Edward Winter
A selection which might be subtitled ‘Lest we forget’...
From page 266 of Chess Explorations:
C.N. 331 questioned the exact role in Batsford Chess Openings of Garry Kasparov, who was referred to as a co-author. In a letter dated 16 September 1983 (published in C.N. 583) Raymond Keene therefore offered us a copy of Kasparov’s contribution, in return for a cheque for £50 payable to a chess charity. We immediately accepted, but no material was ever provided, and nearly two years elapsed before Mr Keene offered us a refund.
By then the level of Kasparov’s involvement had been confirmed in two letters received from the book’s ‘Research Editor’, Eric Schiller. Although they were published in full (in C.N.s 844 and 870), Mr Schiller made persistent claims that they had been edited or quoted out of context, a falsehood which he continued to propagate even after C.N. 1737 had reproduced his original letters photographically.
C.N.s 507, 583 and 588 also drew attention to Batsford’s misuse of Kasparov’s name in connection with two other books, Fighting Chess and My Games.
C.N.s 945 and 1159 (see pages 150-152 of Chess Explorations) referred to our spot-check of 60 pre-1945 game references in Batsford Chess Openings, which showed that there were errors in no fewer than 36 of them. Below is the list prepared by us at the time:
Regarding the attempts by those involved in Batsford Chess Openings to dupe the public over its authorship, C.N. 6372 noted that the most recent revelations come in the article Ex Acton ad Astra.
Raymond Keene, a contributor [to Chess Express, a new fortnightly newspaper published by Nathan Goldberg], describes the venture as ‘the biggest publishing event in more than 50 years in this country’. This reference is meaningless since there was no other big event around 1930. (In passing, we were far from pleased with the same writer’s claim that the world championship semi-finals were to be ‘the greatest chess event in Britain since 1851’. But Mr Keene, we now realize, is fond of these anti-historical hypes. We recall another from page 174 of his (and Levy’s) book on the 1974 Nice Olympiad to the effect that actions of FIDE and Euwe ‘represent the biggest scandal the chess world has seen since Staunton refused to play a match with Morphy’. We hope that this wild dumping of inappropriate comparisons and precedents will stop.
(640)
After just one issue of Chess Express had been published some had already made up their minds. Raymond Keene:
‘It is without doubt the best chess publication I have ever seen.’
(677)
C.N. 782 noted that Chess Express had folded after a
small number of issues. We found it a deeply unimpressive
publication.
The match was a semi-final.
On 16 September 1983 Raymond Keene submitted to Chess Notes a letter in which he took exception to ‘a totally incorrect comment’ which, he alleged, we had made in C.N. 507 regarding the Batsford book Fighting Chess. He asked us ‘to withdraw your damaging comment in the next issue of your organ’.
His letter was published in full in C.N. 583, together with proof
that, as a matter of plain fact, it was he himself who was wrong.
On pages 111-114 of the August 1984 CHESS we contributed an article ‘Problems with British Chess Literature’, criticizing such trends as the large number of errors and general sloppiness. Although the article did not mention Raymond Keene, he replied on behalf of B.T. Batsford Ltd. on pages 146-147 of the October 1984 CHESS. His first paragraph sought to discredit us by asserting that our argument was:
Raymond Keene did not give a single example of a factual inaccuracy by us, and continued to refuse to do so, despite our persistent challenges. Further exchanges appeared in CHESS, and in an article on pages 122-123 of the August 1985 issue he claimed that many points made by us in a letter published on pages 231-233 of the Christmas 1984 issue were:‘... severely weakened by factual inaccuracies.’
‘... bogus and misleading.’
In support of this, he presented one alleged example (concerning the Kasparov book My Games) and added:
‘Such a blatant inaccuracy from Mr Winter surely merits an apology or retraction.’
However, as demonstrated by us in the mid-July 1986 issue of CHESS (page 177) and as is clearly shown by the My Games book, it was, once again, Raymond Keene himself who was incorrect. Thus the single example provided by him to support his thesis that we had been ‘bogus and misleading’ was wrong as a matter of public record. Raymond Keene never apologized.
The main issue arising out of Docklands Encounter by Raymond Keene and others (the identity of the others depends upon which title page one reads) is not the jarring geography (Yasser Seirawan was not ‘born in England’ but in Damascus) or the hapless history (‘Not since the days of Alekhine has the incumbent of the supreme title captured first prize in so many top events’ – in fact Karpov is well ahead in this respect) or the vapid verbiage (‘Vacations, or holidays as we call them rather banally in Britain, are what you make of them’) or the dubious dogma (Korchnoi is ‘greater even than Lasker at defending and saving difficult positions’) or the gruesome grammar (‘With such diverse membership, there will be obviously be conflicts’) or the ...– but no, one should not dwell on such blemishes in this rapidly produced hardback (‘A Batsford/US Chess Federation book’) which has the same breathless spy-thriller style as Kasparov-Korchnoi, The London Contest: ‘Seconds before the event was due to start it was realized that the boards and sets had not arrived. However, swift telephone calls to the Pentagon, the Vatican and That’s Life solved the problem with minutes to spare.’ In short, much of the background material is garbage, or rubbish as we call it rather banally in Britain.
