Edgard Colle
Encyclopedia
Edgard Colle was a Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

 chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 master
Chess master
A chess master is a chess player of such skill that he/she can usually beat chess experts, who themselves typically prevail against most amateurs. Among chess players, the term is often abbreviated to master, the meaning being clear from context....

. He scored excellent results in major international tournaments, including first at Amsterdam 1926, ahead of Savielly Tartakower
Savielly Tartakower
Ksawery Tartakower was a leading Polish and French chess Grandmaster. He was also a leading chess journalist of the 1920s and 30s...

 and future world champion
World Chess Championship
The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....

 Max Euwe
Max Euwe
Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...

; first at Meran 1926, ahead of Esteban Canal
Esteban Canal
Esteban Canal was a leading Peruvian chess player who had his best tournament results in the 1920s and 1930s.-Birth and life:Born in Chiclayo, Peru, he moved to Italy in the 1920s and remained there.-As a chess player:...

; and first at Scarborough 1930, ahead of Maróczy
Géza Maróczy
Géza Maróczy was a leading Hungarian chess Grandmaster, one of the best players in the world in his time. He was also a practicing engineer.-Early career:...

 and Rubinstein
Akiba Rubinstein
Akiba Kiwelowicz Rubinstein was a famous Polish chess Grandmaster at the beginning of the 20th century. He was scheduled to play a match with Emanuel Lasker for the world championship in 1914, but it was cancelled because of the outbreak of World War I...

.

Colle's playing career was hampered by ill health. He survived three difficult operations for a gastric ulcer
Peptic ulcer
A peptic ulcer, also known as PUD or peptic ulcer disease, is the most common ulcer of an area of the gastrointestinal tract that is usually acidic and thus extremely painful. It is defined as mucosal erosions equal to or greater than 0.5 cm...

 and died after a fourth at the age of 34 in Ghent.

Legacy

Colle is remembered today primarily for his introduction of the chess opening
Chess opening
A chess opening is the group of initial moves of a chess game. Recognized sequences of opening moves are referred to as openings as initiated by White or defenses, as created in reply by Black. There are many dozens of different openings, and hundreds of named variants. The Oxford Companion to...

 now known as the Colle System
Colle System
The Colle System is a chess opening strategy for White introduced by Belgian Edgard Colle in the 1920s. Also known as the Colle–Koltanowski system, played frequently and further developed by George Koltanowski, this variation of the Queen's Pawn Game is characterised by a systematic if modest...

: 1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3. White
White and Black in chess
In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...

 normally follows up with Bd3, 0-0, and Nbd2, playing for a central pawn break with e4. The opening is in effect a reversed Semi-Slav Defense
Semi-Slav Defense
The Semi-Slav Defense is a variation of the Queen's Gambit chess opening, defined by the position reached after the moves:For the Semi-Slav the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings designates codes D43 through D49.-Main variations:...

. In response to ...c5 by Black
White and Black in chess
In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...

, White typically plays c3. The Colle System was most often played in the late 1920s and 1930s. Colle himself played it from 1925 until his death in 1932. He won many games with the opening, including a number of brilliancies. Colle-O'Hanlon, Nice 1930, featuring one of the best-known examples of a Greek gift sacrifice
Greek gift sacrifice
In chess, the Greek gift sacrifice or classical bishop sacrifice is a typical sacrifice of a bishop by White playing Bxh7+ or Black playing Bxh2+....

, is especially famous.

The opening gained popularity, especially in the United States, through the efforts of Belgian-American International Master (and later honorary grandmaster) George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski
George Koltanowski was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world...

, who remained faithful to it throughout his long career, and wrote several books on it. Koltanowski said he played the opening as a tribute to his friend Colle. The opening is sometimes referred to as the Colle–Koltanowski.

The Colle System fell out of favor in high-level play as good defenses were found for Black
White and Black in chess
In chess, the player who moves first is referred to as "White" and the player who moves second is referred to as "Black". Similarly, the pieces that each conducts are called, respectively, "the white pieces" and "the black pieces". The pieces are often not literally white and black, but some...

. Chess theory
Chess theory
The game of chess is commonly divided into three phases: the opening, middlegame, and endgame. As to each of these phases, especially the opening and endgame, there is a large body of theory as how the game should be played...

 today regards it as safe but somewhat passive. However, because of its solid pawn structure
Pawn structure
In chess, the pawn structure is the configuration of pawns on the chessboard. Since pawns are the least mobile of the chess pieces, the pawn structure is relatively static and thus largely determines the strategic nature of the position.-General observations:Weaknesses in the pawn structure, such...

, logical piece
Chess piece
Chess pieces or chessmen are the pieces deployed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. The pieces vary in abilities, giving them different values in the game...

 placement, and coherent strategic aims, the opening is often taught to novice players as a safe and dependable way to reach a playable middlegame. Thus, the Colle System is frequently seen in amateur and scholastic tournaments, but is not common in professional play. However, it has been used in recent times by grandmasters Pia Cramling
Pia Cramling
Pia Cramling is a Swedish chess grandmaster. Since the early 1980s, she has been one of the strongest female players in the world....

, Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar is a Hungarian-American chess Grandmaster...

, and most notably Artur Yusupov
Artur Yusupov
Artur Mayakovich Yusupov is a German International Grandmaster of chess, and a chess writer.-Chess career:...

, who prefers to play with b3 and a queenside fianchetto
Fianchetto
In chess the fianchetto is a pattern of development wherein a bishop is developed to the second rank of the adjacent knight file, the knight pawn having been moved one or two squares forward....

, a setup known as the Colle–Zukertort
Johannes Zukertort
Johannes Hermann Zukertort was a leading chess master of German-Polish-Jewish origin. He was one of the leading world players for most of the 1870s and 1880s, and lost to Wilhelm Steinitz in the World Chess Championship 1886, which is generally seen as the first World Chess Championship match, he...

.

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