When we were Kings VIII

Will things start to get ugly in Sofia if Anand pulls ahead of Topalov?

Over on the EC Forum that was what one Arshad Ali, posting after game 3, wanted to know. "Very possibly" was my reply although as it happened when Anand did pull ahead a shenanigans there were none.

Was it out of the question though? What would have happened had the Champion won game 7 or saved game 8 or even picked up the win in yesterday's fabulous game 9? Topalov 2-0 down with four to play, say, instead of level? Might that have prompted some Bulgarian action? We'll never know.

A couple of pages after our friend Mr. Ali in that EC Forum thread BCM Editor John Saunders opined that we had returned to,

... pre-1972 times when world chess championships commanded minimal interest in the general media in the West. This is a pity because the entertainment value of the four games played so far has been remarkably high. However, these are early days and we mustn't underestimate the fertile brain of Silvio Danailov when it comes to creating a bit of controversy and garnering a few headlines.

Perhaps it's a shame nothing kicked-off; the chess in Sofia just gets better with every game and yet all the media are interested in is whether Kirsan has or has not met E.T. (and note how even here the chess content of the story is just a sub-plot to the main joke: 'These wacky foreigners ... they think they've met aliens and they spend all their money on chess').

There's certainly no denying that a little off-the-board argy bargy never hurts when it comes to generating publicity for a chess contest. As we saw in WwwK VII the Korchnoi-Spassky 77/78 Candidates Final was getting front-page coverage anyway but press interest in the match increased still further when the battle spread beyond the 64 squares.

Back in Sofia there are still three games to go so perhaps we shouldn't give up hope of trouble breaking out just yet. Vishy one up with one to play anyone?

Korchnoi vs Spassky: Chess Crisis


The Times,
21st December, 1977
page 5

PROTEST BY KORCHNOI AGAIN DELAYS GAME WITH SPASSKY
Belgrade, Dec 20. – A dispute over Boris Spassky’s use of a demonstration board today prevented play between the former world champion and his self-exiled Soviet compatriot Viktor Korchnoi.

The organizers of the world chess championship challengers final postponed until Thursday the adjourned tenth game to allow Spassky time to appeal against the referee’s decision to place the board out of sight.

Korchnoi, who protested about the use of the board, leads the series with 6 ½ points to 3 ½ with one game adjourned.



The Times
22nd December, 1977
page 4

SPASSKY REFUSES TO PLAY IN CHESS PROTEST
Belgrade, Dec 21. – The twelfth game of the chess candidates’ match between Russian grandmasters Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi was postponed today after Spassky failed to show up, continuing the psychological warfare between the two contestants.

Officials said Spassky, a former world champion, risked forfeiting the game by refusing to play, but Korchnoi and the referee Bozidar Kazic, agreed on a postponement.

Korchnoi leads the 20-game match, 6 ½ points to 3 ½. Spassky’s refusal to play was apparently in protest against a referee’s ruling that a large display chessboard should come down from the stage. – UPI.



The Times
23rd December, 1977
page 6

CHESS CHIEF TRIES TO SAVE MATCH
Belgrade, Dec 22. – Dr. Max Euwe, president of the International Chess Federation, arrived in Belgrade tonight to try to solve a dispute which threatens the match between the world title challengers Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi.

The dispute, which has held up play for the past three days, is over whether a demonstration board for spectators should be within sight of the two players. It became an issue after the eleventh game – the first won by Spassky.

After Korchnoi had complained, the referee ordered that the demonstration board be moved out of sight of the players. Spassky has since refused to play.

Dr Eune (sic) will see both players. Korchnoi is leading 6 ½ - 3 ½ in the match to decide who challenges Anatoly Karpov for the world title. – Reuter.



The Times
24th December, 1977
page 4

FEUDING CHESS CHALLENGERS AGREE TO PLAY ON TODAY
From Our Correspondent
Belgrade, Dec 23

A temporary solution was found today to the dispute between Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi, the world chess title challengers, and their 20-game match will be resumed tomorrow.

The compromise was reached after Dr Max Euwe, president of the International Chess Federation, had spent all night in separate talks with the two players.

The dispute is over whether a demonstration board for spectators should be within sight of the players. Korchnoi complained after Spassky had spent most of the eleventh game away from the table studying the position on the demonstration board and reappearing only to make his moves.

When the referee ruled that in future the demonstration board should be out of sight, Spassky refused to continue the match, arguing that the conditions of play had been altered.

The adjourned tenth game will now be resumed tomorrow in a small hall without a demonstration board. But the board will be back as Spassky wishes for the twelfth game.

What happens after that is uncertain as both players are insisting on their point.

The match is to decide who will challenge Anatoly Karpov for the world championship. At present Korchnoi leads 6 ½ – 3 ½.



The Times
30th December, 1977
page 1

KORCHOI ULTIMATUM
Viktor Korchnoi, the self-exiled Russian grandmaster, threatened to withdraw from this world chess championship qualifying match against Boris Spassky unless spectators were banned. Page 4



The Times
30th December, 1977
page 4

KORCHOI THREATENS TO QUIT MATCH AGAINST SPASSKY
Belgrade, Dec 29. – Viktor Korchnoi, the self-exiled Russian grandmaster, today threatened to withdraw from his world chess championship qualifying match against Boris Spassky.

In a letter to Mr Bozidar Kazic, the umpire, he said he would not resume the match unless spectators were excluded and no demonstration board was in sight of the players. He would exercise his right to postpone the fourteenth game tomorrow but would play on Monday provided his demands were met. If they were not, he would ask the International Chess Federation to move the match from Belgrade.

