of 5,000 crowns. Greco was apparently waylaid during this journey, however, resulting in the loss of his newfound wealth. Undeterred, he continued to London and played the English chess elite. During his stay in London, Greco began recording entire chess games rather than single instructive positions, as had been the usual manner. Greco returned to Paris in 1624 and began rewriting his collection of manuscripts. It is unclear whether he actually played these games – to modern eyes, his opponents' play seems dubious at best. The games' provenance is perhaps inessential; having composed them, Greco was "certainly capable of playing them" on a board. Not one to remain in one place for long, Greco left Paris for the court of Philip IV in Spain. Greco managed to defeat all his opponents there, as well. By this point Greco had shown himself to be the greatest player in Europe with victories over the champions of Rome, Paris, London, and Madrid. Having conquered the Old World, Greco traveled to the New. Greco is said to have succumbed to disease in the West Indies soon after arriving. The exact date of his death is unknown, but most sources have him dead by 1634. His chess earnings were given to the Jesuits. Legacy Greco was a remarkable chess player who lived during the era between Ruy López de Segura and François-André Danican Philidor. At that early date, no great corpus of chess knowledge had yet been amassed. It is for this reason that Greco's games should be understood as those of a brilliant inventor and pioneer rather than as guides to sound play. They are also valuable examples of the Italian Romantic school of chess, in which and are eschewed in favour of aggressive attacks on the opponent's king. Greco paved the way for many of the attacking legends of the Romantic era, such as Philidor, Adolf Anderssen, and Paul Morphy. Mikhail Botvinnik considered Greco to be the first professional chess player. Other chess writers from the early period of modern chess had professional occupations, except Paolo Boi, who was wealthy through inheritance, and Giulio Cesare Polerio, who was a servant to a wealthy family. Greco, however, relied on chess to make a living. Greco's innovation to record entire games is perhaps his greatest legacy. Although his manuscripts were initially kept privately by his patrons, they would eventually become public; in 1656, years after