Graves of Famous Chess Players: No 5 in a series of ......?

Having been stuck in Kensal Green cemetery for what seems like an age, it is now time to take a tube ride - New Vaudeville Band, anyone? West Brompton is ten long stations from Kensal Green change at Paddington (and if necessary  Earl's Court, too!), where we find another of London's "Magnificent Seven" High Victorian cemeteries.

Brompton Cemetery is unique in being managed by The Royal Parks. This is a truly spectacular architectural site, with many listed monuments, while the cemetery as a whole is listed Grade II*. The colonnaded central section is truly awesome. Unlike Kensal Green, Brompton is quite a busy place, as not only is it more central and accessible, but it operates as a short cut for pedestrians and cyclists between Chelsea and Earl's Court. And, according to Wikipedia, because "it is a popular cruising ground for gay men." Now they tell me! Should I be offended that no one cruised me on my visit?

But why are we here, you ask? Well, we have come to visit the grave of the great Polish chess master Johannes Zukertort (1842-88), a man who so nearly ascended to the very summit of chess, but lost the first official World Championship match to Wilhelm Steinitz in 1886. The match was something of a road-show, with the first five matches in New York, then four in St Louis and the last 11 in New Orleans - poignant, as that city's greatest chess son, Paul Morphy, had died there in 1884.

Zukertort had convincingly won the great London tournament of 1883 with the massive score of 22/26 in the 14 player double round event, ahead of Steinitz (19), Blackburne (16.5) and Chigorin (16), so his right to a shot at the title (which Steinitz could reasonably, but unofficially, claim since his match victory over Adolf Anderssen in 1866) was indisputable. History was so very nearly different, as Zukertort led 4-1 after the New York session, despite losing the first game. Unfortunately, his poor health - which ultimately saw him killed by a heart attack just two years later - took its toll under the stress and strains, and while still level after the St Louis games (by which time there had only been one draw!) he collapsed in New Orleans and ended up a 10-5 loser with five draws.

Zukertort's grave has probably been the most celebrated of all chess players' over the last couple of years. GM Stuart Conquest led a campaign to install a new headstone after discovering (in 2011) that the original had fallen into disrepair and had even become buried. A joint effort between the chess community and the UK Polish community (the Polish Embassy donated £2,000!) ended successfully with the rededication of the grave on June 26, 2012. You can read more about the ceremony, watch Stuart Conquest's speech, and see pictures of the pristine new headstone, at my good friend John Saunders' chess blog here.

When I arrived at Brompton almost exactly two years later, though, there was quite a transformation. Luckily I had some idea of where the grave was located - in the shadow of one of the stands at Stamford Bridge - since while the headstone was still looking pristine, it had almost vanished into the vegetation.

Taking my life in my hands, I even ventured into the undergrowth to bring you a close up or two.

So there we have it. The cycle of neglect that seems to afflict most graves, judging from my observations of two major cemeteries, has already recommenced. One good reason to opt for cremation. Another being you won't be pursued in death by morbid grave hunters like me!

And so to our illustrative game. Not much debate here. A true immortal game.

It's Deja Vu All Over Again

Perennial league champions Olton came to Kenilworth on Monday, defending a perfect Played 4/Won 4 record this season against the reigning champions with their perfect Played 2/Lost 2 record. By the end of the evening, both records were securely intact, as player availability, or rather the lack of it, unfortunately meant we were staring defeat in the face before a ball was kicked.

Poor old Phil, once again valiantly answering the call to arms, was both massively out-graded and, not surprisingly, the first to finish on Board 4. Facing a Leningrad Dutch, he played a desperately passive response and was worse out of the opening almost immediately. At some point he dropped the exchange and in next to no time Mark Cundy had chalked up the first point for Olton.

