This is the end V

Black to play

... if, as a rule, a strong player analyzes an adjourned position more deeply and more accurately than player of a lower standard, then if the analysis is indeed carried out with maximum intensity, this contributes to the development and improvement of the player. 

Lev Polugaevsky, Grandmaster Preparation (Pergamon Press 1981)

Last week I wrote about the problems I was having getting to actually play endgames. In club chess, I concluded, neither adjournments nor quickplay finishes were particularly well suited to gaining experience in this aspect of the game.

Analysing adjourned positions may have worked very well for old Polugaevsky, but what about those of us who opt for adjournments in our club games and then find that the second session usually fails to materialise? In TITE IV I was somewhat sceptical as to the value of such uncompleted games, and yet, it has to be said that it is sometimes possible to get something from them.

After all, what's the big deal about adjournments anyway? It's not so much that the pause in play gives us an opportunity to analyse an endgame position - we could always be learning from books or solving studies if we wanted to - it's that it can give us the motivation to do so.

The need to hold on for a draw or squeeze out a win is quite an incentive to actually do the sort of work we think we ought to be doing but never quite get around to. So it's all to do with that old adage about necessity being the mother of getting off your fat lazy arse - and that's something that can still hold true whether or not a second session comes to pass.

Take my last non-adjourned adjournment of the 2010/11 season, for example. Although my opponent resigned without resuming the game, until I received his email confirming that he was giving up I had to assume both that he'd be playing on and that he'd be finding ways to keep the game going rather than meekly playing into a losing ending. Had he resigned on the night I'd almost certainly never have taken a close look at the adjourned position and never found my way to a rather crazy 'rook plus pawn on the 7th against two pawns on the 7th' position let alone bothered to work out whether it was won or only drawn.

I got a lot out of an adjournment, then, even though it never actually happened. Actually, in hindsight, I might easily have taken even more than I did from it. I'll come back to that later. First, we'll take a look at how things developed from the sealed move.

Lev Polugaevsky:
wasting your adjournments will make him cross

It was a London League game played towards the end of April, the first session ending in this position:-

White to play

Ilfordian v JMGB, April 2011

My final move of the first session was ...Rc2-c3 which, since swapping rooks seems to lead to a lost ending (not all opposite-coloured bishop endings are drawn - see BORP? II) and anything else seems to lose a piece, leaves White in a rather sticky situation. To be honest, I didn't see any way out and expected him to resign without coming back for more, but, although that was the way things turned out, there's certainly much more in the position than I'd imagined.

What if he had sealed Rg4+? The day after the game I settled down for a little bit of adjournment analysis and quickly discovered that rather than simply losing his bishop White could say that he was sacrificing it as the start of a plan to give up all his material in order to get his pawns rolling.

39 Rg4+ Kb3, 40 Rd4 c6, 41 Bf8 a3, 42 Bxa3 Kxa3, 43 Rxd5 cxd5, 44 Kxf7

Black to play

What now? My initial thought was that simply

44 ... d4, 45 e6 d3

would take care of business, but then it dawned on me that the fact that Fritz assesses the continuation as "-+ (-7.06)" notwithstanding,

46 e7 Rc8, 47 e8=Q Rxc8, 48 Kxc8 d2, 49 f6 d1=Q 50 f7

is actually just a completely drawn queen v bishop's pawn on the 7th ending (as seen in the original TITE)*

What about

44 ... Rc7+

then?

45 Ke6 d4, 46 f6 d3, 47 f7 Rxf7, 48 Kxf7 d2, 49 e6 d1=queen, 50 e7

now wins for Black because it's not a bishop's pawn, and

45 Kf6 d5, 46 e6 d3, 47 e7 Rc8 gains a crucial tempo so 48 Kf7 d2, 49 e8=Queen Rxc8, 50 Kxe8 d1=queen, 51 f6

also wins because the pawn has only made it to the sixth rank, so it seemed to me that White would have to try

45 Kg6 d4, 46 e6 d3, 47 f6 d2, 48 f7 Rc8, 49 e7**

bringing us to the position at the head of today's blog.

I spent a while getting nowhere with 49 ... d1=queen and queening one of White's pawns in return before I realised that I didn't have to promote straight away and could try 49 ... Rc6+ instead. Unfortunately at the very moment this insight came to me I also remembered that there's a free online six-piece tablebase and that there was, therefore, no need for me to calculate any of this.

On reflection, I now think that it's rather a pity that I turned to the tablebase straight away. OK, I discovered for sure that Black does win here - it's mate in 17 as it happens - which was a relief, but I'd got this far on my own so I probably would have found the concluding moves too. It would have taken longer, but I would have got more out of it in the long run and I could always have checked my analysis later.

3:08, yo

Although I still doubt that club match adjournments on their own are the best way to get endgame experience, there's certainly more point to them than last week's post suggested. Yes, the longer sessions of tournament and county games are more likely to be helpful, but if club chess is all we have, adjourning our asses - as Stringer Bell would say and Polugaevsky probably would not - is definitely worth thinking about.




This is the end Index





* For completeness I should add that 47 ... d2, 48 e8=queen d1=queen is supposedly winning for Black, but I didn't notice that at the time and, in any case, my initial reaction on seeing it now is that I'm not sure I'd be able to win it in practice.

** I also looked at 45 Kg8 d4, 46 e6 d3, 47 f6 d2, 48 f7 Rc8+, 49 Kg7 d1=queen, 50 e7 which is identical except Black has already  queened and White has the extra move Kg7 - which is obviously in my favour compared to the mainline.

