DG IV: After Six Years' Thought

But I knew the line of the Slav that Nigel intended to play: I had seen him and Kavalek spend a week’s work on it back in Reston, Virginia. It was the variation Kavalek had described as 'good rope-a-dope stuff'. Far from challenging Kasparov with the sharpest and latest line in the opening, Nigel was relying on a move which had once been played by the ex-world champion Vassily Smyslov in 1953. Smyslov, the most extraordinary example of longevity at the top levels of grandmasterdom, then gave the move a rest for forty years, only to play it again this year in an obscure tournament in Rostov-on-Don. I remember Nigel’s excitement as Kavalek’s computer - the Beast in his basement - spewed out the Rostov-on-Don game by the Rip Van Winkle of world championship chess: "If Vassily Smyslov thinks that the move is still good after forty years' thought, then it’s good enough for me."

Dominic Lawson, The Inner Game

I include this passage here partly because I rather like it and partly because it gives me an opportunity to shoehorn a little bit of chess into the blog, but mostly because it makes a good lead in to a post which is in itself a lead in to something coming tomorrow.

Last week’s Doctor Garry (Dogs That Don’t Bark) showed that a journal article - Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly Verghese et al. (NEJM 2003 348:2508-2516) - which is cited all over the place as the 'proof' that chess is an effective intervention to counter dementia actually contains no mention of chess whatsoever. The closest it gets, as we know, is a reference to people "playing board games or cards".

As it happens, the New England Journal of Medicine article is not the only study that makes use of the the data obtained from the Bronx Ageing Study. No doubt there are many others. The one that interests us today is,

Cognitive Activities Delay Onset of Memory Decline In Persons Who Develop Dementia
Neurology (2009) vol 73 no 5 p. 356-361
Hall, C.B; Lipton R.B; Sliwinski, M; Katz, M.J; Derby, C.A; Verghese, J

You may recognise the final author listed, maybe all six of them, since every one is credited as an author of Leisure Activities...  (albeit, as Andrew Preview might have it, not necessarily in the same order).

The same group of researchers making use of the same data set investigating a similar topic. The difference? The NEJM 2003 article asks a group of people about their leisure activities and then looks forwards to see which of them develop dementia. The Neurology 2009 paper goes the other way, taking the group of people who developed dementia and then looking backwards to the start of the research project to examine what those people said they liked to do in their leisure time.

The point for today is that the categories listed for cognitive leisure activities in the second article - "reading, writing, crossword puzzles, board or card games, group discussions or playing music" (p. 357) - are the same as in the first. Yes, that's 'board or card games' again, not 'chess'.

We know from last time that 'board games' means "board games such as chess, checkers, backgammon". We know that if the data had justified the use of "chess" rather than "board games" then the researchers could have used that word in 2003. We also know that the authors repeated their choice not to do so in 2009.

Are the two terms interchangeable for the purposes of this discussion? I think not. That’s being kind. 'Obviously not', would be a more appropriate retort. There are any number of reasons to come to that conclusion, but aside from anything else, if Hall, Lipton, Sliwinski, Katz, Derby and our friend Verghese still thought that 'board games’ was the correct wording after six years' thought then it should be good enough for us.

Chess and Dementia Index

Rook for Bishop

Black to play

Todorovic - Plachetka, Zemun 1980

I do mean to move on from fianchettoed bishop exchange sacrifices, but it seems wherever I look I keep finding another one. Today’s ISE is an unusual variation on the theme.

Exchange sacrifices against a fianchetto frequently involve giving up a rook to get rid of the bishop. We’ve had loads of those already: the Original ISE; TISE V; Close but no ISE; Back in the USSR and most recently three posts - BORP? XXX, On Plans and Advice for Beginners, SMA #27 on the ISE that never happened in Reshevsky-Kotov, Zurich ’53.

When the side which has the fianchetto gives up an exchange, it’s often to enhance the power of his own bishop by get rid of the its opposite number.  Examples of this kind of ISE include TISE IV; When Bishops are too Strong and Azmai Could Play.

In Todorovic - Plachetka, which I found in Mednis’ classic From the Opening Into The Endgame,  Black played the Grunfeld and sacrificed his rook for the other bishop. After ... Rxd5, the game continued exd5 Qxd5

White to play

at which point Mednis concludes that Black has "... more than enough compensation ...."  A familiar annotation, if not a massively helpful one for the amateur chesser.