The chief point at stake is not even the book’s curious belief that the reader will view with reverential wonder the glamorous world of wealth and power that is portrayed. Page 17: ‘Richard Desmond did, however, offer everyone a lift in his gold Rolls Royce (number plate RJD 1) ...’ After a line like that one feels that if an Atlantic crossing had to be made, only Concorde would do. And so it proves, on page 135: ‘FIDE President Florencio Campomanes flew by Concorde.’
Far more important than this tinselry is the fact that for the first time a book has gone all the way in publicizing the sponsor of an event. It is true that The London Contest paved the way, notably with a front cover that boldly stated ‘Acorn Computer World Chess Championship’ (thus proving that what counted was the sponsor’s name and not a correct description of the event), but Docklands Encounter goes much further. Chess fans are even offered three gripping photos ‘View across Millwall Dock’, ‘The proposed STOLport site at the Royal Docks’ and ‘Northern and Shell’s spectacular new building on Millwall Dock’. The book starts with eight and a half pages of history of Docklands that show signs of having been stitched on as an afterthought.
Our question to readers is whether we are alone in feeling ill-at-ease about such prominence being given to a sponsor. Is there a case for saying good luck to sponsors in securing all the publicity they can by any means, or do readers share our opinion that books should not be over-run with advertising matter?
Final remarks: the bibliography acknowledges the work’s debt to The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The annotations are of the Anmerkungen von E. Bogoljubow kind mentioned in C.N. 698. From the dust-jacket (which, surprisingly, features the Docklands) we learn that the author is ‘a regular commentator on BBC-2 chess programmes’.
The Karpov-Kasparov world championship match was terminated on Friday, 15 February 1985; just 11 days later we received our ordered copy of The Moscow Challenge by Raymond Keene. Batsford’s speedy publication (and, let it not be forgotten, distribution) is a remarkable tour de force.
Since most reviews will, presumably, concentrate on the game annotations, we prefer to discuss the background and historical features. As regards general ‘atmosphere’ material, the author has adopted the novel approach of writing mainly about himself: ‘Baguio 1978, where I acted as Korchnoi’s chief second’; ‘One day I plan to write the definitive chess bestiary’; ‘He has been taking me out to the Journalists’ Club, Literary Club and other places which house exclusive Moscow restaurants’; ‘I was invited to give a lecture ... I also demonstrated the game Keene-Kovačević, Amsterdam (IBM) 1973, and gave a simultaneous display scoring 65 per cent’; ‘I was being interviewed live on Soviet TV ...’; ‘Before Game 15 I gave another simul and lecture’; ‘I am often stopped in the street for autographs, and in the press centre I can scarcely move from my chair without being deluged with requests for articles, interviews, book translations etc.’; ‘On Sunday, a free day, I went to a Bach organ recital ...’; ‘At the start of the World Championship copies of the book USSR v Rest of the World, which I co-authored with David Goodman, were presented to both Karpov and Kasparov’; ‘Back to London as guest of Bill Hartston for the world première of Tim Rice’s new musical “CHESS”’; ‘This game I annotated in German from the NDR (North German TV) HQ in Hamburg, where I was appearing as guest lecturer on Helmut Pfleger’s weekly programme’; ‘... the main interest switched to Salonika where I was acting as BCF delegate to the FIDE Congress and member of the Olympiad Appeal Committee’; ‘Today I inadvertently joined the Houses of Parliament ...’; ‘When I acted as Korchnoi’s second against Karpov in 1978 at Baguio ...’
Yes, it is as bad as that, often less a match book than a personal diary – or campaign brochure ...
The historical matter is not egocentric, it is simply inaccurate. Page 1 gives the wrong starting-date of the 1927 championship match; on page 2 Raymond Keene repeats yet again his mistaken claim that New York, 1927 decided Capablanca’s challenger (although we drew attention to this error in C.N. 586); is it true (page 4) that ‘in a recent interview the World Champion recalled that the first chess book he studied was written by the great Cuban’? Not according to the April 1982 BCM, page 159, where Karpov is reported as saying that his first book was Panov’s work on Capa; page 6, Mr Keene will see that his views on Hugh Alexander are wrong if he reads C.N. 693; pages 7-10, most of the statistics regarding Lasker are false – he played seven world championship matches, not eight; page 9, we are told that it is ‘staggering’ that Steinitz’s tournament record during the period he was champion (1886-1894) was ‘abysmal’. Should a writer not at least check his facts before so criticizing a great player? The truth is that Steinitz did not play in a single tournament during the period under consideration.