Every Picture Tells A Story: The Cast of Players, Part 1

Number 11 in a continuing series. This one by Richard Tillett with a couple of suggestions and comments from Martin Smith.

In this series, Martin and I have been sharing the results of our investigations into this early 19th century picture by Thomas Leeming…

…which is one of three, similar-but-interestingly-different, versions that we’ve identified during the course of our research. You can see the other versions here.

As readers of the previous blogs in the series will know, the artist did posterity a great favour by recording the names of the people in the picture. They are, from left to right: John Allen Junior, Francis Lewis Bodenham, the artist (standing), Samuel Beavan, Edwin Goode Wright, Charles Biss, and Theophilus Lane. In the version Leeming painted for exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1818, he replaced Samuel Beavan with the red-jacketed James Buckton.

So, who were these eight people, what did they do with their lives, and what did they have in common apart from their enthusiasm for chess? In blogs 6 and 7 we looked at Thomas Leeming himself and his London friend James Buckton in some detail. But so far we’ve not had much to say about the remaining members of the cast, and in this and our next blog we turn our attention to these six young men.

In the case of three of them, there’s a good reason for our silence – we haven’t yet been able to discover a great deal about them, and what we have uncovered isn’t especially interesting. So let’s despatch the trio without further ado, starting with Charles Biss.

Charles Biss: mystery man

Of Charles Biss there is little trace, and we do not even know his occupation. It is probable that he was related to the Charles Bisse who was a mayor of Hereford in 1752, and possible also that he had a family connection to Philip Bisse, an early 18th century bishop of Hereford. Our man is likely to be the Charles Bysse who was baptised in Hereford in 1790, who may (or may not) be the same as the Charles Biss who married Elizabeth Wiltshire at Bridstow near Ross-on-Wye in 1820… Yes, those variant spellings are confusing. There are records in the National Archives relating to a Charles Biss who owned land at Berkeley in Gloucestershire in the 1830s, and he too may be the man in the picture. But that’s all we know (or think we know) about him.

Theophilus Lane: scion of a prominent Hereford family

There are also some known unknowns (not to say unknown unknowns) around the identity of Theophilus Lane. We are confident that he came from a prominent family of attorneys and clerics in the Hereford area – another Theophilus Lane was mayor of the city in 1729. We initially assumed that the man in the picture was the son of yet another Theophilus Lane who was a prebendary of Hereford Cathedral. That Theophilus Lane (the prebendary) married a niece of the painter Thomas Gainsborough and the couple had some talented children who went on to make names for themselves, one as a lithographer and engraver, and another as an expert on the Arab world. However, in the absence of any supporting evidence we now think it more likely that our man is from another branch of the Lane family. He may be the Theophilus Lane born to James and Anna Lane and baptised at Ross-on-Wye in 1791.

In his inscription to the painting, Leeming described Theophilus Lane as a solicitor and it seems that shortly after it was painted he became Diocesan Registrar at Hereford Cathedral, a role which, then as now, would have required legal skills. In 1830 he was listed as a notary and a chapter clerk living in St Owen Street.

Samuel Beavan: solicitor who returned to his roots?

Samuel Beavan is another shadowy figure, who we think came from a Welsh borders family where the surname is fairly common. He may have been the son of Major Beavan of the Radnorshire Militia, who was living in Hereford at the time of his death in 1799 (his widow was still living in one of the best addresses in the city, Castle Street, in 1830).

Records in the National Archives suggest that Samuel Beavan settled in Radnorshire, where he practised as a solicitor. He is possibly the Samuel Beavan of Glascombe who was appointed as deputy lieutenant of Radnor county in 1825. But at the time of the painting (1815), it seems he was working in the Bodenham law firm in Hereford.

Which brings us to Francis Lewis Bodenham, of whom we know rather more…

Francis Lewis Bodenham: oh no, not another solicitor.

The Bodenhams were a wealthy Catholic family of bankers and solicitors with a country house and estate, Rotherwas, on the outskirts of Hereford. As we’ve already noted in an earlier blog, Rotherwas may well have been the setting for the picture but as the house was subsequently demolished we will probably never know for certain.

Francis Lewis Bodenham was to become a successful lawyer, a respected figure in Hereford public life, and an all-round Good Egg. He had the unusual honour of serving twice as mayor of the city, first in 1840 and again in 1857. A 19th century history of Hereford records that he was “a thorough going reformer, a true lover of the city, a pattern of correct dealing, with a passion for public service and devotion. He respected and honoured conscientious scruples wherever he saw them, and was indeed the true friend of the people, and to the cause of social betterment.”

The family seems to have had an enduring interest in chess as another Bodenham was listed as a patron of the 1885 international tournament held at Hereford, but more on this in a future blog.

Edwin Goode Wright: not a solicitor.

Edwin Goode Wright had already made his name at the time the picture was painted as editor and publisher of the Hereford Journal, a role he was to maintain for four decades.

When he died in 1859 he merited an obituary in the Illustrated London News, from which we learn that he held many appointments as a trustee of public charities. He was also a scientist of some repute: “He made many improvements in scientific apparatus. Several of these, adapted to the microscope, have been generally adopted”. His obituary also records that he was something of a ballistics whiz: in 1823 he “announced his discovery of the advantageous employment of fulminating mercury in the preparation of the percussion cap”. The obituarist goes on to explain that “few now living can remember the disadvantages which this invention remedied, such as the oxidation and injury to locks and barrels, the dirt generated, and the feebleness and uncertainty of the old percussion powder”. If you fancy blowing yourself up, you can find a recipe for fulminating mercury here, where Edwin Goode Wright's contribution is acknowledged.

