Benasque 2011 : Streatham and Brixton against the grandmasters

The highest-finishing English player at Benasque was actually Jana Bellin, who finished with 6.5/10, the same score as Erik Teichmann but a few places higher on tie-break. I finished on a lousy 5/10, my tournament having the opposite trajectory to Jonathan's but a similar one to most of my games, in that I started well but went downhill from there.

During the first half, though, I played two grandmasters, while Angus, who was the best of our party with 6/10, played one. We scored, you'll not be astonished to hear, 0/3 in these games. But maybe it didn't have to be that way.

The first of these games was played in round two, in which I had the black pieces against Indian GM Neelotpal Das.

Not one of our victims at Benasque

At first sight it's a fairly straightforward stronger v weaker player crush, which is basically what it was: White played a sideline (9.a3) which Black didn't properly know how to counter (he really needs to take on a3) and hence lost a tempo (...Bf8-e7xb4) which enabled White to put him into an inescapable bind. After which it was just a question of how to finish Black off, which he managed himself with a blunder (29...Rc7??) while his time was running short.

So it goes. But there's one thing that piques my curiosity. In the post-mortem, Das said that had I avoided the blunder on move 29 and played the better 29...Rf8, he was intending to play 30.Bxd5 Rxd5 31.Ree7 Rh5 32.g3, reaching the following position.

I wonder - is White actually winning this? Black's back is absolutely up against the wall, but how does White finish him off? I can't see any obvious way in which this can be done, assuming that the position is drawn if a pair of rooks are exchanged. I don't believe White can even get his king past the fourth rank, not without giving up his extra pawn. In which case isn't this a draw?

Maybe. I'd like to know. Or maybe I wouldn't. But it didn't happen that way, and I lost.

In the fourth round, both Angus and I were on 2/3 and were paired against grandmasters, and pretty strong ones at that: I had Black against Alexsander Delchev while Angus, on the next board, had White against the Hungarian David Berczes (2550) who is older than his photo here suggests.

Not one of our victims at Benasque

Angus' notes (in italics) follow.

1.e4 e5 A surprise: I was expecting one of 1...c6, 1...c5 and 1...e6.
2.Nf3 Nc6
3.d4 exd4
4.Nxd4 Bc5
5.Nxc6 Qf6
6.Qf3 And a surprise for my opponent. [A 1...e5 player writes: this line is a pain in the behind when you're really trying to win - ejh]
6...Qxf3
7.gxf3 bxc6
8.Be3 Bb6 8...Bxe3 is more common.
9.Nd2 9.Rg1 Ne7 (also possible is 9...g6) 10.Rxg7?! Bxe3 11.fxe3 Ng6 12.Bc4 d5 13.exd5 Kf8 14.Rxg6 hxg6 15.dxc6 Rxh2 16.Nd2 Rh1+ 17.Nf1 with probably not enough compensation: -0.51 at 19-ply according to Houdini 1.5. Maybe 9.c4!? intending c5, even after 9...d6.
9...Ne7
10.O-O-O d6
11.Rg1 O-O
12.Nc4 Be6
13.f4 f5 13...d5? 14.f5
14.e5 d5

15.Nxb6 Better is 15.Na3, as my opponent suggested after the game.
15...axb6 I've "won" the bishop pair, but Black has mobile pawns and the a-file.
16.a3 c5
17.c3 c4
18.Be2 c5
19.Bf3 Rfd8 Here I decided that my position wasn't as good as it had been a little earlier I thought I wasn't going to get any play on the kingside and would have to wait for Black to play d4, after he'd prepared it by doubling rooks and playing the knight to b3.
20.Rd2 However, doubling rooks on the g-file, with 20.Rg3

and staying active was the right thing to do. This would also free d1 for the bishop to cover b3. Also Rg3 may provide useful defence along the third rank. The position is virtually equal according to Houdini.

20...Rd7
21.Rgd1 Rad8
22.Kc2 Nc6
23.Re2 d4
24.Ree1 dxe3
25.Bxc6 exf2
26.Bxd7 fxe1N+ 26...Bxd7 also works

White resigns

While this was going on, I was playing Delchev, who at 2622 may have been the highest-rated opponent I've ever faced (depending, I think, on what Tony Miles' grading was when I played him in December 1992).

Not one of our victims at Benasque

The game did not begin auspiciously for me, since just before arriving at the playing hall I realised that I had no recollection at all of handing in my hotel room key at reception (which I had, in fact, done) and it was too late to go back and check. Then, fiddling around in my bag to see if I'd brought the key with me, I pulled out my right hand to find it covered in white stuff, which I thought at first was sun cream but which shortly proved itself to be Tippex from an inadvertently-opened bottle.

The subsequent cleaning-up operation was time-consuming as well as embarrassing, as I not only had to go through my bag to find what else had been covered in Tippex but had to make several trips to the toilets to try and wash off as much of it as possible - this after having tried to extend as much of my hand to Delchev, at the start of the game, as was possible without getting Tippex on him as well.

On top of this, I was still worrying about whether I had lost my room key, or left it in the door, leaving myself open to theft. This was a little distracting. It's fair to assume that neither of these two mini-disasters actually had an impact on the outcome of the game, but given that this was one of the biggest games of my life, I would have preferred that my concentration, never good at the best of times, had been a little less disturbed.

Anyway, on to the game, with Delchev playing White, and surprising me with the English Opening.