The Moscow Challenge ends with a hurried account of the closing proceedings. Rather than merely giving a non-specialist article (the piece appeared almost word for word in The Spectator of 23 February), the author might have held on for a day or two more in order to present more thorough and reflective coverage.
No doubt the same publishing/writing team will be back in action for the planned K-K ‘re-match’, and we hope to see a vast improvement. Anyone who remains unconvinced by our criticisms of The Moscow Challenge should take a look at page 62, for instance, and decide whether, in all honesty, it can be claimed to say anything of interest or value.
(976)
Regarding the remark about Steinitz’s tournament record being ‘abysmal’, we drew attention to the error on page 200 of the May 1985 BCM. On page 256 of the June 1985 issue Mr Keene responded with the astounding claim that ‘in calling Steinitz’s tournament record “abysmal” he was criticising it on the grounds of lack of activity’. By that logic, we pointed out on page 305 of the July 1985 BCM, Fischer’s post-1970 tournament record could be labelled ‘abysmal’.
Mr Keene’s ignorance of Steinitz was also demonstrated on page 35 of his volume Duels of the Mind (London, 1991), where he stated that Steinitz published a book called Modern Chess Theory. No such work exists.
Can readers help us collect examples of writings which state the opposite of the intended message? In the Preface to Becoming a Grandmaster (London, 1977) Raymond Keene says he would be pleased if his GM title did not help others involved in a similar quest.
(980)
How many games were played in the 1927 world championship match? The obvious reply is 34, but on page 14 of his 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi book Mr Keene claims 35. As he does again on page 124 ... and yet again on page 138.
(1015)
The following letter from Michael Stean’s mother was published on pages 84-85 of the February 1980 CHESS:
From page 73 of The English Chess Explosion by M. Chandler and R. Keene (London, 1981):
‘No-one remembers Reshevsky’s losses as an 11-year-old, but everyone knows it was at this age he beat the former World Championship Candidate, Janowski.’
Everyone knows no such thing, for the simple reason that it is untrue. Reshevsky was ten, as the book itself had stated earlier (page 35):
‘Short’s achievement was even more momentous than Capablanca’s match win against Corzo in Havana in 1900 when Capa was 12, and almost on a par with the game won by 10 year old Reshevsky against the veteran GM Janowsky in 1922.’
However, that reference is wrong on other matters. The match took place in 1901, not 1900, and Capa’s age should read 13, not 12. Note too the slapdash inconsistency: two different spellings, Janowski/Janowsky.
In The Times of 24 August 1985 we see Raymond Keene vaunting a scoop:
‘Imagine my delight, then, at discovering the moves of a win by Alekhine against another player of the very highest class, which has so far eluded publication in any of the English language collections of Alekhine’s games. It has been known for some time that Alekhine’s lifetime score against Paul Keres consisted of five wins, one loss and eight draws, yet one of Alekhine’s wins proved impossible to track down.
At last, the score of the game emerged from an obscure Estonian document after a long search through the library of Bob Wade, the British Chess Federation coach. This week, I present this lost game to readers ...’
Before Mr Keene becomes even more carried away with his discovery, perhaps we could point out that the Alekhine-Keres game-score is given, with notes by J.H. Blake, on page 483 of the October 1935 BCM. Finding it there took 30 seconds.
The Chess Tournament – London 1851 by Staunton has just been reprinted – superbly – by Batsford, as has Nimzowitsch’s Chess Praxis. Mr Raymond Keene’s willingness to supply his company with a Foreword to the latter work is not readily comprehensible when one recalls his words on page 4 of Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal:
‘The English of My System is, by and large, very good and makes a brave effort to capture the spirit of Nimzowitsch’s original German, but, unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the translation of Chess Praxis which I find a poor, maimed torso of Nimzowitsch’s original. If you have no alternative read the translation by all means, but if you possess the merest smattering of German I urge you to read the original. It is well worth the effort.’
(1231)
In the course of an interview with his then brother-in-law, David Levy, on pages 262-266 of the September 1986 CHESS Raymond Keene declared:
‘Just prior to and during the match [Kasparov v Karpov, 1986], a flood of election literature arrived from an organisation called the American friends of FIDE from Edward Winter in Geneva and Hugh Myers in Iowa. It is quite clear, even if Mr Campomanes had the intention of halting electioneering during the match, the friends and organisations who support him didn’t.’
