No thank you, CJ

Dear CJ...

I wrote to our President last week.

You'll recall my surprise that a Karpov fundraising event appeared to be disguising itself as a Ray Keene publicity drive and my concern as to whether this was entirely wise.


So having read the following in Chessbase:

For more information and tickets please contact CJ de Mooi, the President of the English Chess Federation. The email address is president@englishchess.org.uk.

and having seen a similar ad on the ECF website, complete with that same official email address, I sent CJ a message via that address. Just to ask.

...as an ECF member (membership number 4166) I wondered if I could ask you about the extent of Ray Keene's involvement in the Staunton Memorial Dinner, which the ECF is promoting.

ejh

Imagine my surprise, when CJ's commendably swift reply (from his private email address) arrived, to be informed:

May I just say that this dinner has nothing at all to do with the ECF other than the fact the President is organising it? It is a purely independent nature that I myself am undertaking.....this is a private venture free of the ECF auspices.

CJ

Uh huh.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I were to organise something in a private capacity, entirely separate from the organisation of which I was President:

• I would not use my official email address to sell tickets
• I would not advertise the event on the organisation's website
• I would not describe myself as President of the organisation in advertising for the event, nor on the invitations.

Or, to put it another way, if I did do these things, I wouldn't expect anybody to believe me when I said I was acting in a private capacity. Not least because, whatever my intentions, I very obviously wouldn't be. Which point I made:

Dear CJ

...if the president of an organisation advertises an event on that organisation's website and personally offers to sell tickets, he is patently acting in his capacity as president of that organisation and not privately.

ejh

This may all seem very obvious. But let us hear the man's defence:

Thank you for your comments, they'll be taken under consideration.

However, I'm sure you've realised I can't advertise my personal email due to my public position.

CJ

That's surely fair enough as far as it goes. But I wonder if there may be an obvious solution?

Dear CJ

Thanks for yours.

As somebody who also likes to keep his email address private I can understand that you might wish to do the same, but unfortunately that's not a justification for using the ECF address, as it were, privately. If you're really intent on selling tickets for Ray's event can I propose the creation of a bespoke email address for the purpose? It takes only a few minutes and I imagine something like penguineventcash@yahoo.co.uk may still be available.

ejh

CJ replied:

Thank you, I'll look into it.

Glad to be of service. I look forward to seeing the ads amended accordingly.

He continued:

This is not Ray's event though, it is mine!

CJ

Now let us do CJ the favour of accepting that he, at any rate, believes that. But we, at least, may have our doubts. Among other things:

• Does CJ really have the contacts that Ray has got?
• Would CJ really have thought of the name "Staunton Memorial Dinner"?
• Would CJ really have thought of inviting long-term Penguin crony Barry Martin?

I think the answers to to those questions are "no", "no" and "no", where "no" means "very obviously not".

CJ's event? It's a bit like a child's birthday party. It's their party all right. It's their big day. But it isn't entirely them who organised it. And it isn't really them in charge.

In truth it is, in some part, a networking and publicity event for Ray. For which CJ, in his stated capacity as ECF President, is selling tickets.

Which means in practice that the ECF is working for the Penguin.

[FOOTNOTE, 22 July: the invitation here refers to Event Organiser - Raymond Keene. Does CJ know?]

[passages quoted are excerpts from emails, which are not generally given in their entirety]

[Ray Keene index]

Like: something rolling about at random on the keyboard, possibly in pain

Dennis Monokroussos writes like Arthur Conan Doyle. Arne Moll, like Isaac Asimov. The Kenilworthian, Dan Brown.

How do I know? Science: I used a "statistical analysis tool, which analyzes ... word choice and writing style and compares them to those of the famous writers." In other words, the internet told me.

And for me? Depends what text I put in. Sometimes James Joyce, it seems; sometimes Shakespeare; but - never Homer. Never Homer.

I found an excerpt from How Life Imitates Chess by Kasparov: written in the style of George Orwell, apparently. But who writes in Rowson's special style? What about Ray Keene?

More questions than answers: more copying and pasting than one blogger alone can perform . . .

Short - Kasparov, Brussels 1986

Heads up:

The British Championships is nearly upon us; just eight days away according to the official site. To celebrate the tournament, between Saturday 24th July and Saturday 7th August (Sunday 8th if there's a play-off) we'll be binning our usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday-Saturday schedule and posting something every day.

In the meantime, back to regular blogging ...

With thanks to Morgan for the find.

Why didn't Topalov play 3.Nc3?

Topalov v Anand, world championship match 2010, Sofia, game 12.

Position after 2...e6.

It seems strange to be writing about the last game of the world championship two months after the event, but I was waiting for New In Chess, hoping that it might shed some light on something that puzzled me about the final game. Alas, no such enlightenment was forthcoming and so I'll ask the question myself, here: why did Topalov play 3.Nf3?

To understand this question at all, you probably need to be an advocate of 1.d4, or at least somebody who plays 1.Nf3 and 2.d4 as I very often do. This would put you, and me, in a minority at club level and even among that minority, I would guess that not quite everybody is aware of all the merits and demerits of either choice. So I hope the following digression will merit either your attention or your forgiveness.

You'll appreciate that the question is not which move is better, but which options are retained, or lost, for either player, if one or other is selected. 3.Nc3 abandons some possibilities which 3.Nf3 retains, and we'll get on to these, but let us begin with what it gives White (and threatens to impose on Black) that 3.Nf3 does not, which is two different kinds of exchange variation, both of them a little uncomfortable for Black. These are:

3.Nc3 Be7 4.cxd5 exd5

and

3.Nc3 Nf6 4.cxd5 exd5, as per the diagram below.


