Whilst the players who contended against Philidor at the slightest
shade of odds included Sir Abraham Janssens, the Hon. Henry
Conway, Count Bruhl, Mr. George Atwood (mathematician and
one of Pitt's financial secretaries), Dr. Black, the Rev. Mr.
Boudler, and Mr. Cotter. Stamma, of Aleppo, engaged in London
on works of translation, and who was one of the best chess players,
was matched against Philidor, but won only one out of eight games.
These contests took place at Slaughter's Coffee House, in St.
Martin's Lane, long a principal meeting place for leading chess
players. Philidor does not seem to have tried more than two
games blindfold, but such was the astonishment they caused at the
time, that doubts were expressed whether such an intellectual feat
would ever be repeated; and certainly from the tenor of press
notices of the event, and Philidor's own memoranda, it seems that
it could not have been contemplated or conceived that
performances on the scale we have witnessed in our days by Louis
Paulsen, 1; Paul Morphy, 2; J. H. Blackburne, 3; and Dr. J. H.
Zukertort, 4, would become, comparatively speaking, so common
in a future generation.
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