Monthly Archives: July 2024

Mayor of Kingston Visiting the Chess Stand

Breathing new life into old kings

On Saturday 27 July we brought Hnefatafl and giant chess to the centre of Kingston – and the success of the move exceeded our wildest imaginings

Image: The Mayor of Kingston visiting the Kingston Chess Club stand

Kingston Chess Club will celebrate its 150th anniversary in the 2025/26 season, but last Saturday we decided to delve a little deeper into the history of both Kingston and chess. Several members of the club participated in, or attended, the Kingston Saxon Fayre organised by the Kingston Heritage Service. We had two locations – one in the ancient market square and one in the churchyard of All Saints Church. The day exceeded our wildest expectations. For a start, the weather was glorious – the weather gods are more interested in Saxon history than Parisian sports events – and we were extremely busy at both locations from the start at 11am until the end at 5pm.

Large Chess and hnefatafl
Alicia Mason on the large chess board and John Foley on the Hnefatafl board

Market Square

The town’s market square was the centre of the Saxon celebrations. Managing our stall was club president John Foley, who arrived early to set up our gazebo. This housed a trestle table on which was a splendidly large demonstration chess set and a game from the Saxon period – Hnefatafl. The name of the club was prominently displayed on two menu stands. All Saints church had kindly provided the trestle table and four chairs as well as several posters to bring attention to the regular chess social activity which takes place at the church on Wednesday mornings.

Our stall sat prominently within a circle of Saxon-themed stalls, including live sheep and goats, a forge, stained glass-making, some nasty-looking weapons, craftwork, Anglo-Saxon clothing, falconry, historic recreations, music and so on. Also attending were organisations closely involved in research into Saxon history and culture, including the Kingston Society, Surrey Archaeology, the Dark Ages Society and Malmesbury Archaeology.

The set of large pieces attracted considerable interest from the public, proving that chess can be a tactile as well as an intellectual experience. So many youngsters queued up to play that Jaden Mistry was tasked to fetch another chess set which we squeezed on to the trestle table. Jaden was there for most of the day and played chess against all-comers.

Jaden Mistry (front right) takes on the Man in the Suit. Alan Scrimgour plays Dominic Fogg on the second board

John took responsibility for demonstrating the game of Hnefatafl. This was necessary for historical authenticity because the Saxons never played chess – they got it from the Vikings. A brief history of the Saxons is required.

John Teaching Hnefatafl
John Foley teaching Hnefatafl

When the Romans left Britain in 410 AD, the Saxons started to arrive in numbers from Germany. Kingston Council runs the Saxon Fayre to reclaim its history. Seven Saxon kings were crowned at Kingston, starting with Æthelstan in 925 – the 1100th anniversary of that event next year promises to be a very big event in the royal borough. Æthelstan was followed by Eadred in 946 and Æthelred the Unready, who we like to consider the patron saint of the Kingston club, in 978. Kingston was the capital of England in the 10th century after Æthelstan effected a merger of the kingdoms of Wessex and Mercia. Kingston is a crossing point on the Thames between the two kingdoms.

The Saxons mixed with the local Britons, resulting in a hybrid Anglo-Saxon culture. The Anglo-Saxons continued to play Roman games such as Nine Men’s Morris and Ludus Latrunculorum. It was only with the Vikings that new games came along. Lindisfarne Priory was famously sacked by the Vikings in 793 AD – not the best way to introduce a new game.

The first record of chess being played in England dates back to Cnut, King of Denmark and England, who learned to play chess while on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1027. The famous Lewis Chessmen found in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland have been dated to the 11th or 12th century. William the Conqueror was already playing chess in 1060, before the Norman Invasion of 1066 which, according to historians, is the official end of the Anglo-Saxon period.

We may infer that the Anglo-Saxons may only have been playing chess for a decade or so before they were conquered. What is certain is that they were playing the game of northern Europe and Scandinavia spread by the Vikings. This game is known as Hnefatafl, which translates as “fist table” where “fist” represents a “king”, giving us the most common translation: “king’s table”.

According to the chess historian Richard Eales “Chess did not become popular in the 11th and 12th centuries because it came to people who thought it wholly original or had never seen board games before. Rather, chess succeeded by displacing the existing range of games; because it was inherently more complex and interesting or because it was introduced as one aspect of a new dominant culture.”

Never a quiet moment at the stand
Never a quiet moment at the stand

For this event, we procured from Regency Chess a beautiful Hnefatafl set of reconstructed pieces made from resin and stone powder, with a historically accurate wooden board. John was surprised to find that the queue for Hnefatafl was just as long, if not longer, than the queue for chess. There was no break for lunch.

Hnefatafl is a tabletop game played by both the Saxons and the Vikings, and can be seen as a precursor of chess. The king sits in the middle of the board and attempts to escape to one of the corners, as the monarch’s guards do battle with the berserkers of the chasing army. It all seems rather insurrectionary and politically provocative for the early medieval period – is the king trying to flee his realm? But it proved a big hit in the marketplace, alongside the falconry, forge and flax spinning, and President Foley is now talking about renaming us Kingston Chess and Hnefatafl Club. After all, he argues, nobody challenges the full name of the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

Trusty staff
A Saxon playing with his trusty staff

John did a huge amount of work to ensure the day went well, even dressing up in appropriate Saxon clothing, which may well now become his standard uniform at club matches. At one point he was able to join a passing procession of friars and minstrels without anyone batting an eyelid. With all due respect, a man born a thousand years too late.

Saxon Procession
Saxon procession from All Saints Church

All Saints churchyard

Stephen Moss managed the giant chess set in the church grounds. His challenge was to find some way to hook the audience. Nobody was going to wait around for Stephen and his able assistant Dominic Fogg to finish their game lumbering over the giant chess table. So he came up with the brilliant idea of borrowing another trestle table from the church and a couple of sets that we use for Wednesday chess. This served as the Beginners Corner, with fascinated children and more especially ultra-competitive dads playing throughout the afternoon.

In All Saints church yard
In the All Saints churchyard

The giant chess set was hampered by the fact that we were four pawns short of a full set – a description which could be applied to the club generally, one wag said unkindly – but we ingeniously got round the problem by wrapping bean tins in plastic bags. At one point we also pressed a young man dressed in chain mail into service as a knight, though the fact that he was smoking was not ideal and it was in some ways a relief when he was captured. One very strong player came by and said he found trying to calculate variations on a giant set where four central pawns were represented by bean tins wrapped in blue and white plastic bags very tough, but who said chess was meant to be easy?

Stephen Moss had been rather doubtful about the day. He was only wearing regular suburban T-shirt and shorts, not the Saxon garb. Even though a cynic, he had to admit it had been splendid. He may have been influenced by the supply of free oat and honey cakes (made using an original Saxon recipe apparently), and by the fact that none of the vigorous battles between small children using swords and shields that were taking place on the lawn where the giant set was located resulted in hospitalisation. He admired the children who stuck with the chess when they could have been plunging vicious-looking plastic weapons into their friends and siblings. A happy day and a peaceful knight.

