Dirty Little Secrets

Ray's got a new book out!

He was giving it away on Twitter...

...and now he's plugging it in his Times column.

Times, 10 December 2013.

Tell you what, it's worth a closer look.

Here it is!

What's in it?

A lot of chess positions. Here's the very first one.

There's some notes. Here's the first one.

Does that look anything like this to you?

What about the second note?

Isn't it more than a little bit like this?

Shall we make it three out of three?

Get in!

If you're current suffering more than one case of déjà vu at once, this is because we have seen all this before. As observed on this very blog in July, these notes are plagiarised, from Part One of My Great Predecessors.

Ray plagiarised them in his Times column for 5 June 2013 - and also, in a more truncated form, in his column for 28 May 2010.

Needless to say there is no mention in The Times Little Book Of Chess Secrets of either of these columns, nor of My Great Predecessors or its author. The reader will not know, because they are not told, that the material is not original to the book. Nor will they know that it is not even written by the book's author, but plagiarised from someone else entirely.

They will particularly not know, because what they are told is this.

But it is very much not copyright Raymond Keene OBE, is it? And Raymond Keene OBE is well aware of this.

That's the first position in the book. Might there be any more plagiarism like that in any of the other positions?

What do you think?

And what do Harper Collins think?

We'll see if we can find out.

But given what's between the covers, here's maybe what the front should really look like.

[Thanks to Angus French and Pablo Byrne]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]

[Plagiarised by Ray Keene index]

[Ray Keene index]

[Keenipedia]