Predecessors VIII: Spassky-Bronstein 1960

When you ask the question "how does Ray Keene get away with it?" it's hard to come up with a better answer than "God only knows". But part of the explanation may be that Ray is a prodigious networker, who lives by doing favours for people whose ethics are often no better than his own and himself receiving favours in return. Four decades of networking builds up an awful lot of protection.

One minor character in this particular play has been CJ de Mooi, one-time President of the English Chess Federation, who, it will be remembered, by chess players at least, invited Ray to open the 2011 British Championships. This was strange for a number of reasons, not least that Ray has not been a member of the English Chess Federation for about twenty years. Not since the financial shenanigans that involved him claiming and receiving a substantial sum of money for duties he had not apparently performed.

Opening ceremony 2013: no sign of Ray

CJ, for his part, was no stranger to financial shenanigans, distinguishing himself at those same 2011 Championships by distributing thousands of pounds in cash without invoices, receipts, signatures or any other kind of record to show for it. He subsequently disappeared from active chess life, though not before persuading the ECF to pass him another wedge of money to send him to the 2012 Olympiad in Istanbul, on arriving at which event he resigned his post without having performed the duties for which he had received his money. He proceeded to enjoy a holiday and - no doubt - a good laugh at our literal expense.

Anyway, CJ was (and is) a small part of Ray's mutual backscratching network. Here's part of Ray's Times column for 4 June 2011, which otherwise annotates the game Spassky-Bronstein, Leningrad 1960, from the 37th USSR Championship.

Now had I but world enough and time, on top of ploughing through Ray's many plagiarisms and his extraordinary number of recycled columns, to look at a third dubious aspect of his Times journalism, I might write about his use of his column and his Twitter account to plug his friends and business associates. (One notes, for instance, his several dozen mentions of Julian Simpole.) But for now, we'll just observe with regret that Ray's support was insufficient to raise the profile of The Renata Road, beautifully crafted as it may have been, to a film you have actually heard of.

In more important "actually" news, the column for 4 June 2011 was one in which Ray actually mentioned the source from which his notes were taken.

Yes indeed! Ray does in fact do this from time to time, perhaps once for every seven or eight times that he does not. He does it here. There's no mistaking it. That's a mention for My Great Predecessors, which he has so often plagiarised. Here, he speaks its normally absent name.

So what, then, is it doing in this piece, appearing as it does in the Predecessors series and the Plagiarism Index?

The answer is that the notes from My Great Predecessors have been plagiarised all right. They've been plagiarised by Ray Keene all right.

Not in the Times, but in the Spectator. Twice.

Let's take a look.

Here is Ray's Spectator column for 13 November 2010, entitled On Display.

Here is his column of 17 March 2012, entitled Landmarks.

The notes from these two columns are plagiarised from Part Three of My Great Predecessors (Everyman, 2004) in which the game Spassky-Bronstein appears on pages 203-206.

They're plagiarised in very different ways, though. One is basically a simple importation of phrases, passages and variations wholesale: the other is a more subtle example of the genre.

1. White's move ten.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

This is not the more subtle of the two.

2. White's move thirteen.

My Great Predecessors:

(The note is longer than this: I've reproduced the relevant part - ejh.)

Spectator 17 March 2012:

3. Black's move fourteen.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

4. White's move fifteen.

My Great Predecessors:

(Again, I have reproduced only part of the note - ejh.)

Spectator 13 November 2010:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

5. Black's move fifteen.

My Great Predecessors:

(I have reproduced only the first paragraph of two - ejh.)

Spectator 13 November 2010:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

6. White's move sixteen.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 13 November 2010:

Nothing wrong with this note, by the way. I rather like it.

Spectator 17 March 2012:

7. Black's move seventeen.

My Great Predecessors:

(Another shortened one - ejh.)

Spectator 13 November 2010:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

8. White's move twenty.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

9. Black's move twenty.

My Great Predecessors:

(And this one - ejh.)

Spectator 17 March 2012:

10. White's move twenty-one.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

11. Black's move twenty-one.

My Great Predecessors:

Spectator 17 March 2012:

As you see the piece from 2012 is simple, blatant, unmistakable plagiarism of a kind which has become rife in Ray Keene's recent work. The earlier, 2010 column is more an example of Raygiarism in which the phrases are usually altered to disguise the plagiarism, but, as I wrote in March:

not bothering to do it thoroughly, such that some original phrases still remain.

And indeed, in the 2010 piece, we have phrases like

After the natural...White has the initative

and

Black is a rook up but is unable to defend

which give the game away to anybody who should happen to look at the original. Still, if it were a one-off - if, perhaps, it weren't the writer's habit to do this, and rather worse than this - you might do no more than raise a knowing eyebrow. Trouble is, that's pretty much the best that Ray does, rather than the worst.

One piece - the major purpose, plugging a friend - which has an attribution. One piece plagiarised, but with disguise. One entire shameless rip-off. I suppose that's Ray's full spectrum nowadays. That, and copying his own notes wholesale.

Perhaps the date, June 2011, is pertinent in a way. While I've been working, this summer, on Ray's columns I've come to develop some impressions about how he works, and whether it's changed at all. Those impressions:

• Ray has always been a plagiarist, but not previously on the scale he has been of late;
• Ray's habit of reusing old material unannounced is practised on an industrial scale, and has been for years;
• The habit of engaging in crude, huge-chunk plagiarism, on a regular and frequent basis, is newer and belongs (on the current scale, at least) to the last couple of years. During that time, other people's work has been reused and recycled much as Ray has previously done with his own.

These conclusions are subject to revision. Unlike, one might add, most of the old columns Ray recycles.

Anyway, as Ray observes, the Spassky-Bronstein game is the one adapted for the chess sequence in From Russia With Love.

In his Times notes he calls the final position "the James Bond position" but of course it's not, quite. As Ray correctly states in his 2010 Spectator column:

It's still recognisably Spassky-Bronstein, though, even with a couple of cosmetic changes. Most things are still recognisable if you just make a couple of cosmetic changes. And some things are still recognisable if you make more than that.

Ray Keene, meanwhile, is surely recognisable as the most outrageous plagiarist in British journalism today.

[Opening ceremony photo: Adam Batson]

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne and Angus French]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]

[Ray Keene index]