Edward Winter
A selection which might be subtitled ‘Lest we forget’...
The match was a semi-final.
On page 9 of The Moscow Challenge (London, 1985) Raymond Keene wrote that it was ‘staggering’ that Steinitz had an ‘abysmal’ tournament record in his period as world champion (1886-1894). The truth is that Steinitz did not play in a single tournament during the period under consideration.
(976)
We drew attention to this 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.
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)
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)
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 opening sentence of a report by Raymond Keene on page 2 of The Times of 21 December 1987 claimed 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?
(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)
‘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)
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)
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)
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)
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 (London, 1982), 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, the most recent revelations come in the article Ex Acton ad Astra.
(6372)
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):
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
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Copyright: Edward Winter. All rights reserved.