Predecessors Predecessor

A couple of years before he wrote the article Great Alexander for the Spectator, which plagiarised wholesale Garry Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, Ray Keene wrote a piece for the same magazine, called Harry's Game, which appeared in the issue for March 12, 2011. In the article, Ray annotated the game Reti-Capablanca, New York 1924.

The Harry referred to in Ray's title is the late Harry Golombek who, as Ray observes, produced noteworthy game collections honouring both those players.

I happen to possess copies of both books: the game from New York was annotated by Golombek in the one devoted to Reti. Here's the front cover of my copy, complete with the author's name misspelled on the front cover.

Ray goes on to say that his annotations to Reti-Capablanca are based on Golombek's.

With notes based on Golombek's. But they're not. Patently, they are not based on Golombek's.

How can we can say that with confidence? Because they are, in fact, not "based on" anything, but plagiarised - and not from Golombek but a different place entirely.

Where do you think that might be?

There's a clue in our title.

Below are Golombek's notes on Reti-Capablanca, which we'll examine in more detail lower down. My edition was published by Batsford in 1997 and the game can be found on pages 124 to 128.

Here's the game from My Great Predecessors, Part One (Everyman, 2003). It appears on pages 291 to 293.

You'll observe that the notes in My Great Predecessors repeatedly quote Alexander Alekhine. This is because Alekhine annotated the games from New York in the tournament book, of which I have the Dover edition, published in 1961.

Alekhine's notes to Reti-Capablanca appear on pages 55 and 56.

Let's go through Ray's notes. In each instance, we'll compare them with Golombek's notes, to which they bear little or no resemblance - and then with My Great Predecessors (and where appropriate, Alekhine in the tournament book) from which they are plagiarised virtually word-for-word.

1. Black's move nine.

Ray:

This bears no resemblance to Golombek, nor could it, since Golombek makes no note for this move. But it is plagiarised word-for-word, both from My Great Predecessors, which acknowledges the original

and from that original, which is Alekhine.

2. Black's move thirteen.

Ray:

This bears no resemblance to Golombek

but it is plagiarised word-for-word, both from My Great Predecessors, which acknowledges the original

and from that original, which is Alekhine.

3. White's move fourteen.

Ray:

This bears no resemblance to Golombek in so far as the text is concerned, although the variation given is similar (albeit shorter)

but Golombek is evidently not the source, since the passage is identical to that given in My Great Predecessors, from which it is therefore plagiarised word-for-word.

4. Black's move eighteen.

Ray:

This bears a very small resemblance to Golombek (the overlooking of White's 22nd)

but Golombek is evidently not the source, since with the exception of the added "here" it is in fact plagiarised word-for-word, both from My Great Predecessors, which acknowledges the original

and from that original, which is Alekhine.

5. Black's move nineteen.

Ray:

This bears no resemblance to Golombek, save the mention of 19...Rad8

but it is plagiarised word-for-word from My Great Predecessors.

(Below, for the record, is Alekhine's note, to which My Great Predecessors refers, though it does not quote or use its text.)

6. White's move twenty-six.

Ray:

This bears little resemblance to Golombek in so far as the text is concerned, although the variation given is similar

but Golombek is evidently not the source since - other than omitting "to be sure" - it is in fact plagiarised word-for-word, both from My Great Predecessors, which acknowledges the original

and from that original, which is Alekhine.

7. Black's move twenty-seven.

Ray:

This bears almost no resemblance to Golombek

but every word is plagiarised from My Great Predecessors.

8. Black's move twenty-eight.

Ray:

This bears no resemblance to Golombek, nor could it, since Golombek makes no note for this move. But it is plagiarised word-for-word, both from My Great Predecessors, which acknowledges the original

and from that original, which is Alekhine.

9. Black's resignation.

This is just a short note with barely any text, but for the sake of completeness we should note that Ray's comment

is worded exactly the same as the note in My Great Predecessors, which Ray has faithfully plagiarised throughout.

The variation itself appears in both Golombek's and Alekhine's notes.

So there you have it: every word of Ray's notes comes directly plagiarised from My Great Predecessors with the exception of

and

and

which, it might be said, is better than last week's example, if only to the tune of "Here".

The column is another brazen and wholesale exercise in plagiarism and copyright infringement with Ray lifting other people's work and passing it off as his own.

How much more of this is there, you may ask? Well, who knows.

But I can tell you that I stumbled across last week's by accident. Today's, pretty much the same. But after that, I really started looking.

When you really start looking, you find loads.

[UPDATE: Also of interest re: Ray in the Spectator. Edward Winter, last week, on how Ray's current column is lifted from a 1998 column.]

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne]

[Ray Keene index]

----------------------

NOTE

Readers from last week will recall that Ray produced a cock-and-bull story to try and justify the plagiarism, claiming that he had permission from the (unidentified and undocumented) owner of the rights, coincidentally his typesetter, who for (unspecified and unexplained) reasons wished the source to go unmentioned.

This nonsense should not, of course, fool anybody, but just to spell out the bleedin' obvious:

• The work is copyright its author, who is not Ray Keene's typesetter.
• There is no plausible good reason for not mentioning the original sources.
• The only plausible actual reason is to deceive the readership of the periodical concerned.
• Even if Ray personally owned the rights, he could not pass off someone else's previous work as his own. That is plagiarism, and that is what he is doing here.

It's what he does a lot.