John Cochrane (4 February 1798 – 2 March 1878) was a Scottish chess master and lawyer. After serving in the Royal Navy Cochrane chose to become a barrister. While studying law, he became a very strong chess player and published a book on the game, which included the Cochrane variation of the Salvio Gambit, a main line of the King's Gambit. Around this time he played against the Frenchmen Deschapelles and Labourdonnais, who were acknowledged to be Europe's strongest players at the time.
After a long tour of duty in India, he returned to the UK and beat everyone except Howard Staunton, whom he then helped to prepare for his victorious match against the Frenchman Saint-Amant, which established Staunton as the world's leading player. Cochrane returned to India, where he became known as the "Father of the Calcutta Bar" (association of barristers) and a leading member of the Calcutta Chess Club; the Club and Cochrane personally both made significant financial contributions to the first international chess tournament, which Staunton organised. Cochrane continued to play chess and to send games to the UK for publication, mostly in Staunton's columns. His two main opponents were Indians, and against one of them he made the first recorded use of the Cochrane Gambit against Petrov's Defence. When he returned to the UK for good, Cochrane continued to practise law part-time, mainly in important cases that arose in India, and wrote articles and books about the law. By this time he was too old for serious chess competition but played many casual games with strong players.
Cochrane is credited with discovering the Cochrane Defense, a technique to draw the difficult endgame defence of a rook against a rook and bishop. Cochrane is known for his dashing playing style – liberally sacrificing pieces and always attacking. His best-known opening innovations are generally regarded as dubious, although the Cochrane Gambit is still occasionally used as a surprise weapon in master chess. Commentators during his life and after his death expressed strong affection for him.
Biography
Cochrane was "a member of a distinguished Scottish family of which the Earl of Dundonald was the head". He was probably the son of John Cochrane, an army paymaster and merchant and the son of Thomas Cochrane, 8th Earl of Dundonald. As a youth Cochrane was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and is said to have served aboard HMS Bellerophon when the ship transported Napoleon Bonaparte to Britain in 1815. The downsizing of the Navy after the end of the Napoleonic Wars made promotion prospects poor, and Cochrane switched to a career as a barrister, apparently joining the Middle Temple without first attending a university.
While he was a student he first came to notice as a chess player. The first records of John Cochrane as a chess-player are five games (−3 =1 +1) played receiving the pawn and move from The Turk (operated, at the time, by Mouret) in 1819. In 1822 published A Treatise on the Game of Chess, of which the section on odds was based on the Traité des Amateurs, written by Verdoni, Bernard, Carlier and Leger. However Cochrane's book contained significant amounts of his own analysis, including the Cochrane variation of the Salvio Gambit, a line in the King's Gambit. It is known that Cochrane played against Deschapelles and Labourdonnais, who were acknowledged to be Europe's strongest players from 1800 to 1820 and from 1820 to 1840 respectively; his games against them may have been played between 1822 and 1824, but by the time of Cochrane's death commentators were unsure of the dates.
Soon after qualifying as a barrister, Cochrane decided to make his career in India. Before he left, however, he took a leading part for the London team in the early stages of a correspondence match against an Edinburgh team, which lasted from 1824 to 1828, and which the Edinburgh team won. The best-known game of this match was the second, in which, according to Howard Staunton, the London team obtained a winning position by following Cochrane's plan, but blundered after his departure. In India Cochrane became a successful and respected barrister, and also lost no opportunity to play chess with other expatriates and with Indians.