County Counting: 2. More Isidor

We had a first look at the two volumes of the Surrey County Chess Association Match Books, 1884-1967, in Preface, the opening episode in this, the third strand of posts on the chess history of our locality (see Streatham Strolls and Brixton Byways for the other two). Running these three in parallel inevitably means overlap and cross reference - but hopefully to mutual advantage rather than tedious repetition. This post is a case in point. It concerns one of Streatham's several en passant chess professionals and one of Tim Harding's Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Isidor Gunsberg (1854-1930).

Here he is again, looking rather dapper, and rather more Edwardian than Victorian. It is as he appeared (according to the excellent Chess Archeology, from whence this picture comes) in 1905 in the American Chess Bulletin - which is just after Queen Victoria hung up her crown in 1903 - when he was about 50 years old.  Some time later Gunsberg, chess professional and one time contender for the World Championship (see here), appeared in the Match Books, playing for the Surrey County - which is perhaps surprising as these are a record of amateur matches. So what was he doing there?

DG XII: Doctor Jana Bellin

[Dr Jana Bellin] is willing to prepare a considered comment on the interesting matter of chess and seniors, people with Alzheimer's and so on. 

Stewart Reuben, EC Forum

I’m not a glass half-full person by nature. Not exactly half-empty either. By default setting I’m much more a 'there’s not enough water in the cup because somebody knocked it over and now I’ve got a big stain on my trousers and I’m going to have to walk around all afternoon looking like I’ve weed myself' kind of a guy.

Which is why I’m always pleased - if not outright surprised - when I am in a position to report some good news. And today is one of those days.

Patriarchal theory

I happened to be discussing the famous Botvinnik-Fischer game with some friends when Angus French pointed out an interesting anomaly at a crucial point.

The anomaly isn't in the game, so much as in Botvinnik's comments on it: at Black's seventeenth move he gave a couple of short variations which he had apparently analysed in his preparation, but which Fischer sidestepped by choosing a third move instead.

Here's the variations given on page 243 of Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games (Faber and Faber, 1972)

and here they are on page 242 of Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, part 2 (Everyman, 2004).

Day of days

White to play

Kasparov - Karpov World Championship Game 4, New York 1990

Last Friday’s post from EJH marked the 43rd anniversary of the sixth game of the Fischer - Petrosian Candidates’ Final. We’re revisiting another 17th October today too, although we don’t have to go quite as far back for this one.

It’s not exactly a coincidence. You play World Championship Chess for a century or more, you’re going to have plenty of examples of two or more important and/or memorable games being played on the same day.

I wonder, though, what the most significant date for chess history is. Has anybody ever worked it out? If not feel free to make a suggestion in the comments box. Or just enjoy Gazza leaving an exchange en prise for ten moves before Anatoly finally bit, if you prefer.

2014 ISE Count: 59

TISE Index

What Marcel Might Teach You

An exhibition "What Marcel Duchamp Taught Me" has just opened, in which today's "conceptual" artists, reflect, in words and pictures and things, on their debt to Marcel Duchamp. It is at the Fine Arts Society, 148 New Bond Street, W1, and it is on until 5th November - free downloadable catalogue on their website.

A lot of it is good fun, at least I thought so. As for a homage to his chess (not, if the truth be told, a major focus of the artists involved) there's a holographic chess piece, a recycled chess set, a chessic totem pole, and a painting called "Pawn" - which references Marcel's "Nude Descending a Staircase" (according to the press release).

If you do visit, have a go at the interactive headphone installation: it is accessed on the top floor. Stick with it and you, too, will descend a staircase, and you might be surprised where it leads you (clothes optional).

Die-hard Duchampophiles might also fancy hopping over to Paris for a show of his paintings, on until 5 January, at the Pompidou Centre.  

Beware: nudes descending. 

A longer appreciation of these exhibitions may follow in a few weeks time.

Why didn't Petrosian play 3.e3?

The sixth game of Petrosian's 1971 match with Fischer, the Candidates' Final, took place on the seventeenth of October. As Petrosian lost the game and the three that followed, the match is probably best remembered now as the fourth of Fischer's five consecutive crushing victories which began with the procession at the Palma Interzonal became and ended with his trouncing of Spassky in Reykjavík.

Or was that Fisher?

Whoever owns AGON, they can neither spell Fischer nor resist the 600 million nonsense.