Credits

Club activators: John Foley, Stephen Moss, Alicia Mason, Malcolm Mistry, Jaden Mistry, Dominic Fogg, Alan Scrimgour, Leila Raivio
Club visitors: Vladimir Li, Colin Lyle, David Shalom, John Bussmann, Leon Mellor-Sewell, Ergo Nobel

My favourite player: Michael Healey on Rashid Nezhmetdinov

The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them

“With every game a door to a mysterious world of fantasy, adventure, enigma and exact mathematical calculations is opened for me” – Rashid Nezhmetdinov

 “Nobody sees combinations like Rashid Nezhmetdinov” – MIkhail Botvinnik

Rashid Nezhmetdinov was one of a kind. At his best he was a true force of nature, who by sheer determination could turn dismal positions into crushing wins. He could calculate tactical variations with more depth and imagination than most anyone of his time. He annihilated future world champions Mikhail Tal and Boris Spassky a combined five times, as well as a slew of other big names. Uncompromising and exuberant, he attempted to stretch the boundaries of chess reality. He also played the most insane Queen sacrifice of all time, which I’ve already written about here: https://kingstonchess.com/confessions-of-a-youthful-romantic/

Here are a couple of famous examples of what SuperNezh could do:

Rashid Nezhmetdinov isn’t just a hard-to-say name, with a cool nickname. Only those in the know have even heard of him. I got to know of him many decades ago through my university friend Kevin Henbest, whereupon Nezh became a spirit to invoke whenever a crazed attack was in prospect.

Tal is the far more famous player, but Nezh was Tal’s Tal. Each of the pair’s tournament games are remarkable, inspiring Tal to select not one of the dozens of weighty names available but Nezh as his second for the 1960 match against Mikhail Botvinnik. Nezh’s ideas and camaraderie helped Tal unseat the great Botvinnik. Surely the greatest day of his life? Yet Tal later declared the day he played, and lost, this game was “the happiest of his life”.

In Nezh, Tal had a fellow playmate who strove to do the incredible with the pieces. Tal lost 3-1 to Nezh in tournament chess (strangely all with Black), and the win was extremely lucky. Tal said of his friend and rival: “His games reveal the beauty of chess and make you love in chess not so much the points and high placings, but the wonderful harmony and elegance of this particular world.”

Nezh won the Russian championship five times (also coming second in draughts in 1950). He carried off many brilliancy prizes and became a respected coach, even writing the first Tatar book on chess. Coming from the most humble origins possible, a Tatar Muslim orphan, Nezh grew up literally starving during the Russian revolution. He was self-taught, a late starter (11), his interest split with draughts (where his progress came quicker, master level by 19). He had to gain proper employment (at one point working as a stoker), then spent many years in the army, somehow surviving the second world war intact. By 1945 he was in Berlin, 33 and starting again with chess. We don’t know too much about his early games; possibly because, according to Russian chess writer Iakov Damsky, Nezh never recorded his games. Many are fragments, with the initial moves unknown.

There’s a lot to love and respect about Nezh, but playing over his games again for the past few months one thing in particular suddenly inspired me – his best results came after 1950, when he was 38. Guess what birthday I just had! He only really got to play in serious competitions at the age of 35, being awarded the title of chess master two years later, finally debuting in the Soviet championships at 41. 

The opportunities for being selected for foreign tournaments were few, requiring the favour and trust of the Party. Unfortunately Nezh had a tendency to enjoy life off the board as much as on it, as well as being much older than the Soviet rising stars. Indeed he was banned from Soviet tournament chess for a year for off-the-board antics (a light punishment – others were executed or sent to the gulag). Finally selected for Bucharest in 1954, he came second by half a point to Viktor Korchnoi, producing several gems, among them this game:

Nezh’s calling card is this brilliant game:

It was even made into a painting called “The Board of Destiny” by Galin Satonin (see detail below).

When playing over Nezh’s games, it’s hard not to feel swept up in the utter joy of the initiative, the sacrifices, the rampant pieces storming recklessly across the board towards the enemy king. Nezh finds ideas which look impossible, playing in that chaotic space between utter collapse and perfect coordination. He battles on against top players in positions that look completely hopeless, and fights not for draws but wins! When the spirit is with him, every game is a search for double exclamation marks.

But he was a player of inspiration and without it he was not Super-Nezh. “For playing well, I need inspiration,” he explained. “Like a capricious woman, it either visits me or it stands me up. Without inspiration there is no playing well. I am not rational enough; therefore games where one should play positionally and capture necessary squares, and hold back the opponent, most often end unhappily for me.”

Nezh’s chess was impossible to predict. The crosstable of the 1957 Soviet Championship tells its own story:

Early in Nezh’s career, Pyotr Romanovsky praised his fiery imagination, resourcefulness and far-sighted calculation, but warned that he suffered from poor knowledge of opening theory and lacked solidity and self-control. Often, Nezh simply could not resist “interesting” moves, unbalanced positions and juicy sacrifices. He abhorred dull chess and lengthy strategic battles, possessing little patience. He couldn’t stand to defend passively, often turning down material gains lest his opponent got a sniff of counterplay. He often overestimated his own ideas and positions, while underestimating his opponents and their resources. He could play a fantastic game, then overpress or implode; that is if he didn’t drift off in boredom or fall into time trouble as the game lengthened. Nezh was thus both an attacking genius and a highly flawed player. 

Nezh tried to do something about one of his weaknesses, forcing himself to take on proper openings, becoming a respected expert on the Spanish, the Jaenisch, the King’s Indian Defence, the Sicilian Rossolimo and the “Poisoned pawn variation“. He still enjoyed sidelines, but was now prepared to do the work. Learning at the last minute his “examiner” for the title of master had been switched to the experienced Vladas Mikenas, he looked up a recent article he’d authored, then crushed him in his own Alekhine line, twice!

Nezh is perfectly happy breaking opening rules, throwing forward pawns and ignoring classical tropes. Here his uncompromising opening play bamboozles no less an opponent than Paul Keres. In typical manner when the position slows down and requires torturous manoeuvring, Nezh loses patience and goes for a forcing but hopeless option:

His games are filled with fanciful knight dancing and sacrifices. “There is nothing more enigmatic than a knight,” he said. “Its possibilities surpass any imagination. A knight is presented sometimes as a dragon, as a force that cannot be either held back or tamed.”

In spirit, Nezh was playing along with me at the end of last season when I reached the following position against FM Alan Hanreck:

After Nezh’s death, Tal gave a commentary to the following game, where Nezh shows such great mastery and control of the position that Tal, the ultimate master of power play, holding a seemingly imperious pawn centre, is completely paralysed:

“I feel it would have been more correct to have resigned several moves earlier, or to play Ke8 and let White have the pretty ‘aerial’ mate Bf7. Shortly after these notes were written the chess world heard with regret of the death of the great chess artist Rashid Nezhmetdinov. Players die, tournaments are forgotten, but the works of great artists are left behind them to live on for ever in the memory of their creators. Let this game and notes remain as my modest tribute to the memory of a fine player.”

Nezh could be strategic, patient and calm after all! And still win beautifully. His favourite phrase was “Our day will come.” Age is no obstacle; setbacks are nothing; the beautiful chess is out there, just waiting to be found. So remember, next time you’re in a crazy lost position, ask yourself – what would Nezh do?!

Bibliography

• Alex Pishkin – Super Nezh: Rashid Nezhmetdinov, Chess Assassin (‎Thinkers’ Press, 2000)
• Cyrus Lakdawala – The Greatest Attacker in Chess: The Enigmatic Rashid Nezhmetdinov (New In Chess, 2022)
• Ray Keene – Learn from the Grandmasters (chapter on Mikhail Tal) (Batsford, 1998)

Video

• Documentary on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BUZ2zyWRh0&t=2325

World senior team championships 2024

Alan Scrimgour (Scotland) v Tony Hughes (Wales)

World Senior Team Championships, round 5, Scotland v Wales, played on 6 July 2024 in Krakow, Poland

It always feels ironic to travel to a distant land only to play against someone local. This is what happened when I represented Scotland during the recent World Senior Team Championships held in Krakow, Poland. Scotland were paired with Wales in Round 5, and I found my opponent was Tony Hughes, three-times winner of the All Saints Blitz. This game was played at a less frenetic pace, which is more to my liking.