No doubt this invention was prompted by his own military experience during the Napoleonic wars as a young officer in the Herefordshire Volunteers, alongside another of the sitters in the picture, John Allen Junior, whose life merits a blog all to itself on 28 May, where we will also reflect on the relationships between the Gents.

Acknowledgements
This blog is deeply indebted to Hereford historian David Whitehead who has been most generous with his knowledge of Hereford families.
Information on the individuals in the picture has also been gleaned from online sources including International Genealogical Index and National Archives.

Every Picture Tells a Story Index
Chess in Art Index

What happened next XVII

Wednesday's position was taken from the 1980 Olympiad in Malta, the top board game between Lajos Portisch and Tony Miles in the sixth round match between Hungary and England. The game was adjourned here.

In his Secrets of Grandmaster Chess (Batsford, 1997, p. 177) John Nunn explains what happened next:

During the match against Hungary, Miles adjourned in a very dubious position against Portisch. We started analysing the position in Miles's absence. Suddenly Miles joined us, saw what we were doing and advised us not to waste our time as he had sealed 'Resigns'. On resumption, David Anderton did his best to avoid a diplomatic incident by congratulating Portisch on his victory with one hand while attempting to confiscate Miles's score sheet with his other. However, Portisch was not to be denied: he insisted on seeing the sealed move. When the 'Resigns' became visible, he just grunted as if he had expected nothing else. This was one of David's few failures as captain.

Maybe, though Anderton's would not have been the only failure relating to Miles' sealed resignation: neither of Britain's major two chess magazines, in their Olympiad reports, mentioned the incident at all.

The only other reference in print I can find, in English, to the incident is by Nigel Short, in a well-known obituary to which we may return at a later date. Other than that, as far as I know, nothing. Certainly, no contemporary reports.

This even led me to wonder whether the event, which seemed to have gone unmentioned for seventeen years until the publication of Nunn's book, and which I could trace neither in Geoff Lawton's book on Tony Miles, nor in Ray's effort, had ever happened. On the other hand I could see absolutely no reason to doubt Nunn's account, seeing as he was on the team in La Valletta. (Mind you, so was Ray.)

I was aware that István Bilek, captain of the Hungarian team in Malta, had written a book about the Olympiad: so if Bilek mentioned the incident, that would confirm it. I was therefore very grateful to Csaba Gerencsér, who has read the book and blogged about it, who was kind enough to check for me.

Paraphrasing what Csaba sent me: according to Bilek, Miles bombarded Portisch with draw offers during the game. Finally the game was adjourned, but when the adjournment session began, Miles wasn't present, so the arbiter opened the envelope. Together with the England captain he deciphered what Miles had written, which was presumably resigns, as the arbiter awarded the point to Hungary. Shortly afterwards, Miles appeared in the hall, with a smile all over his face. Bilek couldn't help but comment, to the England captain: "Miles smiles - but Portisch wins", expecting that the message would be passed on to Miles.

So there you have it. It happened - and Bilek's contemporary account basically tallies with Nunn's reminiscence. Good. But why no contemporary account in English? What did our two leading magazines say?

Chess only had two short reports on the Olympiad, but was able to report that Miles' fifth round game was temporarily suspended because of a dispute in the Kasparov-Georgiev game on an adjoining board, without saying that anything odd happened to Miles in the following round.

The British Chess Magazine, meanwhile, in the person of Bernard Cafferty, reported more extensively and was able to mention problems with transport, accommodation, the playing schedule, crowd encroachment and suchlike. On the Portisch-Miles game, however, there was this:

Portisch beat Miles in a high calibre game by exploiting a slight black square weakness after the original opening 1 c4, b6; (no need to ask who is Black!) 2 Nc3, Bb7; 3 d4, e6; 4 a3, f5; 5 Nh3, Nf6; 6 f3 with a later Nf2 in the style of Steinitz

That's basically it: the opening, but nothing about the finish, save the result.

One wonders why. This was not long after Belgrade and Baguio and questions of at-the-board behaviour were not considered irrelevant by the chess-watching public. This blog has already discussed the lamentable under-reporting of controversies attached to the previous Olympiad, in Buenos Aires: it seems that this habit carried through at least to the 1980 event. Not telling tales out of school was, it seems, the motto by which the chess journalist then worked.

I don't want to deny the existence of real, and understandable pressures, which would lead chess writers to operate in that way. Chess is a small world, everybody knows everybody else and the person you offend today - or their friend - may be the person you wanted to annotate a game for you tomorrow. Nor do I want to claim that other sports journalism didn't operate in much the same way (most football writers probably didn't think it their job, in 1978, to write about "politics" when the World Cup was in Argentina, and plenty didn't) and nor do I want, entirely, to judge journalism from previous decades by the standards of today. A piece of bad sportsmanship like Miles' would certainly be reported on today, but then again it would have to be, because it couldn't be hidden: it'd be all over the chess world within minutes. (Well it wouldn't, because they don't seal moves in Olympiads any more, but you take my point.) It's not necessarily that the hacks are better nowadays, it's that the circumstances are different.