1.c4 I'd expected to play another Semi-Slav. But no matter.
1...Nf6
2.Nc3 e5
3.Nf3 Nc6
4.g3 Bb4
5.Bg2 O-O
6.O-O e4
7.Ng5 Bxc3
8.bxc3 Re8
9.f3 I used to play the White side of this, or I did theoretically, since I don't think I ever got this far down the line. I moved away from it because I liked it for Black: it never seemed to me to recover from the second game of the 1987 World Championship match in which Karpov surprised Kasparov with
9...e3 after which White's position never looked comfortable to me. However, that shouldn't lead anybody to conclude that I knew very much of the theory. I was confident I knew as far as move eleven for Black
10.d3 d5
11.Qb3 Na5 but from here on I was unsure. So after
12.Qa3 I continued
12...c6
13.cxd5 and now I wasn't clear with which piece I should take. The knight capture seemed more natural, but the more I looked at the pawn capture the more I preferred it, clearing c6 for my knight while obstructing e4 for his. So I played it. But the paradoxical outcome of so doing was that I was convinced that I had departed from theory and was therefore winging it - whereas, in fact, I was going straight down the main line!
13...cxd5
14.f4 Nc6 14...Bg4 is, I'm informed, generally preferred, but I don't have any reason to dislike the move I - and Karpov - played.
15.Rb1 b6 And here we depart from the original KvK game, in which Karpov played 15...Qc7, quite probably a better move than mine. 15...b6 has the apparent demerit of weakening the long diagonal, which Delchev of course saw, and attempted to take advantage. But he shouldn't have, because his sixteenth was a bad error, perhaps even, potentially, a game-losing one.
16.c4?

I thought for more than half-an-hour on the next move, which left me with barely more than ten minutes for the rest of the game (albeit I didn't, as it turned out, need very much more). I saw an idea, and its follow-up, and I was very tempted indeed to play it: but it seemed to me to be, probably, exciting but unsound. So, though I was, nevertheless, sorely tempted, I eventually decided that if I could find another move that looked both good and sound, I would play it. I did find another move: and though that move was sound enough, perhaps, in playing it, I missed my chance.

16...Bg4 This was the safe move. What the idea was, we'll see below.
17.Bb2 I didn't think of this: all I'd really considered was 17.Re1.
17...Bxe2
18.Rfe1 Bh5
19.cxd5?! The computer likes 19.Rbc1, strengthening the threat rather than rushing to the execution, though 19..Rc8 looks perfectly OK for Black. Now, however, I panicked, or whatever you want to call it: I thought that after 19...Nxd5 20.Qb3 Nce7 21.Ba3

I would be under intolerable pressure. But it's not so: after 21...Rc8 (and maybe even 21...h6 22.Ne4 Rc8, as the knight fork wins neither of the rooks) Black is at least fine.

However, I went instead for the desperate

19...Na5? and then after
20.Ne4 it's too late for
20...Nxd5? though 20...Nxe4 21.dxe4 is not a strategy for the long-term, either.
21.Nd6 Re6
22.Bxd5 Rxd6 and now my last hope was that 23.Bxa8 Rxd3 would give me a pawn or two and some long-diagonal compensation for the exchange, but he interposed
23.Qc3 and then noted that my attempt to play 23...f6 was an attempt to play an illegal move. Black will shortly have nothing for the exchange, and therefore

Black resigned.

But let us go back to the position after White's sixteenth.

The idea which I had, and on which I spent so much time before rejecting it, was 16...Nd4!

and then, after 17.Qb2, Black can play 17...Nf5, which I didn't consider, because I wanted to play the much more daring, and much stronger, 17...dxc4!!

Then, after White takes the rook with 18.Bxa8, I considered both 18...cxd3, which is not so strong, and 18...c3!, which certainly is.

Then, after 19.Qb4, Black naturally plays 19...Nxe2+ and then we have this position.

I hope you don't mind so many diagrams: I've provided them partly to strengthen the impression of an analysis proceeding several moves down the line, and yet not reaching the point of clarification. Which was partly my problem. It was unclear where I would go from here: indeed, everything was pretty much unclear, and I couldn't really convince myself that this position, which I thought about long and hard, was a mess in which I had good chances, rather than a mess in which I was probably going to be losing.

Part of the reason for this is that I was, perhaps understandably, looking for a way to play the c8 bishop somewhere strong in order to threaten to take the a8 bishop. But I couldn't see how it was to be done, and I wasn't convinced, and while at least once I was on the brink of reaching out and playing 16...Nd4 anyway, I didn't. I played the bishop move instead.

I wish I had gone with the knight. Although there are many different ways the game can go from here, I think Black has tremendous chances. It's far too complicated to analyse here, even if I had the time or the ability to do so, but White has two possible king moves here (20.Kg2 and 20.Kh1) after either of which Black has a number of options - but perhaps prime among them, either 20...h6 21.Ne4 Qxd3, or the immediate queen capture, 20...Qxd3. So for instance, after 20.Kg2 Qxd3

this looks like a massive position for Black. Already three pawns for a rook, and, more importantly, all sorts of attacking ideas. Perhaps there aren't many, or indeed any, one-move threats, and perhaps this too helps explain why I didn't really see how powerful my position was. But ask a computer, or try playing it yourself, and I think you'll find White's position is probably indefensible.

I'm sure, in practice, that I'd have been very lucky to win it, even had I reached it: five hundred Elo points is an awfully large gap in capability. Even so, I think I can be forgiven for regarding this one as a near-miss.

But a miss it was, near or otherwise. A miss is what it was.

[Das photo: Chessbase]
[Berczes photo: Ray Morris-Hill]
[Delchev photo: Chessdom]

[Thanks to Angus for notes]

Con un poco de suerte

I'm not sure how Spanish chessers would say, "It was a tournament of two halves, Brian", but however they'd do it, it would be a pretty good description of my ten days in Benasque. Rounds one to five and six to ten were so different for me that I could easily have been playing two entirely separate five game Swisses: a brace of tournaments-within-a-tournament, which, as it happens, were divided by an incredible dollop of good fortune.

I don't really believe in luck as far as chess is concerned. Often when I hear people talking about being unlucky, or, more rarely, the reverse, it sounds to me that what they're actually describing are patterns that they cannot, or will not, see. Anyhoo, since by definition luck is something outside of our control there doesn't seem to be much point in devoting our time to it - as opposed to thinking about what we can do to give ourselves a better chance of being lucky and how we can minimise the likelihood of suffering accidents, I mean.