This is a position which has been seen thousands of times in grandmaster play, but which has not been much seen at the highest level in recent years. We can probably assume that Anand would not have gone in for it, and certainly that this position would not have constituted a reason for Topalov avoiding 3.Nc3 rather than choosing it.

What difference, here, does it make that the b1-knight is out and the g1-knight remains at home? The first point is that because the knight is still on g1, White can still move the f-pawn: so we may well get something like 5.Bg5 c6 6.Qc2 Be7 7.e3 O-O 8.Bd3 Nbd7 9.Nge2 Re8 10.O-O Nf8 11.f3 giving us this position.


This is of course perfectly playable for Black at most levels and has been played by all sorts of top-rank players, but the very best seem to feel that White's edge is a little too clear. Anand is most unlikely to have intended this: Topalov most unlikely to have wished to avoid it.

3.Nf3 obviously deprived White of this, the most dangerous option. That's easily understood, though it may be less obvious that it also deprived him of the second most dangerous line: that is, the best possible version of the Exchange Variation with Nf3. How so? Because if the development of the g1-knight is delayed, White can obtain the best possible arrangement of the other pieces first, notably the Queen and white-squared bishop. Hence after, say, 5.Bg5 Be7 6.e3 c6 (not 6...Bf5? 7.Bxf6 Bxf6 8.Qb3!) 7.Qc2 Nbd7 8.Bd3 O-O 9.Nf3


and you will have realised that the sequence has been designed to prevent Black's bishop coming to f5. Black is OK, but passive. White has the formation he or she has played for.

However, if we try and get in Nf3 earlier, say 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Be7 5.cxd5 exd5 6.Bg5


then White can't get that ideal arrangement of queen and bishop because Black has 6...c6 and now either 7.e3 Bf5


which is job done, as far as Black's concerned, or if White tries to keep the bishop away from f5 with 7.Qc2 there is 7...g6! and it will get there after all.


The resulting position isn't lifeless - I've lost on the Black side of it - but it isn't troublesome for a good player. Black should not struggle to equalise and White would not aim for this position if he or she were looking for a win.

Please be aware that there are various tricks and complications that I've not gone into here for fear of inducing excessive boredom in the reader - a still-useful guide is Sadler, Queen's Gambit Declined, Everyman, 2000 - but the basic point should be clear enough, which is that if you want to play the dangerous lines of the Exchange Variation, you have to play 3.Nc3*.

If you do, Black has one further trick already mentioned above, which is to play Alatortsev's 3...Be7


which prevents the bishop coming to g5 for the moment, and thereby proposes that play proceeds 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Bg5, or 5.Bf4, which sequences bring about mainline Queen's Gambit Declined positions, but with the Exchange Variation nicely sidestepped.

However, it's not all good news for Black, since White's not obliged to accept these transpositions and may instead prefer, as mentioned above, 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bf4. The bishop doesn't go to f4 in the Exchange Variation with 3...Nf6, for a couple of reasons - one of which is that after 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bf4 Black would have 5...Bd6


swapping off black-squared bishops, almost always a desirable objective for Black in the QGD where he or she is a little cramped and wishes to ease the problem with exchanges. But after 3...Be7 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Bf4 the option isn't available


not so much because Black would lose a tempo, but because 5...Bd6?? drops the d-pawn.

That doesn't make the position above at all terrifying for Black - Karpov, for instance, played this variation very successfully against Kasparov on several occasions - but again, it cannot have been for fear of this that Topalov played the g1-knight out first. Two reasons:

(a) current theory does seem to consider White a little better and it's not presently being seen much at high level;

(b) possibly more to the point, White has, as mentioned, the option of transposing to the very line which was actually played in the game. 3.Nc3 Be7 does not prevent what he was willing to play.

So from what we have above, everything seems to be in favour of 3.Nc3. So why didn't Topalov play it? It's not so simple, of course, but as far as I can see, there are two major reasons for preferring 3.Nf3 (which, to tell the truth, is the present writer's choice) of which one wasn't Topalov's intention - leaving the other, which is the puzzle.

The first reason for preferring 3.Nf3 is that it permits White to play the Catalan with 3...Nf6 4.g3


which is probably White's normal preference at super-grandmaster level these days, but which wasn't Topalov's intention, because he didn't play it. So we have one other major possibility - that Topalov didn't like the sequence 3.Nc3 c6.


This is kind of an accelerated Semi-Slav: the position above is sometimes referred to as the Triangle Variation, of which there are two versions, this being one and the other occurring after, of course, 3.Nf3 c6.


This joins the considerable number of variations mentioned in this article which can be filed under Playable But A Little Inferior: the problem for Black is that while after 3.Nc3 c6 there's an awkward threat to take on c4, after 3.Nf3 c6 White can play simply 4.Qc2


and Black has committed to the Semi-Slav formation perhaps just a touch too early, giving White the chance to select a flexible formation that normally, because both knights have been developed (e.g. after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6) is not available.