That said: keeping mum did do chess a disservice, when all's said and done, because not only is it a journalist's job to tell people things, but when the press decides that it's better to to tell what you've seen, then it becomes easier to cover up scandals, and that means scandals become more likely to happen. The decade that followed the 1980 Olympiad was, in sporting terms, the high point of English chess achievement, memorable for anybody who was part of it, or followed it. But it was also a time when bad things started to happen, and one wonders how much the culture of English chess, including its journalism, contributed to what happened next.

[Thanks to Angus French, Csaba Gerenscér, Jonathan Bryant, Mark Weeks and John Saunders.]

[What happened next? index]

What happened next? XVII

From an international team tournament. Position after White's 42nd move.

What happened next?

[What happened next? index]

This is the end IV

Fruit, eh? Don't get me wrong, I like fruit, but that Five a Day thing is bullshit, isn't it? I get that fruit and veg are good for me, but eating that much on a regular basis? Impossible for any human being living in circumstances that might reasonably be described as normal, I'd say.

I feel much the same way about chess endgames. We've all been told at some point that playing endings is good for our development, but just try upping your endgame count and see where you get.

Although I've been wanting to play more endings this year, it seems that it's going to take something more than simply saying, "right, I'll do more of that, then" to achieve. I've tried playing adjournments and quickplay finishes in my games for S&BCC and while they are obviously superior to adjudications, they both have drawbacks in terms of helping with endgame practice.

Is it time to accept that club chess just isn't particularly endgame friendly?

The Unfinished

Adjournments seem like the ideal way to finish a game of chess from the point of view of a person who's looking to play endings. If, like me, you play in the London League, there are no particular difficulties getting back to the venue and with a second session you get plenty of time to think about your moves.

The problem is that for the most part adjournment sessions don't actually materialise. Even in the London League they can be a pain - the central venue might be better seen as mutually inconvenient rather than the reverse - and, much more often than not, the players concerned agree a result based on the adjourned position.

It's easy to understand why. Take my third 'non-adjournment' of the year: I (Black) was two pawns up in a rook endgame.  At my level there's still a way to go before it's all over and yet it clearly must be winning so it wasn't a surprise when White decided he didn't fancy making a special trip to Golden Lane for a tiny chance of saving the game.

All told I 'adjourned' seven games during the 2010/11 season - see above - but not a single one of them was actually played on. 'Self adjudications' are probably a more accurate description than 'adjournments' for these games. This wasn't an unusual year either. In the previous three seasons I played around 101 games and only three of them required a second session.

If adjournments aren't great for playing endings, how about opting for a quickplay finish as often as possible, then? Certainly it's true that my quickplay games typically last longer than my standard play games (41.8 moves to 35.6 moves on average in 2010/11), but while with this type of finish to a game I might get more of a chance to play an ending how much of it am I going to be able to take in when I'm fighting as much against the clock as I am the board?

In one quickplay-finish ending I played a couple of months ago I transformed this

White to play

JB v A.N. Other, Surrey League March 2011

into this

in 14 minutes of thinking time. That worked out at just 40 seconds for each move. I'm not sure the result would have been any different if I'd have played this on with a time control of 36 in 90, but I'd certainly have had more chance of learning something about rook endings if this one had been played-out over a second session rather than in a blitz finish.

Quickplay finishes have their place in club chess, for sure. As far as endings go, though, it seems to me that they're more an opportunity to demonstrate your existing knowledge (or lack thereof) than they are a chance to discover something new. That's true with the three-hour-or-less playing sessions that you get in weekday/evening league chess, anyway.

The way forward?

I'm not at all sure that there's a solution to any of this. Other than continuing to mix quickplay finishes with adjournments and trying to get the advantages of both, what else is there to do? Try to head directly for an endgame right from the opening a little more often (see BORP? V), perhaps? I'm not adverse to that strategy by any means, but without a stream of compliant opponents it's only ever going to have limited success.

Ultimately, then, I guess the answer is the same as it usually is with questions of developing chess ability. Club chess will only take us so far, so if I really want to get some endgame experience under my belt, I'm going to have to shell out some cash and enter a tournament or two. That's not the only reason I'm going to Sunningdale in a couple of weeks and Benasque in July, but it's certainly one of them.





PREVIOUSLY:
This is the end
This is the end II
This is the end III





PS: Strawberry breakfast photograph from Nibbledish

Anti Chess II: Refuseniks and Dissidents

For today’s post, dear reader, I must ask you to cast your minds back a month. Back before we started calling the lobbing of beardy fellows out of helicopters a "burial at sea"; back before some bloke who looks a bit like our own T.C. got hitched to a common bird and the entire national news media lost their sense of proportion; back before that brace of double bank holiday weekends and all that chocolate. Back, indeed, to the 11th of April and my post Invisible Anti Chess – the story of how, although at the height of his fame, Viktor Korchnoi was inexplicably unable to find a British publisher for his book on the 1978 Baguio World Championship match.

The availability of Anti Chess - or lack thereof - is really rather curious.  The fact is, its author being a defector from the Soviet Union notwithstanding, back in the early 1980s you actually stood more of a chance of clapping eyes on a copy if you were a dissident in Moscow than if you were a citizen of Great Britain and living in what used to be called (apparently without irony) The Free West.

That it was possible to read Anti Chess inside the Soviet Union, even illicitly, is kind of interesting, but what makes this sub-plot in the book's story worthy of its own post is this: Anti Chess found its way behind the iron curtain only because of the efforts of our old friend Raymond Dennis Keene.

