Predecessors VI: Fischer-Euwe 1960

In his Times column for 8 July 2011, Ray Keene annotated the game Fischer-Euwe from the Leipzig Olympiad, 1960. The column is below.

This was not the last time he was to annotate that game for the Times since on 4 April 2012 he chose the same game for his column, which you can see below.

At first sight the columns don't have much in common beyond the game itself, though a closer look (try White's twenty-fourth and thirty-second moves) suggests that the later column wasn't written without reference to the earlier one.

Thing is, though, it's not really the relationship between the columns that interests us here. It's the relationship both bear to a third work, from which they are both shamelessly plagiarised.

That volume is the fourth part of Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors.

In Part Four (Everyman, 2004) Fischer-Euwe is covered on pages 254 to 257.

Let's take it from the top. Or, at least, from White's twelfth move, though there's not much going on there - the 2012 column has no note for that move, while 2011 is only the faintest of echoes of Kasparov's original.

1. White's move twelve.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

So let's move on to the next note, where there is rather more damning evidence to be found.

2. Black's move thirteen.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

Again, there was no note in 2012. However, the 2011 column plagiarises from My Great Predecessors word-for-word, except for a "this is" at the start.

3. White's move fifteen.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

4 April 2012:

There's not much wrong with the 2012 entry (don't worry, there's plenty to be found lower down the column) but you'll notice a couple of familiar words and phrases in the 2011 column when comparing it to My Great Predecessors. We'll be taking a closer look at that tomorrow, but let's just bear it in mind for now and look at Black's fifteenth.

4. Black's move fifteen.

My Great Predecessors:

4 April 2012:

Nothing for 2011, but 2012 is entirely plagiarised, with the aid of scissors and paste: a couple of bits lopped out, and the remainder forming a sandwich with two slices of Kasparov around a piece of Fischer. Of course neither of these gentlemen is mentioned.

5. White's move eighteen.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

Nothing for this move in the 2012 column, nor any mention of either Kasparov or Fischer in the 2011 column, which plagiarises its note for free save the cost of an extra "as".

6. White's move nineteen.

My Great Predecessors:

4 April 2012:

The 2011 column is silent on this move. The 2012 column is also silent on this move - if you exclude all the content that is plagiarised word-for-word.

7. White's move twenty-one.

My Great Predecessors:

4 April 2012:

Nothing from 2011. 2012 is, evidently, plagiarised from My Great Predecessors.

8. White's move twenty-four.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

4 April 2012:

For the first time, both columns plagiarise the same note and in essentially the same way, though Fischer's "squeeze the most out" quote, included (but naturally not acknowledged as Fischer) in 2012, was somehow squeezed out from the 2011 column.

9. White's move thirty.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

Nothing for 2012. Nothing for 2011 that was not already there in My Great Predecessors.

10. White's move thirty-two.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

4 April 2012:

By this stage, it's like identical twins - you can only tell them apart when they dress them up slightly differently. You'd say triplets rather than twins, but I think we can tell which one of these paragraphs fathered the other two.

11. Black's move thirty-two.

My Great Predecessors:

8 July 2011:

No 2012 here and no mention of Fischer either, but although the plagiarism is not on the same word-for-word basis as several of the entries above, the source is recognisably My Great Predecessors, including the quotation from Fischer. Neither of these sources appear in the note. Plagiarism it is. Plagiarism, it seems, it nearly always is.

Strange business, this one. Rather than My Great Predecessors being plagiarised once and then the resulting column undergoing minor changes for unadvertised republication, it's almost as if two different exercises in plagarism had taken place. So why, in the end, plagiarise two of the same notes in the same way in both columns?

Who knows. Perhaps it's because, in true Ray style, he can't even be bothered to fiddle properly. That's the secret of Ray, I think. That's why he plagiarises, why he cheats. He's just phenomenally lazy.

But whatever the reason, a gigantic exercise in plagiarism is what this is.

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne and Angus French]

[Previous Predecessors: see plagiarism index]

[Ray Keene index]

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By the way, in the course of research I was idly inputting a phrase or two from the 2012 column into Google and was most* surprised, on searching for Bobby Fischer dismantling the former world champion to find what appeared to be a piece in the Australian for 7 March of this year.

This piece appeared to be exactly the same as the 2012 column except for replacing "would also have won" with "was also a winner" at White's twenty-fourth and losing the phrase "in this Olympic year for London".

The site doesn't appear to show the whole column, but is this piece for real? And should I therefore guess that what Ray plagiarises from My Great Predecessors in the Times, he then lifts again for use in the Australian?

[* well, not most]