Posted in Humour, My own warped humour, Viz inspired material on December 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Soon to be hot shit off the press ‘Forgotten Secrets of Very Mysterious Openings’ by M.J.McCready, on the shelves after I recently secured a publisher. As you can tell from the title, it’s very much of the ilk for the genre of chess theory so I should make a tidy sum? Details of the publisher can be found below.
Posted in Humour on December 27, 2020| Leave a Comment »
Posted in Humour, My own warped humour, Viz inspired material on March 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »
You may have noticed I recently deleted two posts documenting the rivalry between clubs in the Bedfordshire League in the late 70s and early 80s. 54 emails later and additional help has clarified what contributor Nick McBride told me. I’m now in a position to tackle the issue courtesy of the additional contact second contact -who shall remain nameless.
I am not naming names nor naming clubs. All I will do is list the clubs and list the tactics employed. You can decide which club did what if you don’t already know. It should give you an overview of what a difficult league the Beds. Chess league once was back when punk was trendy, strikes were nationwide and mods hated rockers. Okay, clubs first:
I shall now list the tactics employed. you can decide the answers yourself.
Okay that is as far as I go with this. I’d prefer to portray my own chess league in a more positive light since I am so proud of it but if these things went on and two witnesses are assuring me of it, well I have to go with it. I’ve known them both for thirty years, they are both honest men so who am I to say none of this can be true. Once again, I’m not naming names and will not do so if asked. The more established members of the Beds chess league will know the answers anyway…
That’s all for now. I prefer to promote not discourage so please bear in mind, the content above didn’t go past 1986. You won’t see any such business like that nowadays. It’s all safe and sound. If there’s any funny business going on just message me about it and I’ll fly in and start kicking some arse.
Do enjoy your evening.
Mark
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
Not perhaps, but quintessentially, Old Tom Sweby is best thought of as a passionate devotee to the newspapers he wrote for. He was well read and knowledgeable of the Bedfordshire chess scene and well beyond, given that he was the president of the S.C.C.U. once upon a time. He was generally well-respected and rubbed shoulders with many, if not all, of those eminent within British chess circles. It would, however, be a critical mistake to see his column is primary source material entirely. That it is not. You will also find secondary source material quoted too, and the reliability of that is not quite as Tom hoped. Given that he wrote for decades, this is to some degree inevitable, and after all we are all prone to error whether we realize it or not. Thankfully, with regards to old Tom Sweby, they are infrequent and for the most part old Tom continued to document events and developments in the Bedfordshire league from the get go as best he could but, of course, everything lies open to interpretation. Despite this, and generally speaking. this does indeed make him informative and thus worth reading. Dare I say his columns constitute a narrative describing the latest developments, match reports and changing nature of the Beds league...he knew his audience and wrote according. This manifested itself over decades but brevity was always in play courtesy of the restictions imposed by writing a column. Should you wish to read a in instrumental figure of the Beds' league post WW2, you are quite welcome to peruse what has been posted here... . :-) I should, however, point out that as the decades wore on he gradually moved on away from narratives concerning the Bedfordshire league towards affairs both historical and international. The reasons for this are multifarous, old age was a predominante factor presumably, however, the bottom line is with regards to how the Bedfordshire chess scene developed post WW2: old Tom Sweby is your go to guy. He wrote more about chess in Bedforshire than anyone else did but given he was a Lutonian and writing for a Luton newspaper there is both bias and greater coverage of his hometown than the rest of the county.
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