It didn't seem like that on the afternoon of 17 October: the scores were equal, Petrosian had the advantage of the White pieces and should have had the advantage on the scoreboard, which stood at 2.5:2.5. Granted, he'd lost the first game, but he'd been winning out of the opening: in the second he annihilated Fischer, bringing to an end a twenty-game winning streak, quite likely the most impressive (though not the longest) in the history of chess.

Clearly not a sacking offence

Private Eye 1377, 17 October 2014, page 6.

["Plagiarism is theft and I'd lose my job if I did it."]

[Thanks to Pablo Byrne]

[Ray Keene index]

[Ray Keene plagiarism index]

[Keenipedia]

Dear Roy and Norris

White to play

P. Barasi v JMGB, Surrey League 14.10.2014

My game from last night. Move six.

I was really hoping White was going to play e2-e4. Not because I thought it was a bad move. Purely because I wanted my next turn to be ... dxe4. When my first six moves

... f5

... g6

... fxg4

... d5

... c6 

... dxe4

would have been pawns going to light squares.

Somewhat to my disappointment Paul actually went 6 Qd2 and only on his next go did he push his e-pawn forward two squares. So I did still get six of seven which is not bad at all, but can anybody do better?

From a Shoebox Under the Bed: Australia

White to play

JMGB v C. Kinsman, Perth Open (6) 31.1.1993

The subject of my Australian Chess Federation rating came up in comments to PUMR? II. My old friend Rob Maris - previously of Dunmow and Chelmsford in Essex, now a resident of Perth WA - let it be known that my ACF rating is a princely 1879. Which doesn’t seem much of a return for the +7 =3 -2 that I scored in two tournaments there in December 1992 and January 1993. That said, pleased as I am to learn of the existence of another rating with which I can be dissatisfied, 20+ years on it may be time to let this one go.

Anyhoo, scrabbling around under my bed I found I still have 9 of my scoresheets from those dozen games, the last of them being against a certain Mr C Kinsman. I remember be rather pleased with my play at the time, although my killjoy computer was none too impressed when I showed it. My theory ran out after 15 moves and HIARCS thinks that the game was effectively decided over the next four. After Black’s 19 ... bxa3,

White to play

the B.I.M thinks I’m just winning rather easily. During the game it seemed obvious to me that my attack was worth the sacrificed piece at the very least, but it certainly didn’t feel that the game was decided at this point.

Five moves later, though, we'd reached the position at the head of today’s blog and I did think that I must be about to win.

White to play

I played 26 Rd4 planning to win the queen after 27 Re8+ and 28 Rc4. Black thumped his king’s rook down on g8 and a moment of panic notwithstanding - I thought that I was going to be the one mated with 28 ... Rg1+ and 29 ... Ra1 - I managed to bring the point home.

A pleasing finish to my down-under chessing I’ve always thought, and yet the engine remains underwhelmed.  My move is only +26. It seems I have two different ways to give up a rook allowing Black to recapture with the bishop. One leads to mate in 5, one to mate in 11.

I’m not sure what the correct term for this sort of thing should be. Implied ISEs, perhaps? And maybe not so much of the I either, since the game ended in my favour a few minutes later anyway. Still even if back then I wouldn’t have cared in the slightest, looking back it does feel like a small missed opportunity not to  have finished the game in a more elegant fashion.

2014 ISE COUNT: 60

TISE Index

County Counting: 1. Preface

Our various series on the chess history of our locality - here in this corner of south-west London - are getting more and more confused. First we had Streatham Strolls which, after noting the imprint of chess history on SW16, went off piste and south to Rodmel, in Sussex, then east to Brockley in the London Borough of Lewisham. It will go west as well: some time soon. For one episode anyway. Then Brixton Byways wended its tortuous way through SW9 and SW2 before entwining itself with the origins of Streatham Chess Club: south once again to SW16. And there is yet more to come here - in the not too distant future. If we don't get lost.

Now, we will add a third strand to this spaghetti conjunction, with considerable thanks to Martin Cath, long time officer of the Surrey County Chess Association (currently its Curator of Trophies), who has kindly given me access to a pair of remarkable (and in one case, ancient) volumes: the County Match Books - which go back to the very first Surrey county match in 1884. These are so fascinating that I have interrupted normal service to research and post about these wonderful documents.  

Encounters with remarkable books.
(With thanks to the SCCA)

This first episode, in an occasional series, is a kind of preface before we delve deep into their combined eighty-seven years of history.

What a carve-up!

