Tee-shirtgate claims its first casualty…

…but, alas, it’s not one of the ones we would like it to be. The website of the Egregious Chess Federation has this afternoon published the following announcement:

“It is with considerable regret that we announce the resignation of David Welch as Joint Manager of the British Championships. Dave has made a tremendous contribution to the success of the Championships, for which the Federation and countless players owe him thanks, and his services will be greatly missed”.

This bland piece of prose is attributed jointly to Andrew Farthing, and Adam Raoof, who rejoice in the titles of the ECF’s  “Chief Executive” and “Director of Home Chess” respectively. It will be noted that the statement gives no reasons for this resignation of one of the ECF’s most long-standing officials. However, I am informed that David Welch has not only made his reasons very clear to the ECF Board, but also strongly urged the federation to announce those reasons publicly. They have evidently refused to do so. I wonder why?

It is now six whole days, almost to the hour, since Alex McFarlane appealed to all members of the ECF Management Board to express their public backing for himself and the rest of the Control Team at this year’s British Championship. Not a syllable of support has come from a single one of them; Messrs Farthing, Raoof et al continue to maintain their attitude of dumb insolence. Clearly, they do not know their Simon & Garfunkel:

Fools said I you do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

[ Listen to the whole song]

The art of letter-writing

Nowadays, a number of chess tournaments have adopted the soccer-style scoring system of three points for a win and one for a draw. The London Classic is an example, as is the Grand Slam Final, currently just underway in Sao Paulo. The system is alleged to promote more fighting play, and to discourage draws, although I am far from convinced that it does so, either in chess or even in soccer. However, rather than enter the debate itself, I prefer just to recall one of the finest letters I have ever read in a chess magazine. It appeared in the December 1974 issue of Chess, under the title “Not Entirely Serious?”. The letter was written by my former Kent team-mate, Rory O’Kelly, ever the master of the sarcastic. Readers should bear in mind that the 3-1-0 proposal had been put forward, a couple of months earlier, in the same magazine, by Michael Basman, whose unbalancing style of play tended to lead to more than its fair share of decisive results!

Dear Sir

With regard to the proposals recently made in your columns, by Mr Basman, I would like to offer a suggestion, which, though novel, should be acceptable to all rational people. Like many spectators at congresses, I have often been distressed by the excessive number of wins.  Though some are genuinely hard fought, the majority show only a dreary alternation of madmen attacking each other with blunt instruments and fools putting pieces en prise. Some draws are also bad games, of course, but who would deny that most of the real rubbish played in England every year ends in a win for one of the players? As Mr Basman has pointed out, the weekend congresses, where competitors are systematically exhausted by fatigue and crazed by the lust for financial gain, are the worst offenders. As a partial solution, I would like to propose a new scoring system: three points for a win, two for a draw, zero for a loss.

The benefits of this are obvious. In many tournaments, under the present system, the leaders draw quickly with each other and then try to beat as many of the weaker players as possible. The new system would diminish the value of such rabbit-bashing, while making it highly desirable to inflict defeats on close rivals. This would surely be a good thing.  To take a more abstract approach too, it is clear that the games which any player draws will tend to be played against stronger opposition than those which he wins. Why, then, should a draw be worth only half as much as a win? I am sure that readers will believe that I have many still more ingenious arguments, which I omit for the sake of brevity.

Mr Basman, of course, might point out that this scheme would tend to favour players of a particular style. He might even suspect that I could be such a player, attempting to introduce a system which would enable me to score better in tournaments than other players, undoubtedly stronger than myself, who would unfailingly beat me in any match. Should he voice such suspicions, of course, I could reply only by assuring him solemnly of my single-minded devotion to the interests of truth, beauty and chess.

R O’Kelly

London, 10 December 1974

When gentlemen ran British chess

Last week on this blog, whilst discussing the latest tasteless antics of the current ECF President,  I had occasion to make reference to one of his “great predecessors”, Sir Stuart Milner-Barry. He is a man who deserves more than a passing mention.

