Alexander Cunningham

1. 1654 - 1737
2. c. 1655 - 1730

Alexander Cunningham - 1: Scottish historian and scholar who gave his name to a gambit which dates back at least to Greco. Owing to patronage by the Duke of Argyll, Cunningham achieved eminence as a diplomatist and from 1715 to 1720 was the British Minister to the Republic of Venice. The first attribution of the gambit to Cunningham is in an unpublished manuscript by Caze, dated Amsterdam, 1706.

Alexander Cunningham - 2: Scottish critic and scholar. Like the above he was patronized by a Whig politician; he lived for a while in The Hague and was an excellent chess-player. There was confusion about the identity of the 'gambit' Cunningham because of the close parallels of the two lives. At one time it was thought that they were the same person, but a letter in the Scot's Magazine, October 1804, established they were two, the writer having examined the wills in Doctors' Commons. Then the gambit was attributed to the critic, an opinion not reversed until Murray published his findings in the British Chess Magazine, 1912.

Cunningham Gambit: a line i the King's Gambit Accepted that was evolved c. 1706 by the Scottish historian. (1. e4 e5 2. f4 exf4 3. Nf3 Be7.) After 4. Bc4 he advocated 4...Bh4+, probably a sound continuation but superseded by 4...Nf6 as recommended by Schlechter in the eighth edition of Bilguer's Handbuch, 1916-21.

Source: The Oxford Companion to Chess, by David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, 1984.

Compiled by Alan McGowan