We responded on page 327 of the November 1986 CHESS:
‘1. I have not written, printed or issued election literature of any kind.
2. I have no connection with the American friends of FIDE.
3. I have not been campaigning for Campomanes.
4. I have never spoken to him, corresponded with him, or even set eyes on him.’
Raymond Keene made no retraction of his falsehood.
The 19/26 December 1987 issue of The Spectator contained a chess history/trivia quiz set by Raymond Keene. Of the 30 questions, under half could be called correct. Some were pure fiction, others had more than one answer, and others still were sheer speculation. John Roycroft has kindly authorized us to say that he has no quarrel with this assessment.
We are most grateful to him; after all, Mr Roycroft was one of the three prize-winners.
(1568)
The first two books we have received on the 1987 world championship match are Schach WM 87 by Helmut Pfleger, Otto Borik and Michael Kipp-Thomas (Falken Verlag) and Showdown in Seville by Raymond Keene, David Goodman and David Spanier (Batsford). Both occasionally leave the reader puzzled as to why Kasparov did not do better. For example, the 19th match game was drawn, yet Kasparov’s moves are awarded far more exclamation marks. Neither book offers as much detailed analysis as has already appeared in many chess magazines. (Europe Echecs has been particularly strong in this respect.)
The Batsford annotations have a style all of their own – pure rodomontade. A ‘colossally fascinating’ variation here (game 5), an ‘incredibly minor infringement of normal practice’ there (game 7). That the annotator can do better is admirably shown by games 12 and 14.
The 11-page introduction has little to do with the match, but purports to explain why Campomanes was not defeated in Dubai and how the Grandmasters’ Association resulted. Although commendable restraint is shown (Marcos is not mentioned until page 4) the material is a colossally unfascinating and incredibly major infringement of basic justice. The blame for not beating the FIDE President is placed squarely on Lucena’s shoulders: ‘ ... not even Lucena’s warmest admirers could say that he was a strong candidate. He was kind, amiable, well intentioned, yes – but no public speaker, no vote winner’ (page 5). On the following page we learn that Kasparov ‘was evidently somewhat underwhelmed’ by Lucena. In reality, of course, it was Tartuffe rather than Orgon who was the hustings turn-off. But in fairness it must be pointed out that even Kasparov is verbally savaged by our objective chroniclers: ‘Perhaps Kasparov was a shade naive, understandably so, when it came to politics’ (page 7).
The biased and nugatory introductions to individual games use the familiar hint-and-smear technique, emitting just enough smoke to suggest a raging fire. For example, page 92 attempts to persuade the reader that Karpov engineered Tal’s departure from Seville during the match – just one more ‘scandal’ that is dumped in the reader’s lap without a flicker of evidence.
One of the few historical references in the book is on page 62, where we are told that Grünfeld ‘launched the defence which bears his name with a convincing win against the mighty Alekhine’. This, of course, is nonsense. Presumably the allusion is to Alekhine v Grünfeld, Vienna, 18 November 1922, but by that time 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 d5 was no longer a novelty. One earlier game, though probably not the first, in which Grünfeld played these moves as Black was against Sämisch in round seven of the Pistyan tournament in April 1922.
At least there is no repetition of Mr Keene’s claim (opening sentence of his report on page 2 of The Times of 21 December 1987) that Kasparov is ‘the first player in more than 75 years to come from behind to win the world chess championship’. (What about the title matches played in 1927, 1935, 1937, 1951, 1954, 1957, 1963, 1969, 1972 and 1985?)
As ever, we are at a loss to describe adequately Mr Keene’s handling of chess history; there is no entry for ‘Midas touch’ in our dictionary of antonyms.
(1582)
The December 1988 CHESS (page 36) published an advertisement soliciting subscriptions to Raymond Keene’s English Chess Association. It featured a quote (about the Association’s good intentions) which was attributed to the ‘Encyclopedia [sic] Britannica’. CHESS readers will doubtless have been impressed that a reference work of such stature has given recognition to the ECA.
The truth is rather different. The quoted words are not from the Encyclopaedia Britannica at all, but from the 1988 Britannica Book of the Year (page 319). The writer there? Raymond Keene.
(1765)
From an English Chess Association press release dated March/April 1989:
‘It is heartening to write of the recognition accorded us by the Encyclopedia Britannica, which states that the aim of the ECA is “to make chess as popular as snooker and bring grass-roots players into closer contact with Grandmasters and masters”.’
This perpetuates the misrepresentation described in C.N. 1765. The reference to the ‘Encyclopedia Britannica’ is an untruth and, in any case, the ‘heartening ... recognition’ was from the pen of none other than the founder of the Association.
