Risky business

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 b5 8.Be2 a6 9.O-O c5 10.d5 exd5 11.Nxd5 Bb7 12.Nxf6 Qxf6 13.a4 b4 14.e4

I

14...Bxe4? is much too risky in view of the simple 15.Re1



Steffen Pedersen, The Meran System, Gambit, 2000, p.25

II

14...Bxe4? is far too risky after the simple 15.Re1



Glenn Flear, 8.Be2 in the Meran, TWIC Theory, 2005, p.2 (pdf)

Immediately, if not before

Somebody has offended CJ de Mooi, and he's not going to give us any more of his money. Or so he says, in his 31 October message to the nation.

Funny piece, in a number of ways, ending with the exhortation

we'll make it an Olympic year in many ways.

How? Will chess be in the Olympics then? But let it pass, and scroll up to the flounce:

I do understand the criticisms levelled at me by some people for my more radical methods – one major issue seems to have been my habit of putting my own money into chess and into the federation but in the light of these concerns, I shall desist from doing so immediately.

Hmmm.

Now as it happens I know of nobody who's criticised CJ for his "habit" (a settled or regular tendency or practice?) of "putting [his] own money into chess", but the comments box is open for anybody who can supply a reference to anybody doing so.

Curiously, though, I do have a reference to a previous comment of CJ's, from 13 July 2011, more than three months before the one given above.

In all honesty, I won't be contributing any more personal funds to chess as I can't afford it

Makes a change. Previously CJ reckoned he'd done things he didn't appear to have done. Now it's the other way around: he's claiming he's going to do something that he already did.

[CJ index]
[Thanks to JB]

A rare event

White to play

JMGB v Drunken Knight, October 2011

I'd been aiming to reach this position for a couple of moves. When I got here I played 23 Rf2. It wasn't my original intention, and it is very probably not the best move, but there is a point to it.

What was my idea?

Dadd's Army

This series began with a chess painting by Richard Dadd who was confined, eventually to Broadmoor, after he murdered his father in 1843. It has morphed into a celebration of other patients ("inmates" in the early days) who, over the decades, played chess there.

A couple of episodes ago, we met East End lad Robert Coombes who, like Dadd, was detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Young Coombes was fortunate enough to be discharged in 1912 when he was then only 30 years old. Perhaps he went on, faute de mieux, to another mad-house where he might have served now His Majesty’s Pleasure: the trenches of the First World War. Who knows.

We are making a new world. Paul Nash (1918)

---x---x---

To bring the story of chess in Broadmoor further into the 20th Century your blogger has consulted the Broadmoor Chronicle, a more or less monthly “house magazine” produced by the patients themselves. It ran from the end of the Second War through to the seventies, thereafter appearing less frequently. There was a surprising amount of chess in it, on and off, and from its pages we can follow the fortunes of the game in the hospital, and some of the characters who played it.

Articles in the Chronicle were anonymous, and the Physician-Superintendent (CEO Broadmoor, you might say) had to approve their publication. He seemed pretty relaxed, prohibiting mention only of such things as escapes, deaths, and demands for his resignation (joke!). It was managed by committee of patients, and produced painstakingly on a Gestetner 360 Rotary Duplicator which (on a nostalgic note for our senior readers) looked something like this.

The Broadmoor Chronicle had a run in the region of 500 copies, a modest cover price, and an avid readership throughout the Hospital and possibly beyond.

Although it is the chess that interests us, the Chronicle’s other content was wide and varied. There was the seemingly safe and, to an outsider, trivial. There was the thought-provoking and creative. And there were the saucy bits - in a McGill sea-side postcard manner - somewhere in between.

All in all, it seems so, well, normal.

Another nostalgic note for our senior readers

In the main, the organised chess activity was in the “Parole Blocks”, numbers 2 and 5, where a more relaxed regime allowed patients to schedule their own time. Chess had its up and downs, and in the sixties and seventies (the period reviewed in these posts) its driving force was a few students of the game who were a class apart, in terms of chess strength, from the social players, and it was they who ran the matches in and between the hospital blocks, and wrote the Chronicle’s intermittent chess columns.

In the early sixties there were only sporadic mentions of chess (Christmas competitions and so on) usually in the monthly Sports and Social Reports, but a dedicated column appeared in 1963, always on page 6.

F.J.C. (initials only, I’m afraid) was the main-man of chess in the period, organising handicap tournaments where he sportingly offered his less skilled opponents odds such as Queen and move. He published one of these games, played a few years earlier in 1959.

The old anthologies used to show such games, in which the Master, as if blessed by the Deities, prevailed against such an impossible handicap. But F.J.C. was a Chess Hero for another reason: he featured a game where he offered odds of Queen and was himself mated on move 19. Good on him: even if he used the rest of his precious space to give thirty-three moves of analysis showing how he might have won. He was a mere human, after all.

The walls of Broadmoor didn’t cut our colleagues off from the chess world beyond. In May 1963 the Chronicle reported on the Botvinnik - Petrosian World Chess Championship match, complaining that although “it is the hardest struggle in the way of sport....[chess] rates a fraction of a column in the Times and nil in most other papers” (the usual story, of course).

