The Streatham & Brixton Chess Blog

After the tragedy of round ten I was determined that come what may I would not lose my final game, a determination which, as it turned out, manifested itself in the grinding-out of a seventy-move win with the Black pieces to bring me up to 6.5/11, plus two, and keep the negative effects of the tournament of my FIDE rating down to sensible proportions. This being the case, I never once took the walk, usually undertaken several times each round, around the tournament hall to see how my compatriots were doing.

This, however, would not have been quite the lengthy journey it had previously been, since on my return home, when I looked up the results for the last round - scroll down and look for English flags, or just enter ENG in the Find function - it appeared only half of them had actually turned up.

Lawrence Trent won, Jana Bellin lost and your correspondent, as previously mentioned, managed to score a full point. But the other three, being FM Adam Ashton, IM Lorin D'Costa and IM Stephen Gordon, had neither 0-1 nor 1-0 against their name, nor even ½-½. Gordon, having Black, was on the righthandside of +--: D'Costa and Ashton, on the lefthand side of --+. All three had lost their last round game by default. Half the team, if we may put it in those terms.

This is not good.

The last round at Benasque, as with most international opens, is played in the morning: it starts at nine, whereas the other games, with the exception of one other morning round, take place at four in the afternoon. Morning starts are not popular with chessplayers, be they middle-aged married men such as myself, or younger players keen to enjoy the social and holiday aspects of the occasion.

Still, there are chessplaying aspects of the occasion too and one of these is that if you're playing in the tournament, you may not actually want a free point for waiting around for half an hour - regardless of the consequent improvement in your rating or the greater chance of getting a prize. You may actually want to play a game of chess. Especially if you've had to get up on a Sunday morning in order to play one.

I don't suppose any of the players involved is anything but deeply embarassed at what happened (in fact, having contacted one of them about it, I know very well that they are) and I wouldn't want to go on about it more than it merits, or to give the impression that it's a scandal. It isn't and I have no reason to think that any of the absentees would not be welcomed back next year.

Still, you don't want to get yourself a reputation and when half one country's players don't turn up for the final round there's a danger that you might acquire one. Moreover players with International Master titles do get their hotel rooms paid for and there's a case for saying that when the tournament has shelled out for your room, you possibly owe it to them to be out of that room in time to play in the final round.

Anyhow, I live here. By virtue of that fact, I sort of represent England in Aragonese chess. This being so, I thought I ought to say something. I have. This was it.

Nigel Short...comes across as a bit juvenile and something of a sex addict, but relatively modest for a chess genius.

Or so says a reviewer of Paul Hoffman's King's Gambit: I've not read the book but a strikingly similar thought occurred to me last month, when I found myself observing, in Nigel's commentary in New In Chess, his

liking for a certain sexual metaphor: used, perhaps, a little adolescently, giving the reader the impression that the literary effectiveness of the metaphor was less important than the author's keenness to use it.

Well, last week the latest issue arrived, including Nigel's account of how he won the Sigeman Tournament in Malmö. Wherein I was not entirely surprised to read the following:

In recent years it is well known that I have favoured the Tartakower Variation of the Queen's Gambit Declined. However, playing the same opening is rather like making love to the same woman: no matter how good she is, one craves a little variety every now and again...

Hey ho. I'm sure I was saying just the other day that English chess needs to grow up about women.

Although, as I said last month: is Nigel trying to tell us something?

Champions ... 2008 vintage

IM Jack Rudd and Buffy debate the finer points of Najdorf theory

As many of our readers presumably know, the 2009 British Chess Championships start in Torquay on Sunday. As many may not know, an apparent change to the status of women in these championships has caused some English chessplayers to emit shrieks of protest. The change has been described as "kowtowing", as being "pushed around by politicians": a poster on the English Chess Forum added that "I had hoped that English chess might escape unscathed". Another, possibly with a problem rather wider than the one being immediately addressed, found himself invoking Patricia Hewitt, Margaret Hodge and somebody he called "Mad Hatter Harman" in a series of responses attacking "outdated" feminism and comparing the change to proposals to change the rape laws.

What, you may wonder, is this clearly controversial change that has caused these gentlemen such anguish? What injustice, what act of positive discrimination has caused them to react so angrily? What horror of political correctness could bring them to the point where they respond in such an outraged and aggressive tone? As English chess has not, apparently, "escaped unscathed" - to what degree has it actually been scathed? Have men been barred from the Championships? Have women been awarded bonus points for turning up? Have protesting men been threatened? Been beaten up by the police? Been dragged off to prison?

None of these. Not quite. What has actually happened, as I understand it, is that the name of the title for which women players are contending will no longer be that of Ladies' Champion. We will now have a Women's Champion instead.

Quelle horreur.

Now to my mind the only genuinely noteworthy thing about this change is that nobody thought to make it thirty years ago. Ladies is old-fashioned and outmoded, and for a reason: it's the equivalent, not of Men but of Gentlemen, a term which nobody would think of using, in contemporary sport, in its capitalised form. These terms no longer describe the people for whom they were devised. That is what language does. It changes, over time, as the subjects of a language also change.

It's not so important in itself. It's just a small, overdue correction that somebody has finally thought to make. Had they not made the change now, nobody would very much have minded: they would surely, however, have made it in the end. As one sane voice on the Forum says:

While the change itself is rather inconsequential, this is no reason in itself not to do it if it's appropriate

It could not be better put. It is a small thing but an appropriate one. A reasonable one.

Except in the minds of some chessplayers - to whom, apparently, it is neither appropriate or reasonable. It is an outrage, an imposition, a piece of grotesquery, an oppressive act to be compared with relaxing the laws on rape or murder, or even with taking people off to Nazi concentration camps. These are the terms in which people have, themselves, chosen to respond. These are comparisons which they have seen fit to make.

This is hysterical. But not in a good way.

Of course, the men who have responded in this way are keen, at the same time, to stress that they have nothing against women, indeed not, and nor in fact does any other male chessplayer that they are aware of. Writes one of the loudest protestors:

chess is open and welcomes people of all sorts

and that they are

utterly unaware of any male resentment to women playing chess

Utterly unaware is a good term, here, since they are also utterly unaware of the impression they are giving of themselves.

It is not really, if truth be told, a discussion about whether we should say ladies or women. That would be the issue if the responses were temperate, and thoughtful, and proportionate to the importance of the act. Proportionate is what the responses are not. Nor temperate, nor thoughtful. They range to the embarrassing to the wild and foaming. Some are extraordinary in tone. They are not just unreasonable but unreasoned. They are not the tones of a discussion or a disagreement. They are the tones of resentment and fear.

