Not the Wimbledon Variation

I’m as much in the dark as the chesser on the next board as to how openings get to be called what they do: “Spanish”, “Alekhine”, “Modern”, “Orang-Utan” and the like. It is not about the derivation, mind you, which is usually pretty obvious. My question is: who decides?

Not always the inventor of the opening or variation it seems. For better or worse Eugene Colman wanted to call his discovery in the Two Knights Defence the “Wimbledon Variation” (as he wrote in a letter to the British Chess Magazine in 1952).

Hot stuff: Colman's 8...Rb8

Tomorrow is the anniversary of Colman's birth on the 11th October 1878. It is an opportunity to mark, quite rightly, his dedication to chess, his distinguished career in the Colonial Service, and his exemplary conduct in Japanese internment camps during WW2. But his generous and self-effacing suggestion that 8..Rb8 be christened “the Wimbledon Variation” is a bit puzzling. The assertion that this bustling London suburb at the end of the District Line, with its frantic rush-hour station, was the "birthplace" (as he said in the letter) of the variation is stretching it a bit; because he cooked it up when he was in Singapore. So, perhaps Colman was ingeniously hinting that his swashbuckling defence was, like Wimbledon, the end of the line - but, for White, whose play was now destined to hit the buffers.

E.E.Colman at home in Wimbledon in 1953

Although he may have hoped to see his uncompromising gambit indexed in the opening manuals between the Wilkes-Barre and the Winawer, it has come to be known eponymously as the Colman variation. Btw, and as another mark of the man's qualities, it is said that he wanted his fellow internee*, and 8..Rb8 analyst, Dr.Yeoh Bok Choon's name conjoined to it - alas, in vain; although this post allows us to commemorate Dr. Yeoh's contribution, too.

Thus Colman found himself, against his better judgement, as the sole author of the variation and in the good company of other British amateurs whose singular names appear in the openings vocabulary (as spoken in these islands, anyway) e.g. Dilworth, Gledhill, Reynolds, Rice*, etc. Rather it were so, some will say, than we had the Manchester, the Harrogate, or the wherever-they-hailed-from, Variations.

Eugene Ernest* Colman himself was by origin a South West Londoner, coming back to Wimbledon after the second world war, and passing away in Roehampton in 1964. This local interest makes him especially fascinating to your Streatham blogger, and one could contemplate a Colman theme tour of his various addresses among the Victorian villas of Wimbledon, hopping on the train for a couple of stops (as Colman would have done) to take in Tooting Bec Golf Club where he was a member (the course has long been concreted over for housing, but is remembered today in “Links Road S.W.17”), returning finally via Haydons Road station to pay respects at Gap Road Cemetery, his last resting place, where he lies, by curious coincidence, not far from H. E. Bird who was also interred there in 1908 .

Olimpiu Urcan’s widely reviewed, well-received, and absorbing book Surviving Changi. E. E. Colman: A Chess Biography tells the whole story, including of Colman’s time at Cambridge, and his years of enlightened public service in Malaya and Singapore, where at the age of 64 and surely looking forward to retirement, he was interned for three years by the invading Japanese in conditions of great privation, and worse, with the inevitable toll on his health. He organised chess among the fellow internees, and with them analysed this "new defence", unleashing it on hapless opponents in the London and Surrey leagues in the post-war years. This is the "first official recorded game with 8..Rb8" says Olimpiu. Colman's opponent didn't get as far as the buffers - he'd barely left the platform.

There’s no doubting his chess strength, developed though a long association with the game, and I was tickled to notice the happenstance that back in 1903 Colman played on board 42 alongside would-be Ripper and Broadmoor patient Reginald Saunderson (remember him), on board 122, in the Northern v Southern Counties correspondence match (though given Reginald's situation, “alongside” may be another stretch too far).

Given in the B.C.M. 1903 p 344

Olimpiu Urcan’s book comprehensively sets out Eugene Colman’s known chess games (many of them annotated) and activities, including the evolution of his variation. We also learn about his post-war contribution to Surrey and Wimbledon chess, where he conscientiously served his county and his club on and off the board.

There may be more about Colman to be recovered and told, and Olimpiu is working on a revised second edition, with corrections and additional material. He would welcome missing games and personal information; and any reminiscences of the man (though that must now be from a diminishing number) to supplement that of the indefatigable Trevor Brugger, the current Secretary of Wimbledon Chess Club, who knew Colman when he, Trevor, joined as a junior. If you can help please contact Olimpiu on urcanolimpiu@gmail.com

Something that cries out to be found is the 2 missing scores from Colman’s 3 game mini-match against Frank Marshall in April 1911 - a hundred years ago. Here, to finish off this post, and in Colman’s honour, is the one surviving game, and fittingly it is the one in which E.E.C. fought off and beat his illustrious opponent.

*denotes: see Comments

Acknowledgments.

Full details of Olimpiu Urcan's book are Surviving Changi. E. E. Colman: A Chess Biography 2007, published by the Singapore Heritage Society. ISBN 978-981-05-7922-7.

Thanks to Olimpiu for his help with this post, in which all the major historical facts, and both the game scores, are indebted to his book. The minor Saunderson (to whom we shall shortly return) and Bird connections, and any errors, are down to me.

The portrait photograph was kindly provided by Olimpiu, and comes originally from Bruce Hayden's appreciation of Colman in Chess Review May 1953.