Vladimir Li wins second Kingston summer Blitz

The second blitz tournament of the summer saw FM Vladimir Li triumph with 5.5/6, heading a powerful field which had thankfully not been put off by an evening of torrential rain

The second Kingston club blitz of the summer, held on Monday 15 July at the Willoughby Arms, promised to be yet another friendly blockbuster. Drawing in the usual suspects and some new faces, the tournament also marked my debut as a nervy (and unqualified) tournament arbiter.

Our very persuasive club captain Stephen Moss, who was attending the Thames Valley AGM that night, somehow convinced me that my familiarity with ChessManager software and tournament playing rules (the latter thanks to my son Jaden’s participation in rated tournaments) were sufficient qualifications for me to add another string to my bow, and In hindsight (and for once) I agree with him.

Unlike the first blitz, held a fortnight ago in perfect summer-like weather conditions requiring players to remain hydrated (non-alcoholic beverages preferred), the rain gods had other plans for the second tourney. As Jaden and I walked briskly to the Willoughby, there was a deluge. Would it put off the players who had registered? Happily the answer was no, and a few last-minute additions to the participants’ list took the final tally to 20.

Round 1 was largely uneventful, with the results generally reflecting the ratings of the players. On board 1, Jaden played Black against Peter Lalić, one of his many Kingston role models. Departing from his favoured Caro-Kann, Jaden decided to play the Sicilian Defence. Though not a surprise to me, given that he spent half of the day before studying the opening, Jaden later admitted that adapting to a new opening in a shorter format wasn’t his best decision of the evening. Despite making good use of the increment (the time control was three minutes and seven seconds), Jaden was eventually forced to resign. But he is undeterred and says he will be studying the Sicilian more deeply during the school holidays. 

Round 2 brought heavyweight match-ups on boards 1 and 2. John Bussmann, a very capable and highly tactical blitz player, was paired against FM Vladimir Li, and Peter Andrews was doing battle with Peter Lalić (we are a club of many Peters!). The latter game by no means petered out. They reached an interesting endgame position and spectators clustered around the board. The game was easily the longest of the evening, and much to my relief the two players eventually agreed a draw.

The lengthy (and eventually drawn) battle of the Peters, Andrews and Lalić, attracted a great deal of interest

In round 3 David Rowson had White against club chair Alan Scrimgour, who was just back from representing Scotland in the World Seniors Championship in Poland. Alan scored a crucial win and went joint top of the table with Vladimir, both with 3/3. Sensing a touch of fatigue in the room after three hard-fought rounds, I announced a short break, much to the relief of the players.

Round 4 saw the joint table-toppers paired against each other, with Vladimir having White against Alan. Vladimir, who played superbly all evening, ran out the winner. Just behind Vladimir came Peter Lalić, always a force in these club blitzes, and the highly rated Jasper Tambini, alongside Alan and John Bussmann. Meanwhile, the bottom half of the table was also witnessing some close and competitive games, a notable one being between Edward Mospan and Dominic Fogg, which ended with the players agreeing to share the honours.

Just before pairing round 5, I approached two new club juniors, the Chmiest twins (Piotr and Robert) who were yet to get off the mark in the evening. I asked one what were the chances of him defeating his brother should they be paired in either of the remaining two rounds. Much to my delight, he insisted he would win – there were to be no fraternal favours! It so happened that the twins were paired by ChessManager in round 5, much to the nervousness of their father, who had been spectating throughout the evening. Perhaps to his relief, the family encounter ended in a draw. The two youngsters only started playing chess recently and have bright futures. Well done to them for having the chutzpah to play in this very tough company.

Peter Lalić engaged in a hard-fought (and ultimately successful) endgame tussle with David Rowson

At the top of the leaderboard, Vladimir (on 4/4) was taking on Peter Lalić (3.5/4). A mid-game shake of the head by Peter foretold the outcome: he had blundered, and Vladimir was able to march on and claim the title even before the last round was played. Peter’s loss in the penultimate round also resulted in various permutations opening up in the fight for second place, with Peter himself, the dangerous Dominic Fogg, Alan Scrimgour and John Bussmann all in the running.

The final round started close to 10pm, with the rain still pouring down outside. The battle for second place was intense, and there was also much to play for among the next group, headed by Zubair Froogh, David Shalom, Peter Andrews and Jasper Tambini.

First place was in the bag for Vladimir, though David Rowson, playing Black, managed to deny him a final win. A draw gave Vladimir a final score of 5.5/6. Honours on board 2 were also shared between Alan Scrimgour and John Bussmann, enabling both to finish joint second on 4.5 points. Peter Lalić, as he so often does under immense pressure, pulled out a close win with Black against Dominic Fogg, thus managing to grab a share of second place. Jasper Tambini and Zubair Froogh, both relative newcomers, were close behind.

A tremendous evening which, despite the monsoonal weather, everyone seemed to enjoy. The third club Blitz of the summer is scheduled for Monday 26 August. I’m hoping I can sit that one out in the bar.

Malcolm Mistry

Final top six

1st: Vladimir Li 5.5/6
Joint 2nd: Alan Scrimgour, John Bussmann, Peter Lalić 4.5/6
Joint 5th: Jasper Tambini, Zubair Froogh 4/6

      Efim_Geller_1977b

      My favourite player: Peter Roche on Efim Geller

      The latest of an occasional series in which Kingston members and friends of the club choose the player who has most inspired them. Photograph by Koen Suyk/Anefo

      “Before Geller we did not understand the King’s Indian Defence” – world champion Mikhail Botvinnik

      Why, over the years, have I regarded the Soviet-era grandmaster Efim Geller (1925-98) as my favourite chess player? There are several reasons. Geller (pictured above) achieved prominence in many aspects of the game. He was an exceptionally strong over-the-board player, achieving distinction in world championship competition, international tournaments and Soviet championships, and was member of the all-conquering Soviet team in Chess olympiads. He had a profound knowledge of opening theory, contributing many ideas to modern chess practice. He was a dedicated analyst of all aspects of chess, and was twice used as a second in world championship matches. He was an authoritative chess author.

      Geller was born in 1925 in Odessa, a major Black Sea port now in Ukraine but then in the Soviet Union. In 1962 Geller wrote a short monograph about his life and career to date. The Nottingham-based Chess Player, under the editorship of Bernard Cafferty, published this work in 1969. From his autobiography we learn that he took an interest in chess when he was about four by watching his father, a strong amateur, playing with friends; though as he points out he had to be taught how to play (when about six), contrasting his experience with Capablanca who famously learned merely by observing his father and then telling the old man where he had gone wrong.

      The 1935 Moscow International tournament made a big impression on Geller and he began to apply himself, moving up the junior ranks. At this time he was more interested in football and swimming, and skating in the winter. One day, in the local People’s Palace, Geller went to enrol in the football section, but was too late. While wandering through the building he came across a room where a chess section was meeting. The members were analysing the Botvinnik-Alekhine game which had recently been played at the AVRO Tournament of 1938. Geller made a few contributions and so came to the notice of a local first-category player who encouraged him to take part in local junior competitions, where he did well.

      At the end of 1939 he qualified as a first-category player – at the age of 14. Over the next few years, the war impacted on his development, especially after 1941. Nevertheless he made steady progress, and after the war he was able to resume his chess career. In 1949 Geller came second equal in the Ukrainian Championship, held in Odessa.

