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Voltaire playing chess Oil on canvas by Jean Huber ca 1760.François-Marie Arouet (1694-1788) better known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was an 18th century French Philosopher and a leading figure of 'The Age of Enlightenment'. The author of Candide, his writings and ideas influenced the leaders of both the French and American revolutions. He frequented the Café de la Régence in Paris where apart from discussing politics and philosophy he played chess with his contempories Philidor and Rousseau. Another of Voltaire's opponents was his long term friend Frederick the Great of Prussia with whom he conducted a correspondence game in 1748.From around 1740 the Café de la Régence was a Mecca for enlightened philosophers, dramatists and chess players; one famous encounter was a chess game between Philidor and Benjamin Franklin. François-André Danican Philidor (1726-1795) was one of the strongest players of his generation and would often give odds of material and a move in his games. In 1749 he published L'Analyse du jeu des Échecs, it was later translated into English, German, Italian and Russian and become a standard text for anyone studying the game for the next 150 years. Amazingly the 66th edition originally released in 1871 was reprinted by Ishi Press of New York and Tokyo as recently as 2009 and is available online. Philidor was the first to espouse the importance of pawn structure and is arguably the founding father of positional chess. His ideas are encapsulated by a famous misquote 'the pawns are the soul of chess'. Philidor was ahead of his time and his theories were largely ignored by the Romantics ably led by Anderssen (1818-1879) so it wasn't until Steinitz (1836-1900) adopted the style in 1873 that the chess world recognised the merits of positional play.