Milner-Barry (right), playing his great friend, Hugh Alexander

Born in Hendon on 20 September 1906, Milner-Barry represented all that was best about the Edwardian English gentleman. Educated at Cheltenham College and Cambridge, he had a brief, and none too happy spell, as a stockbroker in the 1930s, but the war changed his life. Pressed into service as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, he was one of the most senior figures there, and at one point personally went to see Churchill, to request (successfully) more resources for that vital operation. After the war, he became a senior civil servant at the Treasury, and on reaching the normal retirement age of 60, he was persuaded to stay on, as the official responsible for the honours system. In that capacity, one of his finest achievements was writing the paper that recommended PG Wodehouse for an honour. On Milner-Barry’s recommendation, Wodehouse was appointed KBE in the 1975 New Year’s Honours list, just weeks before his death.

As a chessplayer, Milner-Barry was the classic British amateur – he played the game for sheer pleasure, yet did so to master level, beating such players as Mieses, Tartakower and many others, and once drawing with Capablanca, after missing a win.  He also made several major contributions to opening theory, with both his gambit against the French, and also the Nimzoindian variation, 4.Qc2 Nc6. With characteristic modesty, he always referred to the latter as the Zurich Variation, but most books name it after him.

Photograph © 1973 Bassano. National Portrait Gallery, London.  (Chessgames.com)   

Above all, Milner-Barry embodied that high sense of morality and honour, so typical of his class and generation. One example of his highly-developed sense of honour was quoted by Bernard Cafferty, in his fine obituary of Milner-Barry, in the May 1995 issue of the BCM.  When Nigel Short played his world championship match against Kasparov, in London in 1993, the match was controversial, because the players walked away from FIDE and organised the match themselves. As a result, the match was officially treated by FIDE and its affiliated bodies, the then BCF included, as a “rebel match”. Milner-Barry agonised over whether to attend, in a private capacity,  as a spectator. He very much wanted to watch the play, but as a former BCF President, fully 20 years earlier, he felt that it was his duty not to lend the match any greater recognition than that assigned it by the BCF!

Milner-Barry lived most of the post-war period in Kent, and so I had the privilege of seeing a lot of him, as he turned out faithfully for the county for decades, right up to just a year or so before his death in 1995. I still recall his distinguished figure, very tall and gaunt, always dressed in suit and tie, arriving at the match on the train. He always carried a brown briefcase with him, from which at the appointed time, he would take out a pack of sandwiches and a thermos of coffee, which he always brought with him.  He contributed enormously to British chess throughout his life, and his charming wife, Lady Thelma Milner-Barry, was for many years a loyal supporter of women’s chess in this country. It was a privilege to have known Sir Stuart, albeit only slightly.

The game below is a typical example of his vigorous attacking play. It was played in a county match in 1966.

White: Whiteley, A

Black: Milner-Barry, P. 

County Match 1966 

1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 Bf5 5. Bg5 Nbd7 6. e3 h6 7. Bh4 e6 8. e4 Bh7 9. e5 g5 10. Nxg5 hxg5 11. Bxg5

By a strange transposition, we have reached a bizarre position, which closely resembles the Botvinnik Variation of the Semi-Slav, but with the black QB on the unlikely square h7, rather than its usual c8!

Be7 12. exf6 Bxf6 13. Bxf6 Qxf6 14. Bxc4 Nb6 15. Bd3 O-O-O 16. Bxh7 Rxh7

It is clear that Black has a huge initiative, and White will not be able to find a safe place for his king. Milner-Barry was very strong in such positions.