The Yugoslav organizers are meeting tomorrow to consider the ultimatum. Mr Kazic said of Korchnoi’s demand that the public be excluded: “This just cannot be done”.

Korchnoi is leading 7 ½ - 5 ½ in the 20-game match to find a challenger to Anatoly Karpov, the world champion. But he was now lost three games in a row. A grotesque blunder which cost him his queen and the thirteenth game yesterday came after he had complained to the umpire of the noise in the packed audience.

Mr Kazic said today: “There would have been whistling and shouting if I had agreed yesterday to Korchnoi’s demand to lower the curtains on the audience.” He noted that the noise subsided as soon as he asked for silence.



The Times
31st December, 1977
page 3

CHESS CHIEFS PUT OFF DECISION ON KORCHNOI
Belgrade, Dec 30. – The organizers of the Korchnoi - Spassky chess match today considered Viktor Korchnoi’s threat to withdraw from the 20-game series unless spectators are excluded. They put off a decision and will meet again tomorrow.

There was no play today, Korchnoi having exercised his right to postpone the fourteenth game. He says he will play on Monday but only if his conditions are met.

Korchnoi leads 7 ½ - 5 ½ in the match to decide who will challenge Karpov, the world champion, next year. Spassky has won the last three games. – UPI.



The Times
3rd January, 1978
page 1

KORCHNOI BACKS DOWN AND PLAYS ON
Korchnoi has backed down and resumed his game with Spassky in the world chess candidates’ match in Belgrade. Although the demands of his “ultimatum” have apparently not been met, he returned to his board yesterday after a personal appeal from the president of the International Chess Federation. Page 4



The Times
3rd January, 1978
page 4

KORCHNOI BACKS DOWN WITH GRACE
Belgrade, Jan 2. – Boris Spassky and Viktor Korchnoi today adjourned the fourteenth game in their candidates’ match. After five hours of play the game was adjourned on the forty-first move in a position which experts say gives Spassky better chances to win.

Korchnoi, backing down from his threat to walk out of the match unless all points of his ultimatum, including the exclusion of spectators and no demonstration board were met, decided to resume the match after “a personal appeal of Dr Max Euwe”, the president of the International Chess Federation, said Mr Michael Steane (sic) Korchnoi’s aide.

Spassky, the former Soviet world champion, made the first move at 4pm, started Korchnoi’s clock, stood up, took off his jacket and left the centre of the stage. But, Korchnoi was nowhere to be found.

Minutes passed. As tension rose Korchnoi appeared nonchalantly, without a jacket, made his own move, and then left the stage. – AP





When we were Kings Index







NB:
(1) With thanks to Morgan for the Reuters tip.

(2) The subtitle of today's post is borrowed from Ray Keene’s book on the match (Allen & Unwin, 1978) but the news reports republished here are not included in RDK's work.

Party Political Broadcast

Never heard of this bloke before, probably won't ever hear of him again ... but any candidate who can set up a chess board the right way around would get my vote.


Btw: we've had some of the chess scenes from this clip on the blog before. Does anybody remember when?

Why I am not World Chess Champion

Of the many delights to be discovered in spectating the World Championship, being constantly reminded how bad I am at chess is possibly the most exquisite. Take the following position, Topalov having just played 20 ... h6:

"Drawish now" I kibitzed. And why not? Black is more or less developed, whilst white will pick up an a-pawn, re-establishing material equality.

Drawish, right? Not exactly.

As the game unfolded, I was further reminded of Anand's 2007 Linares victory over Carlsen. In both games black seemingly-successfully defends against queenside positional pressure - but too late realises his forces have been misplaced, as white switches to a decisive attacking on the king instead. The 2007 game I played through more than once at the time, thoroughly going through the victor's notes in New In Chess. But if pattern recognition is the key to chess improvement, then the lessons from the game were alas far from learnt.

I have enjoyed being wrong about the world championship in other ways too. One of the tacit predictions I made to myself was that there would be no "psychological choice of opening style". Meaning, I expected neither player to particularly angle the game toward something unsuitable for the opponent - no equivalent of the Berlin Wall, no equivalent of those dodgy, dynamical slavs. Au contraire. Excluding the Grunfeld, Anand has played like Kramnik, Topalov's nemesis. And the similarities between the Slav endgame after 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc4 5. a4 Bf5 6. Ne5 e6 7. f3 c5 8. e4 Bg6 9. Be3 cxd4 10. Qxd4 Qxd4 11. Bxd4 Nfd7 12. Nxd7 Nxd7 13. Bxc4 and the Berlin Wall hardly need pointing out.

My overall prediction for the match was that Topalov - the best prepared player in the world, lest we forget - would win. I could only imagine that he wanted it more, with his many points to prove, whilst Anand does not seem to have particularly enjoyed being World Champ. At the half-way stage it's odds-on I'm wrong about this too.

Nonetheless, I'll venture one more prediction. Assuming Topalov doesn't win with black tomorrow, I think he'll be the first to blink and switch his opening move with white. Not only that, I think he'll switch it to 1.c4 in game eight, or possibly ten, if he is still a point behind then. A reversed Sicilian would be right up his alley, anything else would be a roll of the dice, and he could meet 1...c6 with 2.e4!?

Crazy? I've been wrong about everything else. Surely I'll get something right before the match ends?