It's true, the men who respond like this, with their resentment and their fear, are not bad men. Nor are they thoughtless, nor stupid. Except, that is, for the idiot who thought it would be an appropriate response to quote Pastor Niemöller. Really. Somebody actually did that. Some cretinous individual actually did that. Some cretinous individual actually thought it was appropriate to compare a change in wording of a sporting title to people being sent in their millions to Nazi death camps.

You know, I've long since abandoned the idea that chessplayers are necessarily intelligent, but even I was surprised. One sees the most extraordinary stupidity on the internet and I have seen my share in full, but even I was forced to ask myself - just how ignorant and stupid is it possible for somebody to be?

Still, with the exception of the idiot Alex Holowczak, they are not ignorant men (though given that one of them is a Sun journalist, not all have an aversion to ignorance as such.) I've seen most of them comment thoughtfully and usefully on other aspects of chess.

But though they are not ignorant men, they are men nevertheless. And it seems, as it has always seemed, that at the first hint of feminism, many men lose their heads. Or, at least, that portion of their heads which contains the qualities of thought and reason. In the face of feminism the thoughtful become fools. Foolish men, full of needless, ludicrous resentment at an enemy who is present only in their fearful imagination. Men who have no idea that their own reactions demonstrate that they, themselves, are the problem - the problem that they insist does not exist.

They think of "feminism" as "outdated". Of course they do. And they show exactly why it is not.

Is it more ludicrous than it is extraordinary, or more extraordinary than it is ludicrous? Change the word ladies to women and some men respond as if they were being dragged off to the guillotine by a horde of wild-eyed feminists with Harriet Harman playing Madame Defarge. Or to an appointment with Valerie Solanas.

Hey ho. I really ought to be old enough not to be surprised by this sort of thing, but in truth I find it depressing, and troubling, especially if I think (as I do) that it reflects attitudes that are common within chess. I'm forty-four years old (old enough, it occurs to me, to have read Marilyn French's novel almost when it came out) and I can remember what a struggle it was, years ago but lasting years, to allow women to refer to themselves as Ms, if they so wished, not Miss or Mrs according to whether or not they had a husband.

Long and loud was the shrieking whenever this small change was proposed. Great were the insults heaped upon the feminists who proposed it. Dire were the predictions of calamity for humanity if the feminists got their way. Frequent were the accusations of tokenism laid at the door of the feminists for apparently believing that all you had to do to change something for real was to change its name. (You might think that people could either be accused of tokenism or of threatening calamity, but not both at the same time. You might receive the answer: "Quite".)

Of course, the usage Ms is now taken for granted, forms and forms of address have long since changed and nobody gives a damn if anybody prefers Ms, still less expects to heavens to fall when it does. If you're much younger than I am, you probably can't imagine what the fuss was about. Good. You've grown up in a world which is more grown-up - in that respect at least - than it was before. And similarly, in a few years somebody will understand what all this fuss was about. And the people who have written embarrassing things will be embarrassed that they wrote them.

So I hope. In the meantime, I hope these people do no damage. I hope, for instance, that the sheer stupidity of using phrases like "being pushed around by politicians", when the namechange is suggested by one of the few political figures who cares about chess and has been supportive of it, does not have the effect of losing chess those few political supporters.

I also hope that I am mistaken that these clowns represent a serious current of thinking (or indeed "thinking") within chess. It is never, of course, hard to find, on any subject, a small number of people speaking high-pitched paranoid nonsense on the internet, and it is tempting to believe that they represent no-one but themselves. I do not want to think, and I do not want other people to think, that chess - male-dominated though it is - is dominated by the sort of man who behaves like this. I do not want chess to be like that. I do not want chess to be thought of like that.

But I don't know. If they react like this over something so unimportant - what are they going to be like about that really matters? If it takes something as small as this to bring fear and resentment so very quickly to the surface - what is really going on in the minds of some male chessplayers?

There was a question asked on the Forum.

What does substituting one word, "lady," with another word, "woman," actually achieve by way of improving the participation and profile of women in chess?

It's not much of a question: as a rhetorical point it is a specious one, since nobody will be put off either. But what might well put women off - and Lord knows there are few enough of them in chess - is the reaction they get from men who play chess and the impression they get about what those men are like. They know that chess is overwhelmingly played by men - but what if they decide that it is not just overwhelmingly men, but whining, bitter and resentful men at that?

What will happen is that we have fewer of the women and no fewer of the whining, bitter and resentful men. What a depressing prospect that would be.

It doesn't have to be that way. If English chess does what it needs to do. English chess needs to grow up.

[This piece replaces the previously-promised fourth Benasque post, which may or not appear on a future date]

When I play at Benasque I stay in a campsite about three kilometres up the hill from the town, hotel rooms being pricier than I reckon I can afford. When I'm on my own this means about forty minutes' energetic walk, but when I'm not, it's five short minutes in the car, a difference that's particularly noticeable when it's dark, or raining, or when you're knackered.

After watching Romain Edouard's disaster in round nine we had just set off when we stopped to pick up a hitch-hiker who, though it was neither dark nor raining, had, he told us, been walking all day and didn't really fancy the last couple of miles uphill. Having said "thank you" in English when he got in, he found himself replied to in the same language - and in the conversation that ensued he was interested to hear that I was playing in the chess tournament in the town, since - though there to walk, not to play chess - he had noticed that there was a tournament on, and was, he said, a chessplayer himself.

Obviously at first I assumed he meant he knew how the pieces move. This assumption was upgraded when he asked me what my rating was, since you'd have to be a serious player to ask, and was entirely obliterated when he said that his was 2323, a sizeable distance above my own. His accent wasn't entirely English, having a large component of Australian, but given that he said he had been busy on the English circuit twenty years before - and indeed had a couple of IM norms outstanding from that time - I said I surely had to know his name. I did. By extraordinary coincidence, driving uphill from a tiny Pyrenean town we happened to have picked up a hitch-hiker who turned out to be Erik Teichmann.

I remembered the name from my youth, if not much more than that: I don't think we ever played, not surprisingly since Erik was several classes above me as a player, his name presumably familiar from the top boards and prize lists of tournament where I probably didn't even play in the top section. But I did remember him, and I was also half-sure I had seen it again more recently, though precisely where I didn't know. He said he had been playing a bit more recently, after a long largely inactive spell, and that he'd won a couple of tournaments: indeed he had so perhaps I may have seen his name in a report somewhere.

