Graves of Famous Chess Players: No 7 in a Series of 7

Finally, we reach the end of the road on this series (for the time being!), and our last visit takes us back to Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery in South London. Not far from the grave of Samuel Tinsley (see the previous post in this series) lies the last resting place of an altogether more eminent British chess player - one of the greatest of all, in fact - Joseph Henry Blackburne (1841-1924).

The grave, shared with his third wife Mary who predeceased him by two years, is sadly neglected and untended, with the headstone now horizontal. Once again I was totally indebted to Martin Smith's excellent research on the Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog for locating the grave so easily. His fascinating article on both Blackburne and Tinsley is well worth a read here.

Born on the same day as me, just the small matter of 113 years earlier, Blackburne was amongst the world's top five players for the best part of 20 years, between about 1870 and 1890, while according to the Chessmetrics website, he reached a peak rank of number 2 on no less than 77 monthly lists between September 1873 and February 1889. His peak Chessmetrics' rating was 2748 in August 1886, when he was very nearly 45 years old, while his peak performance of 2785 was achieved the following year at Frankfurt, where he scored 10/12 against average opposition of 2613 strength. Even as late as his early 60s, he was still amongst the 20 best players in the world, so there is no doubt that we are talking about a genuine chess superstar.

Famously nicknamed "The Black Death", he notched up major tournament victories at Vienna (1873, equal with Steinitz who beat him in a play-off); London (1876, ahead of Zukertort); and Berlin (1881, no less than 3 points clear of Zukertort). He was also victorious in matches against Gunsberg and Zukertort (though he also lost matches to each of these players) and he was well beaten on the two occasions (1862 and 1876) he played matches against Steinitz.

His longevity gives us all hope. He won a brilliancy prize (against Nimzowitsch) in 1914 (at the age of 72), and in the same year tied for first in the British Championship, but could not contest the play-off due to ill health. He was still reportedly giving simultaneous displays at the age of 78. He died of a heart attack on September 1, 1924, at the age of 82.

And so to a game. It can't get much better than beating the reigning World Champion with the black pieces in your home country, so there could really only be one choice.

So this is what winning feels like

That statement could equally well apply to either myself or the team, since it seems such a long time since either of those things happened; let alone both together. We can only give official thanks to the Banbury team for being slightly more incompetent than us. Brief details:

Two of the games finished quite quickly, with one win apiece. Mike Donnelly on board 4, continuing his comeback to proper chess, after a few years masquerading as a correspondence IM, won on the white side of a Be7 Benoni, having spent about 10 moves successfully resisting the temptation to play an e5 pawn sacrifice I was incorrectly willing him to. Unfortunately, this success was cancelled out by Carl’s rather surprising loss on board 3 where, after seemingly equalising in a Caro-Kann, he allowed his opponent to advance a pawn to f6 where it created horrible mating threats on g7. These were just about fended off but only through an ultimately decisive loss of material.

Mark meanwhile, having unusually decided not to sacrifice the exchange, was instead a pawn down with a hopelessly passive and lost position (-3.5 according to the computer). However, as he mentioned afterwards, this is well within the “drawing zone” for games he has been playing recently, and only a few moves later the material was blundered back and a draw agreed. This left the match poised at 1.5-1.5 with my game the last to finish, something that happened a number of times last season when I was, admittedly, in much better form than I am now. However, much to my surprise and no doubt my teammates as well, despite launching a rather dubious attack, I was somehow able scrape out a win in my game.

Final score: Kenilworth 2.5 – 1.5 Banbury

You may notice this is a slightly shorter match report than usual. There is a good reason for this, namely that I have another, more important matter to mention. It appears that a Mr S. Blaiklock has been seen playing for the Kenilworth D team for the first time. If anyone knows who let him out of his cell in the vaults of The Royal Oak and released him into the real world could let me know, it would be much appreciated.