Peter Lalic on the World Championship

Game 1:

Game 2:

Game 3:

Game 4:

Game 5:

When we were Kings VII

[JB's Note:
Today I have another article that I originally wrote at the start of the year but which never got published. As on Wednesday, I thought it was time to have another look at what I wrote in January in the light of the Anand-Topalov World Championship match currently underway in Sofia.

... can you compare any of the media coverage of the world chess championship games favourably to the coverage of any other sports?

asked Adam Raoof over on the EC Forum on yesterday morning and a very reasonable question it is too. Only the day before Chessbase had published an article contrasting the print media’s coverage of Anand-Topalov in India with that in the rest of the world only the day before. Outside of Vishy's homeland, they said, news from Sofia usually amounts to

... just an inch or two at the bottom in the sports section

If only the coverage in Britain was that good! To be fair there was a piece in the Telegraph the day before battle commenced - I’m indebted to Roger de Coverly, also from the EC Forum, for the link – and that was certainly better than nothing but the fact that the journo concerned was writing from Warsaw and unable to distinguish between a tournament and a match, or between a match and a game for that matter, tells you something about the quality of the article.

In the comments box to T.C’s pre-match article Contemporary Chess is Brilliant, George suggests that there would be more news coverage if Carlsen was playing. Well that’s very probably true, I suspect the ‘young pretender’ angle would be a narrative that the press would find quite appealing, but I doubt that even Magic Magnus’ presence would make that much difference. After all he was playing at the Chess Classic in London last December and that didn’t lead to a huge amount of coverage.

Perhaps you’re wondering, ‘Are you really surprised that the World Championship isn’t receiving wall-to-wall coverage? What do you expect? Chess has never exactly been front page news has it?’ Well, since you have been kind enough to allow me to ask those questions on your behalf, dear reader, allow me to respond …

Hold the Front Page

On the 16th December 2009 something rather extraordinary appeared on the front page of The Independent newspaper. There, right next to articles about Arnold Schwarzenegger being the man to save the world from global warming and Sir John Scarlett being the man to lie to the Iraq inquiry sat thirteen remarkable words,

Checkmate!

Computers will be the death of chess - by Viktor Korchnoi
page 12

and a colour photograph of a Black king lying prostrate before a White queen.

Amazing don't you think? Chess. On the front page of a national newspaper. In 2009!

Readers who turned to the indicated page would find that it was entirely devoted to an interview with old Vik* which is

(a) great

and

(b) more than a bit of a shame

because it was conducted at the strongest chess tournament to be held in Britain for at least a quarter of a century and yet the London Chess Classic gets no mention whatsoever save for Korchnoi's presence in town being explained as the result of him being a guest at the event.

Still, we take what we can get don't we? Chess in any form on a front page is a real achievement for the Classic in general and organiser Malcolm Pein in particular isn't it? That's true I think but when Korchnoi left London to fly off to Elista for a replay of his 1977/78 match with Boris Spassky (mentioned on these pages more than once before) it rather underlined how much times have changed.

photo from the Indy

Back in the day chess graced the front pages of our newspapers far more frequently than the Halley's Comets we have come to expect today. Between 12th December 1977 and 14th January 1978 the Korchnoi-Spassky Candidates Final alone generated half a dozen front page articles in The Times. True they were often short or inspired by what was happening off the board as much as on it but nonetheless they were there.

Incredibly The Times devoted a full 280 first page words to the news that the match had finally been won and then followed up with another 470 from Golombek inside. That's completely unthinkable today but Korchnoi - Spassky was the cold war writ small (it's no accident that two days after the match was over a story documenting Korchnoi's campaign for this family to be allowed to leave the Soviet Union appeared on The Times' front page) and chess was mainstream back then, part of the East - West narrative by which we, or at least the newspapers, lived.

So yes, let's celebrate any publicity our game gets but the next time somebody wants to tell us that the media ignores chess because it's inherently dull and was never popular anywhere except the former Soviet Union lets remind them that When we were Kings chess was front page news here too.

The Times
12th December, 1977
page 1

Chess: Korchnoi wins another game to take a 5-2 lead in his world championship semifinal match against Spassky 5

The Times
14th December, 1977
page 1

SPASSKY BLUNDERS
A blunder by Boris Spassky, former world chess champion, drew gasps of dismay from spectators in Belgrade and brought him another defeat at the hands of Viktor Korchnoi. Korchnoi now leads 6-2 in the match to decide who will play Anatoly Karpov for the world title. Page 6

The Times
30th December, 1977
page 1

KORCHOI ULTIMATUM
Viktor Korchnoi, the self-exiled Russian grandmaster, threatened to withdraw from this world chess championship qualifying match against Boris Spassky unless spectators were banned. Page 4

The Times
3rd January, 1978
page 1

KORCHNOI BACKS DOWN AND PLAYS ON
Korchnoi has backed down and resumed his game with Spassky in the world chess candidates’ match in Belgrade. Although the demands of his “ultimatum” have apparently not been met, he returned to his board yesterday after a personal appeal from the president of the International Chess Federation. Page 4

The Times
13th January, 1978
page 1

BITTER CHESS FINAL WON BY KORCHNOI
Belgrade, Jan 12. – Viktor Korchnoi, the self-exiled Russian grandmaster, today became the challenger to Anatoly Karpov, the Soviet world chess champion, by winning the eighteenth game of his match against Boris Spassky, also of the Soviet Union.

Spassky resigned the adjourned game after the first move today. With an angry wave of his hand, he strode out of the hall as soon as the referee disclosed the move, which he had sealed in an envelope when the game was adjourned yesterday.