As extraordinary as it might seem, to an already wonderfully entertaining career, we can add the story of how RDK smuggled banned literature inside a totalitarian country. As if that wasn't enough, he did it while acting as a second an Interzonal tournament which, since his conduct at such events has not always met with universal approval, makes the story of Ray's visit to Moscow in 1982 impossible to ignore.

Gulko: received a pleasant surprise from Ray Keene

Image from chessdom.com

It was in September 1982 that Keene travelled to Moscow to act as a second for Larry Christiansen. If we take the American GM’s word for it, their working relationship was not an easy one,

“… he didn’t live up to expectations. He was paid $3,500 by the American Chess Foundation but he seemed more interested in making book deals than helping me. We were two weeks in Moscow. I had just one adjourned game ... a very complex rook ending and he showed up inebriated and collapsed. Why me, God? I thought.”

- Larry Christiansen, quoted by Kingpin

but nevertheless, perhaps glad of an opportunity to get away from the chess, the pair took advantage of one of the rest days to visit dissident Grandmaster Boris Gulko.

There years earlier Gulko and his wife, Anna Akhsharumova, had applied to emigrate to Israel, thereby instantly transforming themselves into pariahs in the eyes of the Communist authorities who were most unwillingly to let them go. The Gulkos were soon subjected to surveillance and harassment by the KGB and at times even banned from playing chess.

We now know that the pair were eventually allowed to leave in 1986, but when Keene and Christiansen visited them, of course, nobody could have known when, how, or even if their situation would ever be resolved. If one thing was clear, however, it was that the intransigence of state officials had not diminished in the slightest their determination to leave their homeland behind.

The Gulkos became desperate to draw attention to their cause. A hunger strike timed to coincide with the 1980 Olympiad proved ineffective so two years later they changed tack and planned a series of public protests outside the playing hall at the Moscow Interzonal. After the first, the displaying of a banner proclaiming “Let us go to Israel” opposite the entrance to the tournament hall, the pair were arrested and temporarily detained and during the second, an attempt to gain access to the building itself, Boris Gulko was physically assaulted by a member of the security services in full view of queuing chess fans.

That Keene and Christiansen were prepared to visit the Gulkos at home in such circumstances was both an acknowledgement of their plight and a clear statement of support for them. The trip would be noticed, not just by the KGB, but by the world’s chess media too, ensuring the Gulkos would not be forgotten. Indeed it is from reports in the BCM (Vol 10 #11, November 1982)* that I first learned that Keene and Gulko had hatched a scheme for Raymondo to deliver a letter to FIDE on Boris’ behalf and help him earn some money by having articles published in the Western chess press, but that their plans had been scuppered when customs officers confiscated the manuscripts during a search of RDK’s and Christiansen’s baggage prior to their departure from Moscow.

The story of Keene’s 1982 meeting with Gulko got another airing last year with the publication of The KGB Plays Chess (Russell Enterprises Inc. 2010). I wasn’t particularly surprised to see it there, but what really took me aback was the following passage from The Letter “Lahmed” Problem, Gulko’s own contribution to the book:-

“Refuseniks and dissidents were the natural channel through which banned books penetrated from the West into the Soviet Union. The tamizdat, as we called books published abroad, to distinguish them from the samizdat, arrived in the luggage of tourists and, apparently, also by diplomatic mail. Refuseniks were the channel mainly for Zionist and Jewish literature, dissidents for everything else. At one point, photocopies of Kortschnoi’s book Anti-Chess spread around Moscow with a dedication to me on the title page from the anti-hero of this book, Raymond Keene.”

Boris Gulko: The KGB Plays Chess (Gulko, Popov, Felshtinsky and Kortschnoi Russell Enterprises Inc. 2010)

How had it got there? A few pages later Gulko makes clear that he’d been given that copy of Anti Chess by the “anti-hero” himself. I wondered whether that really could have been true. It sounds like a rather dangerous enterprise, don't you think? What if Keene and Christiansen had attracted the Soviet border guards’ attention on the way in to the country as well as the way out?

RDK himself confirmed to me that the story is indeed true and, moreover, he rather modestly dismisses my post-dated concerns for his safety with a simple, “i dont think it was very risky-we were searched on the way out because we had met gulko!”.

Well maybe so. Raymondo was there and I was not, after all. Nevertheless, I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that we’re talking about a repressive totalitarian regime here and people were sometimes arrested for smuggling items into the Soviet Union. Five years earlier, for example, a number of reports appeared in the press [e.g. Briton Held by KGB is Charged, The Times 15th August 1977, page 1 ] concerning a British student, Andrei Klymchuk, who was imprisoned for six months after being caught entering the country with documents and some money hidden in his shoes.

Even if the RDK smuggling operation wasn’t a particularly hazardous activity, then, it certainly wasn’t without any risk at all. All the more so considering that all this happened at the fag end of the Brezhnev era – Comrade Leonid died just a a few weeks after Keene left Moscow – and oppressive authoritarian regimes are always at their most unstable and unpredictable at times of transitions of power.

Never let it be said that Raymondo's 45-year career in the chess world has been anything less than colourful. Sure, he's made more than a few off-the-board moves that might best be annotated with a "?!". That shouldn't prevent us from tipping our hats to him when he comes up with a good one, though, and smuggling a banned book into the Soviet Union to give to a man fighting for his freedom is most definitely worthy of a "!!" by anybody's standards.