End of the dream

Sadly, last night has confirmed what I think we all realistically knew anyway, that we were not going to be retaining any of the trophies won last year. With Olton still romping away at the top of the league table, the cup was our last chance of silverware for the season. Sadly, with both teams somewhat depleted from full strength, Banbury still had more than enough to cruise their way into the final.

The first two games to finish were both interesting in different ways. Phil, after playing a handful of standard Queen's gambit moves with white, was momentarily possessed by the spirit of Alexei Shirov, and lashed out with an unprovoked g4. Unfortunately, rather than follow up with a traditional Shirov attack, he then proceeded to play Bf1-e2-f3, thus completing one of the strangest fianchettos of all time. A mass of pawn exchanges in the centre seemed to herald oncoming equality, when unfortunately a forcing sequence of moves ended up with Phil’s queen skewered to a rook, and the exchange disappeared. Any hopes of a stiff defence ended when I noticed that, at this point, Phil’s pawns were on a4, b2, d4, f2, g4 and h2, providing perhaps six more targets than you can afford to playing against a rook.

This loss was, however, cancelled out by Carl’s excellent tactical win on the black side of an exchange Caro-Kann. As both sides set up for the standard kingside attacks that can result from this line, an unexpected rook lift by Carl cut his opponents queen off from defending the king. Rather than face a dangerous attack, he gave up the queen for a rook and a piece but, with Carl’s attack still on-going, I chalked this up as an easy win. Returning later, I was surprised to find not only was the game still going, but his opponent had managed to confuse matters, as there were now pieces randomly strewn across the board with no co-ordination for either player. Fortunately, the power of the queen in such open positions eventually tolled, and the match was level.

By this point both Roy and myself were somewhat concerned by Mark’s position on board 1, as for the umpteenth time this season he appeared to be the exchange down with not obviously sufficient compensation. A loss on board 1 would have left us needing to win 3-2 to take the match, so both Roy and myself turned down draws (an offer in my case, a forced repetition in his) to try and win. Unfortunately, despite two nice positions (computer confirmed) we both managed to over press as time ran short, and managed to collapse to losses.

By this point of course, due to his opponent’s faffing around, both on the board and on the clock, Mark had managed to advance a pawn, force his opponent to give up a rook for it, and was trying to win the win an endgame of rook and bishop versus rook. Whilst this is normally a theoretical draw, it is very difficult to hold with one minute on your clock. Despite some slightly shady antics by his opponent (which this blog is of course too polite to report in detail), Mark sealed the win with a check which was very nearly mate.

All this of course meant that if Roy and myself had only taken the earlier draws, we would have been in the final. One way to view this would be that it is our fault for not having sufficient faith in our teammate. I however, wishing as ever to pass the buck, prefer to think that if Mark is going to keep winning these games, it would be nice if he managed to look like that was a possibility at a slightly earlier juncture.

Final score: Kenilworth 2 – 3 Banbury

New grades

January 2015 grades are now available:

Kenilworth grades

I couldn't see any particularly major changes, with the most obvious probably being Phil's slow climb back towards the grade he really should have been on all along. There is usually very heavy traffic on the site the first couple of days, so don't be surprised if you don't find it that easy to view them at the moment.

A Christmas present from Daventry

A slightly delayed report from the final Kenilworth A game of 2014. However, I believe there are more than enough ridiculous events to report from the match to make it worth the wait. Unusually for one of our matches, on this occasion these events occurred on the top two boards whilst Phil and myself, the standard culprits, produced almost sensible looking games of chess. It also gives me a chance to get my own back on Paul and Mark, who have spent far too much of this season mocking my own continuous blundering of pieces.

To get the less interesting games out of the way first, Phil on board four was black and played one of his standard openings, namely 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nc6. As far as I am aware this sequence of moves does not have a name, but whether we call it a reversed Verisov or an accelerated Chigorin, the main fact is it’s not very good, as black gives up any obvious way to put pressure on the centre. I meanwhile, had played a much more sensible line as white on board 3, namely 1. d3 c5 2. f4. I think we can all agree this is much closer to how chess should be played. Regardless of the merits of these individual openings, neither of our opponents appeared to be in particularly good form, both giving away material early and soon falling into mating attacks, leaving us 2-0 up very early in the match.