      In his early days, Geller played the following game against Efim Kogan:

      Geller was quite critical of his play in this game, saying: “I did not yet understand the strict logicality  of the laws of chess strategy, which I frequently broke for the sake of cavalier attacks.” More than a whiff of Marxist dogma, I think.

      Geller and I go back a long way – to 1962, in fact. Early that year I acquired my first chess magazine – Chess, edited by B H Wood. This issue was devoted entirely to the Stockholm Interzonal of 1962, and on the front cover was a cross-table of the tournament from which I saw that Bobby Fischer (of whom I had heard!) won by a large margin, scoring 17½ points, with two players second equal on 15 points. The unfamiliar names of the various competitors made the chess world seem wildly exotic.

      I saw that in round 1 Miguel Cuellar of Colombia (a relatively low-ranking player) beat the highly rated Efim Geller. Notwithstanding this loss, Geller made up ground and achieved second place with Tigran Petrosian. Players in the first six places qualified for the Candidates Tournament, the winner of which would have the right to challenge the world champion (Mikhail Botvinnik) for the crown. By the way, Cuellar showed himself to be no pushover – in the second round he beat Viktor Korchnoi.

      Over the next few years I became interested in Geller’s style of play, whereby the game appeared to commence on classical lines but would suddenly develop into violent attacks. In the same period Mikhail Tal had become much more celebrated for his style of attacking play, but it seemed impossible to hope to play like Tal, much as one enjoyed the product.

      An example of Geller’s style, again from his early days:

      In his annotations Geller criticises his move 26 ( “…the false romanticism that I still hadn’t overcome”). What should Geller have played?

      In Geller’s short 1962 monograph he gave a description of his life and career in chess up to that date. In this account he included just three games – those against Kogan and Kotlerman, as shown above, and a 1949 game against Alexander Kotov. In a later game collection, in his introduction to the game, Geller (writing in 1984) says: “Even today this game is dear to my heart. Not only because, for the first time, it won me a creative award – the prize for the most brilliant game of the championship. The point is that even today, more than 30 years later, I aim, as an ideal, for this kind of dynamic play. Each of Black’s moves in this game is subordinate to one all-consuming idea: attack, attack and again attack.” I think I had better include it!

      In the 1969 English version of Geller’s autobiography the game content was increased from three to 86, the editor pointing out that he had found so many interesting games. The text is a curiosity, but we must remember the times and the circumstances in which it was written. It is, to say the least, tendentious and shows a very blinkered attitude. Only the year before Geller’s memoir had appeared in Russian, an article appeared in Chess in the USSR for December 1961 entitled  “The Moral Code of a Builder of Communism”. The article praises the achievements of leading Soviet players as well as their tact and their bearing.

       “Two other things are well known about them – their modesty and their simplicity of manner,” says the article. “Unfortunately one cannot say this about grandmaster E Geller. He has rendered undoubted service to Soviet sport, but has begun to overemphasise this and to be conceited. This has given rise to a disdainful attitude towards his comrades and a disinclination to take account of their opinions. In our country we don’t like braggarts and big-heads.”

      Geller’s blood must have frozen when he read this, and his autobiography of the following year should perhaps be read in this light. Bernard Cafferty says that he (Cafferty) had edited out the most bigoted material. To give a brief flavour, here is Geller’s view of Fischer (Geller explains that his wins against Fischer in the Curacao Candidates Tournament of 1962 had a major bearing on the overall result): “As I see it, the reason for his defeat lies in the fact that the Soviet school of chess, of which I am a representative, makes a fundamental study of the laws which lie at the basis of the game, whereas representatives of foreign countries, even Fischer, are characterised by a less deep approach to the chess art and by a certain incompleteness in their strategical and tactical concepts.”

      All this is a bit rich coming from Geller. Events at Curacao 1962 were much more sinister than a mere clash of philosophies, as we will see. Geller goes on: “Moreover, he [Fischer] himself certainly doesn’t suffer from any lack of modesty. Fischer’s trouble is that he looks at the game only from the point of view of business. It is unclear how his chess will develop, but one thing is clear – the strongest of this world can only be a person of high conviction, of deep moral fibre, a person free from the faults and ulcers of the rotten capitalist system.”

      Geller even manages a bit of a swipe at the incomparable Mikhail Tal: “What exactly is Tal’s style? Is there such a thing as Tal’s style? Is there a school of imitators following Tal’s example? The answer to the second and third questions must be in the negative. There is not and there cannot be a school which does not have laws and firm theoretical bases. It is no coincidence that blind imitators of his style have normally been very disappointed.”

      Tal showed some magnanimity, because he wrote a very complimentary introduction to Geller’s second game collection, The Application of Chess Theory (1984), though he makes a telling observation about a weakness of Geller – his tendency to make one-move blunders  (more than other grandmasters of similar strength).

      In appearance Geller was a shortish man, but very powerfully built. In his youth he had enjoyed a number of sports, but eventually he excelled at basketball. He earned a doctorate in physical education. He transferred the energy and aggression from the sports arena to the chessboard.  It has been said that a number of opponents agreed draws rather than continue to be confronted by the violent energy coming across the board.

      In 1965 the great Vasily Smyslov was drawn to play in a Candidates match against Geller. Smyslov, though much the taller man, took boxing lessons to counteract the waves of aggression that would emanate from his opponent. Unfortunately it did not help him. Geller won the match 5½-2½.

      The following remarkable game was played in the match:

      If you have ever seen a photo of Geller at the chessboard without a lit cigarette, it probably wasn’t Geller. He was an inveterate smoker and even by the standards of the time his consumption of cigarettes was prodigious. The modern reader may be appalled to contemplate having to face, for hours at a time, an opponent puffing away on a foul cigarette or strange-smelling herbal mix in a pipe, but this was commonplace until, I should say, the late 1970s.

      This problem persisted even at the highest level. When preparing for a match against a known heavy smoker, Mikhail Botvinnik directed his seconds to sit opposite to him as he studied at the board and blow smoke constantly into his face. When Geller died in 1998, New in Chess published an obituary by Gennadi Sosonko, who had known Geller very well.

      “Now, a quarter of a century later [Sosonko is referring back to 1974] I can picture well the Geller of that time. A man of few words, with a characteristic facial expression, frequent rocking of the head, accompanied by a sceptical raising of the eyebrows, his checked jacket hung on the back of his chair, and the ashtray, full of cigarette ends, always alongside him … Obstinate, with a dimpled chin and a slow waddle, Geller’s entire appearance was more that of a former boxer, or an elderly boatswain who had come onshore, rather than the world–class grandmaster he was.”  

      Geller was famous even among his peers for the depth and thoroughness of his analysis, both of opening preparation and during the conduct of a game. Sosonko recalls that in 1974 Vladimir Tukmakov, who was winning the IBM Tournament, told him that he was contemplating offering Geller, his opponent in the last round, a draw. Geller was on a 50% score, so out of the running. The next day Tukmakov told Sosonko what happened. He went to Geller’s room. Light was coming from under the door and there was a “Do not disturb notice on the door”. Tukmakov could hear the sound of pieces being moved on a chessboard, so he went away. He was beaten the next day.

      Geller’s remarkable skill at analysis was manifest throughout his career. In 1962, at the Varna Olympiad, Botvinnik was playing Fischer and at the adjournment (there was no playing to a finish in those days) this was the tricky position faced by Botvinnik, playing White:

      White to move. Other players and seconds and probably the whole Soviet entourage were dragooned into trying to salvage a draw. Late at night Geller came up with the right solution and Botvinnik was able to escape with a draw. If you haven’t seen the position, perhaps you would like to see if you can find the drawing procedure.