The Chronicle’s own assessment of the match was downbeat: as “most of the games result[ed] in draws” it was “less inspiring than [other] recent battles e.g Botvinnik and Smyslov”. Indeed there were fifteen draws in the twenty-two game match, in which Tigran Petrosian ran out winner with 5 wins and 2 losses.

Petrosian and Botvinnik in 1963 - before digital clocks

Fifteen draws there may have been, but also a whiff of controversy. It concerned Iron Tigran’s 41st sealed move in the 5th game, and if you will permit a degree of dramatic licence the story runs as follows.

Chief Arbiter (and sometime Brixton Chess Clubber) Harry Golombek opens the envelope and plays 41. Kf8 on the board. Trouble is: Kf8 is illegal. The habitually undemonstrative Botvinnik, on the ropes in the game, can’t believe his luck. Though such behaviour is frowned on in the classrooms of the Soviet School of Chess he leaps to his feet, punches the air and claims victory. Iron Tigran curls a lip in disapproval. Harry rubs his eyes, and peers again at the score sheet. Now, it is well known that on the board Petrosian liked to camouflage his intentions by adding extraneous flourishes to his play. Apparently, and unknown to our Harry, he would add confusing embellishment to his script as well. Our man gets it at last. Looked at properly 41.Kf7 was the right (and legal) move. Chief Arbiter Golombek adoubes adroitly.

Iron Tigran curls his lip again, this time in approval. The Patriarch, deflated, disgruntled, and now seated, demands a face-saving photocopy for graphological post-mortem. Without troubling his lip further Petrosian wins in short order.

And if that, even with my lame effort to pep it up, was the best they could do for drama, then verily the Chronicle (and the Times) may be forgiven for leaving the whole anti-climax unreported.

The chess column maintained its internationalist outlook with a “test yourself” exercise giving, as a source, a book by Euwe and using, perhaps to the bemusement of its readers, German notation. This suggests the item was by foreign-born G.W., an interesting figure in Broadmoor life (chess and otherwise) to whom we shall return. In September 1963 the Chronicle gave a game between F.J.C. and G.W. himself, again from 1959. Not GM stuff, maybe, but it compares favourably with the action on the lower boards of any club match.

Evidence of an inextinguishable urge to play came in the summer of 1963 when a correspondent complained that “there have been no chess or bridge matches between blocks 2 and 5 this year, perhaps someone could start up some interest again”. In fact, to leap ahead of the story, the 2 v 5 rivalry did resurge, run for a several years, only to fall away around 1973. Fast forward to September 1978, Winter Activities Planning Meeting report: "Hywel D. said there used to be an inter-house chess competition....and he wondered if they could be re-instated." September 1979: "Wishing everyone luck in the internal chess competition," and the wheel of history wound slowly forward to whence it started.

To get back to 1963: Grandmaster game scores appeared occasionally (Tal v Olafsson; Fischer v Gligoric - serious chess) with analysis certainly culled from one of the chess magazines, invariably signed off by G.W., and the column ticked over regularly well into 1964. Then, in June that year, it disappeared…… bursting back over two years later in January 1967...... and we'll pick up the story there, next time.

Notes.

The Hospital authorities have deposited The Broadmoor Chronicle, and considerable amounts of other material, at the Berkshire Record Office for research purposes, and we should be extremely grateful for that (and to the ever-helpful staff at the BRO), though the Hospital has a seemingly blanket ban on publication of images of the Chronicle, even where there is no patient reference, which is a bit frustrating. See this about other problems that beset researchers into Broadmoor history.

The Petrosian - Botvinnik 5th match game is here. Apologies to all parties for taking liberties with the sealed move episode, which is discussed at length in the thread at the link, giving also Botvinnik's account of the affair.

The Paul Nash is in the Imperial War Museum.

Check out the series at the Asylum Index.

At what point does this become embarrassing?

[Warriors Of The Mind]
[The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia]
[CJ index]
[Ray Keene index]

Received

We have a bonus post for you today, but I wouldn't want you to miss Morgan's Today in Chessminster which went up yesterday. Chess debated as a possible distraction for Parliamentarians? Who'd have thunk it?

Meanwhile, newly received from the GingerGM and his crew: a couple of DVDs for review. Given that I haven't finished with Killer Endgames yet (review Part's I and II are available, mind), that's kind of generous. Come to think of it, I'm not done with John Cox's book on the Queen's Gambit Declined yet either (Tears in Rain).

A blogger's work is never done. Especially when there are videos to watch.

Today in Chessminster*

1. In which James Myles Hogge, Liberal Chief Whip and MP for Edinburgh East, worries that a Capablanca simul in the Commons will distract attention away from the Land Settlement (Scotland) Bill, and the chess-loving Conservative Leader in the Commons, Andrew Bonar Law, gives a fairly unsatisfactory reply...