Luck does exist, of course - those amongst our esteemed readership who are of a slightly older vintage may recall how Jonathan Speelman's second's girlfriend happening to buy a newspaper on her way from Norway to London had a decisive impact on his Candidates' match with Short in 1988 - but it evens out in the long run and, clearly, it's what we do with the chances that come our way, deserved or otherwise, that matters. At some point I'll get around to blogging about this in the context of an individual game (specifically, the 4th round of Sunningdale in May), but today I'll stick to how a chance event can, and did, turn the course of an entire tournament.

It was not, by any stretch of the imagination, what you might call a good start. After losing in the first round I won by default in the second, got duffed up in short order by a 2470 in round three and drew against a lower-rated opponent in round four. This last game was certainly not a gimme, but, at 1840-odd, she was in a range against which I've scored pretty well in the season just gone and I was annoyed with myself that I didn't win.

Including my games from Gatwick in June I was now nine without a win and my measly 1.5/4 was lacking a good deal of lustre.  I think it's fair to say that I was lacking a bit of confidence when I sat down to face my fifth-round opponent, a local man rated in the 1820s.

I was Black and after 22 not hugely interesting moves, we arrived here.

Señor 1821 v JMGB

Black to play

This looks like the sort of thing that you'd expect to get playing blitz on the internet against modestly graded opposition. Breaking open White's position might not be entirely straightforward, but it's hard to imagine how Black could possibly get into trouble from here. I managed it, though.

My last move before the diagram position was 21 ... a6 and I remember thinking before playing it that sooner or later White would go a3-a4 and b4-b5 and I'd have to respond with ... axb5 otherwise he'd swap off and I'd be left with a pawn on a6 that I wouldn't be able to defend. When it came to it, however, I jiggered things up by playing my moves in the wrong order.

Around fifteen moves later, I had a long think and calculated a line that went

35 ... h4, 36 b5 axb5, 37 axb5 Kf6.

That, at least, was what my head decided to do. My hand, however, had other ideas and pushed my king forward forgetting to swap pawns first. FECK!!!

I spent the next few moves debating whether I should stab my own eyes out with a spare bishop or simply do the world a favour and go hurl myself off a mountain (there being quite a few to choose from in the immediate vicinity). Then, in this position,

White unaccountably played 45 Rb2.

That, dear reader, is how I managed to win my first game in Benasque. It was a ridiculous win, for sure, but one which completely transformed my tournament nonetheless. After struggling to hit a cow's arse with a banjo during the first five days, I went on to score 50% against opponents with an average rating in the 2080s (180 ECF, give or take) over the last five and that, as Justin kindly mentioned on Monday, turned out to be enough for me to win the trophy for the 'Best score by a player without an elo rating' prize and the 200 euros that went with it*.

Uploaded to Youtube by 'Hot4Kylie'.
One feels this is unlikely to be whoever it was that put up all those Master Games

Was I just hugely lucky, then? Well, I was very fortunate, in the sense that if my opponent in this game hadn't blundered the rook I'm quite sure that my tournament as a whole would have ended very differently, but, even so, I don't think it was just luck.

Yes, I was fortunate to get the opportunity in the first place - we could probably play another hundred games without my opponent playing a move like 45 Rb2 again - but I still had to play well in the following rounds (or better than I usually do, at least) to make use of the chance I was given.

What's Spanish for "You make your own luck in this game"? Whatever it is, I'd rather like it as my motto, but a helping hand every now and is never unwelcome.









* Incidentally, if we're talking about good fortune, I should also mentioned that one of my opponents back in Gatwick happened to be unrated. If he'd had a rating I'd have finished that tournament having played nine rated games in total and would have therefore gained an elo myself. My name would have appeared on the July list and I'd not have been eligible for the prize that I ended up winning. Directly or indirectly Sean Hewitt has helped me win quite a bit of money over the past few months.




Horse shoe image from jdhillberry.com

Benasque 2011 : Talking Blues

Benasque Open 2011, round 5: Horton v Sánchez Gómez. Position after 40...Nb4xa2.

Black offers a draw.

Benasque Open 2011, round 5: Horton v Sánchez Gómez.Position after 42...c5xb4.

Black offers a draw.

I do intend to write about other things this week than dubious chessboard practice, but bear with me for one more posting. I was going to write "alternatively, enjoy a fine game and the notes", but this was not a very fine game and there are no notes to speak of, or not about the moves at any rate.

When I was discussing this game with my friends at Benasque I remembered an incident from a game, oh, probably more than twenty years ago, in which I arrived at an ending in which either side had a rook but I had two pawns, on the f and h files. My opponent offered a draw and was not at all pleased when I chose to play on. Nor was he delighted when I succeeded in winning the game, since it was, according to him, a book draw, which I ought to have accepted.

I laughed at this. Not literally, though who could have blamed me, but in truth it did raise a question of etiquette: how long can you reasonably play on in an ending which you know ought to be drawn?

That's not, however, the sole point of etiquette with which today's posting will concern itself. Nor is it even the fact that a player made, as the notes under the diagrams state, two draw offers in the space of three moves. Which speaks for itself, except that it didn't. Sánchez Gómez wasn't content merely to make the second draw offer, but proceeded to accompany it with a verbal explanation of why he thought the ending was drawn.

This would have shocked me more than it did, were it not for the fact that this is the second time I've had that experience this year, the other occasion being the game from March referenced here. (It's not mentioned in that piece, partly because that whole game was full of Other Things I Could Have Mentioned, including the fact that the player involved was the same one who demanded a draw here.) In each instance my opponent not only saw fit to talk to me directly, which you are very much not supposed to do, but they also thought they were entitled to insist on a draw and to explain to me why I should concur.