All reference books claim that Frank J. Marshall died in 1944, but the consensus has now been broken by Raymond Keene in The Complete Book of Gambits. Page 81 has a game which is headed ‘Lewitzky-Marshall, Breslau 1991’, and page 184 presents ‘Marshall-Duras, San Sebastian 1991’.
(1944)
The book naturally has many other clangers, such as the statement on page 31 that it was Tarrasch, rather than Alekhine, who won their game at Pistyan, 1922.
The entry on Hans Fahrni by Raymond Keene in Golombek’s Encyclopedia (hardback and paperback editions) stated that in 1909 the Swiss player won a tournament in Monaco.
The place in question is Munich. The mix-up presumably stems from Monaco in Italian meaning either Munich or Monaco.
(1978)
C.N. 7291 referred to a letter on pages 18-19 of the July 1991 CHESS:
The suggestion which the CHESS Editor considered ‘not publishable’:
As shown in our ChessBase
article posted on 12 November 2011, Tony Miles informed us
in a letter dated 15 July 1989 that he was working on a project
under the inspired title Raymond Keene: A Reappraisal.
From a letter written to us by Tony Miles on 22 August 1989:
Raymond Keene wrote about Miles as follows in his Spectator column of 8 August 1987 (page 44):
‘Chess games were first recorded towards the end of the eighteenth century.’
Raymond Keene, The Times, 16 November 1991 (Saturday Review, page 53).
(Kingpin, 1993)
Source: BCM, May 1993, page 231.
In The Times of 12 March 1994 Raymond Keene stated that there was a grandmaster named Archangelski. After we pointed out this inaccuracy to the newspaper, a letter dated 24 May 1994 from the Deputy Managing Editor, Mr David Hopkinson, forwarded to us Mr Keene’s response:
(Kingpin, 1994)
The Times’ policy of warding off accuracy in its chess pages is shown by an episode resulting from a letter we sent to the newspaper on 16 January 1991:
‘With regard to recent Winning Move chess features in The Times.
Monday, 7 January: the position claimed to be from a game between Bogoljubow and Alekhine is fictitious (as indeed was the one based on the same game which was published by The Times on 28 December 1990).
Wednesday, 9 January: the position allegedly from Capablanca v Thomas never occurred. The same day’s feature also gives the impossible move 2 Rxa2 in the solution to Tuesday’s column.
Finally, in the solution published on Thursday, 10 January, the reference to “2 Rb8 mate” is erroneous; it is not checkmate because Black can reply 2...Qe8.
In short, your chess correspondent is running true to form.’
The Times published no correction, but ten weeks later we received the following reply (quoted here in full) from Mr Keene:
‘Thank you for your recent letter to The Times concerning the Bogoljubow-Alekhine and Capablanca-Thomas Winning Move positions. It seems to me that the positions and variations have been quoted before, but if you have any information to the contrary, I would be most interested to see it.’
Where is the logic or sense in that?
In the meantime, Mr Keene blunders on. On 29 August 1994 his Winning Move feature published an incorrect position from Mannheim, 1914 and then gave as the actual finish a line that never happened. (The real game lasted over 30 moves more.) For good measure he also mangled the winner’s name, putting ‘Farin’ instead of Fahrni. All that in one little puzzle. What is the solution to the Keene problem?
(Kingpin, 1994)
With regard to the interview in your 94/8 issue, Mr Bob Rice’s knowledge of chess and/or sense of fairness may be measured by his assertion on page 9 of the Batsford book on the 1993 Kasparov v Short match: ‘Although the World Championship matches have been arranged by many different organizations, the lineage of the 13 Champions has been recognized by all, including the World Chess Federation (FIDE), a group of national amateur bodies that arranged the last several matches.’
‘Last several’ means ‘last seventeen’.
(Letter from us on pages 8-9 of the 1/1995 New in Chess)
On page 121 of Chess An Illustrated History (Oxford, 1990) Raymond Keene describes David Levy, his brother-in-law, as ‘President of the International Chess Association’.
(Kingpin, 1995)
In the same book Mr Keene presented some cigarette cards with a chess theme, of which he wrote (page 76): ‘A praiseworthy attempt to assimilate chess into popular culture in cigarette cards of the 1930s. The backs of the cards incorporate quite advanced information about the game.’
A cigarette card illustration on the following page shows what passes for ‘quite advanced information’ in Mr Keene’s mind:
‘J.R. Capablanca. Greatest of all chess players. Champion of the world in 1923, having opposed fifty players at once.’
(Kings, Commoners and Knaves, page 279)
Keene on Kasparov:
‘Legend has it that at fours [sic] years old – before he had been taught the moves – he was already solving problems which baffled his seniors, he had just picked up the patterns from watching adults play.’
Source: Sunday Times ‘1000 Makers of the Twentieth Century’, 1991.