17. Ne2 Qg5 18. Kf1 Rg8 19. g3 Qd5 20. Kg1 Rh4 21. b3 Qf3 22. Rc1 Nd5

23. Qd2 Re4 24. Re1 f5 25. h3 f4 26. g4

Ne3! 27. Rh2 Nf5 28. d5 e5 29. Nc3 Rxe1+ 30. Qxe1 Nd4 31. Kf1 Qd3+ 32. Kg2 Nf3 33. Qe4

33…Nh4+ 34. Kh1 Qf1# 

A splendid pounding of an opponent, who at the time was one of the most promising young players in the country. I will leave the last word on Milner-Barry to the aforementioned BCM obituary, by Bernard Cafferty:

“We shall not see his like again. The England that formed his character is no longer with us”.

Rump

The latest from Alex McFarlane, following his open letter last Thursday evening (see “Tee-shirtgate: the fallout continues” earlier in this blog):

“Still no ECF Director or other official willing to come out and offer public support over the allegations made. We have however had one Director suggest that we should employ the services of a PR company!!! I’m not kidding, that suggestion was made. I assume that the funding to do so will come out of the Marketing budget.”

It is now the better part of 72 hours since Alex made his appeal, yet not one member of the ECF Board has been willing to offer his public support.  I think that says everything that could possibly be said about the calibre of the people we now have running the Egregious Chess Federation.

The ECF’s Annual General Meeting takes place on 15 October. Regrettably, the vast majority of the current Board members are standing for re-election, including CJ de Mooi, the President. To him and the others, I cannot do better than repeat Cromwell’s words to the Rump Parliament:

“You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately … Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

 

Moves we would all like to play (part 9)

A Herbstmann & L Kubbel, Troitzky Tourney 1937

White to play and draw

Enough of the vile and tasteless subject of ECF politics, it is time for some more chess on the blog. And what a piece of chess it is!

To understand this study, you have to know a little endgame theory. Of course, I am sure you know that K+2Ns v K is a draw. However, what you may not know is that, ceteris paribus, K+3Ns v K+N is a win for the stronger side. So Black can win this position, even if he has to under-promote his pawn to a knight, providing he keeps all the knights on the board and does not stalemate White.

1. Ng1 Ne3+ 2. Kh3 Nf4+

Here is problem no. 1 – if 2… e1=N 3. Nf3+! Nxf3 is stalemate.

3. Kh2 Ng4+

Problem no. 2 is that after 3… e1=N 4. Nf3+! Nxf3+ 5. Kg3, Black cannot defend both of his attacked knights.

4. Kh1

4…Nf2+

4… e1=N 5. Nf3+ Nxf3 stalemate is problem no.3

5. Kh2 e1=N

Now, however, it looks as though Black has squared the circle and has a theoretically winning material advantage. However…

6. Nf3+! Nxf3+ 7. Kg3

I am sure you have seen knight forks before, but have you ever seen three knights forked by a king? Black has to keep all three, if he is to win, and there is only one way to do so. Unfortunately,

7…Ke3

produces as delightful a stalemate picture as you will ever see!

Tee-shirt-gate: the fallout continues

I reproduce below an e-mail and open letter I received this evening from Alex McFarlane, who was the main organiser of this year’s British Championships in Sheffield. It is a sad indication of how badly wrong PR stunts can go.

Open Letter to Board 

The following is a letter I sent to all ECF Board members bar one who has asked me not to communicate with him.  To say I am disappointed with the ECF’s handling of statements made by Keene and the Sunday Times would be an understatement.  The accusations made could have serious repercussions on the ability of one of us in particular as a career could be endangered.

Open letter to all members of the ECF Board

Dear Board Member,

In early August the Sunday Times and Ray Keene via his Times_Chess ‘tweets’ published a series of allegations against a number of us involved in running the British Championship.  These allegations involved calling various officials homophobic, bigots and brutish as well as stating that we should be the subject of a police investigation.  There has been no official statement by the ECF in condemnation of Keene or the Times Group for these remarks.  On 23rd August Keene wrote that he stood by his comments.