When I first looked at this, I thought that White would play Qe2 here to save the material, after which Black could trade on f3 - twice if necessary - to leave White with five isolated pawns. It turns out this is not a very good idea at all, though. Plachetka, needless to say, had a much better plan in mind.

Morphyc Resonance

Funny business this blogging. You get what you think is a clever idea for a headline - and then have to go and find the story to hang on it (hoping all the while that no one else had got there first). Anyway, this time patience has been rewarded - a likely candidate turned up: John Townsend's recent volume Historical notes on some chess players...

...just as it plainly says on the cover.

It is the fruits of research by a chess historian of enviable doggedness and diligence; one who doesn't overly rely on re-cycled, ready-made factoids, secondary-sourced from contemporaneous chess mags of the day. He is thus definitely not (to plant a shamelessly self-serving plug...of sorts) in the manner of your blogger, for example in Brixton Byways. John, by contrast, scrapes back to bed-rock, to solid foundations, to brute facts exposed by scrupulous examination of primary data, even if at the outer limits of documentation. Genealogical research is his métier - it must be in the blood.

What's this than?

Here's a tatty old headline. It's from Susan Polgar's blog.

There's more to it, though, than just a careless, casual, misspelling. It's careless all right. But the reason it's happened is anything but casual.

Doctor Garry III: Dogs That Don't Bark

NEJM: Don’t mention the chess

Verghese. Joe Verghese. It only takes the briefest of internet searches combining 'chess' and 'dementia' to find the name.

Dr Verghese was the lead author of a journal article which is routinely cited amongst chessers on the internet. Leontxo Garcia recently called it "the best study" on the thesis that chess could, "prevent or delay Alzheimer’s". I don’t claim to be a "great expert", as Kasparov dubbed Garcia in that nonsense "many studies" tweet of his (Doctor Garry is In), but I have been looking into the subject for a couple of years off and on, and I’ve yet to discover anything better the research undertaken by Verghese and his colleagues either.

The New England Journal of Medicine

'Leisure Activities and the Risk of Dementia in the Elderly
2003 (348: 2508-2516)

Joe Verghese et al

If you’re interested, you can read the whole thing for free online. It’s here.

If you do, you’ll notice that there’s a problem. Actually, for an academic study which is supposed to be the proof that playing chess has a beneficial impact on your chances of avoiding dementia, it’s a very bizarre problem indeed.

Verghese’s article doesn’t actually mention chess. At all.

Sixty Memorable Annotations

#27: Reshevsky - Kotov, Zurich 1953

22 Nxd4

"The triumph of good development and precise play.
With an extra pawn and the better position, the rest is a matter of technique."

Miguel Najdorf, Zurich 1953 (Russell Enterprises Inc)

And so we reach the end of my little trilogy of posts (On Plans and Advice for Beginners; BORP? XXX) on an exchange sacrifice that never happened. Reshevsky didn't play it, Najdorf doesn’t mention it as a possibility in Zurich 1953 and neither does Bronstein in Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953.

Was 22 Rxd4 not worth thinking about at all?

Definitely Got Nothing to do with chess II

Yesterday’s Daily Express:

de nos jours, indeed. Daily Express Bullshit to the left of us, Chess Bullshit to the right of us ... I suggest you ignore them both and take a stroll down Martin’s latest Brixton Byways instead.




... to do with chess Index

Brixton Byways: 4. Regular Bricks

We are pressing on with our chronicle of a chess foretold, trying to make sense of the inexorable unfolding of S&BCC here in south west London in the late C19th. We set out with the successful Endeavour of the early 1870s which, by twists and turns, emerged finally as Brixton Chess Club in the early 1880s. In this episode we will push on through its second decade. It may be for some, I regret to say, a little remote from our modern everyday chess experience, but it is about the period when local club chess as we now know it took shape; for any who prefer a piece of the action this post does offer a couple of little games, one of which was said to be "replete with instructive points".

#chess180

Mirror Mirror on the wall. Who is the most 180 of us all?

Well, me of course. Clearly.

And yet, as unlikely as it would seem to any reasonable person, a pretender to my title appears to have emerged. I won’t stand for it.

As you read these words my ECF grade is 181. That is a fact. A few good Hampstead tournaments in succession combined with adequate London League form enabling me to cross the magic 180 barrier for the first time ever.