Anyway, what with those titles Erik's rating is on the up - not bad for a guy who's forty-eight this year, albeit probably the healthiest-looking forty-eight-year-old man I've ever seen, even by the standards obtaining in Australia, where he lives. Erik is now a qualified "life coach" and it appears his old norms are valid, as he thought, so that title too, may yet be his.

Well, you never know who you'll meet on the road, so my advice is: always pick up hitch-hikers. It was a pleasure to meet and talk, so if Erik is reading this - best wishes and best of luck for the future, in chess and elsewhere.

But what's this I hear about a long beard and a single long fingernail?

In the second round at Benasque I was drawn against the German grandmaster Henrik Teske, whose rating, at 2536, was just one point below that of the English international master Stephen Gordon, also competing in the tournament. They therefore found themselves at adjacent boards, though with opposite colours: or put another way, I was facing Henrik Teske and had Stephen Gordon immediately to my right.

I opened, as I do habitually, with 1.d4 and after 1...Nf6 employed my Benko-avoiding favourite 2.Nf3 which was followed by 2...c5 3.d5. Teske then played 3...b5, a Benko of sorts nevertheless. Not one I have a name for (so I shall here and now coin the name Benko Deflected) but one I had faced before, in the 4NCL some years ago, a game which Chessbase Online Database informs me was played against Adeyo Dasaolu. I remembered the game and that I had lost it after establishing a certain advantage early on: but I wasn't entirely sure how it had gone, other than being fairly sure that after 4.Bg5 Black had played 4...Ne4 and 5...Qa5+.

Anyway, I got up - the position being that in the diagram at the top of this piece - in order to say goodbye to my wife, who is in the habit of watching me play for the first few moves and then occupy herself with the not impossible task of finding something more interesting to do.

When I returned to the board Black was, in fact, in the very act of playing his knight to e4, and I was about to sit down and try to remember whether my bishop went to f4 or h4 (I thought the former, but I was not entirely certain) when I noticed that the chair was already occupied. Specifically, it was occupied by the English international master Stephen Gordon, who was just that second putting his black-squared bishop on f4.


We were playing the same unusual variation, side-by-side. Or side-by-side provided I sat in the right chair.

I moved my bishop to f4. Gordon's opponent played 5...Bb7, not the move my 4NCL opponent had played. Teske, for the while, did nothing.

What are the ethics involved in situations like this? We're familiar with the famous occasion at the Gothenburg Interzonal of 1955 where three Soviet players defeated three Argentinian players in games that were identical until Black's move 13 (and in two cases, until White's move 23). Can you copy? Should you copy? Moreover, if you choose to play the same moves as your counterpart because you think they're the best ones, will people assume that you are copying? Especially when you're not only graded almost four hundred points below him, but share his nationality?

Goron replied to 5....Bb7 with 6.a4. Meanwhile, Teske was still to move, and didn't, in fact, move, for about ten minutes. I was not entirely sure why - it was intrinsically unlikely that a player of his class had reached our position without knowing what he wanted to do next - but he told me afterwards that he was concerned that Gordon's opponent might copy him and for that reason wanted to allow the other game to get ahead of us. Eventually, though, he did play, and chose the same move, 5...Bb7.


And I thought, for perhaps twenty minutes.

We were now in a position I had not been in before, and I felt it was an embarrassing position to be in. I really didn't want this to be happening. It was quite obvious that it would be wise to copy Gordon's moves: they were likely to be better than the ones I would choose unadvised. And I was being advised. Every move, unasked and unwanted, I was having a strong international master say to me "this is what I think is the best move here - what do you reckon?"

I didn't want that help. I was playing a grandmaster, something I do once a year if I am lucky, and I wanted to play my own moves. I didn't want any help and nor did I want the appearance of help. I also knew that sooner or later Gordon's opponent would make an error, Teske would play something else and that if I then, as was almost certain, went on to lose, I would give the appearance of having copied Gordon's moves for as long as I possibly could and then having caved in as soon as I'd had to make my own moves.

No - I wanted to be the one to diverge. But of course, that meant trying to find alterntive moves to those being selected by a player almost four hundred rating points my senior.

What should I do? I decided to play any alternative move which seemed to me a good one and only play Gordon's move if I really thought it was the best - and therefore spent those twenty minutes trying to make 6.c4 work but eventually I was forced to concede that 6...bxc4 looked like a good reply. So I copied Gordon with 6.a4. Teske replied with the same move he had already seen at the adjoining board, 6...b4.


He said in the post-mortem that he felt there was nothing else, and it certainly seems that 6...Qa5+ is struggling after either knight to d2, while 6...a6 likewise suffers after two captures and 9.Nc3! when White has the centre, better development and no more weaknesses than his adversary.

But it meant I had to choose again - copy or diverge - and I could see that Gordon had already gone for 7.Qd3.


I hadn't thought of that move although - as the game had proceeded to 7...Nf6 8.e4 - I could see that it was good.


Of course Black can go 8...Ba6 and even follow up 9.Qe3 Ng4, but although White's queen is being kicked around Black is neither threatening its survival nor developing any new pieces. White's pawn centre is important: the possibility that he will be unable to castle, rather less so. But still, I was surprised by 7.Qd3 - it's not a move, I felt, I would have thought of. So if I were to find an alternative, I'd prefer to play it.

I wanted to put a knight on d2, but that would leave the d-pawn hanging - without that fact, Black would simply be much worse - and then it occurred to me that I could challenge the knight by putting mine on g5. If he swapped, that was mission accomplished: if he followed the pattern, if no longer the letter, of the other game in retreating to f6, I'd have time for 8.c4, propping up the menaced d5 pawn. It seemed all right to me: I played 7.Ng5. At last I was playing my game and not somebody else's.


I was all right, too, as it turned out, play continuing 7...Nf6 8.c4 h6 9.Nh3 g5 10.Bc1 e6 11.g3 with an eccentric but basically equal game in which I blundered on move 20 and shortly lost. Gordon, of course, went on to win.

7.Ng5 is, however, certainly not the best move. I don't want to investigate it thoroughly here, not least because I have no intention of playing it again. Not because it's weak as such, but because it's clearly not the best. In contrast to Gordon's 7.Qd3, which keeps a nice advantage in space and development, it leaves White struggling - and having to come up with tactical tricks - to maintain himself in either department.

It's not as strong as Gordon's move, nor as practical. And the thing is, I knew this. It wasn't just inductive reasoning - his move is likely on any given occasion to be better than mine - that led me to believe this, it was having looked at the position it gave him and noticed that it was comfortable for White. But I preferred to go my own way.