Well, tomorrow some time Ray Keene's friend will be elected President of the English Chess Federation, not that "elected" is the right term for a one-candidate affair deliberately organised in such a way as to avoid a contest. There was, of course, no need to do it that way: the electorate could have been provided with a variety of names, or the Board's preference could have been announced well in advance so as to allow for the emergence of other candidates, as opposed to at the last minute, giving opponents no chance. But instead it was deliberately done in such a way as to allow for the minimum of discussion and the maximum of dissatisfaction. So well done.

On the Nevil

Talking about Andy Costello nearly going to prison, as I was yesterday, there was some action on the jail front this summer, but it was Nevil Chan, erstwhile national co-ordinator of Chess in Schools and Communities, who went down. Curiously, Nevil too had previous form, albeit only a caution for forgery, but it was enough to send him to the big house for a six-month stretch.

As it happens Nevil does have a connection to chessboxing, albeit one very slight and tangential indeed.

From the site:

Still, enough to raise the prospect of a Curse of Chessboxing. Who's next for the Curse, I wonder? Is Ray going on Saturday?

The Great Chessboxing Swindle: said goodbye to the circus

There's another chessboxing event in London this Saturday. You can look up the details yourselves - you won't miss much if you don't. Basically it's the same clowns in the same ring as it usually is.

Well, not quite the same. The same except one. One in particular.

Interesting and Difficult ISEs: the Baku Grand Prix vs the London League

Black to play

Caruana - Gelfand, Baku Grand Prix 03.10.2014

"Interesting" - the website formally known as Chess Vibes.
"Interesting" - Chessbase.
"!?" -  Chess24.
"!?" - Chess Today #5078

If ever there was an exchange sacrifice made for this series, it seems this is it.

Boris’ 18 ... Rxe3 would have been considered a big TN not so long ago, but if you watch the press conference you’ll see that Fab had also had it on his board/computer screen at home long before the game was played.

Black to play

JMGB v Ron Harris, London League 29.09.2014

It was a rather different story at Golden Lane, a few days before Caruana and Gelfand were battling it out in Baku.

The previous moves had been 13 Rb1 bxc4, 14 bxc4 exd5, 15 Nxd5 bringing us to the diagram you see here. I was pretty much expecting my opponent - presumably not that RH - to play 15 ... Rxb2 here. Not because I’d had this position before or had studied it before, but because giving up rook for bishop like that is the sort of thing you do in this line (e.g. see TISE IV from April 2011).

As it happens, Black did indeed ISE, although, slightly to my disappointment, he immediately took the material back with 15 ... Rxb2, 16 Rxb2 Nxd5, 17 Bxd5 Bxb2, 18 Qxb2.

Black to play

My opponent had only used about three minutes to get this far, although I assume he wasn’t still in book either since this position seems rather pleasant for White to me.

I’m not saying staying material down - after 17 ... Bf5 instead of 17 ... Bxb2, say - would have been a better choice, but the resulting position would have been ... well, "interesting" is the word that comes to mind. And tricky.

No ISE as played and I have the obvious plan of trying to exploit the a1-h8 diagonal. With the ISE, I confess I’m not entirely sure what White should be doing. e2-e4 for starters then trying to keep the knight out of the game whilst pootling around hoping the extra material becomes useful, perhaps.

Well, JMGB - Harris ended in a draw anyway. Still, it seems to me that some of the comments to Caruana - Gelfand, particularly Chess24’s "The play that followed was fiendishly difficult" and Baburin’s "This is a good practical decision - while this sacrifice does not offer Black equality, it's certainly easy for him to play now" in Chess Today, might also be applied to game played by chessers with a combined elo around 1,500 points lower that Caruana and Gelfand’s.


2014 ISE Count: 58
TISE Index

None other than

What's Ray writing about in the Spectator these days? Let's have a look at yesterday’s issue...

...and have a closer look at that first paragraph.

Jackie Eales. Who might she be? Whoever she is, Ray's really interested in this Canterbury lecture, since he's also written about it twice in the Times.

I knew Nick Clegg was desperate but I didn't realise he was that desperate

EDIT 5 October: thanks to our correspondent who correctly identifies the dinner as the Second Integration Dinner with Deputy Prime Minister Clegg organised by the World Congress of Overseas Pakistanis. As opposed to dinner with Nick Clegg as such.

Bonus points for spotting a couple of names among the organisers:

both Arif Anis and Suhail Chugtai were among the chancers last seen with Ray here.

[Ray Keene index]

Bewildering

Dirk Jan ten Geuzendam, New in Chess, 2014#6, page 14

You know, if I were a leading chess journalist and I had spent several days in a small place in which, by my account, bribery and vote-selling was rampant, yet nevertheless I'd not been able to come up with one single example I could stand by - I really wouldn't go out of my way to shout about how widespread and blatant it had been.