Not everybody was so 'lucky’ (read: skillful). Take Matt Fletcher, for example. His current grade is a paltry 179. This, too, is a fact and the difference between his grade and mine demonstrates rather clearly not just my advantage at the chessboard, but also that I am the superior human being, I feel.

Here’s the thing, though. Through a statistical quirk - a below par performance at Hampstead in February* followed by a failure to capitalise on one or two very favourable positions in some club games - I’ll be dropping below the 180 line when the next list comes out. So I’ll be back to the 170s for a few months. Honestly, who cares?. Form and class and all that.

I really wouldn’t mind, but our Mr Fletcher seems somehow to have fluked enough wins to take him into the 180s this time around. An equally temporary outcome, no doubt, but unaccountably he seems to be labouring under the delusion that that this statistical blip somehow makes him 'more 180' than me.

I know. Completely ridiculous.

Him

As a man of honour I will not and cannot stand for this insolence. The gauntlet has been thrown and I will pick it up. You can be certain of that.

A match? Yes there will be a match. A duel some would call it.

It will take place this summer. The only question that remains to be settled is the terms of play. A meeting to finalise matters will be held on neutral ground in early June. An arbiter has been appointed and will be present

I promise, my dear readers, to report back in due course.

To Mr Fletcher, however, I have just two more words to say.

Check and mate.

darts

The Big L

* I don’t want to make a big thing about it, but my pet gibbon suffered an anxiety attack on the morning of the first round which naturally meant I was rather distracted intellectually and emotionally throughout the weekend. And ill. I had a terrible cold. And if memory serves, I’d forgotten my lucky pen too. You try playing a decent game of chess under those conditions. Frankly, I’d be well within my rights to contact the ECF and have those games annulled. Not the two that I won. They were fair. The other two. It’s quite absurd that those other games should count, though. But, like I say, I wouldn’t dream of making an issue of it.

John's Immortalised Game

Not often these days that an S&B player makes it to a national chess column, so here we proudly present Dave Ledger (Hackney 1) v John Carlin (Streatham 1) from Division 1, London League, played 30 January 2012, immortalised in the Sunday Telegraph 18 May 2014 - and here's the photo to prove it.

Column copyright: Sunday Telegraph.
Telegraph daily chess column here
Photo by J. Carlin!

Ok, so the news travelled slowly (although the score did the rounds in S&BCC circles at the time), but has now reached the outside world, and many thanks to Malcolm Pein for featuring the game, and for agreeing to let us reproduce his column, with his notes. You get a bonus "Worst Move On the Board", too.

Game player after the break:

Doctor Garry II: de nos jours

This week - the 18th to the 24th May - is Dementia Awareness Week. You will know this from the numerous zero references to the event emanating from The Times’ chess correspondent’s twitter account.

Ironic that. At times it seems like we're getting one chesser or another using twitter to tell us something about dementia every other day, but the week when there’s an actual organised attempt to push the issue into the nation’s consciousness we get nothing at all. I just can’t understand it. It’s almost as if the provision  of information about dementia isn’t the primary purpose of those tweets at all.

Anyhoo, Dementia Awareness Week is as good a time as any to begin a series on what chessers have said about dementia over the past couple of years. Garry Kasparov’s recent missive being just the latest rather than the first of it’s kind, I feel that coverage of the issue (coverage of the coverage of the issue, I suppose we could say) is not just timely but long overdue.

The Times’ chess correspondent has spouted dubious nonsense in this area several times, Susan Polgar has republished a piss-weak article on the subject and almost exactly a year ago an execrable piece appeared on the Chessbase and FIDE websites. And now Gazza’s stuck in his grossly misleading oar.

Truly, the idea that we might use knights and bishops as an intervention to tackle dementia has become the bollocks de nos chessical jours*.

The last 1 e4

Twenty years ago today, in a club championship game in Oxford, I played my last 1 e4.

You can see the game below: it was entertaining enough to play, as I recall. (I've not put it through a program, for no better reason than that I don't actually have a working program at the moment. If I did have one, I suspect it'd show me a better reason.)

I don't think I intended it to be the last when I played it, unlike my last Sicilian, but it was. "Last" in the sense of over-the-board, freely-chosen: I've played it since in correspondence theme tournaments, where you have to play both sides whether you like it or not. But since that day twenty years ago I've never sat on the White side of the board and touched the e-pawn first.

That alternative reality again...

...where plagiarism is taken seriously...

