DEFENCE

Defence is the correlative of attack. Emanuel Lasker used to say: the art of strengthening obstructions, of giving firmness to your position,and of averting the blow directed against you. A move or moves played with the object of countering the opponent’s threats. A description of an opening, or an opening variation, initiated by Black. The name does not necessarily imply passive play: some defences are aggressive. Composers use the word defence in a special sense: in a direct mate threat problem any move by Black that forestalls White’s threat (using this word in its problem) is a defence.

Novel by the Russian-American author Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977) about a chess master who becomes obsessed with the game and loses his mind. Originally written in Russian (1930) as Luzhin’s Defence, under the pseudonym V. Sirin, it appeared in English in 1964.