I think this is why I drag up my old experience with the rook and two pawns. We can take it that you're not supposed to start a conversation with your opponent, though plainly some players think this doesn't apply to them. (As do some arbiters, since when I called over an arbiter to complain, he took no action - but that's some arbiters for you.) I think we can also take it that you're out of order in trying to discuss the position with the opponent before the game has finished, although some people think this doesn't apply to them either. But who the hell are these players who think that their opponent is somehow obliged to agree a draw before they've demonstrated on the board that the position is drawn?

I don't deny that there's a potential breach of sportsmanship here. While you can of course, within the laws, play on any game as long as you like, I certainly don't think that you should carry on playing indefinitely where the game is clearly drawn, where the opponent has demonstrated that he or she knows exactly why this is so and where you have no genuine plan to try and win the game. Where, in other words, you would only be carrying on out of pigheadedness, and hence, to my eyes, disrespecting the opponent in so doing.

But none of these applied here. Of course the positions above should be drawn, quite easily, but White does have a winning plan, and Black has not yet shown that he knows how to neutralise it - which, of course, he never did. I might very well have agreed to a draw, and no doubt I would have been more amenable to that draw had I not previously had the kind of position it took a lot of substandard moves to spoil. Turning down the draw wasn't entirely a matter of objective assessment of the position.

But even so, if that constitutes pigheadedness it was directed at myself - it constituted a refusal to allow myself to give up the win until it was absolutely necessary. Meanwhile, I could see that Black's bishop was poor, his h-pawn was conceivably vulnerable and that I had the opportunity both to create a passed pawn and to infiltrate with my king. Right then, those are winning chances.

Which doesn't affect the fact that the game should have been very easily drawn and that Black could have brought this about either by exchanging on f4, or by leaving his king on g7 (unless and until White's king went to the d-file). And if he didn't do either, and didn't understand why he should, then he had no business whatsoever expecting a draw.

Opposite-coloured bishops don't constitute a draw. What the book says doesn't constitute a draw. Being a pawn up doesn't constitute a draw. What constitutes a draw is that you know how to draw it. So play it, prove it - and until then, shut your mouth.

At least I shut it for him. Though I would rather have stuck up it the arbiter rather than the opponent, since I was even more annoyed with the official than with the player. Still, Black wasn't at all happy that he lost, and I was very happy to see it. It should perhaps be satisfaction enough, to win an opposite-coloured bishop ending a pawn down. But some wins are more satisfying than others.

Benasque 2011 : Upside Down

While I'm working my way through my Benasque scoresheets to bring you material for this week's postings - coming later, how I should have beaten a 2600+ GM - I'm reminded that the strangest incident of the week, or at least the strangest I witnessed, involved the back of a scoresheet. What was strange about it is that moves are normally recorded on the front. What was also strange is that moves are meant to be recorded. Actually, what was strange about it was pretty much everything.

It was a first round game between the American International Master Marc Esserman and the Spanish player José Manuel Fuertes Romo, a game the IM lost despite being rated five hundred points higher than his opponent. At some point he lost a piece and when I started watching, after about four hours of play, they must have just about reached move sixty.

The scoresheets at Benasque allow for the recording of eighty moves, divided into four columns of twenty moves each. Hence, you will gather, reaching move sixty-one requires the players, who have just completed the third column, to start at the top of the fourth. This, naturally, Fuertes Romo did. Esserman, however, did not.

Making his Marc

Instead, he turned over the scoresheet, and made a squiggle at the top of it, somewhere near the middle. When I say a squiggle, I mean a squiggle. I don't mean that the move was badly or even illegibly written: I was standing right behind him and there was plainly no recognisable shape or meaning to the squiggle, nor any intended. I mean that Esserman simply made a squiggle with his pen. My assumption was that he thought his pen might be malfunctioning and he wanted to make sure it still worked.

After he had made a couple of successful squiggles, I expected him to turn the scoresheet back over. He didn't. He carried on squiggling, moving gradually down the page (or, more accurately, the back of the page). Everybody could see that this was going on, except for, apparently, the nearest arbiter (who was close enough to events to collect the scoresheets at the next board, where play finished while this was happening) and possibly his opponent, who either didn't see, or preferred not to be distracted.

I wondered briefly whether the problem was that new scoresheets were required and the arbiters hadn't supplied them: but no, there was Fuertes Romo, working his way down the fourth column of his scoresheet while his f-pawn worked his way towards Esserman's side of the board. Round about move seventy, or squiggle number whatever if you were going by Esserman, White resigned.

It's just possible that Esserman, whose handwriting is even worse than mine - and, unlike mine, quite large, spreading beyond the confines of the fields provided - had a brainstorm and thought that he had reached the end of his scoresheet. (It's also just about possible that he didn't think he had time to call for an arbiter and request a new one.) But if he did think that, it's hard to explain why he didn't look across at his opponent's scoresheet to check, seeing as the Black player didn't seem to have any such problem. It's harder to still to explain why he made no effort at all to record the moves properly. All of this is hard to explain.

I don't think he was cheating as such. To be honest, I have no idea what he was trying to do. But I do know that he should have recorded the moves properly: I also know that he should have been instructed to record the moves properly.

Doesn't matter, really, seeing as he lost. But I'd hope he's not done this before. And that he doesn't do it again.

[Esserman photo: Boston Blitz]

Petrosian and Bryant triumph in Benasque

Benasque finished on Saturday: the main tournament was won by Armenia's Tigran Petrosian with 8.5/10, half a point ahead of the field. He took home the winner's trophy and 4000€.

"I know you're thinking it, but don't say it"

However, this feat was surely overshadowed by the first place achieved in the category for players without a FIDE rating - which went to none other than Jonathan Bryant of Streatham and Brixton chess club, and the blog which you are presently reading.

Reaching 5/10 with a last round draw against WIM Roquelina Fandino Reyes of Cuba, he won the competition on tie-break from Pedro Miguel Tómas of Spain and hence took home 200€ (twice the prize, as it happens, won by the grandmaster who came 23rd) as well as a copy of Ajedrez Para Dummies and a trophy bearing a symbol amusingly similar to the Portsmouth FC club badge.