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne]

[Ray Keene index]

All our yesterdays

CJ is distressed!

What word is that, CJ?

Party Political Broadcast

With thanks to Angus

Doctor Garry is In

Ah, the old "Claiming of 'Many Studies' Without Troubling Oneself To Actually Cite Any" Gambit ...

Not sure who that EJHChess bloke is. Anyhoo let’s stick to dementia and Alzheimer’s disease for today, if for no other reason than until recently I had a professional interest in the field. Those of you unable to wait for the 'great expert' to vouchsafe to Garry his wisdom might like to take a peek at the search results returned for "chess" on the Alzheimer’s Society website.

On Plans and Advice for Beginners

I’m back musing on the difficulties of calculating exchange sacs today. It’s the same one as last week, but a few moves earlier in the combination.

The theme this week is chopping and changing. Specifically, the benefits thereof.

Everybody knows the piece of beginner advice that tells you that it’s better to play with a plan, even a bad one, than drift from move to move without any consistent objective in mind. I frequently have the very opposite problem when trying to calculating lines, though. I miss moves precisely because I don’t change tack in mid-combo.

Brixton Byways: 3. Onwards And Upwards

In the first two episodes of this chronicle (here and here) of Brixton's chess times past we investigated the fortunes of the Endeavour Club (the ancient forerunner of S&BCC) in the decade of the 1870s up to the tragedy that befell Ernest Peyer (the club's secretary) and his young wife Ellen in 1875/6. This sad business happened to coincide with the closure of the City of London Chess Magazine in early 76, William Norwood Potter having already stepped down as its editor one issue before curtains.

The lady succumbed in childbirth, Endeavour lost an able secretary, and the club a vocal supporter ("Endeavour CC always merits our attention" wrote Potter): a double and triple whammy after which it is difficult to know whether, in the few years following, the club disappeared altogether, or was merely lost to view. However Leonard Rees, who was shortly to become the first Secretary of the Surrey County Chess Association, made a significant remark in a letter to the Croydon Guardian in July 1883 - and reproduced in The Chess Player's Chronicle in August. He said, when proposing a Surrey Chess Association (with italics added): "holding a prominent position among the town clubs of Surrey, [is] the "Endeavour" of North Brixton, established on a new basis in 1879....".

Whether it collapsed, or was just forgotten, or even a bit of both, we can, after the renaissance of 79, pick up the Endeavour trail again in the early 1880s; and in this episode, with two games near the end, we will follow it into the middle of that decade. Before we do, however, we need to go east a bit, to Endeavour's next door neighbour, where we will find a suggestive clue as to what might have happened to the men of Endeavour in the dark years of 76 through to the post-79 revival.

Sloan alone

16 March 2014

Dear Mr Sloan

Sorry to bother you. I understand from the review in the British Chess Magazine that you are the publisher of Ray Keene's recent book about the Anand-Carlsen world championship match.

Would it be possible to ask you a couple of questions about this?

All the best

ejh

Yes. I am the publisher. You may ask your questions.

Sam Sloan

Thanks very much.

I noticed, in the book, a declaration that the notes to the games in the match itself are "substantially based" on notes that Mr Keene had previously had published in the Times newspaper.

However, I also noticed that the notes to a number of other games in the book were also substantially based on notes previously published, in a variety of places. I could, however, find no declaration to that effect. Was there any such statement that I missed?

Yours

ejh

Play it again, Sam

Good Lord, that book is published by Sam Sloan. Your life as a credible author really is over when he gets to publish you.

So a friend of mine wrote about this recently-published volume. He wasn't wrong.

Of course Ray can still occasionally get a gig with a reputable publisher, but as they necessarily become disreputable as a result of employing him, perhaps there's a case for cutting to the chase and sticking with the less reputable ones.

I hadn't really intended to write about this book, solely because I have no intention of shelling out any cash to buy it, but a comment on the English Chess Forum piqued my curiosity, or to put it another way, seemed keen to do my job for me.

He's not wrong, either.

The Worst Move On The Board XIX

Suárez García-Rudd, 4NCL, round nine, Hackney v Bristol 1, 3 May 2014. Position after 36...Rc6-g6+.

White's in check, but he has several ways to get out of it and they all win.

All but one.