Mr. HOGGE (by private notice) asked the Leader of the House, who is responsible for authorising the use of a Committee room of the House of Commons for a chess tournament by a professional player during the discussion of an important land measure for Scotland; whether he is aware that on the last occasion on which Scottish business was discussed the proceedings were interrupted by a river pageant, and whether he is prepared to appeal to those hon. Members who prefer the chess tournament to the discussion of Scottish affairs, to abstain from voting in divisions on subjects of vital importance to Scotland, on which they have not heard the arguments?

Spoilsport Hogge at the National Portrait Gallery

Mr. BONAR LAW I understand, in reply to the first part of the question, that the use of the Committee room was authorised by the Sergeant-at-Arms, at the request of a Committee of Members of the House. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative. As to the third part, I will give an undertaking, so far as I am personally concerned; but it would not be reasonable in this case alone to ask Members who have not heard the debate to refrain from taking part in Divisions. Let me add this, that the choice of to-day for this exhibition of chess is no mark of disrespect to Scotland, as I am informed that the date was fixed before it was known what the business would be.

'What's the big deal?' Bonar Law in Vanity Fair

Mr. HOGGE Has my right hon. Friend considered the question of precedent, and is he prepared to assure the House that in regard to amusements this will not create a precedent? This is the first occasion on which this sort of amusement has been permitted.

HON. MEMBERS No!

Mr. HOGGE I think so. If a Committee of this House wanted a prize-fight during the hours in which the House was sitting, would they get permission?

Mr. BONAR LAW I do not think it is right to ask me to answer any hypothetical question, but if the hon. Member wishes to take part in a prize-fight and makes application in the usual way, I am sure it will be considered.


(House of Commons, Official Report, 2 December 1919, vol. 122, cols. 233-4.)


* Please, for the love of God, if you have a better name for this series, do let me know.

Duffers' Delight V

Knights on the rim are Morgan's

Knights on the rim ... you know the rest. Grim. Or dim. Grim and dim.

Well not for my friend and fellow blogger Morgan Daniels they're not. For Morgan, whatever Siegbert Tarrasch might tell him, developing knights towards the centre of the board is naught but some kind of middle-class affectation. For Morgan, sticking them on the edge isn't so much a possibility as it's a requirement. Once I saw him open with 1 P-KN3, 2 B-N2, 3 N-KR3 and then follow up with 4 P-QB3. I asked him why and he replied, "So I can play N-QR3 and N-QB2, of course". Obviously.

My own attitude, I'm afraid, is somewhat more bourgeois. Increasingly so, in fact.

During the 2007/08 season I played both my knights to bishop three less than half the time (18 of 40 games), but by 2010/11 the figure had jumped to 78% (27/35). In the games I've played so far this season it's up again (82%; 31/38) and that's not the end of it. These days, of the knights that I don't develop to their traditional squares I'm only playing about one in eight to rook three which is about half my rate for the last four years as a whole. Guess who's going to be first against the wall come the revolution.

Potty mouth Major Rawls probably would call me fuck face

If the way Morgan and I like to play chess is ever going to come together it's going to be in Mike Basman's old pet line of the Leningrad Dutch.  The Basmaniac system, you see, manages to combine my love for defences against queen's pawn openings which are based on an early ... f7-f5 and Morgan's creative use of his knights

1 d4 f5, 2 g3 g6, 3 Bg2 Bg7, 4 Nf3 c6, 5 O-O Nh6, 6 c4 d6, 7 Nc3 O-O

Black gets a standard Leningrad set-up save for the king's knight which has gone exploring. It looks strange - well, it looks strange to me; I doubt Morgan would bat an eye - but according to Basman,

There are many ideas behind [putting the knight on h6]. Firstly, it does not block the bishop's diagonal, nor the KR's line, after castling. Secondly, the black squares of the K-side have weakened; a knight on f7 can defend h6 and g5. Thirdly, sometimes White plays P-Q5 and Black answers ... P-K4; in this case, a knight on f7 can defend d6.

It's not just the king's knight, either. Basman usually followed-up by playing his queen's knight out to the edge too. After 8 e4 for example,

Webb-Basman, British Championship 1973

or 8 Qc2.

Keene-Basman, Hastings 1973/74

Interestingly Raymondo - a leading theorist at the time, lest we forget - achieved nothing more than a short draw despite having months between the British Championships and Hastings to come up with something against Basman's system. A couple of years later Keene even adopted it himself when desperately seeking his final GM norm at a tournament in Spain.

Basman's Leningrad might just be another of his ropey openings, but it's one of his better ideas and RDK's failure to dent it, not to mention his subsequent patronage, is surely some kind of endorsement.  That's what has tempted me to give it a punt myself, I suppose, although I've never quite managed to persuade myself to do it.  I guess, when all is said and done, it's simply more Morgan's kind of thing than mine: he's got the creativity gene that you need to play this kind of stuff and I haven't.

Epilogue:

Last Halloween, we covered Korchnoi's tale of playing a game of chess with the long-dead Geza Maroczy. This year's ghost story is an encounter between Morgan and Tarrasch.