Chess is food and drink to him

Well done to these and all the other prizewinners (I should also mention my teammate Antonio Abós Rosico, highest-place finisher from Huesca Province) and we hope this will encourage readers to come next year. More, on Benasque, in posts to come.

[Petrosian photo: Chessvibes]
[JB photo: Angus French]

What Dadd Did Later

In the last two posts, here and here, we explored the problems posed by the chess problem in The Child’s Problem painted by Richard Dadd R.A. in 1847 while he was detained at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in Bethlem Asylum.

In the first post we solved one problem: what was the chess problem? In the second we looked at the solution: the key move 1.Qd8!

Dadd's The Child's Problem

But there is another problem. We’ve touched on it already: could Dadd, an artist elected to the Royal Academy at the age of 20, admitted to Bethlem in 1844 at age of 27 (he was detained there and in Broadmoor for the rest of his 69 years), play chess well enough to compose a problem easy enough to be solved by a child, but which required a more adult intelligence to devise?

Let’s take a step back and look at chess in the Asylum. There is some remarkable evidence that it was a “popular pastime”, as the then Archivist at the Bethlem Royal Hospital put it in her 1974 book on Dadd's art. Just look at this fascinating image from the Illustrated London News of 31st March 1860.

It comes with a report by George Augustus Sala of a Royal visit to the Hospital. It is worth reading in the original:


The "party playing chess" is at the back, and here they are in close-up:


So yes, there was chess in the Asylum in the 19th Century, and not just in Bethlehem. Mr. Stevens, the Chief Archivist at the Berkshire Record Office (they hold the Broadmoor records), says that a chess set was standard issue in the Asylums of the time, for example "it was one of the first things provided at the old Berkshire County Asylum (later Fair Mile Hospital): cards, draughts, dominoes, bagatelle and chess sets were all purchased within its first year of opening in 1870". Bill Hartston’s famous quip that “chess doesn’t drive people mad, it keeps mad people sane" may have more literal truth than he realised.

As for Dadd himself , we discussed last time his interesting ideas about the game. Doctor Orange noted, for example, Dadd’s theory, eccentric as it may have been, as to why some people couldn't play: it was because the pieces, steeped in antiquity, didn't like them. But if Dadd could play, how well did he play? Step up Edward Oxford (1822 -1900) another “pleasure man” at Bethlem, to help us get things in perspective.

Oxford's undoing befell him on the 10th June 1840, when he was only eighteen. He attempted to assassinate Queen Victoria and Prince Albert no less, and he was subsequently detained in Bethlem at Her Majesty’s Pleasure (hence the soubriquet).

Edward Oxford attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
C. L. Doughty (1913-85)
Private Collection. © The Bridgeman Art Library

Eduardo Sadier described Dadd’s story to me, involving as it did patricide at the behest of an ancient Egyptian God of the Underworld, as “wonderful and terrible”. It is as Gothic as it gets. But Oxford's brush with regicide (reginicide?) runs him close.

The two guns he discharged in direction of the Monarch and her consort weren’t loaded, and no bullets were ever found. Apprehended on the spot he was presumably wrestled to the ground, tabloid style. He was heard exclaiming all the while “it was me..!” At his trial for High Treason a successful defence of insanity was mounted on his behalf, with convincing evidence coming from his family and the best medics in the land.

In Bethlem from 1840 he learnt languages, painted and was a model prisoner, so much so that the Bethlem authorities were sorry to see him transferred to Broadmoor in 1860, and there he came to be recognised as sane. He was declared medically such in 1864, and eventually a Home Secretary, with no other axe to grind, signed his release in 1867. That’s after 27 years inside.

As a condition of his freedom Oxford had to agree to permanent exile in Australia, and to there he was shipped on HMS Suffolk. Thereafter the trail gets vague, but there are suggestions he was variously a petty thief, married, published a book (the Lights and Shadows of Melbourne Life , albeit under the name of "John Freeman"), and worked as a house-painter (a skill he'd learned inside). He died maybe at the turn of the century (this account relies entirely on Berkshire Records Office Chief Archivist Mark Stevens' note in Inside Victorian Broadmoor).

And what is the relevance of this? Firstly, not only was Oxford in Bethlem at the same time as Dadd, but it is a safe assumption (according to Colin Gale, current Archivist at Bethlem) that he was on the same ward for the criminally insane. Secondly, and significantly for our purposes, his Doctor’s notes say “he plays chess and draughts better than any other patient”. Better, in other words, than Dadd.

Extract from original notes on Edward Oxford, February 16th 1854,
by kind permission of the Bethlem Royal Hospital Museum and Archive.

So, without any other evidence whatsoever, and because fact may be stranger than fiction (or the other way round), how about this as a good story: Richard Dadd needs a chess position for his painting and asks Edward Oxford, the best chess player in the company, for help, and of course he obliges. Oxford, recalling that he had nothing personal against Queen Victoria (“I may as well shoot her as anybody else” he said at the time of the "shooting"), and to show he still harbours no hard feelings towards her, devises a puzzle wherein the White Queen has the key move.

It's child play, really. The sort of thing you might expect to find in Madame de Saint Pierre’s imaginative novel about Dadd's life, mentioned in the previous post.

There’s yet more Dadd, and chess in the Asylum, to follow.

Acknowledgements
Thanks again to Mark Stevens at the Berkshire Record Office; and Colin Gale at Bethlem Royal Hospital Archive and Museum, for permission to source the Illustrated London News material, and the medical notes on Oxford.

Chess in Art Index

Once was enough V : Vienna Variation

1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.e4 Bb4 6.Bg5 c5

If you know the Vienna Variation, you'll already be thinking, hang on, that's not right: but don't worry, all will be explained. I didn't come across the line by the normal, conventional route of finding it in a book, or in a game I saw: we're coming at this from an unusual angle. So this may involve a lot of diagrams. Bear with me.

