Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Predecessors XIX: Lasker-Chigorin 1895

Just yesterday we were looking at Ray's Times notes to the game played between Lasker and Chigorin at Hastings in 1895, notes which appeared in his column for 3 January 2012 and then again on 24 December 2012 in a version that owed a great deal to the set already published.

Still, among the various notes copied out from the first column to the second, there were several which appeared in one column but not the other, giving the impression that Ray had, at least, done some original work on each.

Alas, it was not so. The fresh notes were not fresh and the copied notes had been copied already.


They were all plagiarised from Part One of My Great Predecessors, where they were annotated on pages 102-106.


First, the notes that appeared in both columns.

1. White's move fourteen.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

2. Black's move twenty-two.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

Intriguing little change to the end there, the return of "of this position" suggesting that Ray went back to the original to see what it said.

3. Black's move twenty-seven.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

4. Black's move thirty-three.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

Not much surface similarity between the two Times notes after "Here 33...g5", but having seen the original, we can see that Ray adds Evgeny Vasyukov and Alexander Nikitin to the list of writers he's plagiarised. (One guesses that "get his knights working", in the second Times column, echoes Kasparov's comment on Chigorin's knights.)

5. White's move forty-seven.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

Both notes plagiarised, obviously. But what's "kept the balance" all about?

6. White's move fifty-four.

3 January 2012:
24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

The 24 December note just makes me laugh. Everything copied, but the typesetting mangled.

On to the notes which appeared in one column or another, but not both, giving the appearance of originality. But only its appearance.

7. Black's move seven.

3 January 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

8. White's move thirty-eight.

3 January 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

9. White's move thirty-nine.

24 December 2012:

My Great Predecessors:

As I was saying, Ray's quite capable of changing the voice where he has to, and the telltale "to me" disappears.

10. Black's move thirty-nine.

3 January 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

11. Black's move forty-six.

24 December 2012:
My Great Predecessors:

All right, none of that is anything we haven't seen before. One thing before we go, though.

If you clicked on the link at the top of the piece (and yesterday's) you'll have seen that on Chessgames.com, the Lasker-Chigorin game has notes by Ray. And, a touch unusually for Chessgames, the page gives the origin of the notes, which is Ray's book Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal.

Here's the original, from my edition (in fact it spills over to a second page, but I think this one is sufficient).


So given that Ray had already annotated the game, and given furthermore than he has no particular objection to using forty-year-old notes, one has to ask - if he couldn't be bothered to produce a new set of notes, why, instead of stealing somebody else's, didn't he just reuse his own?

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]
[Plagiarised by Ray index]
[Ray Keene index]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is not so much of a surprise, is it? If no one is going to stop him, then simpler just to copy from the same book - the one that is already on the desk - than to traipse around the house looking for other annotations of the same game. (And in RDK's house, the various books he has authored must be all over the place. Could there be a room big enough to store them all?)