Feeling confident at this point, I strolled over to glance at Paul’s game. I noticed what appeared to be a fairly level position in his game against Chris Ross. I was however, somewhat less thrilled when I realised he had managed to leave himself with only 30 seconds left for 12 moves. Impressively, and probably due to his extensive experience of ridiculous time pressure, Paul managed to make the moves in time but, probably unsurprisingly, he passed the time control with a completely lost position. Specifically, Chris had three connected past pawns on the queenside versus Paul’s one on the kingside which not only couldn’t move, but could be taken by either a knight or king if it ever did.

I was about to turn away in disinterest and disgust when I noticed something interesting. Due to Chris’s visual impairment they were playing with two boards, a standard one for Paul and a tactile one for Chris, with each player making both his and his opponent’s moves on both boards. It was now I realised that, in Paul’s time scramble, they had managed to end up with different positions on both boards, with Paul thinking a black pawn was on a7, and Chris having it on a6. At one horrible moment, the spectre of Paul playing Nb5 reared its head, and it subsequently being captured by a pawn he thought was on a7. To make matters worse, Paul hadn’t been keeping score in his time trouble, and Chris was recording on an electronic device it’s not easy to get the moves back from, so we might have had no way to find out which position was correct. Perhaps fortuitously however, Paul’s position was just so dire he resigned before any of these events came to past, leaving the match depending on the result on board 2.

And so to that game, which was perhaps one of the oddest games I have ever seen by players of this strength. After an impressively insipid opening (e4 c5 d3) by white, Mark as black got a very nice space advantage in the early middlegame. There then followed a period of intense manoeuvring as both players carefully manoeuvred their pieces to worse and worse squares, getting them blocked off or tied down to defending pawns. We join the game at the time control, where Mark is just in the process of miscalculating and forcing himself into a worse endgame.

For anyone who couldn’t find the winning move for white at move 48, it was Nf6. The point is that whether black takes the knight or not, white will play Be4 on the next move, stopping the pawns, and will then be able to walk his king over and take them at leisure. A brilliant if perhaps slightly undeserved swindle, and we somehow managed to stumble over the line to a 2.5-1.5 victory. I’m looking forward to more horrendously unsound games in the New Year, and hoping they won’t all be mine.

Graves of Famous Chess Players: No 6 in a series of ......?

Well, in this case "famous" might be stretching it a bit, but there's no doubt whatever that Samuel Tinsley (1847-1903) was a very strong player, who should probably be better remembered in British chess history. According to the Chessmetrics website, he achieved a peak rating of 2588 in December 1890, and a ranking high of world number 21. And his achievements were all the more impressive, as he reportedly only began to play seriously when he was in his forties.

Tinsley's chief claims to fame are that he participated in two epic tournaments - Hastings 1895 (a mammoth 22 player all play all) and the even stronger London 1899. Pillsbury created a sensation by taking first place at Hastings with 16.5/21, ahead of Chigorin, world champion Lasker, Tarrasch and ex-world champion Steinitz. Our hero finished some way adrift of these all-time greats, coming 21st with a score of 7.5/21 (+7 =1 -13). His biggest scalps were von Bardeleben (who lost an immortal game against Steinitz in this tournament), Janowski, Mason and Gunsberg.

Four years later he fared less well, essentially coming last of 14 in a double round (!) apa, as the 15th player, Richard Teichmann, had to withdraw after only 4 games. Tinsley's wins came against Chigorin, Showalter and, twice, Cohn, with draws against Janowski, Mason and, twice, Lee. The tournament saw a brilliant win by Lasker who lost only 1 game (against Blackburne, though he won their other game) and scored at least 1.5/2 against every other opponent. He finished an incredible 4.5 pts clear of a three way tie for 2nd between Maroczy, Pillsbury and Janowski.