      Geller had an unrivalled opening knowledge. He contributed many ideas in such openings as the Ruy Lopez, the Sicilian (the modest-seeming Be2); Geller’s “Quiet version” against the Modern; the Queen’s Gambit – 1. d4 d5  2. c4 dxc  3. Nf3 Nf6  4. e3 e6 5. Bc4 c5 6. 0-0 a6 7. e4 (known as the Geller variation) and similarly: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Nf3 Nf6 4. Nc3 dxc 5. e4 – the Geller Gambit), and above all the King’s Indian Defence – hence the quotation from Botvinnik at the beginning of this article.

      Twice Geller’s knowledge was used in world championship matches. First, Boris Spassky selected him as his key second in the match against Fischer in 1972; then Anatoly Karpov used his services. Spassky says that Geller could be very obstinate and at one point in their preparation for the Fischer match there was a disagreement about a particular line, “but he kept insisting on his own view, he was very obstinate. His diligence was extraordinary. He developed his talent by sitting on his backside, and his backside in turn developed thanks to his talent.” Geller said: “ If I feel anxious or uncomfortable, I sit down at the chessboard for some five to six hours, and gradually come to” [in the sense of wake up].

      There was a price to be paid for all this effort. He would spend long periods in a match trying to get to the heart of a position and end up in terrible time trouble. This would often lead to blunders (as observed by Tal). Geller’s notes to his annotated games often refer to a shortage of time. One case which had dire consequences for Geller was in the 1973 Interzonal at Petropolis, Brazil against the (relatively) low-ranking Canadian grandmaster Peter Biyiasas. During the game Geller reached a position which was objectively won for him, but he got into bad time trouble, his position deteriorated and he lost on time. This led to his failure to qualify for the Candidates matches.

      Geller’s record in qualifying for the Candidates tournaments/matches was remarkable. He was consistently among the top players in the world vying for first place and the chance to play a match for the world championship. He qualified for these final stages five times. In 1953 the Candidates Tournament took place in Zurich. On this occasion 15 players took part, each playing Black and White against the same opponent, making this a brutal contest of 28 rounds. It is interesting to note that as recently as the 2024 Norway Tournament a commentator describing a game involving Hikaru Nakamura referred to a game played at Zurich as an important stem game for the game taking place, thereby emphasising the contribution made to opening theory by … Efim Geller.

      The winner of the tournament was Vasily Smyslov, who in 1954 went on to draw his match for the World Championship with Botvinnik, who thereby retained his crown. Geller finished a creditable equal sixth, though he did suffer seven losses, including this one to former world champion Max Euwe:

      David Bronstein took second place (equal with Paul Keres). He wrote a book of the tournament, which has become a classic. In his introduction to the game Smyslov– Geller in round 22 Bronstein makes the following pertinent observation. “One of the postulates of opening theory reads as follows: in the opening, White should always play to gain the advantage, while Black should always play to equalise. I do not know the precise formulation of Geller’s views, but to judge from his games he apparently believes that whichever side he happens to be playing is the side that ought to get the better of the opening. The chief characteristic of Geller’s creativity are an amazing ability to extract the very maximum from the opening and a readiness to abandon positional schemes for an open game rife with combinations, or vice versa, at any moment.”

      In 1956 Geller qualified for the Candidates Tournament, held in Amsterdam. This time 10 players took part, playing each other twice. The winner was again Smyslov with 11½/18 and second was Paul Keres with 10/18. Five players (Geller, Spassky Bronstein, Petrosian and the Hungarian Laszlo Szabo tied for third place with 9½/18. Smyslov went on to beat Botvinnik in the 1957 world championship match, only to lose the title back to Botvinnik in a rematch.

      Geller had participated in the Amsterdam Tournament as a result of his tied fifth place in the Gothenburg Interzonal of 1955. Twenty-one competitors took part. During the Interzonal an extraordinary event took place. The strong Soviet presence included Geller, Keres and Spassky and in one round they were drawn (all with White) against three of the Argentine contingent, Oscar Panno, Miguel Najdorf and Herman Pilnik. This represented a bit of a problem for the Argentinians because they all liked to play the  Najdorf Sicilian and in an earlier round Panno had received a battering from Keres.

      What to do? The three Argentinians used the rest day to come up with a cunning plan. There was at the time a well-known line in the Najdorf involving a knight sacrifice. What if it could be refuted? They spent their time well and found an excellent line for Black. Surely one of the three of them would have a chance to spring the refutation against their formidable opponents. The games started and incredibly all three games – Geller  v Panno, Spassky v Pilnik, and Keres v Najdorf – followed the same early moves. Geller was ahead of the others in terms of moves:

      Geller did not appear in the next Candidates Tournament (Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade 1959). In fact he did not even qualify for the Portoroz Interzonal of 1958. As we have seen, Geller did well in the Stockholm Interzonal of 1962, and he qualified for the Candidates Tournament which was to be held later that year. The venue selected was the West Indian island of Curacao. The eight competitors faced a demanding schedule of 28 games in tropical heat – nice for a holiday but not perhaps for the rigours of a major chess tournament.

      No fewer than five of the eight were from the USSR – Petrosian, Geller and Korchnoi as qualifiers from Stockholm, to whom were added Tal and Keres in recognition of their achievements in the previous cycle. The remaining three players were Fischer, Pal Benko (USA) and Miroslav Filip (Czechoslovakia).

      The Soviet delegation also included grandmasters Alexander Kotov and  Yuri Averbakh, but at the last minute Kotov was replaced by Sergei Gorshkov, who was an amateur chessplayer but a KGB officer – sent no doubt to keep a watchful eye on his charges. The pre-tournament favourites were Fischer and Tal, but Tal’s ill-health prevented him from playing to his usual high standards. In fact he ended up in hospital and failed to play in the last sequence of seven games. Incidentally, only one of the competitors went to see Tal in hospital, and that was Robert J Fischer.

      The problem all eight competitors faced at the outset was how to manage their energy and mental strength. Two of the players (Geller and Petrosian) had been good friends for years and they persuaded Keres (who was by some way the oldest competitor – he was born in 1916 ) to join in an “arrangement” whereby they would agree short draws with each other, leaving them with more energy for the rest of their games. Thus the number of moves in their head-to-head games were:

      Geller v Petrosian             Keres v Petrosian       Geller v Keres

               21                                     17                            27

              18                                      21                            17

               16                                     22                            22

               18                                     14                            15

      All the games were of course drawn.

      Did this scheme work? The final standings seem conclusive:

      1 Petrosian 17½
      2. Geller and Keres 17
      4. Fischer 14
      5. Korchnoi 13½
      6. Benko 12
      7. Tal (out of 21) and Filip 7

      There was alas another incident involving Geller and Petrosian. In round 27 – the penultimate – Keres was playing Black against Benko and at the point of adjournment – the game was set to be finished on another day – Keres was in a lot of difficulty. If he managed to get a draw he would go into the last round on equal points with Petrosian, and half a point ahead of Geller. That evening Benko heard a knock on his door, and Geller and Petrosian explained that they were visiting to offer to help Benko by checking his analysis. Benko handed over his notes and some time later they were returned – Geller and Petrosian could see nothing wrong as Benko was a very strong player in his own right. The next day Benko won easily as Keres went wrong very quickly.

