Tuesday, December 17, 2013

With his original manner

Well, Xmas is nearly upon us, and that means Hastings is nearly upon us. Among Hastings' many contributions to chess tradition is that it gives the Times correspondent something to write about over the holiday period, and on Xmas Eve last year, Santa, before setting out, might have glanced at Ray's notes to the game Lasker-Chigorin from the very first Hastings in 1895.

Here's the column from 24 December 2012.


I said it was a tradition. Ray annotated the same game the previous Xmas, on 3 January 2012.


Might these two columns have anything in common with one another?

Did Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer have a very shiny nose?

To be fair, the first note in the 3 January column


has no counterpart in the 24 December piece, but the next note

3 January 2012

is not distinguishable from its successor in every respect.

24 December 2012

Similarly these two notes make something of a pair

3 January 2012

24 December 2012

and these two, though not twins, are very much related.


3 January 2012

24 December 2012

However, the notes to move 33 only have slight similarities

3 January 2012

24 December 2012

and after that the two columns annotate different moves until they are reunited at White's forty-seventh.

3 January 2012

24 December 2012

We reach the end of the game with two pairs of closely-related notes.

3 January 2012

24 December 2012

3 January 2012

24 December 2012

Well, nobody really wants to put the work in over the Xmas period, do they? Still, that's one reason people like me have a problem with the traditional Xmas. Same bloody thing every bloody time.

Could Santa bring Ray some different notes this year?

[Ray copies Ray index]
[Ray Keene index]

2 comments:

John Cox said...

I could have sworn you'd already covered RDK plagiarising this game from Gazza. Now that would be an irony. I expect I was wrong, though. Or perhaps not - after all presumably RDK didn't actually write these notes himself in the first place.

Adam FF said...

Seems to have reached the stage where few comment, as there seems little more to add; but keep going Justin. For one thing, I enjoy playing through the games. Plus, there are useful notes to help understand what's going on; several identical sets in fact!