[Thanks to Jack Rudd, surprisingly enough]

[Worst move index]

BORP? XXX

White to play

I don’t know about your first impressions of this position, but mine were,"Well I don’t see a mate yet, but surely Black must be in trouble here." White is down an exchange, but Black’s pieces are sleeping in their beds. Black has a mate in one on, but White has the move. Black’s king is trapped against the ropes, but … but nothing.

Surely this must be good enough for White?

If you check this with your engine, or your own brain if you’re so inclined, you’ll see that 1. Qxh7+ and 1 h4+ both lead to mate. In 11 and 8 moves respectively according to HIARCS. In a game you wouldn’t know that, though, would you?

Is 'surely this must be good enough' good enough?

Probably Got Nothing to do with chess XIII

My name is Katherine Parr. 

I'm 31 years old and already twice widowed. 

I'm in love with a man I can't have, and am about to wed a man no-one would want - for my husband-to-be is none other than Henry VIII, who has already beheaded two wives, cast aside two more, and watched one die in childbirth.

Or so it says here.

... to do with chess Index

Assuming wrongly

Here's a Tweet I saw earlier this week, after Ray retweeted it.

It's by Daniel Freeman. Who is Daniel Freeman?

Daniel Freeman runs chessgames.com. So not unnaturally he wants to say thank you to Ray for some commentary Ray has provided for that site. And here is that very commentary.

What's wrong with this?

Just about everything.

Jack’s Back

Our Friend Jack Rudd - Back When We Were Beautiful; Jack’s Sacs - returns to write another post for us today.  Welcome back Jack. 

- JMGB

For The First Time In Forever
- IM Jack Rudd

Sometimes, you have a pattern you need to break. And you don't realize it until you break it by accident.

By any standards, July-October 2013 was a disastrous set of months for my chess, culminating in a tournament at Crawley where I lost 30 rating points. This would normally be my cue to try to win them all back at the London Chess Classic and Hastings, and fail again, and set off another chain of depressive thoughts that would send me off to another unsuccessful tournament.

Instead, two things happened to break the chain. One is that I ended up arbiting at the Classic rather than playing, because I needed a norm from an all-play-all for my International Arbiter title. The other is that my girlfriend, Olivia Netshagen, invited me to spend Christmas and New Year with her and her family in Sweden.

(Olivia with her mother and sisters. L to R: Oleana, Kristina, Olivia, Ellen)

This proved to be an excellent decision, and not just because it meant I got to spend time with Olivia. It gave me the break from high-level play that I needed so that I could return to the game on my own terms and with my head clearer. A couple of lower-level tournaments - the Gibraltar Challengers and the Exeter Open, both of which I scored 4/5 in - served me well for the next few months, but the real test was how I would do on my return to norm-tournament play in the Easter international at Sunningdale.

At first glance, the answer seemed to be "not very well", as I blundered early on and lost to a 1900-rated player in round one. And if I'd still been in the frame of mind I'd been in in October, this would no doubt have triggered another disastrous tournament.

But then, in rounds 2 and 3, I played these two games:

And it became apparent that my form was coming back to me: I'd kept control nicely in round 2, and negotiated a tricky endgame in round 3. And from then on, I played like I know I can play, and rounded things off with this nice win against a much higher rated player to finish on 6/9 and a gain of 18 rating points:

It was a good tournament for me. But I don't think it would have been had I not stumbled randomly on the strategy of not playing my usual December tournaments; the pattern needed to be broken to get me into the right frame of mind again. I may not make it to grandmaster; I may never be that good. But for the first time in forever, I'm feeling like I could.

Our Chief Weapon is Surprise

This week I’m taking a break from exchange sacking and celebrating an anniversary instead. It was three years ago yesterday that I first played a Berlin Endgame in a serious game.

At 7:00pm on the 27th April 2011 I started the game that would become my first proper Berlin. By around 7:05 the queens had come off and it can’t have been much after 7:10 that we arrived here ...

Black to call it a day?

... at which point my opponent offered me a draw.

As it happened, I wanted to play that night and if my opponent didn’t that was all the better. So play on we did and I won a rather pleasant game. Without me doing anything in particular the position became equal and then preferable for Black, then clearly advantageous for me and, eventually, won.

It was exactly the sort of game that would inspire you to do it again. The type that would make you think that Once wasn’t enough. So play it again I did. Or at least I have tried to.

I’ve played about 160 graded games since that first Berlin. How often do you think that I’ve been able to punt The Wall since that first time?