I've often imagined it: the erstwhile German chesser hanging around at Golden Lane, keeping an eye on the games. He's bound to be there. He's got an eternity to fill, after all, so he's going to take his entertainment wherever he can find it.

Sooner or later Tarrasch is going to find himself at Morgan's board. It's inevitable and when it finally comes to pass our man will feel the old master's presence at his shoulder and will turn, nodding towards his knights as he does so, and whisper,

You see these Siegbert? You see 'em? These are for you.

Basman quote taken from The Leningrad Dutch, Tim Harding (Batsford, 1976)

A Literary Reference : A Long Lunch

This was all slightly disappointing, from a man who once would willingly have grabbed what sleep he could on a filthy mattress in the back of a van as it cruised down the M1 at four in the morning. So I asked about the game, Mornington Crescent. Ah, he said, people always asked about that. "I say to them, you wouldn't expect me to explain the rules of chess in the interval at a jazz concert, would you? Well, Mornington Crescent is much more complicated than chess."

It had been invented when the programme had a producer whom they didn't greatly like. They had been having a few drinks in one of their hotel rooms, and had heard him coming down the corridor. "Quick," somebody said, "let's invent a game which he won't understand." Which they did.

....

Quite a number of reporters either made their names in Northern Ireland, or went to work there at some stage in a celebrated career. Max Hastings and John Sergeant are among the best known. Tim Jones worked for The Times and was a fine chess player as well as a resourceful reporter. His main problem as a chess player was finding anyone sufficiently challenging to play against. His boredom had resulted in some damage at the critic Bernard Levin's flat while he was playing him in the paper's chess tournament. In the tedium of waiting for Levin to play he took to rocking back and forth on a valuable Chippendale chair. Levin was, apparently, gracious about its broken leg.

Tim had been present at the early riots in Londonderry and was called back to give evidence to the Scarman Tribunal, held in the city itself. He had been told that his session would begin on a Monday afternoon, so he refrained from drinking. He wasn't called that day, so he abstained the next day too. By Wednesday lunchtime he was giving up hope, so had a generous and restorative lunch. When he had to give evidence that afternoon, things did not go entirely to plan. At one point the brief for the tribunal asked him if he could confirm that he had seen a rioter throw a brick - here he pointed at a map - at this location here, which had hit a soldier standing at that location there.

Tim agreed.

"Are you aware, Mr Jones, that that is a distance of one mile?"


Simon Hoggart, A Long Lunch: My Stories And I'm Sticking To Them, John Murray, 2010, p.102-3, p.119-20.

[A Literary Reference index]
[Thanks to Tom]

Bad book covers XXII

Back to Basics: Strategy, Beim, Russell Enterprises, 2011

[Bad book covers index]

Untitled simul post

The Nigel Short simul tour comes to an end in Gatwick tomorrow afternoon. It's obviously been a hugely popular event - 177 games played in the first leg, 51 games played as of Sunday in the second - and a great success. In fact, the only bad word that anybody has had to say about the tour itself comes from the star of the show:-

The little brat kept offering me draws by thrusting out his arm, which induced great mirth from his Dad as my displeasure increased ... Afterwards two parents quietly informed me that they were almost certain that his father had been communicating moves to him from a hand-held computer.

Nigel Short: New in Chess 2011, #3

Receiving multiple, frequently inappropriate, draw offers is part and parcel of chessing with munchkins, but silicon-assisted cheating is an entirely different kettle of pawns. Fortunately, Short makes clear that the incident was very much a one off with the vast majority of his opponents being impeccably behaved.

Come on then, I'll take you all on

Photograph from ChessVibes

It's good to see the 'big event' simul making a comeback. The 1970s was the Golden Age for such things, just as it was for just about everything else to do with chess, and thirty years ago a succession of leading Soviet Grandmasters made their way to London to take on the cream of the British juniors.

At the top of today's blog we see CHESS reporting the Karpov's simul in 1977 (this, by the way, is the one that made it all the way to the front page of The Times - see WwwK XVI). Let's take a closer look at who Anatoly was playing ...

... and, while we're at it, who was there taking on Spassky a couple of years later?

Good to see Boris putting his back into it. Anyhoo, if you were at any of this year's simuls and took photographs, please keep hold of them. The S&BC Blog might be needing copies when we publish Untitled simul post II circa 2045.




STOP PRESS:
An extra date has been added to the tour. Nigel Short will be at Drunken Knights' London HQ - The Plough in Museum Street - tonight from 7pm. I gather all boards have been filled, but spectators are welcome so do go if you find yourself in town and at a loose end. I wouldn't mind popping along myself, although, in the circumstances, probably best that I give this one a miss.

I don't call you f**k Face ....

Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:58pm

Note to Jonathan Bryant:
My name is Nigel Short and not Nosher. I don't call you f**k Face but, if I did, I expect you would find it insulting. Please show a modicum of respect.

Offence. There seems to be an awful lot of it about these days. Last week's big event, the Ricky Gervais shitstorm - rather reminiscent of kafuffles involving Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr, I thought - has already been replaced by the news that Hitler really hated being called a NAZI. (Yes, really.)