      There is one further element which might be relevant. In 1953 a major tournament had taken place in Bucharest. There was strong Soviet representation including Alexander Tolush, Petrosian, Smyslov, Spassky and Isaak Boleslavsky – Tolush was the eventual victor. But it was a Hungarian grandmaster, Szabo, who took an early lead. In a Soviet team meeting, a telegram from the Soviet sports committee was read out: “Stop fighting each other. Make draws. Stop Szabo.” To be fair, Spassky (one of the competitors) said that Szabo was stopped because he was not strong enough to win, but an unhealthy precedent was set. Curacao represents the nearest Geller got to challenging for the world title – just half a point behind the winner, Tigran Petrosian, who went on to defeat Botvinnik in 1963.

      There was fallout from Curacao. Fischer in particular complained at what he regarded as outright cheating. Fide, the World Chess Federation, changed the format for the challengers and, instead of an all-play-all tournament, for the next 50 years (if we disregard the Ilyumzhinov years) the eight candidates played in knockout matches. Only in 2013 was the format changed back to a tournament. Also, arbiters were instructed to make sure that players did not agree draws within 30 moves, but this rule did not last long as it was found to be impractical.

      In 1965 Geller qualified for the Candidates only because Botvinnik decided not to take part. Geller was drawn to play Smyslov and, as we have seen, he won impressively by  5½-2½ ; in the semi-final he lost by 2½-5½  to Spassky who went on to challenge Petrosian. In the following Candidates cycle in 1968 Geller lost again to Spassky in the first match, once more by by 2½-5½, and in 1971 he lost to Korchnoi; and that was Geller’s last appearance at this exalted level. Nevertheless, Geller had had a remarkable run of qualifying for and taking part in the Candidates’ cycle between 1953 and 1970.

      Later on, in 1991 Geller came first equal (with Smyslov) in the World Senior Championship and in the year following he took the championship alone. Over his long career Geller took part in numerous tournaments all over the world. As a young man he was part of a Soviet delegation sent in 1954 to play a match against Argentina, then one of the strongest chess-playing countries (after the USSR) and visit various clubs and organisations. About the same time the USSR played a match against the USA on American soil. Geller has a few digs at American bureaucracy in his autobiography.

      He took part in tournaments all over the world,  including Copenhagen, Havana, Santiago, Beverwijk, Monte Carlo, Las Palmas and in 1990 New York (sharing first place at the age of 65). He even played in a tournament on Teesside, which he won. Spassky said of Geller’s visits abroad: “There he would relax. For him this meant the following: he would light up his Chesterfield, drink Coca-Cola, and be outside of time and space.” At one time,  says Gennadi Sosonko in his masterly account of Geller’s life, the family thought about going to America – a striking contrast to the attitude set out in his early autobiography.

      As a sample of the chess played at Geller’s peak is the following brief (but complex) encounter:

      In the third collection of his games Geller, who had a whimsical turn of phrase, headed this game: “A Ledge above the Precipice”.

      I stumbled on this example (from a few years later) which I admit has a certain resonance* for me:

      *Resonance: This is where Geller and I part company. I have played (whenever the opportunity arises) the Sicilian Sveshnikov since about 1984. The starting moves are: 1. e4 c5  2. Nf3 Nc6 3. d4  cxd  4. Nd4 Nf6  5. Nc3  e5. If only I had known Geller’s assessment. Spassky recalls a training session of the Russian team where Sveshnikov was demonstrating his system. Geller made a number of interjections, essentially saying that the system was flawed and the early move e5 left Black’s position with too many holes. It is an irony that Geller made use of the system to avoid having to face a line where White fianchettoes his king’s bishop. The point is that Geller had fared disastrously in two matches against Spassky – and Spassky was an expert in the closed Sicilian.

      Between 1952 and 1980 Geller represented the Soviet Union in seven Chess olympiads, winning six medals either silver or gold for his individual performance. He played 76 games, winning 46, drawing 23 and losing only seven times. He had similar success when representing the USSR in the European Team Championship. He played on six occasions, winning the individual gold on his board four times. He played 37 individual games, winning 17 times, drawing 19 and losing only once.

      Geller played a remarkable 23 times in the Soviet championship. He won aged 30 in 1955 and a second time in 1979 at the venerable ages of 54 ( the oldest  Soviet champion). In terms of his performance in all competition, according to the retrospective assessment by Chessmetrics, Geller was ranked No 2 in the world between May and July 1963 and was in the world’s top 10 during the 1950s and 1960s. After the elo system was recognised by Fide, Geller appeared three times in the top 10 – 1971, 1976 and 1981. I remember reading somewhere that Botvinnik reckoned that at one point in the 1960s Geller was the strongest player in the world.

      One measure of a top player’s strength is how he has performed against the very strongest players – the world champions. Geller’s record is exceptional:

      World Champion                            Won                 Loss              Drawn

      Max Euwe                                          1                       1                       0

      Mikhail Botvinnik                              4                       1                       7

      Vasily Smyslov                                 11                      8                       37

      Mikhail Tal                                         6                       6                       23

      Tigran Petrosian                                5                       3                       32

      Boris Spassky                                     6                      10                      22

      Bobby Fischer                                    5                       3                        2

      Anatoly Karpov                                  1                       2                        5

      Garry Kasparov                                  0                       1                        2

      Viswanathan Anand                          0                      1                         1

                                                        

      Total games played 206                  39                     36                       131

      Here is one interesting game against an ex-world champion:

      Here is another victory against a player destined to become world champion:

      Geller was deeply involved in the “Match of the Century” – Spassky v Fischer in Reykjavik 1972. While Fischer was completing the demolition of his three opponents in the Candidates matches in 1972 (6-0 v Taimanov, 6–0 v Larsen and 6½–2½ v Petrosian), Spassky was setting about preparation for the world championship match. He selected a small team: GM Bondarevsky, GM Krogius, GM Geller and IM Nei. Each was allotted a particular task. Bondarevsky (Spassky’s long-standing trainer) was commissioned to study 500 of Fischer’s games to identify weaknesses. Krogius, who held a doctorate in psychology and was effectively a sports psychologist, was to appraise Fischer’s psychology, for example his attitude to defeat, and to compare Fischer’s psychological make-up with Spassky’s. Geller was to work on the openings, an aspect for which he was famous. And what of Nei, a mere IM? Well, he was a good tennis player and Spassky loved his tennis. 

      Tucked away in a dacha, there should have been a devoted, dynamic squad concentrating solely on securing a win for the Motherland. The reality seems to have been a bit different. It looks as if Spassky was confident of victory from the start. Later on, when recriminations started to fly, Krogius said that Spassky ignored his studies and Geller complained that Spassky did not follow his opening advice. Bondarevsky left the group early because of various disagreements. Also, Spassky pointedly ignored letters of advice from other leading Soviet grandmasters.

      As everyone knows, Fischer emerged triumphant at Reykjavik and Spassky was left to return to the Soviet Union and face the music. He encountered a lot of public criticism. On 27 December 1972 Spassky, Geller and Krogius were summoned to face the Soviet Sports Committee. There were 15 members present, including five grandmasters. Early in the meeting, Geller launched an attack on Spassky, blaming him for losing the title. Apart from disregarding the opening recommendations and other advice from his team, Spassky was criticised for being much too accommodating over the conduct of the match, as he fitted in with the numerous and various demands made by Fischer without consulting his team. At the end of the meeting, Spassky was not allowed to play abroad for nine months and his monthly stipend was reduced to the same level as other grandmasters.

      In 1974 General Nikolai Schelokov, the then interior minister, was visiting the Karpov– Korchnoi Candidates match. He asked an official: “Who went with Spassky to Reykjavik?” He was given the answer and said: “If it were up to me, I would put them all in jail.”