The version after 3.Nc3 c6, however, is a different game entirely. White has to think about the threat to c4 and can either choose 4.e3 - when Black normally plays 4...Nf6


and gets a Semi-Slav in which the most dangerous line with 5.Bg5 is no longer available - or 4.Nf3 in which case Black can either play back into a Semi-Slav with 4..Nf6 (with 5.Bg5 now possible, of course) or can accept the dare with 4...dxc4 reaching the incredibly complicated Abrahams-Noteboom Variation


which Black on current assessments has no reason to avoid.

So Topalov avoided 3.Nc3 in order to retain the option of 5.Bg5 in a potential Semi-Slav? Well that's possible - and in fact, given that the game proceeded 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 Be7, I think that's probably what happened. But there's still a puzzle! Because if White was afraid of Black's extra options after 3.Nc3 c6, why didn't he think Black would be afraid of White's extra option? Because if 3.Nc3 c6 White can play Marshall's Other Gambit with the very dangerous 4.e4!


Very dangerous, that is, for both sides - but surely more dangerous for Black than White.

This is what's been puzzling me. Because after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6, if White chooses to develop the b1-knight first, Black is either obliged** to allow one of the exchange variations investigated above, either of which would give White a slight edge - or he can take a punt on the Marshall Gambit, which many White players choose not to play, for fear of being out-prepared in the complications, but which scores well for White. When White has the nerve and the preparation to go in for it.

Do you see the puzzle now? Nerve - that's Veselin Topalov. Preparation - that's Veselin Topalov. Fear of any kind - that's not Veselin Topalov, let alone fear of being out-prepared, or fear of complications. But on this day of days, the last game of a world championship match, he didn't play like that. He didn't call the bluff. I wonder why?



[* but not 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Nc3, after which Black is not obliged to play 4...Nf6 or 4...Be7 but can pick something stronger and more flexible like 4...c6!]

[** for the purpose of this article I've not gone into the Tarrasch Variation with 3...c5, but I don't believe for a moment that Anand intended it or that Topalov feared it.]

Ray Could Play VI

After a brief interplanetary interlude and a long overdue chat with Eric Holt I want to get back [previously here and here] to exchange sacrifices today. It’s an aspect of chess that I find both fascinating and almost completely incomprehensible.

T.C. tells me that Jonathan Rowson once suggested that a willingness to give up rook for minor piece is the thing that really separates the very best chessers from the rest of us. If so the following position seems to be a case in point; in any event it certainly demonstrates on which side of the divide Raymond Dennis Keene belongs.

White to play
Keene - Wirthensohn, Hannover 1976

For Raymondo it’s simple. 22 Rxd5, he says, is an “opportunity too good to miss. Black becomes hopelessly exposed on the lights squares”. After 22 … cxd5, 33 Nc3 Nac7, 24 Nxd5 Rf5




he adds, “In addition to his positional compensation White will soon possess a material equivalent. The exchange sacrifice has been a complete success.”

This may all be run-of-the-mill for RDK but it’s most definitely not for me. I can see that White is going to swing his rook over to d1 so in effect he has swapped his least useful piece for Black’s best one, that all of White’s pieces are now in play and that Black’s knights and queen’s rook are not well placed to defend a rather shaky looking king. What I have trouble with is judging whether that adds up to a sufficient return for the required material investment.

If I were considering my 22nd move, in the unlikely event that I’d have considered taking on d5 in the first place, my thought process would be something like,

OK I can give up 5 in exchange for 3 …
… and I can easily get 1 more back too …
... umm ...
… what now?

An unopposed bishop, weak light squares, active pieces – these factors are too abstract for me to be able assess properly. Actually I originally wrote “too abstract to be able to quantify properly” there and I wonder if that’s the problem; I need (believe I need?/want?) something tangible to be able to judge the merits of a chess position. 5 is bigger than 4 and always will be; that’s something I can readily grasp and since the numbers are something I can understand it’s the numbers that drive my thinking.

Ray Keene:
Dressing like you're in Life on Mars is
"an opportunity too good to miss"

For my occasional fellow blogger unsurprisingly playing chess was a very different experience. Keene was at the top of his game in 1976 and, probably not coincidentally, a short time after his encounter with Wirthensohn he became England’s second ever Grandmaster. Whether or not exchange sacrifices really do mark the borders of chessboard competence as Rowson believes, games like this one that show beyond any doubt that Ray could definitely play.

Ray Keene Index







PS:
RDK's comments taken from his book Becoming a Grandmaster, Batsford 1977

Photo taken from Wikipedia

More questions than answers?

1. Could Simon Williams do for chess what Jamie Oliver did for food? "That video was hysterical," commented PG last month, about Simon Williams's latest. "Get that man on TV now! Seriously." I completely agree. It's no surprise Simon's blog is picking up readers and comments - but this man deserves a bigger stage, if anyone in British chess does.
   
   
2. I have 6221 Cubits to spend at ChessCube. What should I buy? They sell videos by one FM, five IMs and nine GMs, but currently the only videos in my price range are those by Andrew Martin: nine volumes of his "general guide to the opening", and forty-nine of his shows. Decisions, decisions . . .
   
   
3. . . . indecisions. I could, of course save them and try to earn more. After all, I got them for free: one day, out of the blue, I had thirty; the next three thousand. Then the option came along to play for more, and I won another three thousand or so. But the excitement is rather wearing off. Perhaps I should forget all about them, and give up online chess altogether?
   
   
4. Scifi fans out there will have no doubt already be wondering whether chesscube Cubits are named after the historical currency, or the currency in the Battlestar Galactica franchise. Good question.
   