As you see, your humble scribe has also been busy causing offence. I’m not sure quite how I managed it, to be honest, but the Gervais business was all about a word beginning with 'm' and mine and Adolf’s start with 'n', so perhaps these things run in alphabetical order.

Doesn't like the N-word

Doug Stanthope, a comedian known for his especially acerbic style, once wrote that nobody has the right to be offended. I don't agree with this. Not in general and not here.

It's entirely reasonable that Short is offended by Nosher if he chooses to be. It makes no difference whatsoever that his response was rather over the top and neither is it of any consequence that he has his own extensive history of not showing respect to those around him.

In contrast to Stanthope, in the world according to me people have every right to be offended and while I also feel that everybody else has a corresponding right not to give a damn, in this particular case I do care. It bothers me that Short took umbrage at my use of his nickname not despite but because I had no idea he didn't like it. As Robin Ince puts it in an excellent article on Ricky Gervais' use of the word 'mong',

I do not mind offending people. I’d just like to think that if they cornered me in the bar I could explain the reason I was offensive before they punched me.

Well, now I know. I think it's a great shame that Short hates his moniker, but that's the way it is. From this day forth, then, TheChessPlayerFormerlyKnownAsNosher it shall be.

Every Picture Tells A Story: The End, Part 2

Blog 20. We finish with a joint effort by Martin Smith and Richard Tillett.

It is a year (almost to the day) since our first Every Picture Tells a Story blog appeared and now it is time to sign off this series. However, our work continues – there are articles to write and a talk to give next March to the Hereford local history society, and more research to pursue.

We thought we would finish with the man at the centre of our story, the little-known artist Thomas Leeming, who painted himself as the standing figure in his picture of the gentlemen chess players of Hereford.

The artist…

Five days after Leeming’s death on 24 May 1822, at the age of around 33, a short anonymous obituary appeared in the Hereford Journal, which we discovered at Hereford Library on one of our visits to the city. It remains the only commentary that we have been able to find about him, either by a contemporary or by a later writer, and it tells us much about his painting, the range of his work, and his standing as an artist at the time of his death.

The author of the obituary was almost certainly Edwin Goode Wright, the proprietor of the Hereford Journal and one of the chess gents in the picture. He was an admirer of Leeming’s talents and may have commissioned what we think is the first version of the picture (the one held at Hereford Museum and Art Gallery). We think he also commissioned the portrait of “Mrs E G Wright” that Leeming exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1821.

… and his obituarist?

Leeming was, the obituary tells us, “an artist of great natural talent, which he had improved by study, and matured by practice, and as a miniature painter, he would probably in a few years, have been at the head of his profession; if his life had been prolonged”. Hmmm. “Great natural talent” perhaps but the few miniatures we have tracked down, though competent, fall a long way short of the exceptionally high standards set by the best London portrait miniaturists of the time. We doubt he would ever have bridged the gap.

“The productions of his pencil were remarkable not only for their striking resemblance, but for their delicacy of finish, and expression of character, which so few artists attain.” Sadly, as far as we are aware, no drawings of his survive.

“He also excelled in portrait and landscape painting in oil and watercolours, and has left numerous records of his genius, which bear flattering testimony to his skills and taste.” We have found only one, rather average, landscape and one, considerably better, full-size portrait (the one of John Grosvenor discussed in blog 19). We’ve not found any watercolours, unless you include a modest wash sketch held in the collection at the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery.

“As a copyist, he was perhaps excelled by few in England.” That may well be true. He certainly did a splendid job with his copy of Valdés Leal’s Christ Carrying His Cross (blog 10) and we would love to track down the copy of Raphael’s School of Athens which, according to the obituary, was unsold at the time of his death.

Here, then, was an artist of talent who was, to quote the obituary again, still “arriving at that perfection”. In his short career he maybe spread himself too thinly: working in London, Hereford and Oxford; running a London house and, from 1817, supporting a wife and family; with poor health to contend with in his last years. The odds were stacked against him in a cut-throat market where miniaturists were two-a-penny, and without high-end clientele you were likely to struggle. His style was resolutely traditional, which may have suited his middle-of-the-road customers but failed to impress the London elite. Perhaps, as his obituarist implies, he was robbed of the time necessary to achieve his full potential. But even with twenty or thirty years more – such contemporaries as Lawrence, Constable and Turner lived into their sixties - we are not sure that his reputation would have blossomed, nor that posterity would have judged him more kindly.

And what of Thomas Leeming the man? The final sentence of the obituary is all that we know of his personality, but it tells us much:

“He also possessed a talent for music, and was warmly esteemed and respected by an extensive circle of friends in different parts of the Kingdom, to whom his excellent heart, gentlemanly conduct, and unpresuming manner, had greatly endeared him.”

A fine fellow then, who gave us what we think ranks among the finest and most significant chess pictures of its – or indeed any – time with its lively portraiture, skilful composition and ordering of the characters, fidelity to the facts of chess, and evidential value to the history of the game.