David O'Neill, making his A team debut on Board 3, was the next to finish. Meeting Richard Smith's Catalan type set up with an early d5/c5 Tarrasch set-up, he got a reasonable position but then became overly nervous about his IQP and co-operatively lined his rooks up on e6 and c8 so that the white bishop could go from g2 to h3 to win the exchange, and soon after the game. Are you spotting a theme here?

On Board 2, Carl was engaged in a tough fight with Alan Lloyd and seemed to be pressing throughout. He reached a complex minor piece ending where he may have had a slight edge. But by the time control it was nothing significant and a draw was agreed.

My game against Phil Holt on Board 1 saw my intense preparation wasted as early as move 5, but in fact I got a pleasant position from the opening anyway, as Phil uncharacteristically resisted playing an e5-e6 pawn sac for three successive moves. We reached an ending where I had bishop against knight with pawns on both sides of the board and Phil having one set of doubled pawns. Advantage to me, you'd think, but I never came remotely close to doing anything with it and the position was dead equal when we agreed the draw to leave Olton 3-1 winners.

So while our visitors went home as red-hot favourites to regain the league title, a relegation struggle looks on the cards for the A team.

How The Mighty Have Fallen!

Two games into the defence of our first league title in 26 years and its still like watching Norway in the Eurovision Song Contest for the A Team this season - Kenilworth, Nil Points! Not only did we allow Banbury B to follow in their A team's footsteps and record a 2.5-1.5 win, but it couldn't even be classed as a big surprise, as they managed to field a team that out-graded us (and their own A team)!

In Paul's absence, I had a really interesting game against Fide Master James Jackson on Board 1, after he uncorked a major opening surprise by leaving a knight undefended on d4. I resisted temptation for one move and then took it, and even though I had to give up my rook on a8, I got a very playable position with a pawn for the exchange. After I removed his dark square bishop I may even have been very slightly better, but in severe time trouble I started to go wrong and despite some inaccuracies by White which should have left me with a dead equal position (according to Fritz) as late as move 46, I had neither the brain power nor the time to find the right moves, and was eventually overrun by 2 connected queen side pawns - about ten seconds before I would have lost on time.

Joshua had a typically crazy game on Board 2 against Paul Rowan which eventually yielded our only win of the night. In a mutant KIA type position he feinted to sacrifice on the king side, and then rushed over to the queen side to grab a pawn at the cost of his centre. Black had a big phalanx of pawns but neglected to push them at the crucial moment and when he went passive to stop Joshua's passed a pawn, they fell off.

Carl played a solid - some (not me I hasten to add) might say boring - game on Board 3 to draw against Dan Rowan with 2 rooks and a bishop against his opponent's two rooks and a knight. There were divergent opinion's afterwards as to whether the bishop was better or worse than the knight, which probably means that a draw was a fair result.

So once again Phil found himself occupying centre stage with the match outcome in his hands. After various vicissitudes, a seemingly level rook and knight ending was reached, but then all hell broke loose. Nick Martin went horribly wrong and lost a queening race by several tempi. But Unfortunately, Phil went horribly wrong by having less time, and despite being a queen up in the final position, he lost on time while his opponent had the grand total of 3 seconds on his clock. A very unlucky break for us and for Phil, but in a perverse sort of way it is becoming quite exciting to see the new ways Phil keeps coming up with to lose winning positions.

I don't want to be unduly alarmist after just 2 matches, but history does sound a word of warning for us. In 1937-38 Manchester City got relegated from Division 1, the season after winning the title. Could lightning strike twice, I wonder?

Mixed fortunes

After a fairly disastrous start to the season both for myself and the teams I have managed to drag down with me, the B team headed to Solihull last night with me in particular in need of a good result. The pressure was also raised by the fact that, amongst the 21 games of league chess taking place in the room, were two with average player grades over 200. Clearly, this was not an evening for my usual level of incompetence.