He did not shake hands with Korchnoi or say one word to him. The defeat was doubly bitter for Spassky for he had spurned the offer of a draw from Korchnoi on the thirty-third move.

Once the offer was refused, Korchnoi went all out for the kill. Sacrificing pawns, he built up a powerful attack against his opponent’s king.

The icy finale reflected the extent to which the match, billed as a test of two brilliant but dissimilar players, had degenerated into bitter psychological warfare.

Spassky’s resignation gave Korchnoi victory by 10.5 points to 7.5 in the best of 20-game series. Korchnoi won seven games, Spassky four, with seven drawn. Korchnoi who is 46, will meet Karpov, aged 26, later this year at a location still to be decided.

Besides the right to challenge Karpov, Korchnoi won $15,000 (£8,000) and a Yugoslav-made car, while Spassky who lost the world title to Bobby Fischer of America, received $10,000.

Korchnoi looks on his meeting with Karpov as a grudge match – for it was his semi-final loss to Karpov in 1974 that led to his defection to the West leaving a wife and son in Leningrad. – Reuter and UPI.
Harry Golombek comments and moves, page 16

The Times
14th January, 1978
page 1

Belgrade: Viktor Korchnoi, challenger for the world chess championship, will press the Soviet authorities for the release of his family from Russia 5

When we were Kings Index







* Curiously it appears on the web dated Tuesday 15th December

When we were Kings VI

[JB's note:
I was originally planning to write about something else today but when I realised we'd be in the middle of Anand - Topalov I had a rethink. To be honest the start of the match took me rather by surprise. This is partly because I'm not visiting chess news websites like Chess Vibes or Chessbase so much these days but I also think it says quite a lot about the lack of an impression that chess makes in the mainstream media these days.

Today's blog article was originally written in January but, for reasons that won't be at all clear when you read it, it got held over because of that earthquake in Chile. Despite Tom's encouragement the world, as reported in the news and on TV at least, doesn't seem to care very much about Anand-Topalov in particular or chess in general. I like to think that it's worth remembering that it wasn't always like this.]

News of the World

I’m writing this in my local coffee shop having just enjoyed a nice cup of tea whilst taking a look at Jon Speelman’s chess column in The Independent. It happened to be Spess I was reading before getting down to work but it could just as easily Malcolm Pein in The Telegraph or Ray Keene ('Ray Keene' if you prefer) in The Times. It wasn't that long ago that weekly was the typical interval for chess articles in what we used to call the broadsheets but now The Guardian seems rather out of step in running theirs every Tuesday.

Just as I was putting down my tea cup and powering up my laptop I had a ‘the world doesn’t make sense’ thought:-

We live in a time where there’s more chess in the papers than ever before and yet the game has completely disappeared from the news.

Which is pretty strange when you think about it.

Specialist chess columns may be great for we confirmed players but they come at a price. You’ll find Speelman at the fag end of the Indy’s “Life” supplement, Malc under a pile of obituaries and RDK hidden away somewhere between the financial news and the sport. They're easy to miss and easier still to skip over if you happen to accidentally fall upon them. ‘Chess’, the placement of the columns tells us, ‘is a speciality subject of interest only to those already interested’ and every article might as well be headlined ‘Nothing For Outsiders Here’.

It wasn’t ever thus. When we were Kings chess used to be news and because of that it was part of the collective consciousness. Not a big part perhaps but in the 70s the game was a mainstream subject and treated as such. When I mention this in conversation I often get incredulous looks in return but have a look at some clippings I've had kicking around on my hard drive since a spot of research at the British Library last year:-

The Times
2nd November, 1977
page 5

WARRANT FOR FISCHER
Pasadena, California, Nov 1. – Police have issued a warrant accusing Bobby Fischer, aged 34, the former world chess champion, of forcing his way into the home of Mrs Holly Ruiz, a magazine writer, and hitting her on the face because of a story about his affiliation with the Worldwide Church of God.

The Times
16th November, 1977
page 5

FISCHER RULING
Pasadena, Nov 16. – Judge M.G. Fransciscus has announced that he is prepared to dismiss criminal charges against Mr Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion who had been accused of assaulting Mrs Holly Ruiz, a woman magazine writer. Mrs Ruiz has withdrawn her complaint after receiving an undisclosed sum in an out-of-court settlement of her civil claim for damages.

The Times
9th December, 1977
page 11

FISCHER CLEARED
Pasadena, California, Dec 8. – Charges accusing Bobby Fischer, the former world chess champion, of attacking a woman journalist were dismissed after he appeared in the municipal court here.

Today we can only dream of this level of media interest. OK, there were the Danny Gormally and Vlad Tkachiev kerfuffles but they were two isolated incidents more than three years apart. Here we’ve got a trio of (admittedly short) pieces in barely a month and don’t forget Fischer hadn’t played for over half a decade by the time of these reports.

Kasparov? Yes that name crops up in the media from time to time but he's a rather different kettle of fisch. Other than that one-off burst of publicity over the Karpov match at the end of last year, when Gazza gets mentioned it tends to be in connection with his political activities. The fact he was once the best chess player in the world might be mentioned in passing as a curiosity but it’s not likely to be at all relevant to the story.

As implausible as it sounds at this distance, between the 2nd of November and 9th December 1977 The Times published three short stories relating to an incident which was deemed to be ‘news’ because one of the participants used to play chess. In the Golden Age even ex-chessers were celebrities. Well they were if they were Bobby anyway.



And then there’s Ray Hankin.