We end our series with the version he painted for the Royal Academy exhibition of 1818.

Every Picture Tells A Story Index
Chess in Art Index

How Occupy Wall Street keeps itself occupied

Zuccotti Park, New York City, Friday 15 October

[With thanks to bat020 on the spot]
[Occupy Wall Street]

This is the end X

Philidor 1777

I met up with Angus at I Love Coffee on Streatham High Road again last Friday afternoon. It’s become a bit of a regular fixture. A drink (tea for me – I don’t love coffee), perhaps a custard tart and two or three hours of studying endgame positions.

This week’s topic was queen versus rook. Has anybody out there had this in a real game? I found it absurdly difficult. Sure, there's only a king and a single piece each, but they're the most mobile pieces on an open board so there are still dozens of options each move. Finding the right path - even in what pass for the simplest positions - is next to impossible at first.

Where to begin with this ending? How to do a Svidler and go from this,

to this?

Curiously, de la Villa doesn't include queen against rook in his otherwise very good 100 Endgames You Must Know.  Your choice is Nunn's comprehensive, but tough to digest, Secrets of Pawnless Endings or something less dense, but infinitely more accessible, like Nick Pert's Killer Endings (review part I, II). For those just starting out, by the way, my suggestion would be the latter and move on to the former as and when the need arises.

Angus and I started, as is usually recommended, with the Philidor position - the set-up you see at the head of today's blog. Black to move loses so White's first task is to work out how to triangulate in order to return to the same position except with Black to play. The second step is to calculate the win, either delivering mate or winning the rook, against all of Black's tries. Most of them are rather straightforward - for example, against 1 ... Rb2 or 1 ... Rg7 White has an immediate fork with 2 Qd4+ - but some are pretty tough, especially if you haven't looked at this sort of position before. 1 ... Rf7, 1 ... Rh7, 1 ... Rb3 and 1 ... Rb1: they're the moves that are the hardest to break down.

Angus and I got there in the end and then moved on to some harder positions although nothing like Gelfand - Svidler (mate in 22 from the starting position; mate in 14 at the point Gelffie claimed a draw under the fifty-move rule) or Svidler - Howell (mate in 15 from the starting position). It was hard work, and I don't know what the chances are of either of us ever getting this ending in a rated game, but we improved my chess knowledge a little bit which can't be a bad thing.

Tea, custard tarts and a little bit of chess learning. What's not to like?

TITE Index

The Interesting French Exchange XV

[Back to a spot of chess today. Normal service will be resumed in due course, no doubt - JMGB]

Montag's hands picked up the Bible. He saw what his hands had done and looked surprised.

'Would you like to own this?'

Faber said, 'I'd give my right arm.'

Montag stood there and waited for the next thing to happen. His hands, by themselves, like two men working together, began to rip the pages from the book. The hands tore the fly-leaf and then the first and then the second page.

'Idiot, what're you doing!' Faber sprang up, as if he had been struck. He fell against Montag. Montag warded him off and let his hands continue.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

I waited more than a quarter of a century to read Fahrenheit 451. I did Lord of the Flies for O level, but I had friends in another class who got Ray Bradbury's novel instead. My teenage self thought it sounded interesting and made a mental note to get hold of a copy when I had a moment ... and I finally bought one a couple of weeks ago.

The day after I finished the book the latest copy of CHESS plopped through my letter box. I opened it up to find Keith Arkell talking about his game with Jack Rudd at the recent Jessie Gilbert celebration tournament in Coulsden. Keith tells of how he'd intended to play 3 Nc3 after 1 Nf3 Nf6, 2 c4 e6, but had accidentally pushed his queen's pawn instead.

My hand just kind of automatically played 3 d4

he says.

Montag doesn't seem to have been a chesser. I wonder if Ray Bradbury is/was. Be their owners GM or amateur hacker, chesser hands seem to do their own thing on a regular basis. It's certainly happened to me several times, most recently at last month's Sunningdale Open when in this position

I tried to play 27 ... Bg4 with the thought in the back of my mind that I'd always be able to defend the bish with ... h7-h5 should the need arise at some point in the future. My hands had other ideas, though, and it was only as one of them was pressing the clock that they let me know that they'd pushed the pawn and left the bishop back on d7.

Not that letting our hands take over once in a while is necessarily a bad thing. Recently our friend Richard James was netchessing and found that his desired 2 d3 against his opponent's French Defence was corrected by his hands to 2 d4. Consequence one: an accidental IFE. Consequence two: a FIDE Master spanked.

Modest Mr J will tell you that a three minute game on the internet doesn't mean that much, but beating a titled player - regardless of the format - is more than your present writer has ever managed. Perhaps I should start things off and then, like Montag, let my hands continue? They seem to want to get involved so maybe I should just let them get on with it.

TIFE Index

Frideswide And Reggie's Charming

Back at the beginning of September we added Robert Coombes to the list of noteworthy Broadmoor chessers: Richard Dadd, Edward Oxford, and Reginald Saunderson. And a few days ago I hinted we'd reprise Reginald Saunderson, so here goes (we’ll add a new name or two next time).