I don't know, really, whether I did the right thing. Of course the overwhelming likelihood would have been that I would have lost, whenever our games had finally diverged. And thinking about it, I didn't lose anything compared to not having the same game going on beside me, because I don't believe I would have played 7.Qd3 and might not even have found 6.a4.

But at the same time, there it was: my once-a-year chance to take on a grandmaster and I was offered, free of charge, a nice, comfortable edge with the White pieces.

All I had to do was copy the moves of a strong player who - just as if it were How Good Is Your Chess? for real - was sitting alongside me. And would that really have been any different from what we do, when we copy the theory?

I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget.

Before we get on to the diagram above, from a game in the tenth and penultimate round of the Benasque Open, I'd like to tell you about the top board game in the ninth round (a game readers of Chess Today will already have seen me describe.) The players were the experienced Romanian grandmaster Mihail Marin and the rather younger French grandmaster Romain Edouard. I played a longish game myself in that round - my last three games went to 49, 77 and 70 moves respectively, though all would have been half the length had I seen the wins available - and so I was somewhat surprised to see play still continuing on the top board when I finished my post-mortem. I was more surprised, though, by what was still to come.

When I arrived among the spectators, almost four hours into the session, the game had, I believe, reached the following position, Black having played 56...g5 and hence elected to keep his last pawn and the winning chances that went with it.


At the same time, in doing so he gave White two connected passed pawns. However, he might have picked one of them up after the following moves 57.Re8 Re3 58. Kg2 Bg3 59.Re6+ Kh7 60.Re7+ Kg8 61.f6 Kf8 62.Rg7



and now Edouard, instead of playing the win which appears to be there (and which readers are invited to find) played 65...g4? and found himself in trouble after 66.e6. Not that much trouble, as he can draw easily enough, and in fact turned down a chance to do so by repetition after 66...Rf3+ 67.Kg2 Rg3+ 68.Kf2 Rf3+ 69.Kg2, punting 69...Bh6. Now 70.Rf7+ Kg8? (70...Ke8 and it's a draw) 71.Rd7! and suddenly Black has to explain how he's going to stop the pawns.

In fact he can't, and after 71...Rxf6 72.Rd8+ Kg7 73.e7 he had to give up his rook to stop the last one: 73...Re6 74.e8=Q Rxe8 75.Rxe8.

This should, however, have been anything but fatal: though obviously the chance of winning was long gone, it should be absolutely elementary to hold bishop and pawn against rook, provided that the pawn can be reached and defended. Which after 75...Kf6


it obviously can be.

(At this point I might add that there was a huge crowd around the board, although I don't suppose the players were aware of it. I stepped back a bit to allow the shortish Finnish FIDE Master Markku Hartikainen to see, only for his view shortly to be blocked by some other chap barging to the front. A tap on the back produced no response more positive than a shake of the head, something I might have understood had I known that the gentleman was an arbiter, which in turn is something I might have understood had he bothered to wear his badge. Benasque has a couple of genuinely objectionable individuals among its arbiters: this guy is one of them.)

Play proceeded - although the game was of course completely drawn Marin had no reason to accept this until he felt like it - and Edouard succeeded in moving the pawn to a Black square, which should really have clinched it. However, and - in any sense beyond the psychological - inexplicably, in this position


Edouard put his king on f4.

It was his eightieth move and I reckon he might be eighty before he plays another move as bad as that. I can only imagine that he was suffering the delusion that rather than blocking the defence of the g3 pawn, he thought he was reinforcing it: perhaps similar to the apparent belief of an exhausted Efim Geller in this game


that he would be able to take the g3 pawn and thus uncover an attack, by his king on f5, on Fischer's f1 rook.

Fine writes of the pawnless rook v bishop ending:

in the general case....this is a draw...

....the Black King should head for the opposite corner (i.e. one of the opposite colour to the bishop, so that in the event of, say, WK a6 BK a8 and BB b8, rook to the eighth rank produces stalemate - ejh) as fast as his legs will carry him, and once arrived there nothing can happen to him.

In principle, perhaps, this may be true, but in practice bad things can and do happen. There are still tricks and in the particular practice of this game - given what had already happened and the consequent state of his head - Edouard, though he did indeed head for that corner, was always likely to fall for one of them. White can, for instance, annoy and unsettle Black by refusing to let him settle in the corner square: after Black's 97...Be5


White proceeded just so, playing 98.Ra7+ Kb8 and then harrassing the bishop with 99.Re7 Bd6 100.Rd7 Bc7 101.Rg7 Be5 102.Rf7.


Black is still drawing (as Nalimov will confirm) in all sorts of ways, but none of them are 102..Bd6?? as played, because White has 103.Kb6! and now Black can't get safely back to a8, although he tried with 103...Ka8. Because this time, when the king is driven out of the corner with 104.Ra7+ Kb8

1. the placing of the White king on b6 means that there is still a mate threat ; and
2. the bishop has no check to drive the king away.

Hence after 105.Rd7


Black resigned.

After he resigned, he got straight up, scribbled his name on both scoresheets as fast as he could, grabbed his carbon copy, clutched it into a ball and started to run out of the hall, obviously in a state of some distress. Halfway down the aisle he tried to drop-kick the ball of paper, missed and then stopped, putting his head on a nearby table as if to start beating his forehead against the surface.

By coincidence my wife had picked precisely that moment to come into the hall and therefore had the best view of anybody: she told me later that her impression had been of a young player behaving petulantly. But I don't think it was, not at all. It was an individual in a state of distress, somebody who in a situation of high mental tension had inflicted a torment on himself, somebody starting to run because he wanted to and then stopping because he didn't want to, somebody who - from his face - didn't know whether to cry or whether to scream and who therefore did neither. It was somebody who really didn't know what to do. And I really felt for him.

Anyway, having had a poor start to the tournament and a couple of small disasters on my own account, I had trudged my way up to +2 and the next day I played my game a little closer to M. Edouard. (Indeed much closer, since the previous day I had played on the blind/partially-sighted tables, down the very far end of the hall.) I was on board 45 (of 208) against the Peruvian FIDE Master Iván Hernández, rated 2326, more than a hundred and sixty points above me. And I played him off the park.

It was also, for nearly four hours, one of the most exciting games I have ever taken part in. I turned down a draw offer after twenty moves, not just because I knew he would not have offered it were he not worse, but because I knew he was worse. I missed some probable wins but didn't lose control of the position until move thirty-five: and even then I got it straight back, saw some tactics that he did not and, as Marin had done the day before, picked up a rook in exchange for an advanced pawn.

