I was about to post this in the Moves I Could Never Play category until I realized I saw which black’s best move was, as keeping the opposition looks paramount to me, so I guessed it correctly. More memories from facebook which have been long since forgotten. Thotsaporn, who comments, is rated aeound 2050 usually. I once saw him beat an Israeli IM with his pet line in the French Winwer once (Advance, Bogoljubov variation).
M J M
Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »
How good are you at finding mate in 30? Alas, I found out from fb today that I am not very good at all. Of course I jest but the winning move from one of Capablanca’s games I also could not find without even knowing it leads to mate in 30, well according to Stockfish 18 it does. Here’s what I posted on facebook 15 years ago. I have to say, Kg6, as my friend Khalid suggested, looks like the right move to me now but I am wrong. I must have seen the answer at the time to know what the correct move is. Endgames are clearly not my forte.
Lichess confirms that mate in 30 is afoot, which I can’t see.
M J M
Posted in Moves I could never play | Leave a Comment »
In re-reading the post Our Clash of Future Champions, which can be found: here. I noticed that in Part 4 -The dimly lit view of our past, I argued that chess clubs were widespread accross Bedfordshire in the early 20th century. I do believe I have found the building where one of them met and played.
The Shelter is a reading room and can be seen below.
More information about the building can be found here: The Shelter
M J M
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1900-1920 | Leave a Comment »
Click on it for the full image.
Disclaimer This website is not responsible for any eye strain caused by viewing any of its posts!
M J M
Posted in Chess | Leave a Comment »
Esteemed chess fan and snooker world champion Steve Davis used to say that playing snooker was a sign of a mispent youth. Is constantly watching videos about chess a sign of a mispent adulthood? If so, guilty as charged but anyway there is a rapidly increasing number of themed compilation videos on chess appearing on youtube these days. On the whole they are quite watchable but some are obviously better than others. The two embedded below have well chosen content methinks for they show chess players in a light they are not normally portrayed in. Both definitely worth a watch -you will see that the best in the world are indeed very human.
M J M
Posted in Documentaries | Leave a Comment »
Sans Voir is the French term for Blindfold Chess btw. Here old masters Euwe and Botvinnik play a televised game of blindfold chess. It’s for Dutch tv, so its in Dutch but as you most surely know, you can use subtitles and change them to English with youtube. I don’t know who that is moving the pieces on the demonstration board, the commentary provided is there for the benefit of the audience, most obviously.
M J M
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Grace with her chess set plays moi.
M J M
Posted in My daughter | Leave a Comment »
What to do on a hot summer’s day just before I fly off to central Asia for a while? It was a good time to meet up with fellow Bedfordshire chess player FM Gary Kenworthy in Leighton Buzzard and enjoy the day with him -we arranged to meet at The Swan Hotel.
To get there, I had to take the X2 bus from Luton. It went along a bus lane on the edge of town, up through Dunstable and the Bedfordshire countryside beyond it; the short grass in the fields all bright yellow in the sun, due to no rain this long hot summer. The journey was pleasant, as England looks best in the summer sun, and a trip down memory lane soon unfolded as I wondered when the last time I went to Leighton Buzzard was, a place I have only ever been to to play chess. Even though I began tournament chess there in 1988, and played there dozens of times after, it was difficult to find my bearings when I got off the bus. I soon realized that the last time I came was 1997 and I could only vaguely remember the town centre but found the hotel soon enough thankfully.
The hotel had a wetherspoons bar in it. With it being not yet 11 am upon arrival, I ordered a vegetarian breakfast, and being British, a cup of tea, of which there were free refills for, so I could have as many cups as I liked -then Gary soon arrived carrying bags with copies of gamescores. We have been chatting online for a fair few years now, and so it was good to finally meet and catch up. A solid 3 hours and a bit more of chatting about chess, with a few other things thrown in was spent. Gary is very knowlegeable about the British chess scene -much more so than I-and so there was lots to talk about it in times present and past but mostly past. He has had many positions of seniority over the years and has come to know most on the English playing ciruit, so there were many exchanges of stories that went on. He also brought along a publication of his victory over GM Adams, which I had been asking for. (please see below). He’s a very pleasant gentleman, we have many mutual friends, and a good time was had all in all.
FM Gary’s win against GM Adams
No GM has won the British Chess Championships more than GM Adams (9 times, 87 games unbeaten) and no British player has had a higher rating than him (2761ELO), and no British player has come closer to becoming world champion than him (he came very close to beating Kasimdzhanov in the final in 2004) which makes him the best if you ask me. Gary tells me he was rated 213 (2298ELO) and GM Adams was rated 263 (2673 ELO) when they played in 92. The game was a quickplay, which meant they only had 30 mins each.
