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Poor Development

Victor Kahn Many games are lost, by amateurs and masters alike, on account of poor development. The main cause is loss of time from either launching a premature attack or capturing pawns in the opening. When the hasty attack has petered out or when a…

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When Vishy Lost in 6

Zapata–Anand Biel, 1988   1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nf6 3 Nxe5 d6 4 Nf3 Nxe4 5 Nc3 5…Bf5?? 6 Qe2 1-0   Nick Pelling explains Anand’s mishap in his entertaining Chess Superminiatures: ‘While looking through the Informator chess journal, he found a Petroff’s Defence game…

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Letter from Stephen Fry

We are sure that readers will have come across humorist Stephen Fry. A few months ago, the star of Blackadder, Saturday Night Live, the Comic Strip and numerous radio programmes was interviewed on television. In the background on his bookshelves was a copy of Batsford…

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The Hastings Years: Part 2

Stuart Conquest remembers his mentor Our first address in Hastings was 11, Cloudesley Road. Some years later an acute economic squeeze forced us to sell that spacious abode, so instead we moved a few miles west, to a small semi-detached property high up on a hill,…

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The Hastings Years: Part 1

Stuart Conquest recalls his reckless youth When one’s surname is Conquest, and when one spends ten years of one’s life in the town of Hastings, then the line: ‘Is your middle name Norman?’ (or similar witticisms) does tend to crop up with alarming frequency. I…

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Combo Absurdo

With his sharp eye for the unusual and the bizarre, Tony Miles offered this ‘candidate for the most absurd combination of the year award’.  Bellon–Sosonko Amsterdam 1978 Having been positionally outplayed Bellon now produced the incredible 21 Bxa6!!??? The ‘justification’ lying in the variation 21…Bxa6 22…

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A Fish Who Makes a Lemon is Busted

The Students’ Olympiad 1967  W. R. Hartston   This event was held in Harrachov, Czechoslovakia in July and Cambridge University provided two members of the English team. On board two I scored two wins, nine draws and one loss in soporific style while on board…

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Hugh Alexander’s Most Painful Blunder

  ‘My position was too good. I saw several winning moves and couldn’t make my mind up between them.’ ‘It occurred in round eight of the preliminaries in the 1958 International tournament. England were playing East Germany, and we were engaged in a desperate struggle to…

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Eye Told You So

‘John Witherow and Fraser Nelson, editors of the Times and Spectator respectively, are happy to employ a hack who regularly steals other writers’ work and passes it off as its own … This isn’t the first time the Penguin has been caught red-handed.’ Private Eye…

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