But before we go any further we’ll take a short detour and visit Dublin and its environs. We can get an unexpected insight into Broadmoor chess from this unlikely vantage point, and we will do so in the company of the redoubtable Mrs Thomas Rowland (1843 [or 1851, see note] -1919).

It’s a fair bet you’ve never heard of her (nor I, till quite recently). She deserves better, being, as she was, a capable though not top-flight player and most obviously a woman in the world of late 19th and early 20th century Anglo-Irish chess.

Née Frideswide Fanny Beechey, her grandfather was the Royal Academician Sir William Beechey (1753-1839) who your two Thomas Leeming sleuths once briefly suspected was TL's mentor, and you can see the stylistic similarity here and here, perhaps.

But you may wonder how Sir William found time to paint at all, given he was so busy fathering 21 children - 21! One of them, Richard Brydges Beechey (he too was to become an artist), was Frideswide's father. Sir William sired five children by his first wife, and with his second Richard came out as number 9 - though by then Sir W. had probably lost count.

The artistic touch was with Frideswide as well; she did floral watercolours. She was also Irish women’s chess champion, a problemista of considerable talent….


…..and a serial chess columnist.

Just look at her form: she had a hand (or two) in columns in the Mail and Warder, Cork Weekly News, Irish Figaro, Irish Fireside, Kingstown Monthly, Kingstown Society, The Visitor, and The Irish Times. That’s as well as writing a couple of problem books - the delightfully titled "Chess Blossoms" (1883), depicted above, and "Chess Fruits" (1884) - and a biography cum game collection of W.H.K. Pollock (1889), and more.

From 1905 to 1914 she also edited, sometimes jointly with her husband, a slim chess magazine "The Four-Leaved Shamrock" whereby she kept up her pretty line in botanically inclined titles.

The Four-Leaved Shamrock displays its USP

In those days before partition the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom and Dún Laoghaire, a few miles to the south of Dublin, was patriotically known as the above-mentioned “Kingstown” (reverting back in 1921 to the Gaelic); it had an active chess scene centred on the Rowlands. In the summer of 1911, to capture the national mood, they loyally produced a souvenir cover to celebrate the coronation of George V.

You can see that it featured a specially composed problem with a regal arrangement of the pieces. I'll leave you to find the key move, though it will inspire none but the most rabid monarchist to grab the bunting, rush into the street and party.

The King's Crown by T.R.D.
White to play and mate in two moves

So to get to the Broadmoor connection: here are the first two paragraphs of a piece written by Mrs Rowland herself in the June 1911 number. From its base near Dublin The Four-Leaved Shamrock found its way into some surprising corners.

REMINISCENCES

Passing a new agency a few days ago I was arrested by a poster with the heading of BROADMOOR, and my thoughts wandered back to the year 1903, when a match England v Ireland was being organised, and the chess paper having got inside the precincts of Broadmoor, many of the inmates enthusiastically entered the lists - some on the English side and some on the Irish. The first win was scored to "Broadmoor", and his opponent was a champion of an English county, and this is how he won. Broadmoor was white and he started 1 PK4, and sent a number of conditional moves, to which the champion unwaringly agreed. Then came the second instalment with more conditional moves, also agreed to. Alas too late the champion discovered that his game was hopeless, and resigned on the 25th move!!

Very good problems were sent to me occasionally, and one of the Irish inmates was so keen on correspondence play that he carried on 71 games simultaneously, very few, if any, of his opponents being aware of his detention. He was a bright, pleasant correspondent and a strong player, and for a couple of years sent me each season tin boxes of beautiful strawberries by post. But the excitement of too much chess proved fatal to its continuance. Suddenly all communication ceased, and I afterwards heard that the management had to curtail the play, for on dull damp days when they could not get out, the chess proved too exciting and the results were not satisfactory.

Extraordinary.

Mrs Rowland reminisced?

And who could that “bright, pleasant correspondent” have been, that strawberry charmer who played wittily on the lady's "Chess Fruits", that obsessive poor-weather chesser who tested the Asylum's regime to the limit?

How about another wager: it was Reginald Treherne-Bassett Saunderson, whose last taste of freedom was in Dublin’s fair city itself, where he fled after his murderous episode in 1894.

And just a last curiosity from the 1903 England - Ireland correspondence match (in which Frideswide, on board 48, beat the Reverend Robert Bee - she reports the detail in her Irish Times column of 7 May 1904) which owed everything to the Rowlands' organising zeal. Board 25 for Ireland was one Charles Heaviside (who beat an Arthur Schoinberg). Whether or not he was the brother of the scientist Oliver is unclear, but he is interesting in his own right for also being an inmate: of Richmond District Asylum, Dublin.

Acknowledgment and notes

Again, thanks to Dr Tim Harding for his generous leads on The Four-Leaved Shamrock and Broadmoor. He also provided the Heaviside detail. See his page for Irish chess mags. etc.

The British Library has an almost complete set of TFLS.

