4 ms·
The Pirc spike in the 1850s looks interesting visually, but keep in mind that your data set back then is incredibly small. Looking at my own database, the spike
by dfan 12y ago
The Pirc spike in the 1850s looks interesting visually, but keep in mind that your data set back then is incredibly small. Looking at my own database, the spike seems to be entirely due to some guy name Mahescandra playing it 57 times against Cochrane. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with the increasing popularity of 1.d4 40 years later.
I've never heard of Mahescandra, but Cochrane is the guy the famous Cochrane gambit in the Petroff is named after, where White sacrifices a piece on move 4 (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nxf7).
- rhiever 12y agoI double-checked my data set to look into this, and you're right. Nearly all of the Pircs in that time period were done by a guy named Moheschunder Bannerjee: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moheschunder_Bannerjee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moheschunder_Bannerjee He contributed to the development of the Indian Defence.
- Blahah 12y agoWhy do you all have your own datasets of historical chess moves? Is this a popular playground for data analysis, or is it something chess learners study?