Samuel Tinsley is buried in what is now called Brockley and Ladywell Cemetery - which makes this a first venture south of the river in this series! - in yet another large and largely neglected Victorian cemetery. I have to record my thanks to an excellent 2012 article by Martin Smith on the Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog, which contains far more information than I have provided here. Without this sterling piece of detective work, I would never even have known of Tinsley, nor of his resting place - and I would certainly never have been able to track down the grave amongst the romantic but completely overgrown wilderness that makes up most of the cemetery.

The wording on Tinsley's headstone has become very worn, but Martin Smith records that it originally read:-

Till He Come
In Loving Memory of
SAMUEL TINSLEY
Born 13th January 1847
Died 26th February 1903
"The waters closed over him"
"Death to Sin"
"Life to Righteousness"
Also of Sarah Ann
Wife of the above
Called home July 26 1925
Aged 84

(The lowest line is damaged and lost)

And so to a game. I can't pretend I'm aware of any Tinsley masterpiece, so here is his greatest ever scalp - a win against the mighty Mikhail Chigorin, ascribed a retrospective grade of about 2725 by Chessmetrics when this game was played and a peak of 2797/world number 2!!

Glass Half Empty or Half Full?

A draw against Olton B wouldn't normally be any cause for massive celebration, but such have been the woeful results of the A team in the first half of the season that any point is very gratefully received. And if you had forecast a drawn match last night at any time other than about 10.29 pm you would have been laughed out of town.

For a start, the normal selection problems meant that we were missing Paul Lam yet again, and for reasons both diverse and improbable, nearly all possible substitutes. (Does anyone know if Andy Baruch still exists?) But cometh the hour, cometh the man, and reigning Clubman of the Year Stuart Blaiklock bravely stepped up to the plate and answered an 11th hour call to duty - and took a giant step towards retaining his trophy in the process. Then we had to contend with the fact that Carl had returned from Bangalore only the day before, while I had got back from Germany only a few hours before the match. And then we learned that Olton B were fresh from an excellent 2-2 draw against a Solihull team with an average grade of 182. Oh yes, and then it emerged that Alan Lloyd was making a very rare appearance for Olton B.

Finally the match started and it got even worse! Stuart opened with the Philidor Defence, and when White played 3 d4 we waited with bated breath to see whether he would remember not to repeat the 3 ... Bg4 blunder of Count Isouard and the Duke of Brunswick against Morphy at the Paris Opera. Thankfully, those nights at the Royal Oak have not been wasted, and the game proceeded along more acceptable lines. However, Carl was clearly still in another time zone and keen to get home asap, since his Board 3 game with Rob Reynolds lasted no time at all before ending in a not entirely unexpected draw. But by then, we were already in serious trouble, as Josh had suffered a complete mental aberration and dropped a piece for virtually nothing against Gary Hope. For some strange reason, he is keen that I present the opening phase of the game for all to see:-




Guess the result competition!

Back to that game shortly......

As the evening progressed, I was getting nowhere against Alan Lloyd, and when I realised my plan to win a pawn was completely unplayable, I had to go into full scale retreat mode and try to hang on. By this stage Stuart had shed a queen side pawn, but reached the time control with some chances of a draw in a queen and minor piece ending. Sadly, shortly afterwards White won another queen side pawn and Stuart had to resign against Rob Wallman after a brave fight against the 51 grading points difference.That's what's called taking one for the team.

Josh had been playing on and on a piece down, and even though a white pawn got to h7, he somehow managed to confuse the issue so much that he won back his piece and swapped off into a rook ending where he had the only remaining pawn. It was a stone cold draw, but unbelievably, as the moves were bashed out at blitz speed, I happened to look across and see the black pawn not only queen, but also not even get taken by the white rook. A miracle had occurred and he had won a game that will encourage generations of players never to resign, no matter how lost they may be. After this complete turnaround, Alan decided to offer me a draw as despite being a pawn up in a bishop v knight ending, he had no way of ever getting his king in.