Brixton Byways: 2. Peyers You Go

The first episode of this fortnightly history of Streatham and Brixton Chess Clubs explained that our earliest antecedent was the Endeavour Club of Brixton, emerging around 1870-ish in a boom period for London (i.e."metropolitan") chess clubs.

Of the many clubs mentioned last time most were conventionally named after locality or venue. But a few took a different tack: "Ibis" -  aka the Prudential Clerks Society - for example. The Society started out, so the Pru's official history says, with rowing (hence the wading bird thing). Cricket, and chess, arrived later. Endeavour and Ibis often played each other and were pretty evenly matched: for example, Endeavour losing 4 v 6 in 1874, but winning 7 v 5 the following year.      

Sadly not Endeavour HQ,
but the Prudential Insurance Company in Holborn,
home of Ibis - in 1879. The building is still there. (From here)

Any connection of the Brixton club with the Christian Endeavour movement seems doubtful, as far as I can see, as the latter only got off the ground, in Britain anyway, a decade later - but the club's name is clearly intended to be boldly aspirational, as befits the zeitgeist.

Endeavour HQ, at 138 Brixton Road, was at the northern end of the Brixton district, and as we investigate who was involved in the club, and who played for it, we will see (where identification is possible in the censuses) that they tended to live in north Brixton and its hinterland: Stockwell, Vauxhall, South Lambeth (that's Lambeth, looking across the Thames to Parliament, where - in the 1930s - the locals supposedly went about "Doing the Lambeth Walk"), Kennington and Camberwell.

No-brainer

There's something about Times editorials that gets on my wick.

Here's a recent example.

Probably not. Still, it's practically a statement of common sense compared to the procession of fatuous claims that follows.

Psychological Caution

Black to play

Exchange sac-wise, I’ve been in a bit of a slough of despond recently. A couple of days after last week’s post BORP? XXIX - I stumbled across a quote from Petrosian. I’m not sure if it helped or made things worse.

I repeat, that the first and main difficulty in making a positional exchange sacrifice is a psychological caution: after all, you have to give up a rook for a minor piece. The second difficulty is that the exchange is given up when this is not forced by circumstances. Therefore you must anticipate beforehand, in good time, how events will develop and take the necessary measures.

Tigran Petrosian

I don’t know where Petrosian said this. Or even if he said for that matter.

I came across it at chessquotes.com.  You can email them to find out the sources of their little nuggets of wisdom if you want, but I’m not sure I can be bothered in this case. I’m happy to take CQ at their word. I mean, everybody knows Petrosian is Mr Exchange-Sac. Everybody knows he did ... Re6 at Zurich sixty years ago.

Frankly, were it to turn out that the 'Boorish Armenian Peasant' - (c) the ECF’s ECU delegate - didn’t actually say what chessquotes.com say he did I would regard that as more his fault than theirs. It is, after all, exactly what you imagine Petrosian should have said.

How to annotate a chess game, you morons

with International Master Colin Crouch
(renowned author of many Everyman books).

I Gurevich v C Crouch, Hastings 1992/3

You morons aren't going to understand anything about this game.

Probably Got Nothing to do with chess XII

Exchanges sacs will return on Wednesday. In the meantime, here’s something that could help you kill a few hours should you find yourself with a lot of time on your hands this Bank Holiday.

... to do with chess Index

(With thanks to Morgan)

Our first Streatham Library Rapidplay: Great venue, great day, and more to come (we hope).

Richard Tillett reports.

Last Sunday was the day of the Streatham Library Rapidplay, the first such event that Streatham & Brixton Chess Club has held for 28 years.

‘Round 1 will be starting shortly, please take your places…’

Martin wrote about the 1986 event here, and two stalwarts of our club who were there on that day turned up on Sunday – Robin Haldane to play in the Open and Angus French to take charge of proceedings as tournament controller. Alongside Angus was a 6-strong team of S&B helpers - Shez, Paul, Barry, Martin, David and yours truly. Together we comprised an awesome management team… or that’s what we reckon anyway.

And what a lovely day it was. The sun shone, there were lots of smiles, and nothing went wrong. Except maybe the weather was a bit too glorious – we think it may have kept some last minute entries away and as a result there were some empty places.

Perhaps the star of the show was the venue itself, the newly refurbished Mark Bennett Streatham Centre at Streatham Library. It’s a terrific venue for chess - spacious, high ceilinged and well lit. There’s a small kitchen for serving drinks and snacks, and between rounds players can relax in the garden at the back of the hall. Moreover the venue is easy to reach with two overground stations and a constant stream of buses plying their trade along Streatham High Road.