Kasparov on Kasparov (four years previously):
‘One spring evening, just before my sixth birthday, my parents were trying to solve a chess problem in the newspaper set by the old master Abramian. I had never played chess …’
Source: Child of Change, page 14.
(Kings, Commoners and Knaves, page 302)
G.A. MacDonnell is not to be confused with A. McDonnell, affirmed Raymond Keene on page 139 of The Complete Book of Gambits (a steal at £14.50), yet Mr Keene twice misspelt G.A. MacDonnell’s name as ‘McDonnell’ on that same page.
(Kingpin, 2000)
Here is Raymond Keene’s verdict on the 1972 world championship encounter:
‘The battering Spassky received in that match knocked the guts out of him.’
Those graceful words come from page 35 of his book on the Kasparov-Kramnik match. But let’s compare them with what appeared on page 178 of the 1997 book Samurai Chess by Michael Gelb and Raymond Keene:
‘The battering Spassky received in that match knocked the guts out of him.’
In fact, the entire section on Spassky from the earlier book – a chunk of 24 lines – has simply been slapped into the Kasparov-Kramnik match book (cf. the similar treatment meted out to Steinitz, Capablanca and Fischer).
That earlier book had itself lifted the Spassky section more or less verbatim from somewhere else. On page 21 of part 5 of Keene’s Men of War publication for The Times during the 1993 Kasparov-Short match we find:
‘The battering which Spassky received at the tournament [sic] knocked the guts out of him.’
And why stop there? From page 96 of Keene’s book Chess An Illustrated History, published in 1990:
‘The battering which Spassky received, sadly knocked the guts out of him.’
But never let it be claimed that Keene invariably churns out the same thing. Compare and contrast:
‘Perhaps the western media exposure, to which Spassky, being a Russian, was quite unaccustomed, helped to knock the stuffing out of him.’
That comes from page 83 of his book Duels of the Mind, published in 1991. But on page 10 of his book on the 1992 Fischer-Spassky match he declared:
‘Perhaps the Western press exposure, to which Spassky, being a Russian, was quite unaccustomed, helped to knock the stuffing out of him.’
However, on page 72 of his 1993 book Chess for Absolute Beginners it was back to:
‘Perhaps the western media exposure, to which Spassky, being a Russian, was quite unaccustomed, helped to knock the stuffing out of him.’
(Chess Café, 2000)
Page 237 of the Complete Book of Beginning Chess by Raymond Keene (New York, 2003) asserts that Capablanca’s 1921 feat of winning the world championship without losing a game ‘has never since been repeated’. (What about Kasparov v Kramnik in 2000?) The same book also contains, on page 241, the following information about Alekhine: ‘b. 1882 in Mocow’.
(3343)
We have it on the authority of Raymond Keene that after the fourth game of the 2004 Kramnik v Leko match in Brissago Peter Leko declared:
‘My cousin Sammy told me a true slugger – a Szeged slugger – will always swing for the fences, and that is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to knock Kramnik out of the room with my “home run punch”. My trainer and I have been developing it in camp. I just hope Vladimir’s head is screwed on tight or it may end up on top of the demonstration board!’
After quoting these words, on page 114 of his book World Chess Championship Kramnik vs. Leko, Mr Keene reported:
‘Kramnik made a face – and a fist – but chose to reserve a fuller reply for the chessboard.’
But did Leko, a gentleman, speak any of those words attributed to him by Mr Keene? Drawing this matter to our attention, Alan O’Brien (Mitcham, England) writes:
‘It struck me that this mix of boxing and baseball terminology sounded unusual coming from a Hungarian, so I decided to trace the source of the quote. The first time I have found it mentioned is at http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1306947&kpage=59. In a posting dated 3 October 2004 somebody using the pseudonym “Offramp” asserted that the words quoted above (completed with “I will knock Kramnik senseless. He is going down in game five. And he is going down HARD!”) had been spoken by Leko during a press conference after game 4.
Incidentally, Raymond Keene mentions the www.chessgames.com site many times in his book on the match, but not in this case.
I was curious as to where “Offramp” had obtained the quote, and at the webpage http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news/sternburg2210.php I found the following text:
“Sosa: ‘I'm Going to Knock Manfredy Out of the Park!’
… Dominican national lightweight champion Victoriano Sosa predicted a ‘home run-style’ knockout against former WBU champion Angel Manfredy when they rumble, Saturday, 9 November, on the pay-per-view extravaganza ‘Real Fights!’ …
Sosa, the cousin of Chicago Cub home run king Sammy Sosa, spoke today from his training camp outside Chicago …
‘My cousin Sammy told me a true slugger – a Sosa slugger – will always swing for the fences’, said Sosa. ‘And that is exactly what I am going to do. I am going to knock Angel out of the ring with my “home run punch”. My trainer and I have been developing it in camp. I just hope Manfredy’s head is screwed on tight or it may end up in the bleachers!’ …
‘I will knock Manfredy senseless. He is going down in five. And he is going down HARD!’”’