We were also welcoming a new player to competitive chess for Kenilworth, David O’Neill, who we appear to have successfully poached from Warwick University, and his game was in fact the first to finish. After a fairly normal London System opening (1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. Bf4 c5 4. e3 Nc6 5. c3 Qb6 6. Qb3 c4) white went badly wrong, playing Qc2 and allowing the very nice tactical shot Bf5! Objectively, the nest move after this is probably to retreat the queen to c1 and accept being slightly worse, this isn’t something easy to do with white on move 7, so David’s opponent plunged in with 8. Qxf5 Qxb2. Black soon emerged the exchange and a pawn up without white having anything like adequate compensation. Some imprecise play from David allowed his opponent to generate some counterplay with the two bishops, but after the game transformed to a mating race, the superiority of the rook became clear and the win was wrapped up before the time control.

Not long after I managed to scrape to a win in my game as well, my first of the season. Since this game is slightly less awful than my previous efforts this season, I think it might just about be acceptable to share it for the contempt of the group:

Now 2-0 up and feeling considerably better, I went to check on the other boards, and was pleasantly surprised. Dave had played the standard IQP position he seems to commonly get with white, and although he was slightly worse in the endgame (2 bishops vs. bishop and knight) his knight was on an excellent square and a draw seemed the most likely result. Phil had also recovered magnificently from a very dodgy opening, where he had played e6 and g6, then allowed a white bishop to get to h6, and both white knights to point at the f6 square. Somehow, he managed to tactically squirm out of the bind, and was now a pawn up in a pure queen endgame where, as the books will tell you, he was playing for two results.

Unfortunately, they turned out to be the wrong two. His opponent was trying to bring his queen around the back to force a perpetual check, and Phil carefully moved his king to avoid all the perpetual threats. He did indeed succeed in avoiding any possible perpetual checks, but at the cost of creating a very elegant helpmate in 3, which his opponent duly played for an unexpected and rather unpleasant turnaround. By this point Dave was now playing a same coloured bishop endgame with equal numbers of pawns, but all his pawns had managed to become fixed on the wrong colour. Probably a draw with accurate defence, but a horrible position to play when short on time, and he was unfortunately not able to hold the draw.

Final score: Solihull B 2 – Kenilworth B 2

A Team falls at the first fence!

Banbury A 2.5 - Kenilworth A 1.5

Any thoughts that retaining the league title would be easy for our heroic superstars, were summarily dispelled at Banbury on Tuesday evening, when we came a cropper in our first match of the season. The omens were not good, as the last time that our foursome had turned out for the A team together, a truly calamitous defeat had occurred at Stratford last season.

But as big a turn up as the match result itself was, there was an even more earth shattering occurrence, as after scoring 17 wins and 3 draws in his first 20 games for the club, Joshua lost to Carl Portman. After a sensible opening the game went rather crazy after Joshua completely opened up the kingside. He won a piece for 2 pawns, but Black seemed to have oodles of compensation - especially as, and I'm sure he won't mind me saying this, neither White's queen's bishop nor queen's rook made a single move in the entire game. A rather brutal checkmate finished proceedings. But I understand that many wise chess masters say that this is what can happen if you don't develop your pieces.

Phil was the next to succumb, after a rather passive looking game against an English/Reti type set up. The white queenside pawns advanced, a knight or two jumped in and a black pawn fell off. And then it got worse. Or so I'm told, as I didn't really see much of the action. Anyway, it was enough to put Banbury A 2-0 up.

At this stage things looked really bleak, as neither Paul nor I were obviously winning - but clearly we had to try. In a rook and minor piece ending, I was trying to make use of a good knight against a bad bishop, but I missed the chance to swap the minor pieces off and cut the White king off on the a file. Instead the bad White bishop suddenly became good and I was in a bit of trouble. White might have had a winning position for one move, but he went the wrong way with his king and even though I had to give up my knight for 2 pawns, White was left with a bishop and the wrong rook's pawn, so it was a draw.