   
5. And on the subject of scifi chess crossovers, if my Cubits could buy me this t-shirt, would they not be spent already?
   

Chess in Art Postscript: A Game At Chesse - Fourthe and Finale Parte

The first three parts of this post (here, here, and here) explored the chessic aspects of Women Beware Women, Thomas Middleton's Jacobean "tragedy", revived recently at the National Theatre, and well-known now for its chess scene. In these posts we found ourselves unexpectedly sucked into some head-spinning semantics concerning a piece of C17th chess board slang. The arcane "Blinde-mate" was the case in point. But you can skip most of it. To cut a long story short, the term remains in use today only to round off such occasional felicitations as "You must be......." when you fork some patzer's Queen. Just remember, next time, to give a nod to Middleton.

The NT show was of special interest because chessers from S&BCC and GLCC had helped the production team with moves for their on-stage chess game. Rather than our unorthodox Reversed French, the NT went with the slash and burn Bishop's Opening suggested by Nigel Blades at GLCC. Maybe they liked the clerical reference, because a major protagonist in the WBW intrigue was The Lord Cardinal. He was responsible, as a consequence of his professed piety, for much of the bloodshed that disposed of most of the cast, but yet was granted the honour of delivering the play's final (self-serving, and somewhat hypocritical) closing homily: "So where lust reigns, that prince cannot reign long". Unless, my dear Cardy, it suits your unholy purposes to have that prince reign, and reigneth everyday.

To be fair, nota bene that some Cardinals can play with a straight bat, and even know their way round a chess board: look again at the post that kicked all this off two years ago; ejh's very first Chess in Art pic.

La partida de ajedrez. José Gallegos y Arnosa. Early C20th. Private collection.

At least it keeps them out of mischief, or worse. And that's definitely a reason not to hate chess. Certain commentators with an interest in these things (and you know who you are) will spot that they wear really cool hats (they are called zucchetti - award yourself bonus points for that).

Back at WBW, our particular interest is in made-up games. Which is what prompted, unlikely though it might seem, Streatham and Brixton's celebrated hacker-in-chief and tactical wizard, Robin Haldane, to tell all concerning an experience of his some years back.

Working in the London Borough of Wandsworth's Finance Department at the time, he regularly helped run a we-take-on-all-comers chess simul. at the annual Wandsworth Weekend festival. One year the enterprising Parks Department also wished to display their skills, horticultural, using a chess theme: a floral board, with flowery pieces; and could he compose a chess problem for them, please; oh, and by the way, the management have cut back (typical Wandsworth) on plants, so we've only got WK, Q, N and 2Ps v BK, Q, R and 2Ps. "No worries" one can almost hear Robin reply, "being down on material never bothered me before", and composed away.


On the day, our man, not blessed with green fingers and psyched-up to field questions on knight manoeuvres, queen sacrifices and the like, found himself ambushed by queries on deadheading and the finer points of companion planting. As ever, Robin had a resourceful riposte, even if sometimes a little unsound on closer analysis.

At packing-up time he unwisely took his eye off the board, returning to find that the good citizens of the Borough had stripped the underplanting from files a to h and run off with the pieces, grabbing the chance to pretty-up their gardens, even with fading blooms, and get some payback for their Council Tax. Robin, from the Finance Department remember, and now exercised by the impending audit of the Council assets entrusted to him, 'fessed up. "They robbed me blind, mate". At least, I think that's what he said. And Thomas Middleton nodded back.

Happily, there was also a happy ending for Robin: he was mightily relieved when Parks said he'd done them a favour. No, they were not going to put that half-dead stuff back on Municipal display. No, not even in Wandsworth.

The problem follows, with White to play and win. Can you do as well as the Borough's six successful solvers? But before you begin: you are an advanced chesser, so we ought to try and level the playing field. Give yourself a handicap and imagine the diagram below decked-out with festive bunting....

....sorry, festive bunting ....

....and camouflaged with municipal bedding.

So, now that you can't see the wood for the trees, solve away (and, mind, no computers).

And if it's too much for you, do some pruning.

Postscript.
Beware the hubris of "take-on-all-comers". I did one or two of those Wandsworth simuls., along with other S&BCC guys, before our beloved Council cancelled these celebrations of local community pride alleging that they cost too much. Once, after disposing hordes of schoolkids who relied on 1.h4 and 2.Rh3, some geezer sits down, plays 1.e4 and a classic Lopez, and procedes to duff me up. Afterwards he confessed to being a "snake in the grass" and a member of the Hong Kong International Correspondence Chess Team. Robin would surely have nipped him in the bud.


With special thanks to Robin Haldane for the story.
The municipal bedding photo is by Phil Clements. The others are from Wikipedia.
Chess in Art Index

"In the end I did OK": What Happened to Eric Holt

Regular S&BC blog readers may recall that back in February we published an article - Whatever Happened to Eric Holt? - about a promising junior player who disappeared from the game after competing at the British in 1971. With apologies for the delay, it's time I explained what happened next.

To bring more recent visitors up to speed as quickly as possible, I had stumbled upon Eric's chess career quite by accident while in the process of writing an earlier post about Ray Keene's 128 move win against him at that Blackpool Championship - Ray Could Play IV - but quickly realised that there must be quite a story to uncover if only I track Eric down. After all he was reigning Scottish Champion, had finished 7th= in his first (and as it turned out only) British Championship and had previously competed successfully in European junior events facing such names as Romanishin, Ljubojevic, Ribli and Beliavsky and yet all of a sudden he just dropped off the face of the chess world. I was determined to find out more.