Because it would make me look a bit useless, wouldn't it?

Pump Up My Rating? II

I got my first Elo rating in September 2011, right after Benasque. Nine games in Spain, four at e2e4’s Gatwick Open in June and another 4 at the Sunningdale Major in May saw me come out at 2049.

I’d actually I played 12 games in those last two events, but even before I had a rating I had begun running up a big plus score in games that didn’t count - a habit that led to my Elo DWP? post last February. Anyhoo 2049 was not a bad start at all, I thought.

Within three months I had shipped 130 points.

The day the January 2012 rating list came out I made a vow: I might have just dipped below 2000, but by hook or by crook I will get myself out of the 1900s.

Two years and nine months later, I have finally achieved that goal.

Ray Could Play XV

White to play

Keene - Polak, Erlangan 1968

I was planning to move on from RDK, but since I boobed last time around (RCP XIV: Pretty Good Year), I thought I should do one more that most definitely is an ISE.

So, Black’s just gone … Qa6-a7. Ray to play.

"I spent half an hour considering this sacrifice … ", our man writes in Flank Openings (his notes to the game are also available for free here), "a primarily strategic offer based on the weakness of Black's pawns and the isolated position of his queen."

Half an hour well spent, it turns out. The "!?" Keene appends to his move suggests he wasn’t 100% sure about it, but today with the benefit of computer engines we can be a little more certain. Ray’s judgement was spot on.

2014 ISE Count: 55 (still)

TISE Index

Bad book covers XXXII

Positional Attacks, Johnson, Lulu, 2014

[Bad book covers index]

Pump up my Rating?

I might not have scored a floating chessboard for my birthday last week, but I did at least get a couple of chess books. One of them being Axel Smith’s highly regarded Pump Up Your Rating.

The first question on picking up a book with a title like PUYR is simply this: why?

A Year on the Circuit III

Golders Green Open, August 2014

White to play

JMGB v Chris Rice, Golders Green Open (3), August 2014

A BORP? decision for me here. How to recapture on c5?

Take with the rook then try to swap the a and b pawns to play against c6 or take with the b-pawn and play against b7? Both options seemed plausible to me at first glance. Fortunately I had some help when making the decision.

When thinking about my move I remembered the Larsen-Donner Master Game rook ending (SMA#21) and realised that taking with the pawn would give me a similar queenside pawn configuration. I also recalled Keith Arkell’s minority attack rook and pawn position from the British Championships when he won by opening the king’s wing and attacking Black from the side. Best of all there is a detailed chapter on minority attack endgames in Hawkins’ From Amateur to IM, a book I’d bought a year or so ago.

History Boy 2

Back in July the Blog reported, in the post History Boy, Paul McKeown's splendidly erudite and entertaining presentation (at the City Lit in London) about an episode of chess in days of yore. Now there's another effort coming along, though Paul's will be a hard act to follow: this time it will be your blogger talking to the excellent Streatham Society about "Militant Activity: Chess in Victorian Streatham, and Beyond" on Monday 6th October.

Floater

It was my birthday on Wednesday. Did anybody buy me a floating chessboard? No they didn’t.

Bastards.

Near miss

That's just about right, even at this distance.

How cynical* can you be?

Nigel's having himself a bit of whinge.

Nigel Short, New In Chess 2014#6, page 39.

Well, I'll take the Cynicism Challenge and see how cynical I can be.

Cynically, I wonder. If you were the candidate in a presidential election and your main backer was promising ten million dollars to spend if you won - no strings, no questions asked - would you actually wait until half an hour before the election to announce it?

[* As cynical as somebody who complains about malpractice and corruption but is best mates with Ray Keene?]

[Nigel Short index]

Ray Could Play XIV: Pretty Good Year

29 ... Rbc8

Jiménez Zirquera - Keene, Camaguey 1974

1974: A pretty good year for Ray and ISEs. We’ve already had his effort against Cardoso from the Olympiad in Nice (RCP XII) and a brace from Cuba (RCP XI; RCP XIII). Here’s a third from Camaguey.

We join the game with Black having played ... Rbc8. Of course this allows Ba6 'winning' one of the rooks for his bishop. It’s the way I blunder material all the time, but RDK, needless to say, had a plan. Interesting that even with the dark-squared bishops off the board he was still looking for ways to give up a rook for a minor piece.