But in reality it was Edouard's role I was playing, not least, but not only, because I also picked up a bishop - and entered the endgame with a piece up. In this instance, for absolutely nothing. A piece up for nothing against a FIDE Master, graded 2326.

In retrospect - or possibly not even in retrospect, because despite having played fearlesly I could sense my fears beginning to make themselves felt - I probably panicked, partly through relative time shortage, partly through not seeing clearly how I could make my extra piece count and being aware that the pawns were starting to be exchanged. Having probably saved me earlier on, the Fischer clock now began to work against me: with just a small increment every move rather than a large addition at a time control, there was no real opportunity to clear my head and think about how to sensibly win the game. (I suspect that had there been such a time control, Hernández would have resigned.)

In truth - one kind of truth, anyway - everything was, in fact, a great deal more under control than I knew, and after Black's fiftieth move we came to the following position


where my 51.f4+ was a perfectly good move. It did, however, have the demerit of taking away the support for the knight.

As inexplicable as Edouard's blunder of the g3 pawn? I can't really explain it, because the moment you look at the position at the top of the column there is no question. You see immediately what the problem is. You cannot miss it.

Maybe, as Tom has suggested to me in a discussion of the game, because I had just attacked the king I forgot that it, too, is an attacking piece. Maybe, because my king defends the knight it didn't seem undefended, just as, because Edouard's king "defended" his pawn, he maybe failed to appreciate that in fact he had rendered it undefended. Maybe I was just thinking about his plans to attack my pawns and it never occurred to me that I might have an endangered knight. But most likely, I didn't notice the threat because I had created it myself.

But, whatever the reasons, after 51...Kf5 I thought for two of the three minutes I possessed and played 52.h3??. And he took off the knight with check - and in an instant, everything had gone. The win, one of the best of my life, had gone. The game, one of the best of my life, had gone. Even the draw had gone.

I played another twenty-five moves before I resigned. When I finally gave in,
I didn't say anything. He did: he said "I'm so sorry". He said it again: "I'm so sorry". But I didn't say anything. I don't think I could have said anything. I didn't screw up my scoresheet. I didn't run out of the hall. I just sort of sat there and closed my eyes.

But really, I could have cried.

[Note: this is the first of four postings this week on the Benasque tournament.]

I believe I'm correct in saying that in America, players bring their own sets and clocks to tournaments - that the organizers provide nothing of the sort.

I'm all for this. Personally, I think electronic chess clocks are highly overrated. I'd revert to egg-timers if I could, the kind with sand.

And think of the benefits to the environment, by keeping down the amount of plastic in circulation. And in fact, why rely on plastic or wood pieces at all? When this kind of thing is available, I mean:-




Yes, that's right. Chess sets made from nuts and bolts. Surely, this is the next step in the evolution of the chess set. Surely, this is the end of the Staunton design.

And I'll go one step further. Surely the day will come when you can cycle to a chess tournament, dismantle the nuts and bolts from your bike, and use them as chess pieces. Or for drivers, why not a detachable sun-roof checkered with sixty four squares?

Yesterday's Independent treated us to one of those hastily-cobbled-together list items in which a couple of the less senior hacks in the office are obliged to compile a list of the all-time most significant happenings in any given sphere suggested by a given news story. The Ten Most Ridiculous Celebrity Funerals, perhaps, or Top Twenty Latin American Coups, compiled with the expert knowledge of the journalists, or more likely their expert knowledge of how to search the internet.

One day I might do the Top Ten Inaccurate Newspaper Stories About Chess, assuming I can whittle it down to ten rather than settle for, say, a hundred: yesterday's piece is at least a candidate for the longlist. Simon Rice and Jimmy Leach offer us The Worst Losers in Sport: beginning (perhaps unfairly) with Ricky Ponting and eventually arriving at number thirteen, who turns out to be Bobby Fischer.

The piece on Fischer reads, in full:

During a chess match between Spassky and Fischer in 1971, Bobby Fischer refused to allow any of the spectators to eat fruit yoghurt in the auditorium because he suspected secret messages were being transmitted to Boris through which flavours they were eating!

Since we're making lists: readers are invited to do precisely that and list every mistake which the piece contains. Because I think it may include more errors of fact per word than any other passage about chess I've ever read. Where did they get it from?

Here's an oddity I came across after reading about the Foxwoods Open in the latest New In Chess. The tournament was won by Darmen Sadvakasov in a play-off after, so NiC reporter Loek van Wely tells us, catching up the leader in the final round with a win on the Black side of the Exchange Slav.

Now there are few variations that interest me more than the Exchange Slav, particularly if Black actually manages to win, so I went looking for the game score and found a pgn file with the relevant game. However, scrolling up to find it, I found myself distracted by a different game, also in the Slav, in which White lost very quickly in a variation known to be a draw.

The game appears at the bottom of this report and was played in the final round between IM Justin Sarkar and GM Julio Becerra Rivero. Both players began the final round on the same score, 5.5/8.

The game went as follows:

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.Ne5 e6 7.f3 Bb4


This line was popular at super-GM level in the Nineties: later 7...c5 was tried in the Kramnik-Topalov match. Rather than 6...e6 the variation with 6...Nbd7 is more common presently, especially if Black has any interest in playing for a win.

8.e4 Bxe4 9.fxe4 Nxe4


Sarkar had had this position at least once before, in the 2006 US Championships against David Vigorito, in which White continued with the normal 10.Bd2 and play continued 10...Qxd4 11.Nxe4 Qxe4+ 12.Qe2 Bxd2+ 13.Kd2 Qd5+


giving a much-explored position in which White's piece is now generally judged to just outweigh Black's three pawns, although the line remains perfectly playable (indeed I play it myself) provided Black is prepared to accept a draw.

I say this because not only is the main line difficult to play for a win if White is not in the mood for a contest, but in fact White has an alternative tenth move which makes it almost compulsory for Black to accept the draw: and this move, 10.Qf3, is what Sarkar played.


This threatens mate on f7 and the knight on e4 and thus (unless Black just wants to be a piece down) forces the response - played by Becerra - 10...Qxd4 which was met by 11.Qxf7+ Kd8


and now 12.Bg5+ is the move, after which 12...Nxg5 13.Qxg7


and now it's considered that Black should accept the draw with 13...Bxc3+ 14.bxc3 Qxc3+ 15.Ke2 Qc2+ since the alternatives (13...Qe3+ and 13...Qh4+) are unpromising. I won't go into the variations here - the interested might like to see Burgess, The Slav, Gambit 2001, pages 234-236 - but at the very least, if Black wishes to avoid the draw, 6...Nbd7 is certainly a much safer, more reliable and more combative way of going about it. It's most unlikely that a master would expect to play for a win, against another master, after 10.Qf3.