That just leaves the question of why it was the British chess fans didn't get to enjoy Anti Chess too. That we come back to next Monday (hopefully) when this trilogy of posts concludes.








* A rare but pleasing example of something appearing in the BCM, but not CHESS (the October 1982 CHESS only mentioned Gulko's protests). It is no accident, I'm sure, that by this time Bernard Cafferty had taken over from Brian Reilly as editor of the BCM.




Ray Keene Index

Sing a Song of Chess IV

When the Pawn

When the pawn hits the conflicts he thinks like a king
What he knows throws the blows when he goes to the fight
And he'll win the whole thing 'fore he enters the ring

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Sing a Song of Chess III
Sing a Song of Chess II
Sing a Song of Chess

Once was enough IV : Eingorn Winawer

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 Kf8

Like the previous item in this series, this line belongs to the category of the slightly-eccentric rather than the asking-for-trouble. I think it may be the only time I have ever played, with the Black pieces at any rate, the Winawer, despite owning two editions of John Watson's Play The French, the third edition of which even includes a couple of references to my good self, following some analysis I sent to the author after reading the second edition.

Despite his recommendation, I've never much liked the Winawer, and the one time I did pursue it, I chose neither the Poisoned Pawn line which his second edition suggested, nor the 7...O-O variation favoured by his third. Instead, prior to the side tournament (the Harry Baines) that I played in during the British Championships in Scarborough in 1999, I discovered a line advocated by Eingorn, 7.Qg4 Kf8, and played it once, in a game I won easily. But after that, I never played it again.

WHY I PLAYED IT: This was towards the end of my period of maximum thrashing-about, my games over the the previous months including Scandinavians, Sicilians and Open Games. I was somewhere between trying to find an ideal Black opening - that I didn't yet accept didn't exist - and considering a portmanteau approach in which I'd select different openings against different strengths of opponent. A reasonable approach in principle, albeit one that ran the risk of overloading oneself horribly with Frenchs, Sicilians and Open Games, all of them the appropriate and theory-heavy choice at one time or another.

I can't say, in retrospect, exactly where the Eingorn Winawer fitted in with this scheme. I do know I have a liking for ...Kf8 in the French, it being the sort of eccentricity that's always pleased me and - perhaps with justice - that I've often thought opponents might find disconcerting and hard to play against. Such was certainly the case on this occasion, and why I didn't persist with it is a mystery which at this distance, I can't entirely resolve.

WHERE I FOUND IT: In keeping with the lapsed-memory theme of this piece, I'm not completely sure. (I was, as it happens, both quite unwell during this period, and in the process of changing life, career and the part of the country in which I lived, so it is not so surprising that much of the detail is lost to me.) I have a feeling that Ray, somewhere, devoted an article, or part of one, to the line, but that might be my imagination. I also wonder whether it may have featured in Wolfgang Heidenfeld's fine and undeservedly obscure Lacking The Master Touch, which was lent to me at the time and which comments on a number of eccentric lines in the French, e.g. 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Be7 5.e5 Ng8, with which the author once drew with Unzicker.

But I am sure the major source was McDonald and Harley's Mastering The French, which I bought despite never having liked - or, as far as I can recall, played - the French before. It's a nice and useful introduction (though what in God's name is the "read and play" method - does it mean "has illustrative games rather than variations"?) and I've played the French intermittently ever since, sometimes as my main defence against 1.e4, rather more often because I felt like a rest from 1...e5.

As I say, whether I intended it as my major defence or as an alternative against the lower-graded, I can no longer remember, though I suspect the latter. But I rolled out the French three times at Scarborough, the first time against 1.d4 which turned into an Exchange Variation, the third time being met with 2.b3 which turned into a Sicilian. But only on the second occasion, and only this once ever, did I get my Eingorn Winawer, which game was effectively over as soon as White had dropped a pawn with 11.Bd3?. (The fact that it continued until move 68 is presumably explicable only on the basis that I might have been in time-trouble. Unusually, the times aren't recorded in my scorebook, which suggests that I might have lost my scoresheet and had to borrow my opponent's to copy the game up. But the time control was at move 40 and only twenty minutes were then added to the clocks. So it's plausible enough.)

It was an easy win. Not just that, but one that came about pretty much as I'd planned, with an eccentric approach confusing my opponent. But I never tried it again.

WHY I STOPPED PLAYING IT: Who knows, for sure? But after the Harry Baines, my next six Blacks against 1.e4 were five Sicilians and a King's Gambit, and though the seventh was a French, it was a Classical. Changing my mind was what I did, at the time, so to ask what changed my mind is perhaps to miss the point.

But possibly I was never entirely convinced. Not by the Winawer generally, nor by the 7...Kf8 line. It's plausible that I didn't really want to adopt a defence on which no specialist book appeared to exist - though this didn't deter me from taking up the MacCutcheon a couple of years later - and I think that's a sound enough approach if you're looking to play something in the long term. It's also plausible that at the time, I was more or less inclined to adopt any defence on which I happened to find a new book.

Or, for that matter, a new article. I can remember seeing, about that time, an article by Mig Greengard on a game Polgar-Illescas, played in that year's Dos Hermanas tournament, in which Black crushed White by playing all around the knight on d5. That, too, was an idea I thought I could understand, there were books on it too (I have six) and I started playing it immediately. It didn't last, but it lasted longer than the Eingorn Winawer. Which was forgotten. Until now.