The Times
2nd December, 1977
page 6

FOOTBALLER BANNED
Ray Hankin, aged 21, the Leeds United footballer, was banned from driving for a year and fined £120 by magistrates at Wetherby, West Yorkshire, yesterday after admitting a drink-driving charge.

That season Leeds United finished ninth in the old First Division of the Football League* and Hankin was their leading scorer with 21 goals. His story makes an interesting contrast with the Fischer reports don’t you think? Today it’s inconceivable that a drink-driving footballer from a top flight club would be allocated less news space than a former world chess champion getting shirty with an uppity journo but that’s how it was thirty years ago.





So it’s the best of times and it’s the worst of times. We’ve got specialist chess columns but even though papers are many pages thicker than they once were there’s no room for chess in the news anymore.

It may be strange but that's the way it is and I’m not sure that there’s much if anything the chess world can do about it so I intend just to enjoy what we’ve got. Which is why, now my blog is written, I'm about to have another cup of tea and take a gander at what Malc’s got to say today.





When we were Kings Index








NB:
Thanks to Sean for the Joe Jackson tip.

* This was back when in football terms “first” meant “first” and not “third”. Leeds, by the way, finished four points ahead of Manchester United who were 10th and ten points ahead of Chelsea who were 16th. Nottingham Forest were champions that season which rather underlines the point that the world was rather different back then.

Your game here?

Anand-Topalov not exciting enough for you? Well, exercise your adrenal gland with this little beauty. One of the most dramatic games you're ever likely to see.

What a turnaround. Black looked as if he would come out of the opening on the receiving end of a miniature - but then as if by magic, out of the hat hopped a brilliancy.

Thanks to Jack Rudd for sending that one in. If you missed our previous installment of reader's games, you can click to find it here. And if you've played a good one recently - or indeed historically - or indeed been on the receiving end of a fine effort - once again feel free to email me for possible inclusion on the blog.

Chess in Art Postscript: Possibly...Definitely...Finally

The last Postscript, and the one before, left this question in the air: why, late in life in 1987, did artist Eileen Agar, creator of at least two chess related works, choose that particular theme to pay her respects to Surrealists Magritte, Dali et al.? Well, if the premise is correct, I reckon the answer is possibly quite straightfoward. First, her soul mate, long time partner, and husband since 1940, was Hungarian Joseph Bard (1889-1975), who was, yes, a poet; and also the model for the Angel of Anarchy.

Bard and Agar in 1937.

Second, in 1941 he wrote a short story "The Game of Chess", broadcast by the BBC in 1959. My hunch is that her chess piece of 1987 was a coded hommage to him as much to the other big beasts of Surrealism. In her autobiography she reminisced thus about the plot:

"In the broadcast, the inimitable Patricia Hayes took the part of the small boy in Belgrade who plays chess with the colonel who is about to murder King Alexander and his Queen that night. The boy wins. In a voice of unfeigned simplicity, he comments that nobody who hates his king will ever make a good chess player".

Which is rather simple chess, but hardly, the colonel might have replied, a conclusive argument against a republic.

Now that we have settled that, it is time to speak of Roland, the main man of Surrealism in England, responsible for unleashing it, red in tooth and claw, on an unsuspecting domestic arterati at the First International Surrealist Exhibition, which he organised in London in 1936 (the one where Dali tried to give a lecture clad in a diving suit, nearly suffocating when the helmet jammed, but not quite - shame, it would have spared us his later ravings).

You'll recognise the name: Penrose, Roland Penrose, son of James (portrait painter), brother of Lionel (geneticist), uncle of Roger (mathematician), Oliver (mathematician), Shirley (geneticist), and of Jonathan (psychologist and chess player). Quite a dynasty, stacking up the family IQ points down the generations as if trying to solve the nature/nuture problem single-handed.

Photos of Jonathan, our Tal-slaying hero, are hard to come by on the web, but one shows Bobby Fischer taking on this particular string from the Penrose gene pool.

Surrealist's Nephew v Fischer (Leipzig 1960)

It's not the best shot of Jonathan I'm afraid, and the camera angle makes it difficult to see any family resemblance in this self-portrait by Uncle Roland:

Roland Penrose (1900-1984)

Self portrait (1947) [National Portrait Gallery]

Though I think there is something about the ears.

Like Eileen Agar, Roland Penrose had a soft spot for collages and you can see many of them, together with other works of his, and a cornucopia of international surreal delights, at his house Farley Farm in Sussex. It is still lived in by the family and you can visit for a fascinating conducted tour. It is a marvellous living museum of friendly Surrealism, where, if you crave something chessic you can see, in the flesh, an aluminium and wood edition of the Man Ray chess set (he was an early lover of Lee Miller, who was later Penrose's wife and mother of Antony Penrose, who will welcome you, rather more in the flesh, to the farm).

Man Ray's set, pure and simple (c1920-24)

So that's it: chess in art with Nash, Ernst, Agar, Magritte, Dali, Bard, Penrose, Man Ray, and Miller. Serially. Finally? Yes, sure really.

Acknowledgements, etc.

Eileen Agar's autobiography was detailed in the previous post.

The Fischer - Penrose photo is from Edward Winter's Chess Notes 2 November 2008.

Farley Farm is celebrated in Antony Penrose (2001) The Home of the Surrealists - Lee Miller, Roland Penrose and their circle at Farley Farm. Pub. Francis Lincoln Ltd., London. On pages 92 and 93 there are photos of the Man Ray chess set, 1946 version, sitting on the sideboard . He also wrote a biography of his father (2001) Roland Penrose - the friendly Surrealist. Pub. Prestel, London.