If you don't know the Vienna Variation, that's not so surprising: it's not uncommon in grandmaster praxis, but it's one of those openings that club players don't seem to play. I've never yet had it played against me. In fact, I'm pretty sure I've only ever seen it once. Which was the time I played it myself.

WHY I PLAYED IT: At the time, which was early in 1993 or late in 1992 (depending on whether we're discussing when I actually played the line, or when I first analysed it) my choice against 1.d4 was the Queen's Gambit Accepted. Not unusually - for me, or chessplayers in general - I'd developed a problem, not with any of the mainlines, but with an annoying sideline against which I couldn't find any way to play that I was happy with. I don't think, looking back, that there should have been any problem, but that wasn't how it looked to me at the time. This is not so unusual either.

Anyhow. In this instance, my problem came if White, after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.Nf3 Nf6, played not the standard 4.e3, but rather 4.Nc3.

This gives Black quite a lot of options, but nevertheless, I didn't like any of them.

The one the books all gave was 4...a6

which after 5.e4 b5 resembles the Tolush-Geller Gambit in the Slav (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.e4 b5) in every respect except that the a-pawn, rather than the c-pawn, has advanced one square. These days I'd probably be happy to take that on, but back then I thought the strong centre and advantage in development were quite a lot in return for a pawn and a draughty queenside.

That said, the reason I'd take this on nowadays is because I play the Slav, so I know a little bit about the Tolush-Geller. But at the time, I didn't, and if I had, obviously I wouldn't have been in the troublesome QGA position in the first place, would I? Similarly, while another option was to transpose into a Slav with 4...c6

I'd have already moved the c-pawn on move two if I'd wanted to do that. So that was out. Why learn a whole new opening just to deal with an annoying move-order?

But there was another, pure-QGA alternative, that was being played quite a lot at the time, not least by Yasser Seirawan (and, I think, by Judit Polgar). This was 4...c5

which, however, after 5.d5 e6 6.e4 exd5 7.e5! Nfd7 8.Bg5! Be7 9.Bxe7 Qxe7 10.Nxd5 Qd8 11.Bxc4 O-O

led to a position that might well be tenable for Black. But it looked like a something of a struggle, and a joyless one at that. It still does.

As it happens, there was another transposition available, but one which may have escaped me at the time. I certainly knew about it a few years later, though, when among the multiplicity of openings I tried out, I included a few Chigorins. There is a transposition to the Chigorin with 4...Nc6

which is the same as the line 1.d4 d5 2.c4 Nc6 3.Nc3 dxc4 4.Nf3 Nf6, and a perfectly viable - and dynamic - line it seems to be. If I had my time again I might well opt for this! But back then it didn't even occur to me. I was stuck with a couple of pure QGA continuations I didn't like and a transposition to a different opening which I didn't want to play.

But then, I started to wonder about 4..e6, which nobody seemed to mention.

WHERE I FOUND IT: Nowhere. In contrast to some other items in this series, it wasn't a questionable line that I'd found in an unreliable book: it was something that I figured out myself. It didn't appear to be in any of my books, certainly not those I owned on the QGA. Though I'd find out later that it was there all right - but in books, and places, other than the ones where I'd been looking.

It looked playable enough. 5.e3 was obviously a normal QGA with the b1 knight developed earlier than is optimal. 5.Qa4+ didn't look too testing. But 5.e4 was the obvious objection - and presumably, I guessed, the answer to the question that bothered me, why don't any of my books mention this move? I looked at it, though, and played with the pieces a little, and wondered whether Black could try 5...Bb4.

After 6.Qa4+, Black looked OK after 6...Nc6, but 6.Bg5 looked like a stronger move, on the assumption that 6...h6 7.Bxf6 Qxf6 8.Bxc4

is surely good for White, Black being likely to choke for lack of space. But then I looked at 6...c5. Which brings us to this position

which is the same as the one at the top of the page. Which is a mercy, because we have surely had quite enough diagrams for a while.

The great virtue of 6...c5 seemed to be that it both challenged the pawn centre and allowed the queen to a5, thus escaping the pin, strengthening Black's own pin on the a5-e1 diagonal and even, potentially, attacking the bishop on g5. All in all, this seemed all right for Black. I checked the tactics - using a board and pieces, since this was before computer programs (or rather, it wasn't, but it was some years before I had access to one) and wondered some more why I couldn't find this seemingly-viable variation anywhere. But as it did, indeed, seem viable, I decided to give it a go as soon as the opportunity arose.

This turned out to be in the regional stage of the 1993 HASSRA chess championship - cor, you're thinking - HASSRA being the sports and social organisation for DHSS employees. (Or what had previously been the DHSS, the two departments having, in fact, been split a few years earlier.) I won this competition. In fact, I later won the national championship for which I thereby qualified.

I played it in the final round, needing only a draw with Black to clinch first place, which draw I comfortably achieved. In fact I may still have been winning in the final position, a pawn up, though my play in the last dozen moves had been pretty lacklustre. 20...Nc4! was probably the best of a number of good moves I didn't play, thus allowing an overwhelming position to become less overwhelming. Incidentally, my scorebook gives the implausible 32.Ke1 as the game's last move. I've input 32.Kg3 instead, though I'm not convinced I'd have got the file and the rank wrong. (Maybe he played 32.Ke3, though I rather hope not.)

Which was all very nice. It had all worked out well, as well as I could reasonably have hoped. Excellent. And then I never played it again.

WHY I STOPPED PLAYING IT: I never had another chance, or at least not via the QGA. I played that opening, by my count, another eleven times, over the next five years, which may not seem many, but the queen's pawn was, then as now, rather less popular than the king's pawn. Nobody, though, ever played 4.Nc3 against me again.