So amazingly it finished as a 2-2 draw - and very much a "Glass Half Full" evening as far as we were concerned!

Back to the drawing board

Just as it seemed we might have been overcoming our little slump, and had registered two consecutive victories, the A team came crashing back to Earth in our last game, a defeat against bottom of the table Stratford. It was however, a close run thing with us only let down by some mishandling of the clock.

Carl managed to get himself into a horrible position out of the opening, missing a tactic which exchanged queens and left him with doubled, isolated pawns and badly placed minor pieces. I had already resigned myself to watching a log a depressing defence, when a mistake by his opponent threw away all of the advantage, and a quick draw was agreed. Not long after that two other games came to a relatively early conclusion as well. Mine started with a reasonably respectable sideline of the modern defence (1.e4 g6 2.h4) and I ended up being able to grab a pawn for not much compensation. My task of converting this advantage was, however, made considerably easier by my opponent showing a remarkable lack of urgency, and losing on the clock with 7 moves still to make (which must be something of a record).

The news from Mark's game was less positive. After declining Richard McNally's offer of a free pawn with the Smith-Morra gambit, Mark seemed to be making the very sensible decision to avoid making the position too tactical, in a game against a player known for his speciality in that style. Unfortunately, when I came back a few minutes later, the position had exploded into insanity, with queens and pieces flying everywhere. Analysis after the game seemed to indicate that Mark should have been fine, but unfortunately he was outplayed in the position at the board, so the match remained level.

This left everything hanging on Dave's game on board 4, which had transitioned from him having a small opening advantage with more space, to being a pawn down but with an excellent pair of bishops as compensation. However, this is where my former comment about time comes into relevance, as Dave was unable to negotiate the position fast enough, and eventually lost on time. A close match, but yet another defeat in perhaps the second swiftest fall from grace currently occurring in the world of sport (after Borussia Dortmund being bottom of the German football league, of course).

P.S. Apologies for the delay in writing this report; I was clearly too distraught to remember to do so previously. On the plus side, this means our next game is now tomorrow, so hopefully I shall have better news to report very soon.

Celebrity Quizzers "more popular than KCC" Shock!

Our normal Thursday evening regime of high quality social chess was rudely interrupted on November 6th, when a bunch of blokes off the telly elbowed us aside as a Celebrity Quiz Match was staged at The Royal Oak. Attracting a near full house, the self styled "Dream Team" was in town to play against local stars "The Usual Suspects". The evening was part of the prize the local team had won for triumphing in a nationwide Great British Pub Quiz competition. As the jovial compere joked, second prize was a visit from (ex ECF President and Egghead) CJ De Mooi, while third prize was two visits from CJ.

The TV celebrities are seen below during their own internal battle to select a champion to take on the locals' own champ in an individual head to head to find the evening's "Mega-Brain".

From left to right, the Dream Team comprised:-

1) Mr Somebody, from Educating Yorkshire - never seen the programme so no real idea who he is or why a teacher was in an all-star quiz team. But as long as he's an inspiration to the kids he's a winner in my eyes.

2) Pat Gibson, from Eggheads - a quiz legend who's won almost every quiz show you could think of. Usually more than once!

3) Shaun "The Barrister" Wallace, from The Chase - very sociable guy (who was formerly in the legal profession, rather than a coffee maker at Starbucks if you're in any doubt).

4) Paul "The Sinnerman" Sinha, also from The Chase - very clever guy with one of the worst nicknames ever.

Over a number of exceedingly difficult rounds the Royal Oak locals regularly outscored both The Dream Team and the "hors concours" KCC All Stars who wisely sat well to the back of the room to hide their ignorance. Despite reaching a peak strength of 9 people, we were unable to score more than 6/10 in any round, while the two heavyweights were clocking up 8 or 9 each time.