Chess in Art Index

Bad book covers XI

Play the St George, Basman, Pergamon 1982

Bad book covers index

When we were Kings V

Crash

A narrow escape for Korchnoi and Keene

It is, as my friend and fellow blogger T.C. pointed out on Monday, almost that time again. The only problem is nobody is quite sure precisely what "almost" means.

According to the original schedule the opening opening ceremony of the Anand – Topalov World Championship match is due to be held this afternoon and the match itself is supposed to kick-off on Friday afternoon. As Tom said though, Anand's was one of the many journeys disrupted by that Icelandic volcano. Vishy asked for an adjournment but at the time of writing - Tuesday evening - the (Bulgarian) organisers are refusing his request.

Anand and his team eventually managed to get to Sofia but only after a 40+ hour road journey. That doesn't sound like much fun although he should perhaps think himself lucky; back in the day Viktor Korchnoi and his second Ray Keene took an unplanned road trip on the way to Belgrade for Vik’s Candidates' Final match with Boris Spassky and it very nearly resulted in something much worse that a numb bum.

When we departed, we ordered a taxi, which should have taken us to a ferry, then a trolley-bus followed by a train to Zurich, and so on. But the taxi driver offered to take us directly to Zurich for a reduced fare. After some thought, Keene and I agreed. After crossing the German-Swiss border, we reached the direct autobahn to Zurich. As night was falling, I was sitting next to the driver, when in the gloom a lorry suddenly loomed up ahead. I shouted, and the driver managed to turn the wheel slightly. We crashed into the lorry and turned over, I think, once. For perhaps a couple of seconds I lost consciousness. And then I unhurriedly crawled out of one of the car windows. The lorry in front belonged to the Swiss army …

Viktor Korchoi
Chess is My Life,
Olms, 2005 (p. 118)

Here’s RDK’s version:-

Boris Spassky almost won the Candidates’ Final by default. On the evening of November 8th 1977, the taxi taking Korchnoi and myself to Zurich smashed, at speed, into the virtually unlit back of a Swiss army lorry. Our Mercedes veered sharply, swung right over and then broke into a spin on its roof, across three lanes of the motorway, until it was brought to a standstill by the crash barrier. I escaped through a demolished window, and managed to help Korchnoi, who was crawling out from underneath the wreckage. His right hand was covered with blood and he looked as if he had been scalped. We had been lucky: the car was destroyed but it did not start to burn, and we had not been hit by any of the traffic that had hurtled past us on the motorway. Korchnoi’s reaction was amazingly calm. He took his miraculous salvation as a sign from above that he was indestructible and that he would therefore be immune from Spassky. Naturally he was not pleased at what had happened but he was far more upset when he lost the eighth game of his match with Polugayevsky.

Ray Keene
Korchnoi – Spassky: Chess Crisis,
Allen & Unwin, 1978 (p. 8)

It may have taken him a couple of days but at least Anand arrived in Sofia in one piece!

Well what now? I may well have been proved wrong by the time you read this but somehow I very much doubt that we’ll see anything resembling this kind of report appearing anywhere in the press this week ...

The Times
Wednesday November 16, 1977
Page 11

KORCHNOI DELAYS SPASSKY MATCH
“Belgrade, Nov 15. – The world chess championship semifinal match between Viktor Korchnoi and Boris Spassky will start next Monday instead of tomorrow as had been planned.

Korchnoi, who injured his hand in a car accident recently, asked for a postponement today and Spassky agreed. – Agence France-Presse”

... and not just because chess never makes the news anymore.

In any event, having finally arrived in Sofia Anand might be well advised to strap himself securely into his seat. From here on in the ride is likely to get really bumpy.







When we were Kings Index


Photograph taken from BCM, March 1978

Contemporary Chess Is Brilliant(and the world should know it)

On Friday Monday Saturday*, World Champion Vishy Anand will sit down opposite the world number two ranked player Veselin Topalov and their contest for the ultimate chess crown will begin: the World Championship. Chess players everywhere will follow the match obsessively, mostly via the internet. But what about non-specialists with a passing interest, or the just plain curious? They must rely on their usual media, and here in the UK the BBC tends to ignore all chess news unless it involves calamity or boxing. And although many of our newspapers have chess columns, even the World Championship is unlikely to catapult chess news out of its regular spot and on to the front pages where it belongs. Lest foreign readers think those regular spots hold a cosy prestige of their own, I’ll quickly mention The Telegraph, whose very good daily chess column is buried each day at the bottom of the newspaper’s Obituaries page.

But mainstream media should cover the World Chess Championship extensively and prominently, and for one very simple reason. Contemporary chess is brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Don’t believe me? Here are five reasons why contemporary chess should command the mainstream attention that it has yet to receive.

1. We know who the World Champion is. It’s Vishy Anand. He beat Vladimir Kramnik in a match, and Kramnik is the guy who previously beat Garry Kasparov in a match. There’s no dispute, no rows, no arguments about it. No corrupt institutions waiting in the wings with false crowns buffed up for their personal favourites. No paper titles handed out like the lesser belts in boxing. No Champions League where the quality of play is really the highest in the game. Not even the sideshow of a constructors championship. No confusion, no nothing. It’s Vishy. For now . . .