Or not, since on searching in Google for eingorn winawer the very first reference turns out to be to my own enquiry, from 2006, as to the present status of the line. Weird. That little nibble, too, I had completely forgotten.

CHANCES OF MY PLAYING IT AGAIN: As with the Czech Benoni, I can feel this twinge of fascination, and at the same time, a competing feeling of "better not". There's even some book coverage now, by Eingorn himself, though more in passing (according to Watson's review) than anything chunkier. And also, apparently, a chapter in Moskalenko's Wonderful Winawer. Perhaps that's not really enough, for the long-term. And perhaps the line itself isn't really convincing enough for the long-term.

And yet, perhaps, perhaps.

[Once was enough I,II, III]

[Thanks to Sean]

When we were Kings XIX

CHESS May/June 1975 (Vol 40 #721-25)

A friend of mine moved to St. Albans recently where, as it turns out, his new local pub is owned by Paul Littlewood. Not just a Paul Littlewood either, but the Paul Littlewood. International Master Paul Littlewood. Former British chess champion Paul Littlewood. That Paul Littlewood.

It is precisely thirty years ago this August that he - Paul Littlewood, not my friend - won the British title. No doubt the game was very different back then, but with the benefit of hindsight the opposition he overcame in 1981 - he scored wins against Gary Lane, Peter Wells, Robert Bellin (British Champion,1979), Murray Chandler and William Hartston (British Champion 1973 and 1975) alongside draws with Craig Pritchett, Nigel Short and Jon Speelman - looks pretty impressive don't you think?

CHESS August 1981 (volume 46 #859-60)

Anyhoo, in case you are wondering why this is appearing as part of a series of posts dedicated to chess in the 1970s I should say two things,

(a) as far as chess is concerned, the 1970s lasts from March 29th 1970 (the start of the USSR v World match in Belgrade) to November 19th 1981 (the end of the Karpov-Korchnoi World Championship contest in Merano) so the 1981 British Championship just sneaks in;

and,

(b) I went to St. Albans to meet Paul* because he had some 35-year-old chess magazines that he was looking to pass on.

Which brings me to the photograph at the head of today's blog. That's Paul on the right, six years before he became champion, but who are the other three?  Without the caption - which I've cunningly cropped out - I'd only have got one.  I'm sure our esteemed readership will be able to do better.






When we were Kings Index






* and pop in to see my friend

On grades and grading II

[Due yesterday, but postponed for Ray Tweets the Wedding]

Another quiet day at work, a bit more time on my hands and, hey presto, another post based on a session with the calculator emerges. This one starts with a story. Are you sitting comfortably? Then we'll begin.

A month or two back I was talking with T.C. about how my season was progressing and I mentioned that while I was doing very badly everywhere else, I was at least scoring pretty well in the London League. Tom suggested that this could be something to do with Golden Lane - I feel comfortable there, so play better, so score more points - to which I replied that while it was true that I like playing at the London League's usual venue, I was also doing well against clubs like Athenaeum, Albany and Drunken Knights who play their home matches elsewhere.

That little exchange encapsulates the human condition pretty well, I think. We are built to create stories and to (try to) explain the world around us, but simplifying a complex set of circumstances into something more understandable is an error-prone activity because our perception processes are erratic - we pay attention to some things more than others - and we remember some of the things that we take in better than others.

Perhaps for that reason, the narrative that I'd constructed to explain my chess season was no more accurate than T.C.'s. I thought I was scoring well at Golden Lane, but when I crunched the numbers for last week's post I saw that my performance there was actually no better than par for the season. I only really did well in the London League at clubs that don't play at the central venue.

The +5 =1 -0 I scored at Albany, Drunken Knights, Athenaeum, Morley College, London Deaf and Civil Service highlights another major fault we have as storytellers: we tend to grossly underestimate chance as a determining factor. We like to believe that things happen for a reason so when events come together in a certain way we tend to think that 'x causes y' and totally overlook the fact that randomness is lumpy and not at all evenly spaced as we feel it should be.

After all, what possible reason could there be for my 90% score in non Golden Lane London League games this year? Two of the venues I actively dislike so it's certainly not anything to do with the playing conditions. No, much more probable is that it was just a slice of luck here, the absence of misfortune there and suddenly there I am with a 200+ grading performance over six games.

As the Gallagher brothers once observed, nobody ever mentions the weather can make or break your day. Games of chess can turn on similarly small points and sometimes, we would do well to remember, half-a-dozen good results just happen to come along all at once.

Goodluck Jonathan

So with all that in mind, it's worth taking another look at the figures that came out of last Monday's On grades and grading and the stories that they seem to tell. In terms of grading outcome it appears that I,

• perform much better when playing White than when playing Black;
• do hugely better playing Black against queen's pawn openings than when facing king's pawn openings;
• score well in the London League, but under-perform elsewhere (Surrey, Croydon, Thames Valley and Banks' Leagues)
• enjoy a small but appreciable increase in performance when facing higher-graded opposition compared to games against lower-graded opponents.
• do exceptionally badly in games that are concluded with a quickplay finish.

Is any of that really true though? The figures are fairly clear, but the sample sizes are generally pretty small - often only four or five games - and therefore vulnerable to chance factors skewing the outcomes.