Some of the questions were VERY hard - a fact confirmed by our own quiz supremos Bernard "The Accountant" Rogers; Joshua "The Mathematician" Pink; Paul "The Powerlifter" Lam; Nick "The Doctor" Mottram; Phil "Mr Croquet" Wood and Roy "The Northerner" Watson. We were definitely Vanarama Conference standard compared to the Premier League quality of the two competing teams. At the end of the night, the Royal Oak's finest had vanquished the Dream Team, and their star man had also scored a thrilling 10-9 individual win over The Sinnerman to secure The Mega-Brain title. (Though unlike me, neither of them knew that the horse that came second to Desert Orchid in the 1989 Cheltenham Gold Cup was Yahoo.)

Many congratulations to The Usual Suspects for a stunning double triumph and an amazing breadth of general knowledge - delivered at a speed which would have done credit to a 1 minute bullet game. Also thanks to our genial landlord Simon, for putting on an excellent event, though some of our more fundamentalist members were disappointed that the clocks and sets had been removed for the evening and no late night blitz session was possible. After three successive nights of league matches I was, by contrast, mightily relieved at the complete absence of any chess boards. And as I had a rotten headache this morning, I'm pretty sure I had a very good time.

But above all else - welcome back to Roy. Thursdays haven't been the same for the last couple of months, but thankfully he has now returned from the distant wilds of Lancashire to the altogether more convenient wilds of Fen End!



Off the mark at last

The A team, at our fourth attempt, finally managed a win yesterday, with a reasonably comfortable 3-1 triumph over Shirley. I’ll go over the less interesting matches quickly, before we get to the main event.

The first game to finish was Dave’s, who had black against Jonathan Dale. In a Qc2 Nimzo-Indian white played rather passively, and hence Dave seemed to get a very equal position without too much difficulty. When white then left his kingside rather exposed, Dave turned down the opportunity to win a couple of pawns (which may have in turn given his opponent an attack), and instead found a tactical way to win a queen for a rook and knight. I thought perhaps he could have played on a little here, but his opponent’s position was solid and a draw with black can hardly be considered a bad result.

Mark then put us into the lead, courtesy of a win over Keith Ingram. In a Najdorf Sicilian, White chose what looked to me a slightly strange mix of plans, retreating his knights to b3, but then choosing to castle kingside and play f4. Mark was left with an isolated pawn on d6, but as compensation had excellent squares for his pieces, and was able to simplify into a double rook endgame a pawn up. He was soon able to put both his rooks on the seventh rank, and even someone whose endgame technique is as rudimentary as mine knows that such a position should be winning sooner rather than later.

The first half of my own game, with white against Matthew Long, went well, as we played into a relatively main line of the Winawer French (e4 e6 d4 d5 Nc3 Bb4) where white plays an early Qg4. I carefully pointed all my pieces towards the black kingside, then realised he hadn’t actually castled yet and if he did so queenside they would all turn out to be on the wrong side of the board. However, much to my surprise and relief, he did castle kingside and soon I had a very strong attack, and a position rated +3 by the computer. However, here my own incompetence as an attacking player took over, so that rather than delivering mate, I smoothly managed to transition into an endgame a pawn down. Fortunately for me, the opposite coloured bishops meant I was able to hold on relatively easily, leaving us 2-1 ahead.

Moving on to our feature presentation. I think it is fair to say that Phil has been somewhat out of form over the last few months, and has been subjected to a fair amount of gentle abuse as a consequence (and at least some genuine rage after last season’s game in Stratford.) Therefore, by way of balance, it seems only right to present his crushing victory over a 160 graded player on board 4 that sealed the win. I’m sure we all hope this means the real Phil is now back for league chess, and the piece blundering one only shows up in future for Thursdays at The Royal Oak. I haven’t had time to put the game through a computer so there will be a lack of good analysis to go with it, but I think the ease of the win speaks for itself.