Serafino Dubois - Dubois and Italian Chess

Dubois and Italian Chess

Dubois moved to the Netherlands in April 1863 and reputedly stayed for about two years. However, he couldn't get used to the climate and returned to Rome where he concentrated on his writing and his promotion of the Italian rules of the game.

From the late 1850s to the early 1870s Serafino Dubois corresponded regularly with French and Russian masters about how to achieve unity in the rules of chess. In particular he was an avid supporter of free castling which was permitted under the Italian rules of the game but not elsewhere in Europe. Under free castling the King and Rook, after jumping over each other, could go to any square up to and including the other's starting point, provided neither piece attacked an enemy piece.

There were other significant differences in the Italian rules too: taking a pawn "en passant" was forbidden and, interestingly, pawns could only be promoted into pieces captured during the game. There was an added twist to the latter rule - if a pawn reached the eighth rank before any piece of its colour had been captured, it had to wait there 'suspended' until a piece was captured, at which time the promotion was possible.

Dubois discussed these issues in his writings of the time. In 1847 he became the editor of the first Italian chess column, L'Album in Rome and by 1859 he was co-editor with Augusto Ferrante of the chess journal La Rivista degli Scacchi which was also based in his home city. He published a three volume work on the differences in the rules between the Italian and French versions from 1868-73 in which he tried hard to defend the practice of free castling.

However by the 1880s Italy toed the line and adopted the normal European laws of chess although it wasn't until the end of the century that the new rules were widely accepted throughout the country.