In all the excitement I missed the climax of Paul's game. He had been pressing for much of the game, but a Black knight apparently stranded on a4 actually caused him a lot of difficulties in co-ordinating his pieces. An ending arose and, with both players inevitably in horrendous time trouble Paul seemingly sacced a piece unsoundly but Black didn't see the tactical refutation and White emerged with a pair of mighty connected passed pawns which won the day. Unfortunately, too little and too late, and we were sent homeward to think again.

A new dawn

And so it came to pass that a new season was upon us, and we travelled off to the thriving metropolis of Leamington for our first game. A combination of two matches in an evening, various excuses for absence (both plausible and implausible), and a team captain off playing for some other team, left me back in interim charge of the B team, and saddled with a very motley crew of chess players, few of whom will have been expected to have been playing this match before the start of the season. Nevertheless, despite these handicaps, some almost reasonable chess was played, with the exception of course of my game.

Joshua Pink vs. Steve Burnell

Having decided that the openings I played last year were far too sensible, I decided to rectify this, with the game beginning 1. e4 c6 2. Nc3 d5 3. Qf3 dxe4 4. Nxe4 Nd7 5.Nh3. having successfully misplaced all three of my developed pieces, I was pleasantly surprised as I developed a healthy kingside attack during the game, the particular highlight being my h3 knight re-routing itself via f2 and g4, thereby almost justifying my placement of it in the opening. Despite not being able to find a mate, I was still very satisfied to enter a bishop endgame a pawn up, and carefully calculated a winning king and pawn endgame I could force a transposition to. However, unfortunately, due to my inability to count above 7, it turned out my winning endgame was in fact a dead draw, and by the time I realised it was too late to back out. The only thing that made me feel a little better was that on my last move of the game, I had a choice to force a draw by promoting a pawn to either a queen, rook or bishop, not something you can usually manage. Thankfully, my hand didn’t reach out for the knight, and a draw was agreed.

Ben Egid vs. Carl Pickering

During the game, this seemed like a very sensibly played Reti opening by both sides, with a relatively early draw agreement being a fair reflection on the balance of play. It was only when I briefly listened in to the post-mortem afterwards that it became clear that Carl’s opponents plans, if the game had continued, would have almost immediately wrecked his own position and give n us an advantage. Still, there was no way to know at the time this would have been the case, and an early draw with black can hardly be considered a bad result in a team match.

Dave Shurrock vs. Ben Graff

There was clearly a difference of opinion over this game. I think that Dave was much better from very early on in an advance French, and deservedly converted that advantage through the middle-game. It transpired later that both players thought the game was more or less even, and it was just a particular inaccuracy on one move by black that led to the loss. Still, since I thought white was better, and white won the game, I am going to blindly stick to my original idea, no matter what evidence is produced to the contrary. After all, it is what all good chess players do (I think).

Alejandro Bonillo vs. John Harris

Anyone who knows John's games from the Coventry league will be aware they follow a very traditional pattern. He will obtain a crushing position out of the opening, this advantage will slowly dissipate over time, until finally in time trouble he will blunder and lose the game. For a long time I feared the same would happen here, as after a typical exchange sacrifice on c3 in a Sicilian Dragon, more and more piece exchanges kept occurring, with each brining white slightly closer to just being the exchange up in an endgame. However, in mutual time pressure just before the first time control, John found a very elegant mate with a rook and knight trapping the king in the corner, and secured the victory his early play had merited.

Final score: Leamington 1 – Kenilworth 3

A nice convincing start to the season though, given only one of the people playing will be a regular player for the team over the rest of the season, perhaps not too much should be read into the overall result.

Graves of Famous Chess Players: No 4 in a series of ......?

Well, here we are again and amazingly we still find ourselves in the romantic, semi-wilderness of London's High Victorian Kensal Green cemetery. Not far from the neglected grave of Charles de La Bourdonnais, unofficial world champion for at least 16 years (1824-40), stands an altogether grander and more imposing monument to England's only claimant to such a title. At plot 24419/SQ71/RS can be found the last resting place of the chess titan who was Howard Staunton (1810-74).