I do regret giving up the QGA. In retrospect I don't completely understand why I did - though to tell the truth, most of my decisions from around the end of that decade are hard to understand in retrospect. My penultimate game with the QGA was a splendid win over James Cobb, already then a very strong player - and I won my last game with it, too. So Lord knows why. I wish I'd persisted. I'd have twenty years' experience with it now. (I suspect, actually, that perversely, the relative unpopularity of 1.d4 as opposed to 1.e4 contributed to my making a change, as instead of accumulating the aforesaid experience, I simply had too much time in between 1.d4 games to think about alternatives.)

What may, ultimately, have put me off was the existence of the drawish variation 4.e3 e6 5.Bxc4 c5 6.O-O a6 7.dxc5

which is, in truth, a pain. But even so, it's perhaps obscure to address that problem in the way that I did, which was to try taking up the Slav instead.

Whether I'd have played 4...e6 again, given the opportunity, I'm not sure. Later, the same year as I played this game, the Karpov-Timman match for the FIDE World Championship took place, and the Vienna Variation came up three times: and looking at those three games it dawned on me that this was actually my line - though deriving not from the Queen's Gambit Accepted, but the Queen's Gambit Declined.

So if you looked up the QGD instead you could, if you looked carefully, find some bits and pieces about my line. It might be reached, as in the Karpov-Timman match, by 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.e4 and then continuing, as in my line, 5...Bb4 6.Bg5 c5 or Black might reach it via the Ragozin Variation, i.e. 4...Bb4 and then 5.Bg5 dxc4 6.e4 c5. (There are other move orders, too, but those two will do for the here and now.)

Alas, finding that my line was respectable enough to be played in a world championship match (or whatever you may choose to call it) didn't mean it was respectable enough to fare well. Timman lost with it twice, and drew the other game, all three games going - from our original diagram - 7.Bxc4 cxd4 8.Nxd4 Bxc3 9.bxc3 Qa5 10.Nb5.

Despite the results, this wasn't necessarily best: according to Khalifman, 10.Nb5 isn't too much of a problem for Black, although he reckons that 10.Bb5+

is stronger. Kramnik played it quite recently against Naiditsch in a game he annotated for New In Chess. This may still be the latest theory for all I know, but what exactly the theory was eighteen years before, or even whether Timman's experience put me off the line, I can't remember for sure. (Or, indeed, at all.) I don't know what I'd have done if 4.Nc3 had ever come up again. I do know that it never did.

CHANCES OF MY PLAYING IT AGAIN:

Neither Karpov, nor Kramnik, nor 10.Bb5+, killed off the Vienna. Not by any manner of means - you may not see it much, if at all, at club level, but among the really good players it continues to come up now and again. Among its occasional friends is the present World Champion, who wasn't afraid to play it in a World Championship match.

But what's that got to do with me now? I've been playing the Slav. All right, I also play the Semi-Slav and I've been known to use the move-order 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6, which avoids the Slav Exchange but not unusually brings us to the position after 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3

which Black has the options of 4...dxc4 and 4...Bb4, as mentioned above. I play 4...c6 here, but 5.Bg5 isn't just dangerous, it might be the single most theory-ridden variation you can play without opening with the king's pawn. I'll play against 5.e3 all day, but I don't like 5.Bg5 half so much.

So the thought of the Vienna, with the much smaller chance that the opponent may know too much theory, has its attractions. But the thought of starting all over again, and thereby giving up the knowledge and experience I've been acquiring, has fewer. The existence of drawish variations (and there are always drawish variations) is less important, perhaps much less important, than whether you've seen them before and played them before. Perhaps, more than once. Perhaps, less than eighteen years ago.

So it's an interesting line, the Vienna: maybe not completely correct, but completely correct isn't always what we're looking for. Maybe it would have suited me. But best leave it at "maybe". Best leave it back in 1993. You can't always be starting practically from scratch.

[Once was enough index]

The Eternal Fame of My First Online Handle

According to Amanda Hess, the first handles we use online are always embarrassing. Even a professional blogger like Jason Kottke backs her up, admitting to "derbis" (an unintentional misspelling of debris) and "damp trousers". Pretty bad.

But there is no such confession today from Chivers. My first online handle, which I still use to play the occasional chess game, was and indeed still is, even if I say so myself, completely brilliant. It's:-

Ihaveagirlfriend

That's right! If only you'd thought of it first.

But I didn't stop there with outstandingly witty and inventive online handles. I followed up with the following work of Joycean linguistic genius:

Jurchessic Park

- a subtle yet magnificent play on my two great childhood passions, chess and dinosaurs.

And now finally, for the occasional game of 1+0 bullet, my handle issues a clear civilizing messages to the barbarian hordes of the internet chess world:

RealMenResign

That's right, they do. And I do particularly often.

But which is best? I think we need a poll to decide. Look left and cast your vote.

One hundred!

Three cheers for three figures! Congratulations are, apparently, due to Bogdan Lalic, who, in drawing with Alvaro Rioboo De Larriva in round five of the Benasque Open, has - or so we are advised*, played one hundred consecutive FIDE-rated games without defeat.

37 wins

63 draws

0 losses

One hundred games unbeaten in a row. Bogdan, we salute you.


[* reliably or otherwise. No notice should be taken of this statistic without independent confirmation from another source. All statements on this blog are to be treated with suspicion at all times.]

[Photo: Chessbase]

Definitely Got Something to do with chess VI

On a cruiseship bound for Buenos Aires, a wealthy passenger challenges the world chess champion to a match. He accepts with a sneer. He will beat anyone, he says. But only if the stakes are high. Soon, the chess board is surrounded. At first, the challenger crumbles before the mind of the master. But then, a soft-spoken voice from the crowd begins to whisper nervous suggestions. Perfect moves, brilliant predictions. The speaker has not played a game for more than twenty years, he says. He is wholly unknown. But somehow, he is also entirely formidable…

Or so it says here







... to do with chess Index

Every Picture Tells A Story: A Piece of Chess History

Number 14 in a continuing series. This one mainly by Richard Tillett.

Is this a portrait of the earliest provincial chess club in Britain?