An Eric Holt ... but not chesser Eric

Since Eric pushed his pawns a long time before I began playing the game I began by making an appeal for information about him on the English Chess Forum. Fortunately Alex McFarlane reposted my request to Chess Scotland and that led to a number of helpful replies:-

• Craig Pritchett and Alan McGowan responded on the original thread, Craig saying that he believed Eric would have been a candidate for the 1972 Scottish Olympiad team had he continued playing.

• John/Chris Linskaill emailed me with his memories

I was at Boroughmuir Senior Secondary 1968-1974, and latterly captained the chess team. Eric was the team’s star turn ...

• Geoff Chandler kindly took a photo of the Edinburgh Chess Club Honours Board where Eric's name can still be seen

Click on the image for a closer look

Clearly Eric was well remembered by those who were around the Scottish chess scene back then but as pleased as I was to hear from everybody it was nothing to the feeling I got when the following email popped into my inbox.

Dear Jonathan Bryant,

Hello! This is Eric Holt. I took a look at your blog piece and it is accurate. I would be delighted to talk or email any time.

Best wishes,
Eric Holt

An Eric Holt ... but not chesser Eric

I had sent a speculative message to a website that appeared to have a connection with an Eric Holt and luckily enough the webmaster forwarded it to somebody else who passed it on to a chap who did indeed turn out to be our man. Eric was very generous with his time and we swapped emails for a couple of months, a correspondence which I've edited into the interview which appears below.

So thanks to Geoff Chandler, Alex McFarlane, Craig Pritchett, Alan McGowan, John (Chris) Linskaill and most of all thanks to Eric himself. I'm not sure I'd be quite so keen to talk to anybody about what I was up to in my late teens but then I wasn't doing anything to match Eric's achievements. Mind you, Eric was very modest about it all; in talking to him I got the impression that he didn't think that he'd accomplished anything particularly exceptional at all ...

THE ERIC HOLT INTERVIEW

Jonathan Bryant:
You had an exceptional British Championship in 1971, finishing in 7th place at your first attempt, but then you stopped playing. What happened?

Eric Holt:
I had already decided to quit chess before I played in the British. In 1971, after I turned 19, I decided to stop in order to spend more time with my studies. At that time I had been doing pretty well and I could see that chess would occupy an increasing amount of my time. I made a drastic decision to stop playing altogether.

JB:
And then you left Scotland?

EH:
In 1973 I was invited to the US to participate in a missionary seminar and program. I ended up staying a little longer working for many years as a missionary and later as a minister. For the past 15 years I have been mostly involved in financial and administrative work.

These days I live with my wife and three children in Tarrytown, New York. I work for a non-profit organization which has its headquarters in New York City; currently I serve as the organization’s treasurer. The recent photo of me that you found is from a seminary website where I serve on the board of directors. Occasionally, I teach a course there in non-profit financial management.

An Eric Holt ... but not chesser Eric

JB:
These days I imagine it would be tricky to just up sticks and move to America as you did.

EH:
Back then it was a piece of cake to obtain permanent residency – it took only a few weeks.

JB:
So you’re American now? Scottish?

EH:
Several years ago, I became a US citizen while retaining my UK/EU passport. I guess I’m a dual-national [it is perhaps of interest that Eric, as he himself pointed out, often favoured US English spelling of words in his emails to me – JMGB ]

JB:
Do you ever make it back over here?

EH:
My daughter was over in London a few months ago for a high school band performance. Once in a while I visit my ailing mum in Edinburgh.

JB:
So what about chess now? I saw the review of a chess book that you wrote on Amazon …

EH:
A couple of years ago a friend and I decided to start a small chess club, meeting twice a month in Tarrytown. We have around 30 members and perhaps 15 show up at any one meeting. We have all ages from 5 to 60 although on any given evening the players are mostly under 15 with a few adults and university students.

We have occasional tournaments among ourselves. Once in a while we invite a team from a neighbouring town for a competition. Whenever we meet the last 40 minutes or so is coaching from myself, usually in the form of quizzes (puzzle solving).

JB:
Do you play any ‘serious’ chess these days?

EH:
From time to time I think about playing in a tournament in the US but I haven’t done that yet - it is very time consuming. Once in a while I play online using Yahoo! Chess.

An Eric Holt ... but not chesser Eric

JB:
So you’ve not been involved in tournament chess for many years. Were you aware of what became of the people you were competing against?

EH:
From time to time over the years I searched online and saw, as you point out, that some of the players I played against had become some of the world’s best players and when I bought some chess books for the chess club I noticed some familiar names in them – people that I had played against many years ago.

JB:
What do you remember of your chess years?

EH:
The chess world in the late 1960s and early 70s, at least in Scotland and England, was quite different from today. The competition did not seem so severe; there were no computers; less chess books and other resources; things were less institutionalised etc.

In middle school I played in simuls against Smyslov and Gligoric, scoring a draw each time. I had Smyslov totally beaten but in the end, when all the other players had finished, it was just him and me. A 14-year-old versus the ex-world champion – so he eked out a draw!

JB:
You seem to have had a very aggressive playing style.

EH:
I tended to adopt ideas from the best players of the time. Petrosian when I was younger – English opening, Queen’s pawn etc. Later Fischer was all the rage, and I pretty much copied whatever he did – hence the Bc4 Sicilian, Najdorf Poison Pawn, King’s Indian Attack against the French etc. In the Bc4 Sicilian the Rxf7 sacrifice was my invention and it worked for me in a host of games.