      It is sad that the professional relationship between Spassky and Geller, his most trusted second, should have collapsed into mutual recrimination

      In concluding this article, here are some thoughts about Geller, as quoted by Sosonko in his obituary:

      Vasily Smyslov: “As for the fact that he did not become world champion, this is granted from above, for you need to have a particular star in your fate. Geller was not granted this star, but he was a splendid, vivid, dynamic player.”

      Mark Taimanov: “Geller had his own clearly formed creative credo; he possessed great strategic imagination, and he was utterly devoted to the game.” 

      Anatoly Karpov: “Geller’s ideas were deep, although Botvinnik said to me: ‘All Geller’s ideas should be checked three times’.”

      Boris Spassky: “He was very thoughtful, and under his completeness and thoughtfulness even Fischer often cracked. When Geller was on song, he could crush anyone.”

      Let us leave the final word to David Bronstein. At Geller’s funeral, by the grave, Bronstein said that all his life Geller was engaged in seeking the truth, but what truth is in chess is elusive and illusory. All the same, day and night, he kept searching for it.

      Acknowledgments and sources      

      Grandmaster Geller at the Chessboard, published by The Chess Player (1969). Translated and edited by Bernard Cafferty.

      The Application of Chess Theory, published by Pergamon (1984), translated by Kenneth Neat. This is collection of 100 games annotated by Geller. He divided the book into two halves. Part 1 comprises 64 games grouped according to opening, as he considered this would help the student. Part 2 contains all the games Geller had won (with one or two draws) against world champions.

      The Nemesis – Geller’s Greatest Games. Edited and compiled in Russian by Maxim Notkin. Translated by John Sugden (English edition 2019). This work comprises all the games in The Application of Chess Theory, with a collection of 31 more recent games and some positions. Geller’s original annotations are included. Further notes are given where computer or other analysis throws further light.

      The Zurich International Chess  Tournament 1953, by David Bronstein, published by Snowball Publishing (2012). Translated by Jim Marfia.

      Curacao 1962, by Jan Timman, published by New in Chess (2005). Translated by Piet Verhagen.

      Candidates Matches 1971, published by The Chess Player (1972). Translated and edited by Bernard Cafferty.

      Bobby Fischer Goes to War, by David Edmonds and John Eidonow, published by Faber & Faber (2004).

      “The Chess King of Odessa” (from Russian Silhouettes) by Genna Sosonko (third edition, 2009), published by New in Chess. I am very grateful to Stephen Moss for alerting me to this article and supplying me with a copy.

      And if that is not enough there is always ChessBase  where you can find 3,221 of Geller’s games. (Many thanks to Jon Eckert for his help in this connection.) Chessgames.com also offer almost 2,500 of his games. Truly a timeless treasure trove.   

      Peter Roche is a former chair and first-team captain of Kingston, and is a life member of the club.

      Secrets of the simul

      Peter Lalić says the key to doing well when you give a simul is to bore your opponents to defeat. Here he explains how he approached one he gave recently at Kingston

      As part of Kingston’s Summer Programme, a number of our strongest players have kindly consented to give simultaneous displays (“simuls” in chess parlance). First up was IM Ameet Ghasi, who annihilated all-comers, helped by what he felt was an overly generous time differential. For the second simul, given by CM Peter Lalić (pictured above), the clock settings were adjusted and the play was a little less one-sided.

      Peter had an hour and a quarter with no increment; his 15 opponents had 20 minutes with a 10-second increment. Peter eventually emerged triumphant, with 14 wins, a single draw and no losses. But there were a few hiccups along the way: Peter only realised late on that he had no increment and had to start running between the three or four boards where his time was in danger of running out.

      Several games were won with seconds to spare on his clock. He conceded a draw to Kingston stalwart Ed Mospan, which was a source of great satisfaction – to Ed and the rest of us, if not to Peter. Ed was ecstatic and punched the air in delight, saying he would frame the scoresheet. Peter has an ECF rating close to 2300. Ed’s is more than 700 points lower, so this was a significant achievement.

      It is the nice point about simuls that players who do well remember their games forever. I was in touch recently with a 67-year-old club player now retired from over-the-board chess. He sent me a game he had played almost 50 years ago against Britain’s first GM, Tony Miles. My correspondent hadn’t won or even drawn the game, but he had played well and Miles had congratulated him. That memory burned bright half a century later.

      Peter takes such exhibitions very seriously and, to my surprise, said afterwards that he was “more proud of this performance than of any of my classical games, especially because I played with the black pieces and had no increment”. I asked him to explain why it mattered so much to him. “I thought I had an increment, but I was watching one of the kids and when I watched the clock I panicked because I realised I didn’t have an increment and all of a sudden I thought ‘I can lose half of these on time’. I had only minutes left on some of them., and when I managed to be unbeaten it was a great relief.”

      Peter had opted to play Black in all the games, and says his strategy was to bore his opponents to defeat. He played 1…d6 in all games, regardless of White’s opening move, and says that he was generally able to control the pawn structure which ensued. Eighty per cent of the games had the pawn structure shown in the first diagram below; a third of the games had the structure shown in the second diagram, with queens exchanged (a Lalić speciality); in a third of the games White advanced a pawn to d5 (diagram 3), and in a fifth of the games Black was able to construct the pawn chain shown in diagram 4.

      “I was able to race around the room on the opening moves because I was playing the same thing,” Peter explains. “They are the equivalent of pre-moves. Even after five moves, 33 per cent of my games had the same position (see diagram 2 above). It’s the Lalić system! I’m sure that if I’d played anything that was less systematic I would have dropped a couple of losses. It could even have been worse than that because if you have a couple of difficult games there can be a domino effect. I could easily have scored only 60 per cent with a different opening. It’s the fact that the games are so boring that excites me!”

      Peter Lalić working the room at his simul at the Willoughby Arms, He ended with 14 wins, a draw and no losses

      Peter says calculation is difficult in a simul and it’s easy to lose the thread of a game. He had asked his opponents to keep score and says he sometimes had to remind himself what had been played by sneaking a look at their scoresheets – and this is a player with a phenomenal memory! “That’s why I had to play on autopilot,” he says. “I wanted to avoid chaos, and my study of these opening structures and my ability to force my opponents on to my territory meant I had virtually no chaos.”

      He says the only player who brought him close to the anarchy he was seeking to avoid was John Bussmann, as shown in the game below. ” It’s no coincidence that he, being the most highly rated player, was the only one to create chaos,” says Peter. “He knew good simul technique and shows what a challenger should do.”

      Ed Mospan was justifiably proud of the game he played against Peter and deserves his framed scoresheet:

      Peter notes the two players’ accuracy in this game was down at 91 per cent. In the game against Emma Buckley, his accuracy level was 99 per cent! Emma’s accuracy level was a more than creditable 93 per cent, she battled on for 64 moves, and in the course of the game set this nice trap:

      Emma played 25. c5 here, which appears to invite Kc3. The latter would lose the knight to b4 – easy to overlook in a simul. Peter dodged the bullet and went on to win the endgame. Emma is Peter’s half-sister, which made the competition all the more intense; on move 22 she told Peter the position was “dead drawn” – familial trash talking!

      Generally Peter’s “boring is beautiful” strategy worked. “I tried to make sure there was nothing going on,” he says, “and the games hinged on one or two static weaknesses in my opponents’ positions.” This is often what happens in simuls: the master-level player isn’t necessarily looking to blow you away over the board, but instead to gain a technical advantage and then squeeze. So when you’re next facing a superstar in a simul, be ready to trade blows and create as much chaos as possible. Even if you lose you will have a lot of fun and, who knows, you might even win.