Yet another memorable episode …
A) Below is the text of C.N. 4682 (posted on 29 October 2006):
‘“The world’s biggest-selling book” is the boast on the back cover of Guinness World Records 2007 (London, 2006). Two pages include entries on chess: page 99 has a couple of dozen words about Sergei Karjakin being the youngest grandmaster, while page 137 offers brief features on the smallest and largest chess sets, as well as the following: “On 25 June 2005, 12,388 simultaneous games of chess were played at the Ben Gurion Cultural Park in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.” That is all. The four entries from the 2006 edition have been dropped.
Although poker has five entries on page 136, games such as draughts and bridge receive no treatment at all, and the editorial team’s interests are evidently on a different plane. For example, pages 8-9 document such pivotal attainments as “most heads shaved in 24 hours”, “fastest time to drink a 500-ml milkshake”, “longest tandem bungee jump”, “fastest carrot chopping”, “largest underpants”, “most socks worn on one foot’ and “fastest person with a pricing gun”.’
B) From an article ‘Densa and Densa’ by Raymond Keene (posted on the Internet on 21 September 2008):
‘I therefore decided to take a look for myself to ascertain whether Guinness is dumbing down or not, and to discover if their response is an honest appraisal of the situation or pure hypocritical cant?
“The world’s biggest-selling book” is the boast on the back cover of “Guinness World Records 2007”. Seven pages in total include entries on Mind Sports: a couple of dozen words about Sergei Karjakin being the youngest chess Grandmaster, while another page offers brief features on the smallest and largest chess sets, as well as the following: “On 25 June 2005, 13,388 simultaneous games of chess were played at the Ben Gurion Cultural Park in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.”
Although poker has five entries, games such as draughts and bridge receive no treatment at all. For example, it documents such pivotal attainments as “most heads shaved in 24 hours”; “fastest time to drink a 500ml milkshake”; “longest tandem bungee jump”; “fastest carrot chopping”; “largest underpants”; “most socks worn on one foot” and “fastest person with a pricing gun”.’
The matter has been investigated in detail at the website of the Streatham & Brixton Chess Club (reports dated 30 September, 8 October and 10 October 2008). It may be noted, in particular, that:
a) Mr Keene has made various attempts to explain his copying, and they have been proven untrue;
b) The website to which we referred in C.N. 5771 has now removed from Mr Keene’s article our paragraphs about chess;
c) Mr Keene’s article originally appeared in his weekly column in The Spectator (page 64 of the 7 June 2008 issue);
d) Over a third of ‘his’ article in The Spectator was, in fact, written by us.
(5795)
Below is Mr Keene’s column with our text blacked out:
Our writing as it appeared in The Spectator:
The above crosstable (reproduced from page 5 of Golombek’s book on the event) shows that there were, of course, five players and that they played each other five times. But ...
Page 10 of Raymond Keene’s book on the 2004 Kramnik v Leko match.
Page 7 of Raymond Keene’s book on the 2007 world championship match-tournament.
Page 11 of Raymond Keene’s book on the 2008 Anand v Kramnik match.
(5987)
‘The isolated queen’s pawn is an important learning element in chess strategy. The late Bob Wade first coined the term IQP in his 1963 book on the World Championship match between Botvinnik and Petrosian.’
Source: Raymond Keene, in his chess column in The Times, 11 April 2009.
With Google Books it takes about ten seconds to find earlier occurrences of ‘IQP’, one instance being in The Return of Alekhine by C.J.S. Purdy (Sydney, 1938). We add that the text in question, concerning the nineteenth match-game between Euwe and Alekhine, had already appeared on page 349 of Purdy’s Australasian Chess Review, 20 December 1937:
For our part, we would never claim that even Purdy ‘first coined the term IQP’ (or that it was only in 1937 that he first used it).
(6074)
Dust-jacket front (1929)
Nimzowitsch’s My System was first published by G. Bell and Sons, Ltd. in 1929 (302 pages), and the company also issued a two-page errata list. Some, though not all, of the corrections were included by Bell many years later in a reset version (265 pages).
In 1987 B.T. Batsford Ltd. chose to reprint the 1929 original, but the company’s then ‘Adviser’, Raymond Keene, did not realize this. He added a Foreword (‘Batsford are proud to present this new edition ...’) which mentioned page numbers corresponding to the other Bell edition. The Batsford reprint furthermore revealed ignorance of the errata list.