Eric Holt's patented Rxf7!
[For the whole game and another example click here]

JB:
And you were a pretty successful junior.

EH:
I was lucky because my trips to all over the UK and Europe were largely sponsored (I forget by whom). One thing led to another and before I knew it I was competing in pretty high level tournaments. Penrose and Keene were my heroes and here I was suddenly playing them in the British Championship in Blackpool in 1971. I really had no idea whether I would do well or poorly. In the end I did OK.



… which is where we came in although I should remind you that “In the end I did OK” refers to a tournament finish of 7th= including victories over Markland (then 2510), Pritchett (future IM) and Evil Uncle Ernie (future British Champion amongst other things) and defeats only to RDK, Penrose and Cafferty; like I said - very modest.

Bingo!

This has been a rather long post but I hope some of our esteemed readership have made it to the end. These have been three of my favourite posts to write and it was a pleasure to meet Eric, if only electronically, and to discover he's still one of us. I wish him and his family well.

The Staunton set

As your old test papers used to say: read the passage below and then try to answer the questions.

On 8th September, a black and white gala event will be held at Simpson's in the Strand (the historic venue where the 1851 'Immortal Game' was played) as a fundraiser for Anatoly Karpov's campaign for the FIDE Presidency. In deference to the venue and England’s great 19th century player, this will be titled the Staunton Memorial Dinner.

(a) If you were holding a dinner in support of a given cause, wouldn't you normally name that dinner after the aforesaid cause rather than something completely different?

(b) If you were the promoter of a chess tournament, wouldn't you be delighted if a dinner which is likely to receive a lot of publicity were to be, somewhat surprisingly, named after your tournament?

(c) If you were supporting the cause alluded to in (a) on the grounds that you were seeking to remove individuals with questionable ethical standards from their positions of influence, would that claim be best served by associating yourself with the individual alluded to in (b)?

[Ray Keene index]

A turn for the worse

Even if when I met you I had not happened to like you, I should still have been bound to change my attitude, because when you meet anyone in the flesh you realize immediately that he is a human being & not a sort of caricature embodying certain ideas. It is partly for this reason that I don't mix much in literary circles, because I know from experience that once I have met & spoken to anyone I shall never again be able to show any intellectual brutality towards him, even when I feel that I ought to

- George Orwell, letter to Stephen Spender

The British Chess Magazine is changing its editor, and I am doubly sad to hear it.

I am sad in the first place because it means the departure of John Saunders, who I've known for a few years now. Although he had published an article of mine a few years previously, we first actually met, in person, in Port Erin at the Isle of Man International in 2003, the event notable for Nigel Short's brief appearance and sudden departure. Our meeting coincided with an encounter with a Manx, as a result of which we discovered that we shared a passion not only for chess but, much more importantly, for the domestic cat. I liked John, and we remain friends.

I've never been a subscriber to the BCM and since I now live abroad, I do not often see a copy. But I've written two pieces for the magazine: the first of them, mentioned above, was about the curious phenomenon, in openings books, of identical positions, reached by different move orders, which are assessed differently, in different places, in the same book. I came across a few of these by chance and put together an article about them: obviously if the same were to happen now, I'd do a series on this blog instead. Perhaps that encapsulates the problem any magazine editor has in the present age - much of what they would want in their pages goes on the screen instead.

That's a contemporary problem. It is not, however, the only problem. There are all sorts of problems, intrinsic to the nature and size of the chess world, which affect chess journalism and which often make it difficult to produce chess writing that is good, critically-minded and independent.

One of these is the reason Orwell gives to Spender. Chess is a small world, British chess a smaller one and sooner or later almost everybody in it ends up knowing everybody else. If you are writing about somebody in that world, or reviewing a book, chances are you're discussing a friend, or the friend of a friend, or if they are not a friend they are almost certainly an acquaintance. This can't help but affect what one is prepared to write about them. It's not necessarily log-rolling, it's humanity. There's pragmatism, too: even if you wanted to offend leading figures in the chess world, you cannot necessarily afford to, because you need their contributions.

a human being and not a sort of caricature

Another is the kiss-up-kick-down reflex which in stronger or weaker form is all too common among professional chessplayers and by others who are close to that world. Make criticisms of a leading player and it's funny how many people will tell you that you're only saying that because you're jealous, or that you ought to shut up because you could not do what they have done. These attitudes are by no means restricted to the leading players themselves. Even when writers are prepared to criticise, in a book review for instance, it's too often hedged around with a lot of cap-doffing to the effect of "of course I have great respect for Grandmaster Smith's achievements", rather than them having the full courage of their convictions.

The effect of all this is that too many people are reluctant even to see that a bad book is bad and very few are prepared to say so unequivocally. But all this produces is bad journalism, and a by-product of that bad journalism is that even more bad books are produced.

The problem is that because chess is a competitive activity, there is a very natural hierarchy within chess. As there is in sport generally, and in other fields where individual success is of great importance, which translates itself into a hierarchy of opinion. I have achieved more than you, I am better than you, hence who are you to talk about me? This is an understandable reaction and we probably all of us react a little like this in fields where we ourselves are expert. But the practical effect of this syndrome is to make the content of an opinion much less important than the identity of the person expressing it.

has achieved more than the present writer (but who has not?)