Thanks to the efforts of the Staunton Society, a new memorial and headstone were created in the 1990s, although these are already showing some ravages of time.

From the time he beat the Frenchman Charles de Saint-Amant in Paris in 1843, until he lost to Adolf Anderssen in London (1851), Staunton was recognised as the world's best player. According to Bobby Fischer: "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day... In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold dear, and thus - with Steinitz - must be considered the first modern player."

Praise indeed, but there is more. Of course, every chess player around the world knows Staunton because of the eponymous design of chess pieces we all use - and will till the end of time, I dare suggest - but he also organised (and played in) the world's first ever international tournament (London 1851); wrote a best selling book (The Chess Player's Handbook); and wrote a highly influential chess column in the Illustrated London News for nearly 30 years. But despite all this, he has hardly left us a single famous game. And his posthumous reputation was forever tainted by the controversy of his "avoidance" of a match with Paul Morphy. The game below is no Immortal Game, or Evergreen Partie, but it does feature a positional exchange sacrifice (at a time when such things were hardly known) followed later by some nice tactical flourishes to produce a winning endgame. And it was played by an English "world champion". We aren't going to have one of those again for a long, long time.

4NCL rapidplay tournament

The 4NCL team rapidplay tournament is taking place in Daventry on Saturday 4th October. Full details are available below:

4NCL rapidplay

In brief, teams of up to 6 (4 people play in each round), starts at 13:00 with 7 rounds at a time control of 10 minutes + 10 seconds/move. There is no requirement for people to play in the main 4NCL to be eligible, and the entry fee is only £30 for the whole team.

If anyone is interested in playing please do let me know and I will see if we have enough to get a team together.

Joshua

P.S. As a side note, there is also an individual rapidplay competition taking place on the Sunday 5th, which is free to enter if you are also playing the team event. However, there is no obligation to play in this as well so I will leave that up to individuals to decide. If for some reason you wish to play in the individual but not the team event, that costs £15.

Leamington League Jamboree

As the start of the new season draws inexorably nearer, a message from Jason Madden at Leamington:

To all LDCL chess players
The League Jamboree takes place on Tuesday 2nd September at the Leamington chess club venue(Home Guard club Portland street).
The Jamboree (traditionally the Leagues curtain raiser) is an easy going competition designed to blow the summer cobwebs off.
Teams of two compete in two pools of strength over four or five rounds to determine the winners. Each team of two must be from the same club and have a combined grade of no more than 280.
Entries to J. Madden
Tel. 01926650115
Mob. 07432660335
Email maddjase@hotmail.com

Graves of Famous Chess Players - No 3 in a Series of .......?

What started off as a throwaway posting of me in a snazzy holiday shirt, has developed into a bit of a compulsion for me now, and I'm still not entirely sure where this series is going to stop!

It's one of chess history's strange twists, but two figures who are forever inextricably linked by their momentous (unofficial) world championship match(es), are also inextricably linked in death. Louis Charles de la Bourdonnais (1795-1840) was the victor in the epic struggle against Alexander McDonnell, who featured in the previous instalment of this series. By one of life's (death's?) twists of fate, the two men are buried only a stone's throw apart in Kensal Green Cemetery, in North West London.

La Bourdonnais' grave (2796/SQ 108/RS) lies at the far side of Kensal Green, near the wall that borders the Grand Union Canal. The area is largely overgrown and untended, with most of the headstones now anonymous, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that la Bourdonnais' is still clearly identifiable, in the shade of a large tree.

La Bourdonnais is widely judged to have been the strongest player in the world from at least 1824, when he came to London and gave the locals a good pasting, until his death. In 1821 he had also beaten his own teacher Alexandre Deschapelles, and so his reign as "world champion" may have even extended to 19 years.

No remembrance of la Bourdonnais could pass without presentation of his most famous game - possibly the first recorded chess immortal. The final position is truly a thing of beauty.