I am white here. I play 13. Rh1 to free the knight from the pin, and more importantly, to place the rook on the file I want to open, rightly or wrongly…it’s not so often you play Rh1 in the opening huh?
Anyone can escape into sleep, we are all geniuses when we dream; the butcher’s the poet’s equal there.
Emile Cioran
Diggle lives on; that aside, when did Vauxhall gain their very own chess club? Answers on a postcard only please… .
I am not yet sure who wrote this yet sure it was either Sweby or Diggle. It ends with the adverbial clause ‘Luton had the move on the odd-numbered boards’. That is more like Diggle than Sweby but could be either, I suppose… .
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess | Tagged G.H.Diggle Luton | Leave a Comment »
The ideally lucid, hence ideally normal, man should have no recourse beyond the nothing that is in him.
Emile Cioran
In The Luton News dated:
An account of the Fleming Trophy appears. I am assuming it was written by Sweby rather than Diggle, given that the latter is referred to in the third person. You would assume that Diggle would also refrain from dropping the ‘h’ that his middle name begins with in written English and probably spoken English too for that matter. A strong Bedfordshire team won the day!
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess | Tagged Fleming Trophy Bedfordshire Trophy | Leave a Comment »
To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten.
Emile Cioran
Hello my good friends. Please help avert a crisis of epic proportions. Assiduous as they were, my inescapably meticulous efforts to catalogue all my videos so neatly have been hit hard by a solitary remaining avi.
I cannot tell whether the video I took was at a chess tournament or a heavy metal concert I went to long, long ago. That might sound incredulous, however, the sound is lost and the action does not appear…all that can be seen is the audience, nothing more.
I once went to a tournament with a huge gathering which, upon seeing the Berlin Defence unleashed, went wild, thus I cannot tell which folder this video belongs to.
Please assist here, is it chess or heavy metal?
Posted in My own warped humour | Leave a Comment »
Chess teaches foresight, by having to plan ahead; vigilance, by having to keep watch over the whole chess board; caution, by having to restrain ourselves from making hasty moves; and finally, we learn from chess the greatest maxim in life – that even when everything seems to be going badly for us we should not lose heart, but always hoping for a change for the better, steadfastly continue searching for the solutions to our problems.
Benjamin Franklin
Climbing to the upper echelons in our beautiful game after overcoming the abject disappointment of last year’s world championship match, has suddenly become so pleasantly surprising.
I found this game, which not only exemplifies the artifice of those greatest but also reminds us how advantageous we are to have such great commentary by Super GM Peter Svidler in our digitalized world.
Aronian’s thoughts can be found here:
Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »
Our contortions, visible or secret, we communicate to the planet; already it trembles even as we do, it suffers the contagion of our crises and, as this grand malaise spreads, it vomits us forth, cursing us the while.
Emile Cioran
The cursed Luton chess club has found a new venue within Luton itself !!?? It can now be found in Wardown Bowling Club. It’s the best location had for some time in what is. perhaps, the prettiest part of Luton.
Mr. P. Montgomery in action.
Wardown Park
The bowling club
It can be found in Wardown Park itself by the bowling green as the pictures above suggest. It’s a friendly clubhouse with a bar itself and members who are welcoming. As you know British people are the best in the world at bowls but the Kazhaks are second to none, as the video below shows.
At the new venue, Luton Chess Club meets every Thursday. Don’t turn up tipsy like I just did.
Posted in Bedfordshire Chess | Tagged Luton Chess Club | Leave a Comment »
S=Stein
G. Sigurjonsson – L. Stein Reykjavik 1972 19. Bxh2 is okay for black, easy to wee why, but if white plays 19. Kxh2 how does he win? The game is well worth looking at.
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1132552
T=Tolush
A. Tolush v I. Boleslavsky 1945 White plays 17. Qxd4, Tolush, noted for his cavalier approach, being a soldier and all, well it kinda backfired in the moves to come, I don’t know about you but when I come out of the opening with white and my king is on g4…well… .
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1270161
ST = Suicidal Tendencies
Posted in Life beyond the chess board | Leave a Comment »
Facebook tells me that I posted this a few years back today.
Black is almost lost and plays Bf4. But how should white proceed?
Courtesy of MemoryChess, this popped up too:
Who’s ahead here, white or black?
Posted in Personal Interest & Experience | Leave a Comment »
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A side note on how to read old Tom Sweby's columns
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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.
Gallery
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- I’m either 10 or 11 here
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- 1982, myself versus Brian from Sunderland.
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- At the Thai Junior chess championships. My daughter of course.
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- Thai Junior Championships
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- Around 2011
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- 2011
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