Wednesday, 4 October 2023

Mrs Ludovici, Chess Player

I don't blog here very often but I thought it would be a good place to post stray games which I come across in my researches. Here's a game between the well-known Mary Rudge and a lesser known adversary, Mrs Ludovici. Annotations are by Miss Rudge...


I did a bit of biographical research on Mrs Ludovici. Her maiden name was Sarah Anne Rogers and she was born in Stafford (or thereabouts) in the third quarter of 1837. Her brother John was also a chess player, incidentally. Sarah married a German, Heinrich Ludovici, in 1865 and thereafter they seem to have lived in Germany though Sarah returned to the UK to play chess occasionally (and this game score has a reference to her in St Albans). She died in Wiesbaden on 27 July 1904.

'BatGirl' on Chess.com has previously published a couple of games played by her: https://www.chess.com/blog/batgirl/madame-ludovici-of-wiesbaden

There are further biographical details on Sarah Anne Ludovici at the EDO Historical Ratings website.