With the election dominating the news, this week I focus on the strongest chess player to have entered Parliament. Marmaduke Wyvill was MP for Richmond Yorkshire, and he won the silver medal in the very first international tournament, which was organised by Howard Staunton to coincide with the Great Exhibition of London in 1851. Stylistically,
To the best of my knowledge, Michael Basman is the first officially titled chess master to ever stand in a UK parliamentary election. Marmaduke Wyvill, MP for Richmond Yorkshire, was an accomplished player who took second prize in the great London tournament of 1851, but he could not have been described as a chess professional. Basman will
In 1972, in collaboration with George Botterill, two-times British champion, I published a revolutionary book on 1 … g6 which we named the Modern Defence. At first sight this defence is paradoxical, since it makes no attempt whatsoever to prevent the construction of a gigantic white pawn structure. However, its virtues have subsequently been recognised and
Regular readers will recall my column of 15 April in which I speculated on the future of the eccentric Fidé president Kirsan Ilyumzhinov in the face of mounting criticism from the board of the World Chess Federation. Somewhat surprisingly, Kirsan survived and has announced his intention to run yet again in the presidential election next
Four important events have taken centre stage over the past few weeks. These were tournaments in Shenzen (won by Ding Liren), Zurich (won by Hikaru Nakamura), Karlsruhe (which witnessed a massive triumph for Lev Aronian, who came in ahead of Magnus Carlsen) and Shamkir. In this last, the local matador Shakhriyar Mamedyarov seized the laurels
The Catalan opening looks as if it should be relatively harmless, combining as it does the Queen’s Gambit with the modest fianchetto development of White’s king’s bishop. But various endgame virtuosi, notably Petrosian, Korchnoi and Kramnik, have demonstrated that the Catalan can be dangerous. In particular, the nagging pressure exerted at first by White’s light-squared
Polish grandmaster Akiba Rubinstein was one of the strongest players never to win the world title. Up to 1914 he seemed unstoppable, but then the Cuban genius Capablanca burst on to the scene and after the first world war Rubinstein was a changed man. In Chess and Chessmasters (Hardinge Simpole), Gideon Stahlberg wrote: ‘A latent
The British Chess Magazine is the oldest continuously published chess magazine in the world. Recently it has been boosted by the appointment as co-editor of the Belgrade journalist Milan Dinic, who cut his teeth on the news journal Svedok (Witness). The last issue contained an interview with the entertaining and controversial Nigel Short, as well as
This month, watch out for unidentified fleeing presidents. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Fidé, the World Chess Federation, and a self-confessed alien abductee, seems to have a revolution on his hands. Several of his closest lieutenants, such as Giorgios Makropolous and Nigel Freeman from the Athens HQ, are insisting that Kirsan has resigned, while Kirsan himself
Before leaving the topic of the 50th anniversary of the 1967 tournament to mark the half-century of the Russian revolution, I must mention the Hungarian grandmaster Lajos Portisch, another hero of that prestigious competition. (Leonid Stein being the overall winner.) Portisch was famed for his immense hard work and profound erudition in the openings. At Moscow he
Whatever else you may say about it, the USSR certainly created the greatest national chess-playing machine the world has ever seen or is likely to see. The Soviet Union perceived itself to be regarded as a pariah by the international community. One way to counter this was by winning the World Chess Championship, as it
Paul Keres is the only chess player to have appeared on the euro currency, his face adorning the two-euro piece in Estonia, where he remains a national hero. Keres has a powerful claim to be regarded as the strongest player never to have won the World Championship. His scalps included Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal,
The 135th Varsity Match hosted by London’s Royal Automobile Club last Saturday resulted in a narrow win for Oxford, who have reduced their overall deficit. The score is now 59 wins to Cambridge, 54 to Oxford. The brilliancy prize, judged by grandmasters Jon Speelman and Luke McShane and named in honour of Bob Wade OBE,
This Saturday, 11 March, the annual Oxford v Cambridge Varsity match is being hosted by The Royal Automobile Club Pall Mall. Cambridge lead the series with 59 wins to Oxford’s 53 in a contest which goes back to the 1870s. Primum mobile at the RAC is Henry Mutkin, who himself led the Oxford team in
Nigel Short has distinguished himself by scoring 100 per cent, winning all six games, in the Bunratty tournament which finished towards the end of last month in Ireland. Anyone who has competed in a chess tournament of almost any strength will realise how hard it is to win all the games. In Short’s case he
Matthew Sadler’s retirement from full-time international chess is one of the great losses to the British game. Occasionally, the one-time prodigy emerges, usually to make a massive score in a rapid or blitz event in the vicinity of Holland, where he now works and lives. It is also fortunate that he still competes in the
The cause célèbre at the Tradewise tournament in Gibraltar, which finished earlier this month, was the extraordinary protest by Hou Yifan, the reigning women’s world champion, against having to play seven female opponents in ten rounds. In the tenth and final round she made her complaint manifest by deliberately throwing the game in just five
The Tradewise tournament at Gibraltar has gained a colossal reputation and is even challenging the traditional tournament at Wijk aan Zee (see last week’s column) in terms of playing strength. This year the tournament was graced by our very own Michael Adams and Nigel Short, as well as such illustrious denizens of the international arena
My two previous articles dwelt on Richard Réti’s introduction of the so-called hypermodern systems. Characterised by the double fianchetto of White’s bishops, Réti swept to victory with his invention against both Bogolyubov and Capablanca, as detailed in my columns. A fortuitous coincidence with the publication of Réti: Move by Move by Thomas Engqvist (Everyman Chess) was
The new book by Thomas Engqvist, Réti: Move by Move (Everyman Chess), about the hypermodern leader Richard Réti, is so significant that it deserves further examination. Perhaps Réti’s most celebrated victory came against Capablanca, who had come through his 1921 world title contest and the subsequent great tournament of London 1922 without losing a single game.