However, Becerra got one. Because Sarkar didn't take the draw: instead, he took on g7 immediately, 12.Qxg7??


which loses, and lost, immediately after 12..Bxc3+ 13.bxc3 (13.Ke2 Qxe5) 13...Qf2+. And White resigned, having apparently overlooked this simple capture, check and mate.

Odd, that this should happen to an International Master with a 2400+ rating and prior experience of the variation, but such things happen, even to the greatest of us: meanwhile the lucky Becerra came fourth and took home $668.40, a rather greater prize than either player would have won in the event of a draw.

Luckier still given his apparent willingness to accept the draw for which he didn't, as it turned out, have to settle. An odd preference in itself, given that although he had the Black pieces, his rating exceeded White's by around two hundred points: given his greater strength and the prize money on offer, he surely had every reason to play for a win. Maybe he expected White, too, to play for the win, but found instead that Sarkar called his bluff - so he had no choice but to settle for a draw. Or so it seemed. Until a stroke of fortune came his way.

But such things happen.

I, like many chess players, am somewhat prickly when it comes to the use of chess analogies, metaphors, similes, and more or less any phrase that mentions our game and is uttered by someone who doesn't play it. Indeed, even when the use of chess seems not only reasonable but even interesting, I still can't help but feel incredibly grumpy about it.

And I have to admit, I don't really know why. It's not as if in a packed pub, with empty pints all round, and ten minutes to closing time, I haven't been heard to describe the sweaty mess of competing bodies at the bar as a scrum - yet I assume rugby fans don't want to tackle me to the ground and splash my face with mud in punishment, or whatever it is rugby players do to one another when they're cross about slips of language. See, I've never played the game, nor in fact known anyone who has. And 'slips of language', incidentally, is a cricket metaphor that sometimes catches people out.

Back to chess, or rather 'chess'. Why does it get to me so much? Maybe it's just the mass of examples in the news. From this last week or two, for instance, I can guarantee you that

• Sarah Palin didn't make a 'chess' move,

• Andy Roddick didn't execute a 'chess' game strategy,

• withdrawing from Iraq isn't like moving 'chess' pieces,

• the Maldives Journalist Association is wrong to accuse the Maldives Broadcasting Cooperation of playing 'chess' with Television Maldives' editorial board,

unless they, literally, enjoy friendly games over lunch together. And they haven't been.

No, like with dogs, a good chess simile should be for life, not just for Christmas - and there's no such thing as a good chess simile. Or metaphor, comparison, analogy, anything. Or so I had been telling myself until I read John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I know, I know, I know. "Aha!", you're thinking. "Chivers has been taken in by some Le Carré chess metaphor. Well, I'll show him in the comments what's what. Checkmate ahoy!"


But, no. The truth is much worse, much more distressing. Whilst reading this book, I kept on thinking to myself thoughts along these lines: this is just like a chess game. What will be the spy's next move across these sixty four squares of international espionage? Such strategy as to match a Grandmaster's! Bang bang bang bang: such thoughts would just shoot into my head, and nothing could be done about it.
And note too that is not only regarded as the best spy novel ever written, not only regarded as one of the best novels ever written, but I personally recommend it. Yes, that's right. I do.

As I was saying: reading The Spy Who Came In From The Cold is, I confess, like watching a game of chess being played. A very good game in fact. There, I've said it. I admit it. How horrible.

But don't fear. I'm not going to try to convince you I'm right. For example, I'm not going to argue that Agent Leamas's well-calculated and cunningly-disguised journey from West Berlin to East Berlin resembles an elaborate knight's tour, just because it goes via HQ in London, a dingy local library, prison, and penultimately Holland, all seemingly to fool the enemy into thinking he's genuinely defecting rather than setting a trap. Likewise, I'm not going to argue that his British Communist girlfriend Liz Gold's straightforward route from the local library to East Berlin - taken one step at a time - the reader uncertain whether she is headed for some glorious coronation into the ranks of her Communist comrades - or whether she is merely to be sacrificed - having strayed too far from her British ranks - resembles that of an isolated pawn being pushed perilously toward promotion. That would be absurd.



And anyway, we all know the key difference between chess pieces and people, the key difference that makes any comparison between the two pointless, right? In other words, simply that people have free-will, consciousness, and make their own decisions; chess pieces don't. Except, in this book, the calculations of the British spy boss Control take full account of the personhood of his operatives; their human feelings calculated out like a complex tactical sequence. Indeed Leamas is wholly lied to by Control, and as such behaves exactly as Control has calculated he will. Free-will counts for nothing: in each seemingly-novel situation each character faces, each decision each character believes they are making has already been factored in; their supposed decisions as inevitable as an only move.

Each decision, but one. In the final scene of the book, Leamas teeters on top of the Berlin wall. His superior officer George Smiley waits beneath him on the West side, calling him over to safety. On the East side, Liz's fresh corpse lies slumped beneath him, riddled with bullets. Surely he will jump to safety, then resume his career, or retire somewhere comfy. Surely he will choose the West. But, no. He chooses the East side, although he will die for it in the blink of an eye. He would rather dwell by Liz's body for a moment, than rejoin the rest for however long. And in choosing the temporary warmth of her crumpled figure, Leamas chooses to come in from the cold of the vicious game - even if it is for just one final fleeting moment, to be swiftly followed by his own mute slaughter.

And for the existential sake of our pieces, whom never complain about being bundled back into their boxes, adjusted this way and that, sacrificed and blundered left right and centre, we should be grateful there is no such equivalent of that in our little game.

This Postscript steps out from Chess in Art IV "Die Schachpartie", Max Oppenhiemer's vigorous and invigorating picture of chess in a Berlin café in the late 1920s. It is a ramble around the early 20th century avant-garde in Europe and beyond.

There is a later companion piece to the 1920s picture by MOPP that shows Emanuel Lasker, World Chess Champion from 1894 to 1921 at the board, apparently pressing home his attack with the white pieces:


MOPP maintains the same energetic touch as before, and appears even to reprise the same narrative trick: look again; Lasker is not actually playing a game against Herr Grün-Jacket, they are playing over the moves of someone else's game, the one in the red book, and Herr Blau-Jacket is calling it out. This explains why Herr G-J tolerates with Lasker's slovenly chess etiquette – in a proper game he wouldn't put up with his opponent dropping fag ash on d3, ex-World Champion or Nein (note 1).

