Latest in Games

Boy George

© Thomas family collection This is the earliest known photograph of George Thomas (later Sir George). It was taken in Southsea in September 1895 when George was 14 years old. A few weeks earlier he had been a spectator at the great Hastings tournament where…

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Michael Basman’s Questionnaire

  What is your earliest memory of playing chess? I went up to Selfridges with my dad and we bought a wooden set for 10s. 6d. He taught us to play chess that evening. I remember him showing us the knight move.   What is…

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Basman at the British

Michael Basman Editor’s note: What is striking about these games is how each highlights different aspects of Mike’s playing style. As you might expect, there is his calling card – the outlandish opening 1 e4 g5 (‘totally bonkers’ –Nigel Short), but next is an epic…

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Self-help

Chess Improvement It’s all in the mindset  Barry Hymer and Peter Wells 334 pages | Softback | Bibliography | Index | £15.99 Crown House Publishing, 2020 Carl Portman   This is not so much a review as a summary of my thoughts as a passionate…

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Two Sultans

Two remarkable players, Sultan Khan (1905–1966) and Victor Soultanbéieff (1895–1972), met at the International Team Tournament at Folkestone in 1933. Sultan Khan, one of the game’s most naturally gifted stars, represented the British Empire, and Soultanbéieff his adoptive country, Belgium. In a dazzlingly short career…

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Spassky’s Toughest Simul

The chess boom triggered by the 1972 Fischer–Spassky match enthused many talented youngsters, especially in Britain. Boris Spassky became an early casualty of the fallout from the ‘English chess explosion’ when he took on a schoolboy squad over 30 boards in 1979. The event was…

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The Sultan of Swash: Part 3

In a recent Perpetual Chess Podcast the chess writer and translator Douglas Griffin pointed out how much fine chess literature is waiting to be translated into English; most of it is in Russian, as you might expect. Griffin has been mining Soviet chess archives for…

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The Executioner from Berlin

Hans Renette     Kurt Richter A Chess Biography with 499 Games Alan McGowan 380 pages | 93 photos | hardback | $75.00 Jefferson: McFarland, 2018 A few months ago McFarland’s new-born chess book saw the light of day. After working for over four decades…

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Gary Lane’s Agony Column

DEAR GARY I would like to bring to the attention of readers the old but entertaining tome Castling through the Ages: From 0-0-0 to 0-0. I would certainly recommend any aspiring player to seriously study this aspect of  their game and try spectacular castling. I…

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Fiendish Moves #3

 Uitumen – Lein Sochi, 1965 Black to play      12…h5!! A fine move, and the only good one.      13 fxe5 Bg4 14 Qb3 Qf2      15 Qxb7? It was better to play 15 Rd1, and if 15…Be2 only then 16 Qxb7.  15…Qxe1…

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