Ever since Thomas Leeming’s portrait of the gentlemen of the Hereford Chess Club first came to our attention in 2008, we’ve wondered if this could be the earliest chess club outside London. We’ve been to the ECF chess library at Hastings to study the literature on the subject (such as is it)… we’ve asked some knowledgeable chess chaps (Brian Denman, Richard James and Ray Collett)… and now we can venture an answer (if tentative) to our question.

Yes, it does seem to be the earliest known provincial chess club in Britain. Almost.

In his splendid book on the history of chess in Brighton, Brian Denman tells us that the first major provincial club was formed in Manchester in 1817. But Hereford Chess Club predates that by five years, being founded on 29 November 1812. We discovered this on our first visit to the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery to see the picture, when the curator showed us a copy of the inscription which was on the back of the canvas until it was relined.

It may still be true that Manchester had the first major provincial chess club, as Hereford CC only had seven members when the picture was painted. However, the existence of a provincial club at such an early date may prompt chess historians to rethink the spread of organised chess outside London. Other chess clubs may have been starting up at this time on the modest Hereford model, but records have not survived. After all, we only know about the Hereford club from the picture – we’ve not been able to find any mention of it in the various archives and libraries that we and our friends at the present-day Hereford Chess club have consulted.

The daddy of them all: Parsloe’s in St James’s Street, London was the first organised chess club in Britain, founded in 1774. Philidor played this blindfold match at Parsloe’s in 1794 (the turbaned figure on the left is the Turkish ambassador).

So Martin and I are claiming that Hereford Chess Club in its 1812 incarnation represents A Piece of Chess History. OK, not a very big piece - a pawn perhaps - but history nonetheless. We have some support for our claim from no less an authority than Brian Denman, who deems this to be an ‘important discovery’.

But there is another claimant to the ‘earliest provincial chess club’ title. Philip Sergeant, in his history of British chess published in 1934, refers to a shortlived club at an Oxford college. Brasen Nose Chess Club was formed in 1810 by an Oxford surgeon, William Tuckwell. It seems to have lasted for only two years, and to have been more interested in sociability and supper than chess. As it happens, Thomas Leeming was himself in Oxford around this time when he painted a portrait of another Oxford surgeon, John Grosvenor. Maybe the artist, networker that he was, socialised with the Brasen Nose chessers. It’s even possible that he is mentioned in the records of the club, which apparently survive… and thus another avenue of Leeming research opens up (will this ever end?).

So the Hereford Chess Club of 1812 is part of the early flowering of organised chess in Britain, the first wave of a movement that was to expand across the country during the following decades. If anyone knows of other early provincial clubs operating at this time, we’d be fascinated to hear from you.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Richard James, Brian Denman and Ray Collett.

Thanks also to Alan Leary and Les Collard of Hereford Chess Club.

Painting reproduced by kind permission of Hereford Museum and Art Gallery, Herefordshire Heritage Services ©

References

Brian Denman, Brighton Chess

Philip W Sergeant, A Century of British Chess

Every Picture Tells a Story index

Chess in Art Index

Spot the oddity

(Click to enlarge)

Screenshot of a computer program, hard at work analysing a game I played earlier this year. But something is very odd. Can you spot what it is?

[Thanks to Tom for help.]

Chess against the world

A prize if you can name the current world champion.

The offer comes from chess-friendly Guardian journalist Stephen Moss, previewing Bobby Fischer Against The World, which premiered earlier this week in London and which will be showing at various cinemas this summer.

Naturally I sent Mr Moss an email with the subject line What do I win? but I may have been beaten to the prize, perhaps by any number of Indians who know, as I do, the champion's identity. In all honesty I doubt that Viswanathan Anand is quite as famous across the globe as Bobby Fischer was, in his day, and I'm not sure that his life story is quite so interesting to the public as his predecessor's, but even so, it is possible that, measured in millions, the name-recognition gap is not quite so great as Mr Moss might think.

There have been other famous world champions too: Garry Kasparov's name was, and would be, recognised in every continent. For that matter, was Capablanca not famous in his day? Not as famous as Fischer, for sure. But not, perhaps, obscure.

Who?

Shuffling the theme a little sideways, how many world champions of different sports would we expect people to know? Not, perhaps, so many. Who, for instance, is the reigning world badminton champion? The squash champion? The world champion in bowls? All of these sports are, like ours, played and enjoyed by many millions of people, but I have not the slightest idea who is the present-day champion of any of them. I doubt that this marks me out as particularly ill-informed.

Who?

Now of course Mr Moss' point is not to compare chess with badminton so much as to show that thirty or forty years ago, chess could be compared with motor racing, or with boxing, in the degree of public recognition it had, and that the reason for that was Bobby Fischer.

Well yes. But at the same time, it's worth making the point that there have been other famous chess champions than Fischer: and the point that what is true of chess is true of most other sports. At times, for one reason or another, they have had famous champions, and at other times, they have not. Chess is normal in this respect, as in most others. Chess, certainly, is difficult. But even without Bobby Fischer, chess is not obscure.

[Badminton image: The Hindu]
[Thanks to Richard Tillett]

Prime Time

The Chess Café shop offers us the second and final volume of Tibor Károlyi's Karpov's Strategic Wins (Quality Chess).

Read the blurb (which I assume is from the publisher) and then, using your skill and judgement, answer the following questions.

1. Relating to the following passage:

In this second volume, Károlyi has selected Karpov's most entertaining and instructive strategic wins from 1986-2010 when Karpov was battling with his young rival Garry Kasparov for chess supremacy

a. when did the last of Karpov's world championship matches with Garry Kasparov take place?
b. in what year did Garry Kasparov retire?

2. If you were invited to define Karpov's "Prime Years", how many of the years 1986-2010 would you include? How many of the years preceding it would you include?

3. Can "prime" properly be used as a synonym for "declining"?

4. Is it your opinion that "prime" is being used ironically? Discuss with reference to the photograph on the front cover.

Never felt better

[Karpov/Polgar photo: Chessville]