For more on the Rowlands see this excellent blog, from which the second Frideswide photo comes (if indeed it is she). There are two different dates on the web for her birth. While it seems indelicate to probe such a matter concerning a lady, if a proper historian could put us right it would be appreciated.

As usual, all the inevitable errors are my responsibility.

Here is the last part of Mrs Rowland's June 1911 article.

"The articles in "Answers" are exceedingly interesting, and perhaps later on the writer may tell us something about "Chess at Broadmoor." He says, "Probably in no other institution of its kind in the world does one meet with such interesting characters as in Broadmoor." Here is an extract from the second instalment: "The man with the snow white beard and hair is not yet fifty, but for the last ten years he has been an inmate of this institution, winning the respect of all with whom he comes in contact. He is detained during the Sovereign's pleasure because in a fit of madness he shot his aunt. He has a comfortable income, writes regularly for many of the high-class magazines, and even the editors do not know that the brilliant contributions they receive from this man are penned in Broadmoor."

What Dadd Did

What Dadd Did Next
What Dadd Did Later
What Dadd Didn't Do
The Dadd Is In The Detail

How To Beat Your Dadd At Chess
Dadd, Oxford. Saunderson. Who's next?

Note added 9 July 2012. Dr Harding confirms that Mrs. Rowland's birthdate was March 18 1845, as Richard James states in the first comment below. He also confirms that it is she in the pictures above.

The Great Chessboxing Swindle: on course for official recognition

[As mentioned in the comments box on Tuesday, I was interested to read the claim in Tim Woolgar's statement as candidate for the post of ECF Marketing Director that

we (i.e. chessboxing - ejh) are on course for official recognition by Sport England within the next six months.

Having looked into this in the course of writing this post last month, I thought I'd reproduce here, for the public record, the email exchange I had with Sport England on the subject.]



From: Justin Horton
Sent: 07 September 2011 15:19
To: info@sportengland.org
Subject: Enquiry

Dear Sport England

Sorry to bother you.

I'm a chess writer and I had have an enquiry which I'd be grateful to have answered. Is this the right email address to which I should send it?

All the best

Justin Horton

Huesca province, Spain




From: shared.services@sportengland.org
To: Justin Horton
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2011, 9:16
Subject: RE: Enquiry

Good morning

Many thanks for your email- can you please advise the nature of the enquiry- I will then be able to advise accordingly

Kind regards

Kathy


From: Justin Horton
Sent: 08 September 2011 10:23
To: shared.services@sportengland.org
Subject: Re: Enquiry

Dear Kathy

Thanks very much for your reply.

All I wanted to know was whether or not Sport England have received a pre-application (or indeed a full application) for recognition on behalf of chessboxing.

All the best

Justin Horton


From: Richard Clarkson (richard.clarkson@sportengland.org)
To: Justin Horton
Sent: Thursday, 8 September 2011, 15:36
Subject: FW: Enquiry

Dear Justin

Thanks for your email which Kathy O’Neill has passed to me for reply. I can confirm that Sport England has not received any recognition applications in respect of chessboxing.

Richard

Richard Clarkson
NGB and Sport Directorate

[Chessboxing index]

Some questions for the ECF AGM

It's the English Chess Federation AGM on Saturday. It seems that they've got themselves a pretty full agenda, but in the event that they find themselves with some dead time to fill perhaps they could discuss some of the issues that arise from the subjects of our recent series of posts  (This is not a blogpost; Nor is this; Carelessness?). For a start, here are three questions the answers to which I would be rather interested to hear.


QUESTION ONE:
Accounts were promised but not delivered for both the Staunton Memorial Dinner and the first Nigel Short simul tour. The amount of money raised for the British Championships by the former was originally said to be £7000+ and later revised to £1500 while the figure for the latter was originally given as £1500 and later revised to £500, then £0 before finally being called a "significant" amount.

Q. Is the ECF confident that it knows the origins of the money that paid for Sheffield 2011?


QUESTION TWO:
I believe it is reasonably common knowledge that one particular person has said that he was not offered conditions for Sheffield because he wasn't liked. I've no idea if this is true or not, but the claim together with this post:-

Wed Jul 13, 2011 9:39 am

... I'm sure everyone will understand that where I choose to spend my own money should remain confidential.

got me wondering.

Q. Was the basis for awarding conditions for Sheffield agreed within the ECF beforehand? Is anybody other than CJ even aware what the criteria were?


QUESTION THREE:
The Staunton Memorial Dinner and the Nigel Short simul tour were both said to be private ventures. This despite the fact that the invitation for the Dinner began,

English Chess Federation President, CJ de Mooi, cordially invites you to ...

and that the contact email address was given as "president@englishchess.org.uk". Similarly, the Nosher tour was announced in the EC Forum's "ECF Matters" section on the 6th October 2010 but was not declared to be a "private initiative" until 29th January 2011. The second tour (which I assume is also a private affair, although there is nothing to say so), is also being run via the presidential email address.

Q. Should the ECF be more forthright in ensuring that clearer boundaries are drawn between its officials' private business and public roles?

CJ Index