There’s a lot being said about Carlsen and his reasons for withdrawing from the Sinquefield Cup. Take whatever you will but you could do much worse than read the following by GM Jacob Agaard.
https://forum.killerchesstraining.com/t/paranoia-and-insanity-by-jacob-aagaard/856
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BRONSTEIN AND TAIMANOV IN LIVERPOOL
By DENIS V. MARDLE
CHESS, May 1952, Vol.17 no.200, p154
In 1951, it was decided to run an International Union of Students’ Chess Tournament in conjunction with the National Union of Students’ Arts Festival at Liverpool this Easter. The British Universities’ Chess Association co-operated, and some eight teams with three players in each were expected to meet from April 4th to April 10th, but by the opening date only one Belgian, one Dane and one Indian were at Liverpool to meet the British and Finnish teams. It was known that players were to come from the Soviet Union, and their non-appearance brought many enquiries from reporters. There was no “mystery” about the matter; the late choice of players had meant late applications for visas. In fact, only four days was required for the issue of these once Bronstein and Taimanov were known to be waiting in Prague.
The three individual players were grouped into an “International” team, and while awaiting the arrival of the Russians a short Tourney was held in which Finland beat Britain by 2-1, and the International team by the same margin, while the British trio beat the latter by 3-0.
The Soviet Grandmaster and Master arrived at 6 a. m. on April 10th, and a tournament was hastily arranged with the fast time limit of 40 moves in two hours. This was unfortunately necessary, as two games a day had to be played on two of the five days available. The other competitors were the Finnish master Pastuhoff and his fellow-countrymen Nyren and Rutanen with the Danish player Dinsen and the Indian Katragadda.
As was to be expected, the Russians won all their games against the other players, though they met stiff opposition. Nyren had a drawn position against Bronstein after 40 moves but was outplayed in the ending. The draw between the Russian players was a bitterly contested struggle. Taimanov, a concert pianist by profession, gave short recitals to the other competitors, and Bronstein’s work at the British section of the Institute of Languages in Moscow was of great service, even if he appeared to speak our language rather more quickly than most British people!
Unfortunately the impossibility of issuing advance publicity meant that few spectators witnessed the rare spectacle of two Soviet masters playing in a tourney in Britain.
In their individual game Bronstein avoided a draw by repetition on the fifteenth move, and after intense study of the transition to the middle game obtained a superior position, but as the time limit approached he had to make twelve moves in three minutes. At this point Taimanov sacrificed a piece for an attack which gained him a draw by perpetual check, Bronstein having missed a winning line.
The text above has been lifted from the following site:
https://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/195204liverpool-viewer.html
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Andrea Botez, the prettiest of all female chess players, can be seen in the video below. What I would like to know is how he was able to concentrate on his moves?
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The 1925 Soviet cinematic attempt to further popularise chess can be found below (feat. Capablanca)
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You’ve got to give credit to the current world champion for the way he handled the question. It centres around Fischer, Kasparov, himself, and who was the best. Such a question is easily dismissed but Carlsen answers it in a rationally informed manner -and well done to him for doing so! Well worth a listen.
Mark
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On August 30th 2022, a meeting was held at Luton Chess Club, in the library of the University of Bedfordshire. Around 12 people came and it was agreed that the club would meet there each Tuesday. It is expected that more members will join the club once the university opens its doors to students for the coming academic year. Should you need further assistance, do not hesitate to ask.
Mark
Posted in Luton Chess Club | 2 Comments »
Welcome back to my blog after a hiatus of nearly a month. Once more I sit with the lights off and air con on, only this time there is a carefully placed humidifier below it for I have upped ship and sailed off to the desert. Although locations do, some things never change. Again I sit naked in front of my computer in the dark, yes it’s the middle of the night. There is a can of diet Pepsi to my side, which I have only just started. It is 12.41 am exactly, and having slept already, I am all yours. A fortnight ago I fell into the habit of going to bed at 6 pm and waking up in the middle of the night, this is no exception… .
Since the Olympiad, I have put chess to one side and just got on with my life. No games played on line. No on line events followed either. No chess at all for a month or so, whilst my glorious summer holiday ended and a working life resumed. I don’t know what constitutes downtime for I don’t know how much time must elapse, but we could say we are in one…well I just stopped thinking about chess per se. In terms of motivating myself to get back into our beautiful game, you could say ‘the chips are down’ with no allusions to jiggery-pokery in play, only the use of metaphor.
Today, a major event in the chess calendar begins:
All eyes will be on the world champion and the gathering of elite players he is pitted against. I won’t be following it for it starts past my bed time. But I do recommend you take a peek.
I will sign off now. I am in a land that fielded a team at the Olympiad which I could beat quite easily if I wanted to. Does this alter my interest in chess itself, I mean to be in a non-chess playing nation of sorts? Well it does but oh-so slightly. More importantly, life moves on and whether we like it or not we must readjust to changing circumstances and what they ask, or demand, of us. I am no longer on holiday and cannot watch chess tournaments unfolding at my leisure, as much as I may like to.
I will touch base again once I have thought of something else to say.
Mark. J. McCready 12.53 am, September 2nd 2022
Room 306, Helwa Apartments
Sakaka, Saudi Arabia
Posted in Life beyond the chess board, My own endeavours, On-line journal, Personal Interest & Experience | Leave a Comment »
The 44th Olympiad has come to a close in Chennai with a young team from Uzbekistan winning the gold medal. My home nation England faded towards the end and didn’t make it into the top ten.
Of the 188 teams registered to play, Laos finished in 177th place, which is better than what I feared last week when they were losing match after match.
So now that the spectacle is over, there is less to watch during the day. In any event it matters not as I have reached the point where I have to become fully focused on the upcoming weekend as my location will change and I have to say goodbye to my daughter for a while. Despite how well things go, life always has these changes it enforces on you from time to time, and just making yourself ready for them can be an ordeal in itself. Anyway, I hope you admired my rooting for Laos and all those odd little tales I threw in also. I’m prepared to admit that if you asked me which direction this website is going in, there are times where I don’t even know myself. I just know that I like writing… .
Anyway, well done to Laos for sticking at it, and let’s hope we see them again next time. Here’s a link to the final standings:
https://chess24.com/en/watch/live-tournaments/olympiad-chennai-2022-open/11/2/1
Mark. J. McCready, 12.14am, August 10th
The very quiet and dark room I know as home right now,
Laksi, Bangkok
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I will need to modify content and remove certain elements from my posts as I have put my finger on what it is. My social media habits are crossing over onto this site, meaning I think I am being listened to when I write. I am reaching out to people who aren’t there and that has to stop straight away. Content has, in places, become far too personal and I now know why. Okay, just reign things in a bit and should be fine.
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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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