So we don’t intend to wait another 28 years before we do this again. ‘Streatham Library Rapidplays’ has a certain ring to it and we now wondering whether we could make this a regular event in the London tournament schedule.

First prize in the Open section went to S&B member Nick Fordham
(on the right receiving his prize from Angus) with 5/6.
Sebastian Ponulak took the Under 140 with an impressive 6/6.

The Streatham Library Rapidplay results page is here and there are more pictures of the event here. 

We would like to thank Streatham Library and Lambeth Council for their support, and the Surrey County Chess Association for generously lending us chess sets, boards and clocks.

Ray in Romford

Tsk. Too late! We missed the show. Still, don't miss the video!

The page of innocence?

Ask and ye shall receive.

Towards the end of February, I asked Silvio Danailov about Andrew Paulson's allegation that Danailov had spent time in prison.

In March I asked Ali Yazici, who had also been putting the allegation about, what evidence he had to support it. He referred me to a mysterious "Lucy", which turned out to be a pet name for Danailov himself.

So this month, I asked again, not coincidentally on a day when I knew that "Lucy" happened to be visiting London.

As a result, I have been passed the documents that you can read lower down this entry.

Blue or Red Pill? XXIX

Black to play

Rizvi - JMGB, Surrey League 2010

Well that’s 13 posts in already. 25% of the way through the project is perhaps not a bad time to review progress made so far. In truth, I’m having a bit of a crisis of confidence and am not hugely convinced that I’m making much progress.

Actually I’m wondering if players of my strength should even be trying to get a handle on this exchange sacrificing business.

Brixton Byways: 1. Earnest Endeavours

Eighteen months or so ago we strolled around Streatham, Brixton and thereabouts plotting its chess history. Now we return to the task in this post and ensuing series, but this time with a specific focus: the history of the Brixton half of Streatham and Brixton Chess Club. And to be more specific still: its history during its first few decades, from its inception to the end of the 19th Century. Yes, the 19th. It's a narrow focus, and it will be an intensive investigation.

Not that we'll completely neglect the origins of the Streatham half. New evidence about this has only recently emerged, and the accepted wisdom down at the Club  - viz. that Streatham CC appeared only after the First World War, and amalgamated with Brixton CC just after the Second - now needs drastic revision. We'll get on to that in a few weeks time, so watch this space.

In this account of the early history of Brixton CC (and the Streatham bit too, when we get to it) we are not trying (as we did in Streatham Strolls) to document the many well-known chess-historical figures who were "blow-ins" passing through the area, or who, while living hereabouts, played their chess in the main elsewhere (probably in one of the big city clubs) and perhaps at a more exalted level (e.g. Isidor Gunsberg, Henry Bird). We will be looking here at local talent, our home grown variety: Brixtonians brought up and chessed, maybe within the purview of the Town Hall (though it wasn't built until 1906) and who loyally supported their local club through the thick and the thin.

Edwardian Brixton - now with Town Hall (from here)

Jail time

Meanwhile, back at chess politics, poisonous though they be - what is the truth about Silvio Danailov and the prison term he's alleged to have served?

Readers will recall Andrew Paulson's remarkable statement written to justify his campaign for the seupty Presidency of the European Chess Union. It was notable for a series of attacks, of varying degrees of reasonableness, on Nigel Short and a similar series of defences, of varying degrees of unreasonableness, of Zurab Azmaiparashvili. But it also included two serious and important allegations against Silvio Danailov.

If these did not stand out to everybody, this is in part down to Paulson himself, who neither knows a good allegation from a bad one*, nor is a particular master of the art of précis. Nevertheless, they caught other eyes than mine and not long afterwards an interview appeared on Chessdom repeating the allegations.

The interview, a very interesting one too, went through the second of these allegations, the alleged soliciting of a bribe, in some detail, right down to the cuisine in the restaurant on a corner of the Plaza de España in Madrid where Danailov and Paulson had a meeting. (I am familiar with the Plaza de España, but not, alas, the restaurant.) We awaited more information about the first allegation, the prison sentence.

Since then, however, there has been only silence on the matter. Which is particularly odd, since the Chessdom piece was titled "Part 1" and more was promised shortly.

Following weeks? We've had six of them so far.