How was it that MOPP was painting chess champ Lasker in the 1920s in Berlin? Did they just happen to frequent the same Konditori where they could feed their addictions to Kaffee, Kuchen, and Zigaretten. Was MOPP there to admire, in situ, Lasker's renowned coffee-house style which both Siegbert Tarrasch and Bobby Fischer considered conduct unbecoming of a World Champion? Or was there a more substantial meeting of minds?

Some clue may come from Lasker's kith and kin. His older brother Berthold was married from 1894 and 1899 to Else Lasker-Schülers, a poet who a year or so later married the founder of Der Sturm, the Haus magazine of German Expressionism. Unsurprisingly her work graced its columns at length. Even without assuming some cordiality among ex-in-laws (a big ask) Lasker must have been moving in the same circles as the leading lights of the Mittel-European intelligentsia, for whom MOPP was court painter doing a nice line in "psychological portraiture", having had his own done by Egon Schiele, no less.


Now that we have wandered on to German Expressionism, here’s a good example of what some have likened to Fauvism German-style (note 2)


This is a love-in in more ways than one. Apart from the carnal pleasures invited by the reposing Mädchen, the two players, who are ungallantly lost for the moment in the cerebral delights of the game, are two of Kirchner's Expressionist comrades-in-arms; so, mutual admiration all round.

You can see the affinities with Fauvism (strong colour, dynamic design) but Expressionism keeps some distance from its decorative French cousin and heads for the raw and edgy. Heckel's girl friend (or Mueller's, or both) for example, is no odalisque à la Matisse, but is her own woman. You could even leave out the colour (unthinkable for Fauvism) and still get the Expressionist feel; they did wood-cuts to prove it, such as this one by another Otto Möller in the 1920s:


Same plunging view point, raking diagonals and queasy perspective; drop in a nude top left and you'd have a Kirchner look-a-like.

The German Expressionists were hammered by World War One and the style morphed in the 20s and 30s to something more engaged with, and critical of, the Zeitgeist, glorying in the handle "Neue Sachlichkeit", or New Objectivity. The rise of Fascism finally did for it in Europe. Kirchner and others, including Kandinsky and Klee (note 3) were denounced as "degenerate" by the Nazis and he committed suicide in 1938. Lasker-Schülers was beaten up and fled, as did MOPP. Lasker, too, ended up in the States.

So the USA was a refuge for many, and from there Expressionism re-emerged, after World War Two, on to the international stage in a home-brewed Abstract variety, promoted to establish New York as the West's cultural bastion in the Cold War, in place of a debilitated Paris and divided Berlin. For Abstract Expressionism think Jackson Pollock.

There was a less celebrated school of Expressionism in Boston, and Henry Schwartz of Chess in Art XX was a member:


Schwartz's use of collage emphasises flatness and pattern. There is a rather Fifties feel to it: the pieces sit on a Tupperware board and their shapes are echoed in the Formica screen behind; a bargain from Woolworth's, for sure, that would grace any condo. There are people at play, albeit with their identities ironed out leaving just the imprint of pensive silhouettes hooked on their fingers; they play a chess game with each other and a perspective game among the overlaps. Their expressive concentration infuses the scene: we are in the presence of Deep Thought. Maybe an "ism" for this half-way-house-style would be "Semi Abstract Expressionism".

The Boston group were active as far back as the 30s and 40s, before Jackson Pollock et al cornered the limelight and the dollars. They traced their influences to Europe, and like many of his German Expressionist forerunners Henry Schwartz, highly respected, was a troubled soul. He was in reclusive depression for 15 years up to 2007, and in spite of regaining his lucidity he died on 21 February 2009, aged 81 (note 4). To a dedicated artist: RIP.





Notes

1. Edward Winter in his Chess Note 4091 [scroll down - ejh] asks if anyone can identify the other players or the position. The latter appears more plausible than in many a chess painting, and in a bigger view it looks like there are corrections, maybe suggested by Lasker in the interests of verisimilitude.

2. We touched on Fauvism in Postscript: Gone Luco.

3. See Postscript: Slow Triangulation.

4. Charlies Giuliano, Henry Schwartz 1927-2009. Berkshire Fine Arts, 20 February 2009.

Via a Ninja, news of why Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman believes that the project of science is analogous to watching the gods play games of chess - except no-one's told you the rules, so you're trying to work it out for yourself:



Maybe, maybe not. After all, humans can agree to change the rules of chess, which have evolved over centuries into the game we know today. And they're still changing in modern times: for instance, castling with a rook promoted on the e-file was banned by FIDE in 1972. Even more recently, FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov has changed the rules so that a player not seated as the game starts automatically loses.

Just what is it that makes today’s chess sets so different, so appealing? Not a lot. They all look the same. So very Staunton. And this was for Julien Levy, promoter of Surrealist Art, the inspiration for his art-event "The Imagery of Chess" in 1944 in New York. It showed off sets for the 20th century. Hypermodern times demanded hypermodern pieces.


Part exhibition, part multi-media installation, part performance art: The Imagery had chess sets, chess-in-art works, and chess-related modern music from 32 chess-interested artists and designers, with Surrealist-in-Chief André Breton divesting himself of chessic epigrams.

In the midst of all the fun and games the odd game of chess was shoe-horned in, notably in a "'pre-happening' happening" where blindfold wizard Koltanowski took on Levy and six of his chums, using various anti-Staunton sets, with Duchamp as facilitator. Not distracted by the outasight and out of sight pieces the maestro, visualising in Staunton presumably - so last century - chalked up a 6.5-0.5 victory including among his victims Max Ernst whose "The King plays with his Queen" (Chess in Art XIII) was in the show.

Artist and critic Larry List has magnificently chronicled this and later chess/art exhibitions (note 1) and shows how 1944 wasn't the first time modern design and chess paraphernalia had played with each other. Levy's event included some sets conceived twenty or so years earlier, for example the celebrated Bauhaus set, a brutal but refined fusion of form and function.



In de-cluttered style the Bauhaus set sits snugly in its own designer box and would look good on the shelves of Muji – so this century.

At about the same time in the twenties the Russian Constructivists displayed three large squares of colour using primary red, yellow and blue, declared the end of painting as we know it (Duchamp would have approved) and turned their talents to applied design in the service of the Revolution. For a Workers' Club they created a chess table that was recently reconstructed at Tate Modern (note 2) and in 2003 in Japan.