For one of the officials in particular the allegations can have severe career threatening implications.  Pupils now regularly ‘google’ teachers (as could a potential employer).  Under these circumstances we believe that the more positive statements that are out there the better to effectively minimise the damage done by the negative ones.  Unlike the old newspaper reports these are no longer tomorrow’s fish and chip wrappers.

In this open letter I call upon Board members and any other officials to make known their views on the matter.

Should anyone ‘working’ for the ECF be subjected to this treatment without the public support of the organisation in condemning the usage of such terms?

I have gone to the Press Complaints Commission about the Sunday Times article and the complaint is being investigated.  The ST, in an attempt to justify its story, has made claims in its defence which I will not go into at this point.  I sincerely hope that these claims prove to be false.

In the absence of significant and public support from the ECF Board I will need to consider any future involvement with the ECF.  But for the location of the 2012 Championships I probably would have already walked away.

It is with considerable sorrow that I consider it necessary to make this public appeal to the Board to either demonstrate its support or to tell me that my services are no longer required.

Alex McFarlane

 

 

Personal record

As a follow-up to yesterday’s piece, I am pleased to report that it generated a new one-day record for visits to this blog! My grateful thanks go in particular to the ever-charming denizens of the Egregious Chess Forum, without whose help this record could never have been achieved!

I never usually reply to termites, and did not plan to do so in this case, but several friends have pointed out one particular libel perpetrated by various of the forum morons, which perhaps does need answering. That is the charge that I have described the Gay Times (henceforth GT) as a “pornographic magazine”. In fact, that is not so. I did say in my piece below that CJ de Mooi plans to appear in a nude photoshoot in a pornographic magazine. And so he does, by his own admission, in what he refers to as “the Naked Charity issue” of the GT. I personally would regard a magazine, that is filled with pictures of naked men and women, as pornographic. Ergo, if an issue of a magazine appears, containing what I regard as pornographic content, then I will call that issue “a pornographic magazine”. That description sounds as though it applies to the “Naked Charity” issue of the GT.

However, anyone for whom English is their first language should be able to understand, that describing a particular issue of a magazine as pornographic, does not imply that one regards the generic publication itself as a porn magazine.  To take a purely hypothetical example, if the October issue of Chess comes out and is filled up with pictures of naked chessplayers – of whatever gender and/or sexual orientation, incidentally – then I would describe that issue as “a pornographic magazine”, but that does not mean that I regard Chess generally as a publication only fit for the newsagent’s top shelf. Likewise, if the next issue of Playboy magazine happens to contains a few articles on chessplayers, I would still not be tempted to reclassify Playboy generally as a chess magazine.

As I say, it really should not be necessary to point out such an obvious distinction, but even the most casual perusal of the Egregious Forum will suffice to show that normal standards of literacy or common sense are entirely absent from that hallowed, and very special piece of cyberspace.

 

 

Degradation

In these days of social networking sites, one often gets one’s first news via Twitter. Thus it was that, this morning, I stumbled bleary-eyed out of bed, grabbed a coffee and sat down in front of the computer screen, to find out what is happening in the world. One of the first tweets I saw was the following by the ECF President, CJ de Mooi:

“I will be doing a nude photoshoot for this year’s Naked Charity issue of Gay Times – order your copy now!”

Er, excuse me?? Shome mishtake, shurely, as they say in Private Eye? Is it April 1st? Alas, no, it is September 21st. Am I in Amsterdam? Have I been on the wacky baccy? No, I am still safely ensconced in Rochester, and as much of a smoking virgin as ever. No, there is no mistake – the ECF President is planning to appear naked, in a homosexual magazine.

Now, I have discussed the issue of CJ de Mooi’s tenure of the ECF Presidency in a previous blog piece, Storm in a Tee-Shirt. He has been a remarkably active President, who has energised the federation in a way that none of his predecessors ever could.  No argument about that. But the trouble is, chess does not know where to draw the line. Such is the penury of the chess world that anyone who shows the slightest sign of putting, or bringing, money into chess, is likely to be received with a gratitude that knows no bounds.