I have typed out the game below. Don’t forget you can always go to Lichess analysis board if you want to run it through an engine. https://lichess.org/analysis. Just cut and paste what’s below and insert, its in raw pgn form and very easy to do.
The game
G. Kenworthy v M.Adams British Quickplay Championships 1992, Hammersmith, London (Time control 30 mins)
e4 e5 Nf3 Nc6 d4 exd4 c3 dxc3 Bc4 d6 Nxc3 Nf6 Qb3 Qd7 Ng5 Ne5 Bb5 c6 f4 cxb5 fxe5 dxe5 Be3 Bd6 Rd1 0-0 Nxb5 h6 Rxd6 Qg4 Rxf6 gxf6 Nf3 Qxe4 Nd6 Qb1 Qd1 Qxd1 Kxd1 Be6 Ke2 Rfd8 Ne4 f5 Nc3 f4 Bc5 Re8 g3 e4 Nd4 Bg4+ Ke1 b6 Ba3 f3 Nd5 Kg7 Ne3 Rad8 b3 Bd7 Bb2 Kg6 Kf2 Re5 g4 Ra5 a4 Be6 h4 Bxb3 h5 Kh7 Nxb3 Rxa4 Bf6 Rd6 Be5 Ra2+ Kg3 Re6 Bf4 a5 Nd4 Re8 Ndf5 a4 Nxh6 a3 Nxf7 Rb2 g5 a2 g6 Kg7 Ra1 Re2 Bg5 Re6 Kf4 f2 Kf5 Rxe3 h6 Kf8 Bxe3 Ke7 Bxf2 Rf6+ Kxe4 Rxf2 h7 Rh2 h8=Q Rxh8 Nxh8 Kf6 Rxa2 Kg7 Kf5 1-0
N.B I do not have access to a scanner presently and will upload clearer images in due course, most likely very soon.
What should we in Bedfordshire make of this game?
Was Gary the first from Bedfordshire to beat GM Adams? Not so. GM Plaskett informs me that he once beat him in a blitz game in Leeds in 1986, when GM Adams was only 14, untitled and had a rating of 2260, a bit more than 200 points lower than GM James Plaskett at that time. However, he pointed out that his record against him after that was not so good and no other victories were had. The tournament in which FM Kenworthy beat GM Adams had greater prestige and was played when GM Adams had already become a GM and had a much higher rating, making him a much tougher opponent. That tournament should not be confused with the quickplay held at the British Championship every year, which is an informal affair and a seperate entity. Some info about the actual tournament played in and the list of winners over the years can be found here. https://www.ecfresource.co.uk/results/. It should be noted that Gary has informed me that the results for 1992 are not entirely accurate and that it was a 4-way tie for first place and not a 2-way tie. He also informs me that he finished 0.5 points behind the leaders and won prize money for that. To have beaten England’s greatest ever player is something to be proud of, and only GM James Plaskett and FM Kenworthy from Bedfordshire have done it but since Adams was much higher rated and more developed as a professional when he lost to Gary, more credit should go to him I think. Also, there’s quite a big difference between having 5 and having 30 minutes on the clock. I did ask Gary whether he or GM Adams ran short of time in the game and he informed me that neither he nor GM Adams did. Perhaps this stands as the greatest victory ever claimed by a Bedfordshire chess player. It does need to be remembered, however, that both GM James Plaskett’s victory and FM Gary Kenworthy’s victory were both with shorter time controls and not gained in classical chess.
M J M
Luton
Posted in History of Bedfordshire Chess from 1980-2000 | Leave a Comment »
I had a very pleasant evening in the town centre last night and am happy I made a flying visit to the chess club. Tomorrow the chess continues. I will be taking the bus to Leighton Buzzard to meet FM Gary Kenworthy at The Swan Hotel. He will be bringing along scoreesheets to some of his greatest games, including his win against GM Adams, who I did not do very well against last month. The plan is to catch up as well and talk about mutual friends, of which we have many. Should be a pleasant day but it does seem that on those rare opportunities when I do come home, chess does so often take centre stage but then what else is there to do? Should I rename this post to ‘Confessions of a chess addict’.
M J M
Posted in Bedfordshire Chess, My own endeavours | Leave a Comment »
I found this on facebook in the memories section, Grace and her chessboard.
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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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