I decided to find out if these stories were as true for the 2009/10 season as they were for 2010/11. To a fair extent they were, although with a bit more data it was possible to refine my chessplayer story somewhat:-

• Yes, I do play much better with White than Black. Presumably, though, everybody does. Unanswered question: What would be a 'normal' differential?
• Yes, I do better with Black against 1.d4 than 1.e4, although not as much as this season's games would suggest.
• Yes, I do under-perform in the Surrey and Croydon Leagues although last year my London League games were not exceptionally successful for me (I did much better in County games and a couple of tournaments)
• Yes, I do better grading-wise when I play higher strength opposition, but only when I'm White. When I'm Black, strength of opposition doesn't seem to be especially relevant.
• Yes, I do worse in games played to a finish compared to those that are adjourned, but this year's abysmal results are much much worse than 'normal'.

And the moral of today's story?  Well, aside from the reservation that even two years' results are still not totally immune from a chance swing here or there (in a 20-game sample a single loss turned into a win or vice versa leads to a 5 point difference in grading performance), it does seem that I have a few areas that are worth investigating as potential causes of lost grading points.

Playing Black against 1.e4, playing outside of the London League, quickplay finishes - improvement in any of these areas could lead to a healthy gain in playing strength overall.  All I need to do now is work out why they might be problem areas for me and then come up with a some solutions.  Not exactly a piece of cake, but, now I've looked at the numbers, at least I can be more confident that the story I'm telling myself is a reasonably accurate reflection of reality.

This, apparently

JMGB 2009/2010 and 2010/2011

Overall:
2009/10: 163.1 (35 games)*
2010/11: 166.8 (27 games)**
09 - 11: 164.7 (62 games)

Ron Harman Method (top and bottom 10% excluded):
2009/10: 165.6 (29)
2010/11: 166.1 (21)
09 - 11: 165.8 (50)

BY COLOUR

Playing White:
2009/10: 174.8 (20)
2010/11: 182.3 (12)
09 - 11: 177.6 (32)

Playing Black:
2009/10: 147.2 (15)
2010/11: 154.5 (15)
09 - 11: 150.9 (30)

Playing Black, King's pawn:
2009/10: 136.5 (8)
2010/11: 147.1 (9)
09 - 11: 142.1 (17)

Playing Black, Queen's pawn:
2009/10: 155.5 (6)
2010/11: 190.3 (4)
09 - 11: 169.4 (10)

BY LEAGUE

London League:
2009/10: 162.1 (10)
2010/11: 181.3 (16)
09 - 11: 173.9 (26)

non London League:
2009/10: 144.9 (9)
2010/11: 146.1 (11)
09 - 11: 145.6 (19)

BY COLOUR/LEAGUE

London League, White:
2009/10: 170.0 (7)
2010/11: 184.0 (7)
09 - 11: 177.0 (14)

London League, Black:
2009/10: 130.5 (2)
2010/11: 179.0 (9)
09 - 11: 170.2 (10)

non London League, White:
2009/10: 159.8 (4)
2010/11: 179.8 (5)
09 - 11: 170.9 (9)

non London League, Black:
2009/10: 133.8 (5)
2010/11: 117.8 (6)
09 - 11: 125.1 (11)

BY STRENGTH OF OPPOSITION

Higher-graded opposition:
2009/10: 170.1 (10)
2010/11: 168.9 (12)
09 - 11: 169.5 (22)

Opponents graded 0-9 points more:
2009/10: 170.4 (5)
2010/11: 168.8 (4)
09 - 11: 169.7 (9)

Opponents graded 10-19 points more:
2009/10: 169.8 (5)
2010/11: 168.0 (5)
09 - 11: 168.9 (10)

Opponents graded >= 20 points more:
2009/10: -
2010/11: 170.7 (3)
09 - 11: 170.7 (3)

Lower-graded opposition:
2009/10: 158.7 (15)
2010/11: 165.4 (15)
09 - 11: 162.0 (30)

Opponents graded 0-9 points less:
2009/10: 161.6 (11)
2010/11: 187.4 (5)
09 - 11: 169.7 (16)

Opponents graded 10-19 points less:
2009/10: 163.4 (10)
2010/11: 138.0 (4)
09 - 11: 156.1 (14)

Opponents graded >= 20 points less:
2009/10: 150.5 (4)
2010/11: 154.1 (6)
09 - 11: 152.7 (10)

Higher-graded opposition, White:
2009/10: 182.3 (6)
2010/11: 196.2 (5)
09 - 11: 188.9 (11)

Higher-graded opposition, Black:
2009/10: 151.0 (4)
2010/11: 149.4 (7)
09 - 11: 150.0 (11)

Lower-graded opposition, White:
2009/10: 171.4 (14)
2010/11: 172.3 (7)
09 - 11: 171.7 (21)

Lower-graded opposition, Black:
2009/10: 145.9 (11)
2010/11: 160.0 (8)
09 - 11: 151.8 (19)

BY FINISH

Quickplay:
2009/10: 154.3 (9)
2010/11: 118.2 (6)
09 - 11: 139.9 (15)

non Quickplay:
2009/10: 166.1 (26)
2010/11: 180.9 (21)
09 - 11: 172.7 (47)

* The ECF say I played 34 games last year.  I have included a win against a person who remains ungraded - presumably because he played too few games - estimating his grade based on those of the people who played on the boards around him.

**Today's figures for 2010/11 slightly different to last week's because I've had one more game since then.

Ray Tweets the Wedding

[Ray Keene index]

[Thanks to Jonathan and Morgan]

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