2014 ISE Count: 55

TISE Index

Chess in Art: chess set for sale

Would you like to own this chess and draughts set table-and-chairs ensemble? Is it even called an ensemble? Why am I asking you this?

Streatham Library Rapidplay 2

The second edition of the Streatham Library Rapidplay, run by Streatham and Brixton Chess Club, will take place on Saturday 20th September. Round one will start at 10.30am. All details on the SLR website here.

SLR 1 gets under way

The format will be similar to last time but there will be a few improvements:

-              You can now enter online and pay through PayPal: go to the How to Enter page.
-              Entry fees are a little higher to cover costs, but will still be good value.
-              Prizes have been increased.           
-              The Open section will use digital clocks: time limit 25 minutes with five-second increments.

And last but not least:

-              The round times have been adjusted to give 45 minutes for lunch so you can get to any one of Streatham's excellent eateries, including a recently shortlisted pizzeria, and our favourite coffee shop.

See you there!

On using irony on the internet

The trouble is

that some people

don't understand it.


[Note: we were going to run this last week but Dominic Lawson intervened]

A Year on the Circuit II

Golders Green Open, August 2014

Black to play

Freddie Hand v JMGB, Golders Green Open (2) August 2014

"How did you win that one?"

In truth you can't win this kind of ending can you? Although you can help your opponent to lose them. Especially if they are down to 1 minute plus increments, as was the case for the young fellow playing White here.

Dress rehearsal

I wanted to return to this remarkable article¹ - or "crazed" might be a better word - by Dominic Lawson partly because it is so remarkable and partly because it's as good a starting-point as any to discuss why it might matter that the nominee for ECF President says things like this. Because it does. And it also matters that his supporters are so unwilling to come to terms with this.

Let me say that if you think it's all right to refer to young women as dressing like prostitutes - an incredibly unpleasant thing to say - then you've lost me already. I'm not addressing people who think you can refer to women like that. Not here. Maybe not anywhere.

The people I'm addressing are those who understand that it's not all right - but don't see why it's relevant to Lawson's proposed role and to the ECF Board choosing him. But I think it is relevant - and manifestly so.

To see what I mean, let's suppose for a moment that the ECF is a serious and properly-run organisation.

Ray Could Play XIII: Quiero Bailar La Salsa

Black to play

Quinones - Keene, Camaguey 1974

Here we go again. We’re back to 1974 again - see last week’s RCP XII -  White has just played 18 Rxe7 and RDK is about to do another ISE.

Just like Caro-Keene - RCP XI - this happened at a tournament in Cuba. Unlike Caro-Keene, though, this ISE actually happened.  If that doesn’t require a Happy Dance, I don’t know what does.

2014 ISE Count: 54
TISE Index

The flipside of Dominic Lawson V

It's possible that on reading yesterday's piece your reaction was something along the lines of "look, this is all very deplorable but it was thirty years ago - surely everybody has skeletons to hide if we go back long enough?"

Well yes, of course. I'm sure we all do. (Though if you don't want your errors from way back when to be taken into consideration, you shouldn't be invoking the Eighties in your candidate statement, should you?) However, this isn't so much a question of what happened thirty years ago as what has happened over a thirty-year period, running up to today.

Keene and Lawson's cut-and-paste book, complete with Lawson's racist stereotyping, was thirty years ago, for sure. But it was rather less than that when Lawson decided a good man to work with would be a man accused of defrauding British chessplayers. It was rather less than that when he ran Nigel Short's obnoxious obituary. And it was just this summer when he wrote his vicious piece in the Mail and complained in the Sunday Times that teenage girls were dressing like harlots.

Moreover, there's another way to look at it, which is that Dominic Lawson has had a long, long time - thirty years and more - to recognise who is a villain in English chess. Yet the obvious has apparently eluded him.

So once again we find ourselves talking about Ray Keene. Why? (Or as they say in the Mail, why oh why?)

The flipside of Dominic Lawson IV

Yesterday we were discussing, in passing, Dominic Lawson's time working with Ray Keene, not least as his editor at the Spectator, which periodical Lawson edited from 1990 to 1995.

Now Ray has, of course, been exposed over the past year as a gigantic plagiarist, a matter which one might expect to concern anybody who was a professional journalist, like for instance Dominic Lawson. But as this blog has often documented, Ray's habit of stealing other people's work and passing it off as his own is merely an outgrowth of a much older habit - the practive of reusing his own work, in different places (or even the same place) and passing it off as new. Having established to his own satisfaction, over many years, that he could get away with that, it was just a short Penguin-step to the industrial-scale plagiarism of the past few years.

