Book Description

According to data available at this time the first draughts book written in Valencia in 1547 was titled El Ingenio o juego de marro, de punta o Damas. This is indicated by Nicolao Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus, 1696 Volume I, page 165. I am able to write about this draughts book, because I came to possession of a copy of this book. The cost was rather high, but it was worthwhile to fly to Amsterdam in 1988 to obtain this copy, of which the original is now in unknown hands in Madrid. The positions of the diagrams, letters, and language that I could reproduce here are nearly identical to the original book, thus diagrams with almost the same nice decoration and with almost the same old Spanish letters and the same language of the XV century. Furthermore I reproduced the same positions of the diagrams, thus using the white squares for the pawns and having the long diagonal on the right hand. The drawing of the pawns and Dama are exactly the same as appearing in the original book.