Those who do not learn from history

Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at

Let us suppose, for an optimistic moment, that we take an opportunity presented by the departure of Andrew Paulsen, whatever we think of that departure and the process by which it was reached.

We're not going to, of course, but let us suppose it anyway.

Suppose we recognise that there are some serious problems of political and organisational culture within the English Chess Federation. Suppose we understand that the disasters of the past thirty months or so haven't been accidental, but have arisen out of the structure, the priorities and the modes of behaviour which have developed within that organisation. Suppose we accept that we need to identify them in order to change them.

Wouldn't that be a thing?

Secrets and lies

It's been, what, just a couple of months since the coup against Andrew Paulson at the English Chess Federation and I don't suppose there's been two more tawdry, disreputable, disgraceful months in the entire history of the organisation.

We've had conspiracy, we've had claims of conspiracy. We've had back-stabbing, we've had elected officials removed without elections. We've had claims, we've had counter-claims. And it all adds up to two tawdry, disreputable, disgraceful months. I could also say poisonous. I could also say a lot of other things.

My personal Disgust-O-Meter long since went into the red zone. Conspiracy and deceit tend to have that effect on me.

Anyway, the latest ridiculous event in this lamentable series, at the date of writing, is the resignation of the Non-Executive Director Sean Hewitt. What has led to Mr Hewitt resigning, when normally he is more concerned with bringing about the resignation of other people? Frankly any reader who hasn't followed this saga is suffering from a particularly happy form of ignorance. But, very very briefly - and yet in more detail than it merits - it revolves around this document, produced by Phil Ehr, so-far-surviving CEO of the ECF.

Tell you what though, I'll leave it until after the fold. And if I were you I wouldn't bother with it. The sun is shining. You're better off going for a walk instead.

It's raining, you say? You're better off going for a walk instead.

It's snowing, there's a force nine gale and there are swarms of giant vampire bats blotting out the sky? You're better off going for a walk instead.

ISE Monday: Vlad takes on f6

White to play

Kramnik - Illescas, Linares 1994

I’m carrying on with a couple of recent themes today: rook takes piece on bishop three (Collector’s Item) and what counts as an ISE (An ISE by Any Other Name).

Probably Got Nothing to do with chess XII

Adam Cassidy is twenty-six and a low level employee at a high-tech corporation who hates his job ....

or so it says here.

... to do with chess Index

Welcome Back My Friends ...

So 2013

from Alex Baburin’s excellent Chess Today

Chess By Chocolate

Streatham and Brixton Chessers were out in force last Saturday setting out their stall at the gala re-opening of Streatham Library/Community hub after its refurb. It is where we will be running the Streatham Library Rapidplay on Sunday 13th April - open to all!

Here we are in the thick of it ...

...with much tea taken in the foreground thanks to the Women's Institute's coffee and cake stand - perilously close to our larger-than-life chess set (an accident waiting to happen) ...

Taking the MiQ

Times chess column March 20

You might get the impression from the above that when it hasn't been a free day, the Times chess column has been following the Candidates Tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk. Little could be further from the truth.

Ray hasn't been keeping up at all. He didn't annotate a single game from the tournament until his column on March 24, which was the rest day after the ninth round. He annotated Anand-Aronian, from round one.

Indeed it wasn't until the day after the fourteen-round tournament finished that Ray got as far as Mamedyarov-Andreikin from round four. Can this really be the man who was the acknowledged master of the instant tournament book?

So what's been distracting Ray from doing his day job properly? The answer is, the MiQ Leadership Program.

War games

Anybody spotted the chess revival that was supposed to take place after Magnus Carlsen won the title last year? Me neither, but perhaps we were looking in the wrong direction. One Anand blunder in his long endgame in the penultimate round Candidates and we might have had our revivial after all.

We all know that the reason chess took off after Spassky-Fischer was the politics, yes? The Cold War on the chessboard, international politics in minature, that sort of thing? We do?

It doesn't seem to have attracted much comment, but the guy who came second in the Candidates

comes from Crimea. You may also recall that not too long ago he changed his nationality from Ukranian to Russian.

Now that would have spiced it up nicely, wouldn't it? You want contemporary geopolitics on the 64 squares, you might have had it.

Of course Carlsen's not the latterday Cold Warrior you'd want in the opposite chair, but you could always elect a Reaganite as FIDE President in time to oversee the match. And watch everything go BOOM.