These are among the pressures which affect people writing about chess, especially if they are doing so for a living. Worse is when the writer or editor positively embraces those pressures and their journalism becomes entangled with their business interests, or the interests of their friends, or the interests of their owners and sponsors.

It is, for instance, impossible to read Chessbase for very long without noticing that it promotes the owner's friends, political allies and business interests. When it isn't doing this it's a perfectly good site, but nevertheless one that lacks any independence and which is marred by that lack of independence. Similarly, not all of Rupert Murdoch's papers and TV channels are without merit, but the fact that every last editor among them follows the owner's political instructions manifestly reduces not just their quality but their trustworthiness. They lack independence, and independence is really the theme of this piece. That, and independent-mindedness, their importance in journalism and in its editing.

Perhaps nobody is entirely independent. You cannot be when you're appointed by somebody else - and even in circumstances when you are not, you're still affected by the same human pressures that I outlined above. Still, there is such a thing as being independent-minded. As being your own person, and as wanting to be your own person. Whatever other qualities it takes, I do not believe you can be a good journalist, writer or editor without that quality. And now the British Chess Magazine has, as its editor, somebody who is not independent-minded and who for some time now seems to have sought to be as little independent-minded as he can.

Of all the people they could have chosen, the directors have appointed Steve Giddins. Who would be quite the wrong person even in a field of one.

On hearing the news, I assumed the directors of the magazine had interviewed all the possible candidates, given them marks and then appointed the one with the lowest score, by accident or as a joke. However, their announcement makes this claim:

[Giddins'] witty and informative tournament reporting has become a regular feature of such major British chess events as Hastings and the Staunton Memorial.

which prompts the reflection that if you confuse toadying with wit, one can see how you might think so. Perhaps that confusion explains his success in getting the job.

But the directors have more to say:

Steve has some exciting plans for new features and contributors

which naturally has one speculating, as to who and what these might consist of. A monthly column by Ray Keene? A monthly column by Eric Schiller, praising Ray Keene? A monthly column by Sean Marsh, praising Eric Schiller and Ray Keene? Any or all of these writing interchangeably under one another's names? I mean we're talking about the art of stooping low, so how low can we stoop? Sam Sloan? John Elburg? James O'Fee?

There's one thing to be said in its favour. Given that Giddins' recent output has been characterised by nothing more independent-minded than a willingness to say nice things about anybody who's prepared to pay to read them, he might not have to pay his contributors at all. Which I suppose would work as a business model.


The British Chess Magazine has been going for 130 years now, and I don't suppose it has made a worse editorial appointment than this. One must assume that they have acted in desperation. In which case, while one hopes in principle that its directors can save their magazine, in practice, we may be reminded of the fate of Bến Tre.

No, really. Could they not find anybody else to do it? Was it Option A Steve Giddins or Option B closure? The directors conclude their announcement by hoping

that a new generation of readers will join them in supporting the magazine under its new editor.

They may. Or a new generation of readers may prefer to get their chess news from the internet. There was a time when that would have been a bad thing.

[Short photo: UK Games Shop]

Chess in Art Postscript: A Game At Chesse - Thirde Parte

There is still a bit more to say in connection with Women Beware Women, Thomas Middleton's C17th play, recently revived at London's National Theatre, to which sundry London chessers were invited to suggest moves for an on-stage game between characters Livia and Mother. It was the subject of the first part of this post, and the Seconde Parte.

By the way, Middleton loosely based his play on the real-life intrigues of the de' Medici court in 1500s Florence, whose fact-is-stranger-than-fiction back-stabbing, molestation and murder provided him with rich pickings. There are portraits of some of the principals below.

Though she isn't in the play, the Godmother of the dynasty, Catherine de' Medici (1519-89) was, according to Marilyn Yalom (2004), "known to be an excellent chess-player" and promoted the game in the French court after she married her way into it. A contemporary was Sofonisba Anguissola of Chess in Art X, otherwise the nearest I could get to something relevant is this, from Italy around 1535.

Game of Chess. ca 1535. Giulio Campi. Museo Civico, Turin.

At first glance it looks like one of those courtly scenes of chess as a fashionable pastime, with Eros sublimated and lying limp in the wings. But, as befits a raunchy Women Beware Women context, this really is in yer face, full-on, and PG only.

There's some rather risqué play off the ball (to indulge in a little Middletonism) that begins on the left - see the meeting of the eyes suggestive of rather more with the hands - and continues under the table - consider where the good Knight has pleasingly nestled his knee. The diminutive jester is obviously up to Puckish mischief, with knobs on. The Lady's stake in the game is the white rose of her maidenhood, cherry-centred. But she is distracted (an echo of Mother in WBW); the little fellow has caught her attention. He must be reminding her of some tasteful favour she bestowed on him. Perhaps that baton (the one he's holding) with head. Oh yes. Ooh yes. Oooh YES! Yup, that must be what she gave him. Whatever. The respite would give the black Knight time to rearrange his bits and get on top. Stop it, Middleton! Enough already...(but, see note)...

As we reported last time, the National Theatre production used a game with a period coffee-house flavour (if that's not an anachronism) brewed up by Nigel Blades from Greater London Chess Club. Nigel kindly gave us the moves in a comment to our post, and you can see it, complete with his witty use of hot C17th opening theory, here. It is aligned to the verbal sparring, and punning, of the script - remember that apparently a rook was called a "duke" at the time, and that Livia challenged Mother as a ruse to distract her from safe-guarding her daughter-in-law Bianca, whom the Duke, having "bestirred himself" (you don't need any more help with that), then set about seducing (as we might euphemistically put it).

