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Chessville
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Clubbed A chess club is a club where people play chess. A London club is an exclusive establishment, often owning it's prestige premises in the centre of town. Former members probably included people like Charles Dickens, Sir Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli. London clubs often have their own chess circles. Chess in London club-land is thriving and has done for many years. Club teams compete for the Hamilton Russell Trophy, a silver version of the solid gold Hamilton Russell Cup which is awarded to the victors of the biennial World Chess Olympiad. The leading lights of the chess scene are the RAC, the Athenaeum and the Oxford and Cambridge club, but the East India, Chelsea Arts, Hurlingham and so on also make their mark.
In 1986 the Kasparov v Karpov World Chess Championship was to be held in London - specifically at the Park Lane Hotel. This was the first contest of such a calibre to be held in the capital since 1866 when Steinitz challenged Anderssen for an early version of the world chess title. However, we would need a suitably prestigious VIP to make the opening move - it had to be the PM Mrs. Thatcher - but how to get her to do it? Cue Jeremy. Approaching the PM in the voting lobby he enquired whether she might like to make the ceremonial first move - only to be greeted by the prime ministerial riposte "Now why on earth should I want to do that?" Quick as a rapier Jeremy came back with--"Because Prime Minister, you will be on the front page of every newspaper in the USSR the very next day." To which "How can I resist?" led to Mrs. Thatcher declaring the 1986 world chess championship in London well and truly open. So, moving to the present, on St. Valentines evening this year, charitably dubbed in advance by Sir J in the Garrick newsletter, the St. Valentines Massacre, eight courageous opponents took me on in a simultaneous display in the Milne Room of the Garrick Club. For those unfamiliar with a simultaneous display the form goes something like this: the grandmaster, in this case myself, is faced across the relevant number of chessboards by multiple opponents usually in the form of a square, a circle or as here a straight line. All the players sit behind their board and men while the display giver walks past them on the other side of the boards. Traditionally the display giver has white in all games, rather like having the advantage of the serve in tennis, and he makes the opening move on every board. The opposition then replies and a rhythmic pattern of move and countermove is established, with the hydra headed opposition making their responses as and when-but not before-the grandmaster reaches their board. I have experienced many weird occurrences in such displays around the world. In 1966 in a mass display in Havana's main square, where Fidel Castro even took a board against reigning world champion Tigran Petrosian, one of twenty Cuban farming girls I faced in my part of the manifestation just removed my queen, the most powerful piece, from the board at a critical juncture. I remonstrated and tried to replace the queen to no effect - she simply held onto it and refused to replace it - of course my translator had temporarily vanished so I was on my own with a stubborn young girl who would not let me have my queen back. My solution was to play on without the queen and still try to win before she had the brainwave of arbitrarily taking away any more of my pieces. Fortunately a repetition of the ploy did not enter her head so eventually I won the game. On another occasion in Oxford I was facing 107 schoolchildren at the Dragon School, which was hosting the Southern Counties Schools Championship. Several promising players who went on to become masters were in the serried ranks of my opponents. In three hours it was over and I had lost just one game, again I lost my queen but this time it was captured legitimately, though I swear to the present day that, because the players were permitted to use their own chess men and boards, my opponent's pieces were coloured in the same brownish hue as my own and my queen was taken by a piece I thought was mine! At The Garrick the hostilities lasted for perhaps an hour, during the course of which the bastions of a Kings Indian Defence (Adrian Barnes) a Queens Gambit Declined (Sir J) and a Slav exchange variation (Sir Duncan Ouseley) were tried, as well as various opening formations most charitably described as "irregular." The intrepid
gladiators who opposed me on the evening were, apart from those already
mentioned above, The following game was played for the Hamilton Russell Trophy in the match between the Reform Club v MCC on March 27th 2007: Ken Tweedie - Chris Waites
Notes based on those by the winner.
Keene On Chess is
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The
best players in the Garrick Club, named after the actor are, oddly enough, a
team of knights: Sir John Laws, Sir Duncan Ouseley and Sir Jeremy Hanley,
former top board player for the house of commons team. He it was who
persuaded the then Prime Minister Mrs. Thatcher, to open the 1986 world
chess championship in London.
