) to be really useful. You can read a book and learn about strategy, but if you are falling for sharp tactics right out of the opening then your 'theory' isn't much good to you. Greco is a good starting point for learning opening tactics, especially if you like the Kings gambit or Ruy Lopez. I would recommend anyone of any strength to spend an afternoon sometime just playing through a ton of his games. Greco points out a lot of opening traps which masters don't include in their books for beginners (or anywhere in fact). You can look at his games and go right ahead and start using these ideas, it's very accessible stuff full of novel ideas. 🙂
EDIT: Like simple traps like this..
[Event "Miscellaneous Game"]
[Site "?"]
[Date "1620.??.??"]
[EventDate "?"]
[Round "19"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Gioachino Greco"]
[Black "NN"]
[ECO "C41"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "11"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.h3 Nf6 4.c3 Nxe4 5.Qa4+ c6 6.Qxe4 1-0
I still get caught out by things like this, one guy has done it to me three times that i can remember. These sort of simple ideas are gold dust to a new player. That is what is great about Greco, you can see typical mistakes and traps all collected together in one place. When he played there was no chess theory, so his games are really just a collection of opening discoveries.
Obviously these are not the strongest moves (definitely not the strongest replies anyway) but that doesn't matter. The purpose of the exercise is to get ideas..