2. We know who the Rising Star is. It’s Magnus Carlsen of Norway. Still a teenager, tutored by Kasparov, touted by all as the one to watch. No-one disputes his talent or his achievements, so far. But will he become World Champion? There are question marks over his drive; he describes himself as not obsessed by chess. There are questions marks over how well prepared he is – how long can he rely on the secrets Kasparov has passed him? And one final question is whether he is the rising star at all, and not just the herald of the next generation of top players, fundamentally different from the current older crop of Vishy & Vladimir & Veselin and the rest. Why fundamentally different? Because Magnus is the first top player who grew up practicing against computers as strong as Grandmasters. But others are coming, and all of it is fascinating to watch; Mangus is still the rising star - but for how long?

3. The internet. The internet could have been invented for the sake of chess, and vice versa. Curious about trying a new game? You can get a game of chess the minute the thought strikes you. Want advice? You can do anything from leave a message on a forum, to pay for the help of Grandmaster. Chess news, chess blogs, chess jokes, chess poetry, chess images, chess programming – it’s all a google search away. Chess porn even, or so Morgan tells me. And you can watch the World Championship (and indeed all top tournaments) live, in the company of thousands of others, listening to Grandmaster commentary, supplied with computer analysis, playing a friendly game on the side.

4. Chess itself is better than ever. At Arsenal in the 1980s, away fans used to sing "Boring, Boring Arsenal". Now the home fans sing it – ironically, because Arsenal now play beautiful, exciting, attacking football. Like Arsenal, chess has, I admit, gone through dreary phases. Lots of short, dull draws in long, dull tournaments. Lots of similar openings. The belief that dry, technical procedures were best, the styles of the top players suitably dour. Games without sacrifices, without excitement, almost without imagination. No risk, no fun. And, no more. Kasparov and the computers have put pay to that. Nowadays chess is a rough-and-tumble fighting game, a drama of violence, surprise and imagination. Top players head for unbalanced positions where they have the best chance of outwitting their opponents. Each player seeks to throw the game into chaos as early as possible; not for nothing was a recent book called "Fire On Board". Learn the rules, play a little, get used to the game – then have your mind blown by the stuff they get up to in top tier chess. I’m a seasoned player – and I still do. Daily, or almost.

5. Chess is teaming up. The right image for chess is no longer a school boy, lonely, bespeckled, bullied, sat in a classroom on a sunny day – facing him his mathematics teacher, whose broken dreams can barely be sensed on his expressionless face, in his bored, quiet sighs. Instead, chess players enter poker tournaments – and win. Sometimes. Female players – yes, they not only exist, but they have their own websites, and furthermore they often inject them with, let us say, a certain photographic glamour. Others try to link chess with the prevention of Alzheimer’s, or with learning about decision making, or with peace, or with social programmes in troubled areas. And with what next, who knows.

A vibrant and diverse church we have become. True, with the odd wacky element that teams chess up with boxing or visits from aliens. But far more than that. Contemporary chess is an exciting game, replete with intriguing leading players and an emerging new generation, branching out into the wider world and brilliantly served by the internet. Players, tell your friends. Journalists, tell your readers. Editors, it’s time for the mainstream media to catch up. You can start on Friday Monday Saturday*. It’s time for the world to know.

* - hopefully finally. Anand's travel plans have been affected by the volcanic ash grounding flights in Europe.

Chess in Art Postscript: Possibly...Definitely...Continuingly

Now, please try and read this quote without a trace of irony:

"As beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting table of a sewing machine and an umbrella."

It is the flamboyant rallying call of continental Surrealism, penned in 1868 in fact. It makes Paul Nash's chance meeting in a field of a tennis ball and a dead tree (discussed in the first instalment of this post) look very English: Centre Court meets Chelsea Flower Show; as surreal as a cream tea.

A chance meeting on a tea tray of cream, scones, and raspberry jam.

Marvellous (a term of high praise in Surrealist circles).

Between the Wars Nash came within the orbit of one of the GMs of Surrealism, German born Max Ernst, who was in England in the 1930s, and who provides the rather thin pretext for this Postscript to Chess in Art XIII; and while we are about it, to this one as well.

They had many mutual friends, including artist Eileen Agar (1904-1991) who had been co-opted as a Surrealist at about the same time. She played mixed doubles in 1936/7 or thereabouts with Nash, and she produced a piece with the handle "The Angel of Anarchy", some fifty years before Malcolm McLaren and Viv assumed the mantle.

Vivienne Westwood. Passably.

Tate Gallery

Eileen produced two other works of interest to this blog. One, made around the time she met Nash, was an object/construction which possibly had something to do with chess, and definitely, given the title "Mate in two moods", other things besides. It featured a truncated and refashioned chess board with various "things" standing for pieces, including a sunfish (dead) leaning against a wall to play with its shadow, or so says Michel Levy (1999). Without being able to locate a postable version, Fish Circus (1939) will have to do instead. It has pleasing Nasher seaside references, and check motifs to appeal to the complete chess addict.

Eileen Agar (1904-1991)

Fish Circus (1939) National Gallery of Scotland

The check business, on the right representing/alluding to a clown or harlequin's costume, possibly, crops up a lot in non-figurative chess-themed artwork, but that's a topic for another occasion. Here it helps evoke the distinctive features and aura of the circus, its genius loci, just as did Nash, as a rural Romantic, with Ballard's Down, Wittenham Clumps, Romney Marsh and other sites of special ecstatic interest. Agar gives her circus a cast of performing fish (real and painted). She is possibly trying to do a similar thing to Nash and capture the spirit of the plaice.