In 2003 Hardinge Simpole brought out a reprint of My System, though it was nothing more than an expensively priced, cheaply produced, reprint of the Batsford reprint, still with ignorance of the errata list, still with the mix-up over the page numbers and, even though Batsford’s name was not mentioned elsewhere, still with Mr Keene’s remark ‘Batsford are proud to present this new edition’.
How pride can come into any of this is unclear.
(6237)
At chessgames.com on 13 July 2009 Raymond Keene stated:
‘i see today that chessbase censored winters comments about susan polgar and took down what winter had written about her-interesting!’
ChessBase has never censored anything written by us.
As is well known, Yasser Seirawan was born in Damascus, of a Syrian father and a British mother. However, on page 53 of his book Docklands Encounter (London, 1984) Raymond Keene claimed that Seirawan was ...
‘... born in England of mixed US and Syrian parentage’.
Page 278 of Warriors of the Mind (Brighton, 1989), a book co-bungled with Nathan Divinsky, re-affirmed that Seirawan was ...
‘... born in England of mixed US and Syrian parentage’.
When Warriors of the Mind was re-issued in 2002, the errors were, of course, left untouched.
Four years later, Messrs Keene and Divinsky, together with Jeff Sonas, produced a book entitled Who was the Strongest? Warriors of the Mind II. Page 270 stated that Seirawan was ...
‘... born in England of mixed US and Syrian parents’.
(6292)
Regarding the Evergreen Game, the following is on page 136 of Pocket Book of Chess by Raymond Keene (London, 1988):
‘Anderssen’s opponent, Jean Dufresne, was actually a German player and writer whose real name was E.S. Freund.’
Jean Dufresne’s real name was Jean Dufresne. E.S. Freund was his pseudonym.
‘He is certainly a man inspiring great loyalty.’
Source: CHESS, August 1977, page 331
Back-cover inscription by Korchnoi on one of our copies of Karpov-Korchnoi 1978 by R. Keene (London, 1978).
Source: Antischach by V. Korchnoi (Wohlen, 1980), page 109.
After Raymond Keene left the British Chess Federation in 1987 he attempted to brush it out, in favour of something of his own creation. The following is page 174 of his Pocket Book of Chess (London, 1988):
In a presentation for the Winter 1990 ‘Grandmaster Video Magazine’ Raymond Keene began by saying, ‘This is probably the strangest case I have ever been involved in’. He then reiterated his claim that, on the basis of a drawing, he had cracked a murder mystery (Colin English having been accused of killing Therese Clare Terry, who had disappeared). The following may be noted, from an interview with Mr Keene on pages 4-5 of issue 345 of Jaque, January 1993:
In short, Mr Keene asserted that in August 1990 (July 1990 would be correct) he established the area where the body was located but that the murder case collapsed owing to a legal error by the police. Mr Keene considered that a pity because he could have become a millionaire by writing a book on the subject. He concluded by affirming that the defendant had confessed.
At the end of an article about the case on pages 60-62 of the 6/1990 New in Chess Hans Ree wrote:
‘Keene told me that a publisher had commissioned him to write a book about it.’
When the article was included on pages 279-283 of Ree’s book The Human Comedy of Chess (Milford, 1999), this was amended to:
‘Keene had told me he wanted to write a book about the case. Usually when Keene intends to write a book, it is in the bookstore two weeks later. But this one never materialized.’
The following appeared in The Guardian, 27 November 1991:
Black to move. Should he castle?
Richard Hervert (Aberdeen, MD, USA) draws attention to this position, which would have arisen in the game Spielmann v Nimzowitsch, Stockholm, 1920 if White had played Nimzowitsch’s suggestion of 17 Nf4-d3 (instead of the move actually played, 17 Be3).
Position after 16...Qg5
On page 364 of The Praxis of My System (London, 1936) Nimzowitsch gave various lines beginning 17 Nd3 Qg1+.
However, Mr Hervert points out that on page 20 of A Complete Defence for Black by Raymond Keene and Byron Jacobs (London, 1996) there is no mention of 17...Qg1+ in reply to 17 Nd3. Instead, the book states in the note to 17 Be3:
‘White’s best is 17 Nd3!, when Black should play quietly with 17...O-O-O! when his prospects are still not bad. He is ahead in development with two pawns for a piece and with White somewhat tied up.’
Except, of course, that White can somewhat untie himself with 18 Bxg5, winning the queen for nothing.
(7210)
See also:
World Champion Combinations
Copying
Warriors of the Mind
A Sorry Case
The Termination
Chess Awards
Over and Out
The 1986 FIDE Presidential Election
A Unique Chess Writer
Comic Relief
To the Chess Notes main page.
To the Archives for other feature articles.
Copyright: Edward Winter. All rights reserved.