The new ECF Director of Women’s Chess struts her stuff. (Photo: glacombe.com)

One only has to look at FIDE to see that. For the past decade or more, it has been run by a President who is alleged to have rigged elections, arranged the murder of political opponents, and embezzled countless billions from his country’s government. He has reduced the chess world to a laughing stock by befriending dictators and boasting of his alien abduction experiences. He has also destroyed the quality of top-class chess, by speeding up time-limits so as to ruin endgame play, has defaulted players for not being sat at the board, arms folded and facing the front, when the bell goes for the start of the round, and has demanded that they stand around, peeing into plastic bottles, in the name of drug-testing. But none of this matters, it seems. Few in the chess world care a fig about all of these things, because he has put plenty of money into running the world chess championship. For 99% of the inhabitants of the chess world, that is all that matters. Dignity is  just something that happens to other people.

“That’s the worst-looking hanging pawn I’ve ever seen!” (Photo: minneapolis broadwayworld.com)

And now we have a similar scenario unfolding in British chess. Having been such a breath of fresh air to begin with, CJ’s antics are becoming ever more outrageous. And, of course, that is the problem with the world of PR. In order to generate publicity, one’s stunts have to be more and more shocking. Each new series of Big Brother or Strictly Come Dancing has to feature even more ludicrous and controversial events than the last, else it will fail to maintain its place in the tabloid headlines. Once one starts down the slippery slope of selling one’s soul for money and PR, there is no limit. As the wise old bird Lou Mannerheim says to young broker Bud Fox, in the film Wall Street, “You can’t get a little bit pregnant, son!”.

It has been interesting having a professional self-publicist as ECF President, but after two years, it is now important that the experiment is ended, while British chess still retains a vestige of self-respect.  If not, we can expect the game to be dragged down further and  further, as our PR-hungry President engages in ever more tawdry escapades, in order to boost his TV image as the D-list celebrity brainbox, the Tesco’s own-label cheap equivalent of Stephen Fry or Carol Vorderman.

 “Got a soul to sell? Top prices paid! Text “Faust” to 00666 or e-mail http://www.webuyanysoul.com!”

British chess was once run by people of such class as Sir Stuart Milner-Barry. Now it’s run by someone, who boasts about appearing in a pornographic magazine, without so much as a doubled pawn to cover his embarrassment. The ECF urgently needs to recover some dignity, although I have little confidence that the numpties who run it will take any action to do so.

On second thoughts, perhaps it not dignity that the ECF needs. It’s Dignitas.

Mr Hedgehog

I have never been a fan of knockout chess events, and have always regarded the FIDE World Cup and associated world championship events as a monstrosity, despite the superficial excitement that they generate. However, I have to admit to having greatly enjoyed the latest World Cup. The fact that Peter Svidler emerged as winner is certainly a factor, as the cricket-loving, Anglophile, St Petersburg GM has always been a favourite of mine. But the key reason I so much enjoyed Khanty-Mansisk was the superlative online coverage provided by the official website, which included both live video from the playing hall, and GM commentary in English and Russian. Naturally, most Westerners will have listened to the English version, provided by Konstantin Landa and Anna Sharevich.

 The world’s least appropriate radio face – WGM Anna Sharevich from Belarus (Photo: Sergey Kasparov for Chessbase)

But for me, the great delight of the event was the Russian-language commentary, provided principally by Sergey Shipov. Since leaving Moscow in 2005, I still spend a lot of time reading and translating Russian, but I get very few opportunities to speak or hear the language, and it is always a pleasure when I do. In addition, Sergey Shipov is an outstanding commentator. He is nowadays inactive as a player, and although at his height, he reached a FIDE rating of 2667, he is little-known as a player outside Russia . Indeed, I recall Matthew Sadler saying that he once angrily “corrected” the letter “p” to a letter “r” on his Chessbase, “unable to believe that any player could be born just one letter away from chess greatness”!