      Peter makes the point that Dutch grandmaster and acclaimed writer and aphorist Jan Hein Donner was on to this more than half a century ago. “Play aggressively,” Donner advised. “Ninety-five percent of all victims in simultaneous displays usually owe their defeat to their own passivity. The simul-giver lacks the time to work out variations, but doing so is more important when defending than in an attack. On psychological grounds, too, aggressively approaching the simul-giver is a sound and very effective strategy.”

      Peter is now looking forward to the simuls which will be given at Kingston by his friends and team-mates Vladimir Li and David Maycock in the next month. It would surely be too cynical to suggest that he is offering this advice to their potential opponents in order to make life harder for them. Peter just doesn’t think in that Gore Vidal-type way. (Vidal’s famous quip was “It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.”) At Kingston we value togetherness, and such oneupmanship simply doesn’t enter our leading players’ calculations. At least I don’t think it does….

      Stephen Moss, club captain, Kingston Chess Club

      Remembering Mike Tebb

      Forty years ago, Kingston player Mike Tebb died at the board while playing for Kingston. It took a surprise visit from his widow Kate to recall that dreadful night – and to remind those who knew him of what was lost

      A couple of weeks ago a woman dropped by at a chess mentoring session for under-11s which Kingston president John Foley and I were running at a local library. She had a pile of old chess books, mostly dating from the 1970s, so ancient they used descriptive notation. But they had clearly been carefully chosen and included Nimzovich’s My System and other classic texts which suggested the owner has been a discriminating book buyer and serious player.

      As we talked to our visitor, whose name was Kate Tebb, an extraordinary story emerged. Her husband Mike Tebb (pictured above with his son in the year of his death) had played for Hampton in the 1970s, Kingston in the 1980s and also represented Surrey. John Foley did some research later and found old Surrey team lists which showed him keeping very respectable company in high-level county championship matches, and in the starting line-up for the Surrey Congress in the summer of 1976 his grade is given as 169. He was clearly a very capable player.

      Kate told us that Mike had died from cardiac arrest at the board while playing for Kingston in November 1984. She had kept his books for 40 years and now wanted to donate them to the club. What was remarkable was that John Foley, who has been part of the Kingston club for almost 30 years, had never heard a word about this dramatic and appalling night when a routine home match against Slough had ended in tragedy. I have been associated with Kingston for 20 years and had certainly never heard it spoken of. Somehow this tragic event had been hidden away, too grim to contemplate or even recall. Now, on the 40th anniversary of Mike’s death and prompted by Kate Tebb’s visit and her donation of Mike’s beloved chess books, we want to properly remember him.

      We turned to Peter Roche, who is a life member of Kingston and has given more than 50 years of dedicated service to the club, and asked him what he remembered about Mike Tebb. Not only did he remember him well and very fondly, but he had been playing alongside him on that fateful night in November 1984. Here are his recollections, spurred by Kate’s visit but perhaps suppressed for all these decades because he felt the remembrance so painful.

      “Yes I remember Mike Tebb very well,” says Peter. “He joined Kingston from Hampton and quickly became a popular and well-regarded member. He played mainly in the first team and was very dependable. He helped arrange the summer programme (he was a devotee of five-minute chess). I am sure he shared the captaincy duties. I was present when Mike collapsed. We were playing Slough at Kingston and much to my surprise we had to start without him (he being very reliable). After about 20 minutes he rushed in [the match was being played at the now demolished Quaker Hall in central Kingston] with a hurried apology. He had thought the match was at Slough, where he worked. He started his game. Suddenly there was a commotion as he collapsed at the table.

      “Immediately people sprang into action. One of the Slough players attempted resuscitation. We roused the caretaker to get an ambulance and from what I remember it came very quickly. There was a meeting in the next room and some senior police officers came to see if they could help. We contacted his wife to warn her that she must go to the hospital immediately. She had a young family so she had to arrange for them to be looked after.

      “John Adams, a member of the club though not playing that evening, was a good friend of Mike’s, and he rang to tell me that Mike had passed away and asked what had happened, so I gave the description I have set out here. A number of us including Chris Clegg, James Pattle and Richard Harris, and I think Chris Carr attended the funeral. Your enquiry has prompted a very sad memory, though I should say that I have often thought over the years about the catastrophe and what a terrible waste of a fine life it was.”

      Peter’s recollection of the evening chimed with what Kate had told us. Mike had been feeling slightly fluey a couple of days earlier, and an inquest suggested this had made him susceptible to cardiac arrest. The coroner’s report gave the cause of death as viral myocarditis, which can develop when the flu virus (on very rare occasions) attacks the heart muscle. He had played squash on the day of the Slough match and this, plus the need to rush to Kingston when he discovered the match was not being played in Slough, may have increased the susceptibility, though Kate says this is a moot point.

      She says Mike was effervescent, exuberant, enthusiastic, ebullient – “all the E words!”, as Kate puts it. He was clearly dynamic: who else would play a game of squash so soon after feeling fluey? This assessment of Mike’s personality is borne out by Kingston stalwart (and current first-team Thames Valley captain) David Rowson’s recollections of him.

      “It is very touching that Kate Tebb brought the books,” says David. “I didn’t know Mike very well as I went to work in Spain in 1981, but I still remember him quite distinctly as a very warm and sociable character with a great sense of humour. In particular I remember that when I returned to the club in the summer after my first year in Spain he joked about how annoying it was that I followed every move with a shout of ‘Ole!’ ” Kate says David Rowson’s anecdote is “absolutely typical of Mike’s humour”.

      A few days after that first meeting, at my suggestion Kate visited the small group of us who meet every Wednesday morning to play some friendly social chess at All Saints Church next to Kingston Market Place. Kate talked with Peter Roche for the first time in many years and also gave me a batch of Mike old scoresheets, from which I have extracted the game shown later in this article. The other document she brought was a set of testimonials to Mike she had gathered after his death, and again what comes across is his exuberance and joie de vivre – qualities which make his loss all the more poignant and painful.

      “I was really shaken at the dreadful news of Mike’s death,” wrote Hampton player David Mabbs. “Unusually for a chess player, Mike always found time to take an interest in other players as people, He wasn’t one of the intense or introverted players, as are so many of us. He was friendly, gentlemanly and good-humoured. He was also a good player and enjoyed his chess, and he will be greatly missed by his chess counterparts.”

      Malcolm Groom, another former Kingston stalwart who now turns out for neighbouring club Surbiton, wrote: “Mike was one of those rare people who are somehow able to inject a sense of good humour and fun into any group of people. He even made turning up on a dark winter’s night after a hard day at the office in order to spend three-and-a-half hours playing chess enjoyable (well almost). I shall miss him very much.”

      The then Kingston chair Bill Waterton, in a letter of condolence to Kate, referred to Mike’s “exuberant personality”, and that seems to have been the key to his character. As David Mabbs says, some chess players can be myopic and mean-spirited, soulless and self-obsessed. Mike was the opposite: full of energy and delighting in the game for its own sake, which perhaps explains his love of blitz chess.

      Now we have firmly put Mike back in the club’s collective memory bank, we shall continue to celebrate his life and will set up a blitz tournament in his memory. Here are two games – both played at classical time controls – which show how good and resourceful a player Mike was. The first game, a victory in 1970 over the very strong Stephen Berry (who later became a Fide master), is taken from John Saunders’ collection on BritBase. The second I selected from the pile of scoresheets handed to me by Kate Tebb. The succinct annotations in the latter game, written in pen in a small, neat hand on the scoresheet, are Mike Tebb’s own.

      Stephen Moss, Kingston Club Captain