The collective fun and games of this party of British Surrealists, leavened by divers waifs and strays from abroad, was cut short by World War Two after which Agar continued to plough her distinctive and sometimes overlooked furrow into sprightly old age. In her eighties she could still turn a head, both by modelling clothes for the mature lady (snapped by Snowdon, no less), and making collages such as this:

The Game of Chess (1987) Redfern Gallery

A board has some rook-like symbols in the bottom corners and more bits at the top (maybe with a Picasso touch). Our opponent is a bowler-hatted René Magritte silhouette who characteristically has his back to us, preferring to watch a Martian sunset. There could be a play with profiles on the left: is that Dali with his wispy moustache looking out, with a topless lady looking in, forming his nose and chin? If so, who could she be?.....difficult to say as many of the Surrealist ladies were inclined to liberated behaviour, sometimes provoking apoplectic jealously among their men-folk who thought it their preserve. Fun and games, as ever. And in the struggle of shapes and edges will the straights succumb to the curlicues; will the the infernal reds see off the icy blues? It may possibly be chess, but definitely not as we know it.

So this collage, produced in her 83rd year, appears to be Eileen Agar's surrealist retrospect, created by one who saw them all. But why did she hang this hommage on a game of chess? Perhaps we'll see next time.

Eileen Agar c.1988. Photo by Orde Eliason

Notes and acknowledgements:

The ironing board image comes from Comte de Lautréamont (1868) Les Chants de Maldoror written in Paris.

Agar produced a first version of the Angel in 1937, it was lost and the second version, illustrated, was made in 1940-3.

Two books in particular have informed this post: Eileen Agar (1988) A Look at My Life (Methuen, London); and Michel Remy (1999) Surrealism in Britain (Ashgate, London).

Chess in Art Index

Desperately Siegen Scoresheets

Readers may remember this post in which, with a lot of outside help, were able to track down the correct score of an errant game, Patterson-Gheorghiu, from the 1970 Siegen Olympiad.

Alas, it is not the only game missing from that tournament. Not long ago I glanced at the What Is Missing section of the estimable OlimpBase site, and under Siegen 1970 it states:

Following gamescores are missing: Gligoric-Penrose (YUG-ENG, qual. group 2), Sanz-Bahtiar (AND-INA, qual. group 2), Ribeiro-Bonner (POR-SCO, qual. group 5)

The first of these took me aback. While England were far from a force in world chess back in 1970, Yugoslavia were (indeed, they finished third) and Gligoric was still one of the leading players in the world, having competed in the most recent Candidates' cycle. He had also beaten Petrosian with the Black pieces a few months before the Olympiad.


One would have expected his games to have been among the most important to the bulletin and its readers. Moreover Penrose was not entirely an unknown in Olympiads. But the game - which must at very least have been of interest to potential top-board rivals of either player - is not in the bulletin and is, apaprently, nowhere to be found.

What makes this absence even more mysterious is that a book on the Olympiad was written by Raymond Keene and David Levy: and the first of these was naturally seated next to Gligoric-Penrose while that game was being played. But unfortunately Ray has no memory of the game:

are you sure gligoric and penrose played each other at siegen? if they did gligoric wd have been white and it wd have been a draw

at the moment i dont recall the game at all!

Understandably, forty years on. But what baffles me is that the absence of the game from the bulletin produced at the time. You would have thought somebody would have asked after it - and even if no scoresheet could be found, its absence would have explained, or remarked upon, somewhere. But it's not mentioned in the Keene/Levy book.


Baffling. Was the game really so unimportant? Even if it were a short draw, that in itself would have been interesting, given that the world-class Gligoric had the White pieces in what turned out to be a tight match (and even then, the opening might have been of interest). But I don't know whether it was drawn in nine moves or in ninety.

One assumes that forty years later is too late to recover the gamescore, though we can always hope. But can any reader shed any light, from contemporary reports or even memory, as to why the gamescore should have eluded the bulletin, and why its absence should have escaped comment? What happened on the top board in Qualifying Group 2 in the second round, and why, apparently, did nobody care?


(Thanks to Paul Timson, Martin Smith, John Saunders and Wojciech Bartelski for assistance with this post.)

[Photos: Ajedrez32, Olimpbase.]

Ray Could Play V

Stean-Toth, 1976
White to play

Before falling out after Baguio, Raymondo and Michael Stean had been big mates.

In the October 1976 edition of the BCM Stean writes of a game he had recently played against Bela Toth. In the diagram position he wanted, he said, to play 23 Be3 but was put off by the continuation 23 ... Rxf1+, 24 Bxf1 Qxe3+. After a bit of a think he chose 23 Bg5 instead and the game was drawn seventeen moves later after many adventures*.

On his return to England Stean showed the game to Keene who, quickly spotting something his friend had missed, demonstrated that 23 Be3 wins after all. Even when it wasn't his own game Raymond Dennis Keene could play.






Ray Keene Index







* although Fritz tells me that after 23 Bg5 Black can force an immediate draw. It's got nothing to do with Keene but it's quite pretty so you might want to have a look for it anyway.

"Dump Trucks once more, Aunt Peedy..."

Back in 2008, I proudly announced on the blog that I'd beaten a titled player for the first time - an FM.

But then Richard asked in the comments, 'Surely "titled player" is normally short-hand for "IM" isn't it?'

To which my fellow blogger ejh answered:

I tend to reckon that the main function of the FM title is to enable people like me to say we've beaten titled players. I've beaten 4 FMs and until I finally pot myself an IM I think this claim will remain valid.

Quite so. Which means that, once again for the first time, I am happy to announce that I've beaten a titled player.