One would expect the recycling habit to concern professional journalists too, what with the issues it raises of copyright theft, cheating the reader, journalistic integrity and so on.

Still, an editor doesn't necessary read everything in their magazine. Manifestly so, since amazingly, the immense amounts of recycling that went on in Ray's Nineties Spectator columns went unnoticed by the various editors of that periodical. Nor indeed were any of them apparently aware that Spectator material was being recycled in books such as this*

without the unsuspecting buyer being informed that the material they were buying had already appeared elsewhere.

The flipside of Dominic Lawson III

I obtained a measure of revenge not only by eclipsing Tony in terms of chess performance but also by sleeping with his girlfriend, which was definitely satisfying but perhaps not entirely gentlemanly.

Unless I am much mistaken, the most notorious obituary in chess history was published in the Sunday Telegraph when Dominic Lawson was its editor.

For some reason the editor chose not to red-pencil the most objectionable passage, though Nigel is often fortunate with his editors in that respect.

Lawson is a columnist now on a variety of papers, including, as we saw on Wednesday, the Mail, and yesterday,¹ the Sunday Times for whom he pens the occasional climate-change-denial piece.²

The flipside of Dominic Lawson II

As promised yesterday, here's Dominic Lawson showing who else he's prepared to insult.

If you insert the term "inscrutable Asiatic countenance" in Google, you only get a couple of results. One likes to think that this is because few people would use such a horrendously racist stereotype.

But Dominic Lawson has.

Exactly what you'd want from somebody invited to lead a multiracial community, don't you think?

No, me neither.

More Lawson tomorrow. In the mean time, we might add to the list of constituencies of whom Lawson is liable to speak objectionably, feminists.

Sunday Times, 6 January 2013

And gay people.

Romaine, Communiating Gender, Lawrence Erlbaum, 2009, p. 298. Romaine cites Lawson's comments as follows:

It's going to be an inclusive kind of Presidency, isn't it?

- - - - -

EDIT: Just this evening I came across this remarkable commentary. Do we really, in 2014, want our president to talk about girls dressing as if they "were on the game", or to use phrases like "debauched as her demeanour seems intended to demonstrate"?

[Sax Rohmer, for those not getting Mig Greengard's reference]

[Thanks to Rob Thompson]

The flipside of Dominic Lawson

At my last football match, I noticed that all the fans had the complexion and the body-scent of a cheese and onion crisp, and the eyes of pitbulls.

Martin Amis, 1991.

...but then, most football fans do not have a criminal record, or carry knives, or urinate in pockets, or get up to any of the things that they are all supposed to...

Whose game is it anyway? Some random phrases from Martin Amis's review of Among the Thugs, by Bill Buford: "a love of ugliness"; "pitbull eyes"; "the complexion and body scent of a cheese-and-onion crisp". These phrases are intended to build up a composite picture of the typical fan, and typical fans know this picture is wrong...

...the truth — that "pitbull eyes" are few and far between, and often hidden behind specs, and that the stands are full of actors and publicity girls and teachers and accountants and doctors and nurses, as well as salt-of-the-earth working-class men in caps and loud-mouthed thugs.

Nick Hornby, 1992.

Professional football in this country is the debased summit of a debased culture.

Daily Mail, 2014.

Last week, a nasty and ignorant article appeared in the Daily Mail. This, in itself, may not constitute a novelty.

However, the target on that particular day wasn't immigrants, or poor people, or any of the Mail's usual shooting-gallery. It was football. The people who play it, the people who watch it, the people who like it. It's been a long time since I read anything so unpleasant on that particular topic - not since the 1991 Martin Amis hate piece referenced above, in fact.

Ray Could Play XII: Olympic ISEs

Black to play

Cardoso - Keene, Nice Olympiad 1974

Tromso may be over - The Best of Times; The Worst of Times - but that doesn’t mean we have to stop thinking about Olympiads.

Times have changed. Incredible to think that forty years ago we - England - didn’t have any Grandmasters. We didn’t even have any Grandmaster norms until You Know Who notched one at Nice.

Today’s ISE helped RDK on his way. White has just played 16 Bc5 attacking the rook but Ray cares not a jot. It took White a couple of moves, but eventually he bit.

Keene didn’t go on to win this game, but eventually he got his norm and pretty soon afterwards, without dying, he was in the Daily Express (Chessman Raymond Plays for Cheque). Now that is what I call worthy of note.

Like I say, times have changed.

2014 ISE Count: 53

TISE Index