The Duke.

Francesco I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. 1551. Agnolo Bronzino. Uffizi, Florence.

As we have discussed before, there is much multi-layered interplay between the dialogue, the chess action, and the goings-on in the Duke's lair; including the use of the archaic, and thankfully obselete, term "blind mate" by Livia. Nigel's terrific game, rattled out on stage blitz-style, didn't seem to refer to this element of the script. Our own cumbersome effort (see Seconde Parte), on the other hand, included two instances of what we took, back in February, "blind mate" to be: A mates B without B realising it. Thus we had Livia "blind mate" Mother twice, as per the text, the latter repeatedly losing her game on the board, while her daughter-in-law, Bianca, was reportedly losing her virtue on the balcony.

Bianca.

Bianca Capello. 1582. Allessandro Allori. Uffizi, Florence.

It is here that our blog can modestly claim to have carved one more nick on the bedpost of enlightenment when, based on impeccable sources, it brought to the attention of anyone still awake the proper meaning of the term "blind mate", to wit: A mates B without A realising it; which is diametrically opposite from what we had been led to believe. On reflection, this must be right. An accidental victory, in the cockpit of knockabout C17th drinking-den chess, would surely attract a special term of disparagement. A "blind mate" says that A won more by luck than judgement; no small matter when there's more than victor's laurels at stake - dosh, for example.

The credit for revealing the truth goes to Paul Yachnin in 1982, based on an exposition of the manners of C17th chess laid out by one Arthur Saul in 1614. All we did was rescue Mr. Yachnin's paper from obscurity and draw it, thanks to ejh's presence of mind, to the attention of Emeritus Professor Ronnie Mulryne who wrote the authoritative guide to Women Beware Women (see note).

Only £5.99 from all good bookshops

Since the last post Prof. Mulryne has generously e-mailed to thank us for the tip-off, and to suggest that, after Paul Yachnin, we might get a mention in despatches, which would be a nice little feather in our cap.

But, now that the correct meaning of "blind mate" has been recovered, Prof. Mulryne has the unenviable task of revising the annotations in his guide to make sense of Livia's now properly understood use of the term: which is that it was she who didn't see the possible mate that could have cost her the game. But that unfortunately would, as Paul Yachnin put it, contradict the sense of the scene: failing to see everything on the board destroys the metaphor of Livia overseeing everything off it.

How then to square the circle? I hesitantly offered Professor Mulryne my twopenceworth on the matter with the suggestion that Livia's line "I have given thee blind mate twice" should be construed as "I gave you the chance to give me blind mate twice" with the unspoken implication "and you, hapless woman, couldn't win, even by accident, at all, even though it was right in front of you, not once, but twice." Which cranks the meaning round another 180°, back to where we thought it was, so as to give the effect we initially supposed: that Livia was all-seeing in the game, and was in über-control of the seduction. Admittedly though, this application of semantic sticking plaster requires a painful realignment of our everyday understanding of the words.

"When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less."

Prof. Mulryne was kind enough to call my suggestion "ingenious" (though I'd have been even more delighted had he suppressed the first syllable). However, he pointed out that such epistemological gymnastics might be impossible to portray on the stage. Still, as a star-struck innocent abroad in these matters I'd like to think that, if left to the heavenly Harriet Walter (who plays Livia at the NT), it might be conveyed by a telling nuance of her exquisitely chiselled eyebrow. Mark you, if I understood him correctly, Prof. M. concedes the same doubt about his own possible re-interpretation, so we shall have to await his next edition to see how he finally resolves the conundrum.

He also remarked on the "mind games" Middleton has his characters play in the chess game scene; rather presciently, we might add, considering the shenanigans of Topalov/Kramnik/Anand and others of that ilk, whom Livia and Mother knock into a cocked hat.

Voilà. Un cocked hat.

So, thanks again to Professor Mulryne for engaging with "our humble and obscure blog" (as ejh put it with due modesty somewhere, recently), and I hope I have not misrepresented him. And on the theme of concoctions there is yet another titbit, or two, to be told in the Fourthe Parte of this post. So, if you've got this far, please come back for more in a week's time.

Notes/References
Women Beware Women; Thomas Middleton. Edited by J.R.Mulryne. 2007. Manchester University Press.
The Birth of the Chess Queen. Marilyn Yalom. 2004. Pandora Press.
In his Art échecs et mat (2008, Imprimerie nationale Éditions) Yves Marek comments, if I've got the French, thus on the Campi picture, un peu po-faced: the game symbolises feminine superiority over man, here armour-clad but dominated, and trying not to show it. Quite so, but I think M. Marek has missed most of the fun.
The Yachnin and Saul references were given in the Seconde Parte.

Chess in Art Index

Webmasters of the World, Unite!

I have just put the words "British Chess Championship 2010" into Google, including the quotation marks.

The result?

Seven hits.

Only seven hits.

And none of those the official site.

How can this be? The site seems perfectly good; Mickey Adams is playing; and, well, it's the British.

Ok, if you remove the quote the site comes up fine. But still. You should get what you ask for.

And I believe I'm right in saying that there's something we can all do about it. It's this: British Chess Championship 2010. I.e., link to the site.

Or am I mistaken, and is it possible that the official British Chess Championship site for 2010 nowhere includes the name of the event it is for?