But Sergey Shipov was a very strong player indeed. He has a particularly good reputation as a blitz player, so much so that he was a regular blitz sparring partner of Garry Kasparov, when the latter was still an active player. Kasparov played even his blitz as a serious training exercise, and he selected opponents on the basis that they would provide a serious challenge, so anyone he regarded as worth using in this regard has to be a pretty decent player. Thanks to his very deep and rapid grasp of positions, Sergey is perfectly qualified to be an online commentator, as he is immediately able to get to the heart of positions, and explain the key ideas and plans, as well as analysing the tactics. His World Cup sessions were a veritable goldmine of instruction.

This was never more so than during yesterday’s fourth game of the Svidler-Grischuk final, which saw the players reach a Hedgehog formation.  The latter was and is Sergey’s calling card. He is one of the greatest experts in the world on the system, and his Russian book on the line is one of the finest opening books I have ever seen. It is now available in a two-volume English translation, published by Mongoose Press. Although I have not seen the latter, I would still not hesitate to recommend it; even if the translators have mangled the original (and I have absolutely no reason to think they have), they could hardly prevent the result still being a masterpiece of chess instruction.

Here is an example of Sergey’s own prowess with the Hedgehog. The game is one is one of his favourites, and was selected by him in an interview published some years ago on the Chess Cafe website.

White Fridman, Daniel

Black Shipov, Sergei 

Berlin 1996

1. c4 Nf6 2. Nf3 c5 3. Nc3 e6 4. g3 b6 5. Bg2 Bb7 6. O-O Be7 7. Re1 d6 8. e4 a6 9. d4 cxd4 10. Nxd4 Qc7 11. Be3 Nbd7 12. f4 Rc8 13. Rc1 Qb8 14. b3 O-O

A typical Hedgehog middlegame ensues. Black manoeuvres behind his 3rd rank pawn wall, waiting for the chance to hit back with the breaks b5, d5 or e5.

15. Qe2 Qa8 16. Bf2 Rfe8 17. Bf3 h6 18. a4 Bf8 19. e5 dxe5 20. fxe5 Nh7 21. Bxb7 Qxb7 22. Nf3

22…f5! 

Sergey was very proud of this decision. Usually in such positions, Black leaves the potentially weak white e5-pawn in place, but here, he forces its exchange. If White does not take en passant, then he loses control of the square e4 for ever, but after the exchange on f6, the black e6-pawn becomes passed and threatens to advance through White’s position.

23. exf6 Nhxf6 24. Ne5 Nxe5 25. Qxe5 Bb4 26. Qe2 Rcd8

White has a great many positional problems – draughty light squares around his king, the passed enemy e-pawn, holes on the queenside, etc. His position is terribly difficult to hold together.

27. Red1 Rxd1+ 28. Qxd1 Rf8 29. Qe2 Qc6 30. Be3 Nd7 31. Bf2 Nc5 32. Na2

Now Black finishes his opponent off with a small combination.

32…Nxb3! 33. Rb1 Rxf2! 0-1

After either capture on f2, 34…Bc5 is deadly.

Moves we would all like to play (Part 8)

Henri Rinck, 2nd Pr. Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snallposten 1911

White to play and win

White’s chances obviously lie with the e-pawn, but 1.exd7?, planning 1…Nxd7? 2.Bf5+, is defeated by the zwischenzug 1…Kg4+.

1.e7! Kg4+ 2.Kg2 Re6

3.Re2!!  The point is to decoy the BR over the critical square e4.

3…Rxe2 4.Be4!

And this is why. The bishop now shuts off the BR’s guard along the e-file, forcing him to capture on e4.

4…Rxe4 5.f3+ and the pawn queens.