The Comrades weren't on Levy's guest list for obvious reasons; a shame because for panache their design gets top marks, with nice practical touches such as integral seating for players and (in the Tate version) boxes for pieces. The combo certainly beats the usual trestle tables, dodgy chairs and hope-for-the-best approach to set storage, so let's not cavil that there’s nowhere much to rest the elbows, and forbear to suggest that next time, please, get a players' focus group to advise on the colour scheme.

Duchamp was, of course, in the thick of it at the Levy show. He knew a thing or two about chess tables having built in 1919 the "Buenos Aires" travelling board (to go with his own-design set) a fold-up mobile job, for use among the gauchos of Argentina during his respite from the inconveniences of post-war USA. As a serious player he designed-in clocks and space enough for score sheets, refreshments, fag-ash - so last century - and several pairs of elbows, but style-wise his table was uncharacteristically restrained – so it wouldn't distract the players maybe or, more crucially, frighten the horses.


For The Imagery Duchamp broke the habit of a lifetime and left provocation to others, in chess set and table design at least; for example Isamu Noguchi, with whose creation Levy is playing at the top of this blog.


It was the hit of the show. Noguchi was from Japan, his sources were Oriental and Eastern, and his design an exuberant change from, say, the machined minimalism of Man Ray’s 1920s effort. However, looking closely, it is difficult to resist the suspicion that Noguchi allowed himself to be diverted by two signal achievements of Western culture: Sci-Fi B movies and table soccer. Perish the thought that this was the real reason for its popularity.

For musical diversion the score of John Cage's "Chess Piece" was inscribed on a chess board; thus it could be looked at, played on, and perhaps played. Or perhaps not. The sources say that "Chess Piece" wasn't publically performed at The Imagery, and not even played at all, even by Cage, even privately, ever, until recorded in 2006.


It has a beguiling simplicity, and a Middle Eastern/Iberian flavour. Although it is clearly composed by the same hand as the better known, and metallic, "Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano", also on the CD, Chess Piece inevitably inhabits a less exalted sound world compared with one coaxed from a joanna playing bits of any old iron. The final piece, also composed for The Imagery, is "Chess Serenade" by Vittorio Rieti (another of Kolty’s victims) with the subtitle "The KNIGHT serenading the QUEEN on top of the CASTLE, while the KING confers with the bishop on the subject of the PAWNS". It is elegant; like its subtitle, it is charming; and at 1 minute 28 seconds, it is brief. Chess Serenade and Chess Piece back to back would provide the soundtrack to a game of five minute blitz.

Larry List's comprehensive and authoritative essays document the original show, its second coming in The Imagery of Chess Revisited exhibition in 2005, and other twentieth century incarnations in which contemporary artists, including a clutch of YBAs (not so Young anymore British Artists) have used the chess set as the raw material for their art-works. You can see them here and maybe read something half-way coherent about them if and when Exhibitionism is ever Revisited.





Notes

1. The Imagery of Chess Revisited. Larry List (ed). George Braziller, New York, 2005: essay by Larry List, "The Imagery of Chess Revisited".
Skáklist/32 pieces: The Art of Chess. Mark Sanders (ed). Reykjavik Art Museum, 2009: essay by Larry List, "New Forms for a New Era".

The list of exhibitions is: Levy Gallery*, New York 1944/5; Somerset House, London 2003; Noguchi Museum, New York 2005*; Luhring Augustine Gallery, New York 2005; The Menil Collection, Texas 2006*; Gary Tatintsian Gallery, Moscow, 2006; Sebastian Guinness Gallery, Dublin 2008; Reykjavik Art Museum, 2009.

* denotes "The Imagery of Chess/Revisited" series. The others are editions of "The Art of Chess" organised by Mark Sanders and Julia Royce.

2. Rodchenko and Popova: Defining Constructivism. Tate Modern, London 2009. The catalogue shows a design drawing for the 1925 Paris International Exhibition of "Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes" which has the board the wrong way round. The Tate website had the original Rodchenko design drawing where he got it right.

3. John Cage, The Works for Piano 7. Performed by Margaret Leng Tan. Mode Records, USA., 2006. It comes with a liner note by the pianist on both chess pieces. See also Paul B. Franklin and Lowell Cross "Composing Chess" in List (2005) op cit.

It's just not fair, apparently. Week before last we ran a piece about chessboxing, sceptical of both the activity and the media coverage it's received. This has upset British chessboxing supremo Tim Woolgar, who on Monday this week sent us the following email:

I have just noticed that you published your story a few days ago. I am surprised because it is normal to provide advance copy to the contributors - for the purpose of checking the accuracy of any quotes and indeed to provide an opportunity of rebuttal. Given the fact that my colleague Rajko and I went to some effort to provide you with the help requested I am very disappointed that you failed to extend this simple courtesy.

Your published complaint (ironically) seems to be based on envy or jealousy about the amount of coverage chessboxing receives in the media. Well, perhaps I need to point out that I don't like to be lied to or misled - and nor does any journalist. The article published bears little resemblance to the outline you supplied. If this cowardly approach reflects the general standard of your character then it is highly unsurprising that you have achieved so little in your attempts to gain publicity.

regards,

TW

Take that, chessbloggers!

As it's clear that Mr Woolgar is complaining, but, in truth, unclear that he has anything to complain about, on Tuesday we sent him a reply:

Dear Mr Woolgar

Thank you for your email. I am afraid you seem to be under several serious misapprehensions.

One is that you were a "contributor" to our piece. You were not. Nor were you invited to be: nor did you request this. You were asked some questions by email, as indeed were other people we contacted in preparing the article.

A second is that you are entitled to see a piece of ours before publication, which you are not. Nor did you request to see it: nor would such a request have been granted. Publications do not normally submit pieces to interviewees for inspection in advance and nor should they.

A third is that you received some kind of outline of the piece, which you did not. You were informed only of the nature of the query we were making of you, which you did indeed answer - though not everything that was said in your reply was subsequently verified as accurate.

I wonder if this may perhaps be the root of the problem. Until now you have always been able to determine the content of pieces written about your events, either because you or your colleagues have written them yourselves, or more often, because you have had your claims repeated without question by journalists without specialist knowledge of the field. However, perhaps for the first time a publication with knowledge of the field of chess has taken the trouble to examine seriously claims that have been made about chessboxing events - and I am afraid not all of them were found to be convincing.

Everybody likes to have positive publicity but I am afraid nobody is obliged to give it to you. Similarly, nobody is obliged to help you sell your events. I wonder if you may have developed some perhaps unreasonable expectations? This might explain, among other things, the apparent belief that you are entitled to see our copy in advance.

Yours sincerely

ejh

Ding ding! End of Round One. Mr Woolgar's move.