“Sergei Tiviakov was unbeaten for a consecutive 110 professional chess games as a grandmaster, a record that has only been broken by World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Who better to teach you rock-solid chess strategy than Tiviakov. He was born in Russia and trained in the famous Russian chess school. In his first book, he explains everything he knows about the fundament of chess strategy: pawn structures.
If chess players trust that their knowledge of opening theory and tactics is enough to survive in tournament play, they are mistaken. Once you settle down for your game and the first moves have been played, you will need a deeper understanding of the middlegame. And one of the most challenging questions is: how to navigate different pawn structures?
Sergei Tiviakov gives you all the answers in this first volume of his highly instructive series on chess strategy. ‘Tivi’ is famous for his deep chess knowledge and rock-solid positional play. He has gathered a rich collection of strategic lessons he has been teaching worldwide, drawing mainly from his personal experience. The examples and exercises will improve your chess significantly and are suitable for any reader from club player to grandmaster level.”
About the Author:
“Sergei Tiviakov is a grandmaster, winner of an Olympic Gold Medal, three times Dutch Champion, and European Champion. Yulia Gökbulut is a Women’s FIDE Master, chess author and sports writer from Turkey.”
GM Sergei Tiviakov drawn by Rupert van der Linden in 1995
Before we start, you might liked to inspect sample pages
This book has its origins in a recent series of lectures given by Tiviakov. His co-author was responsible for shaping the material into a book.
We start with a long introduction about the difference between human and computer chess, which is interesting in itself, but not directly relevant to the subject of the remainder of the book.
What you don’t get is a complete guide to pawn structures: if you want that you’ll need to look elsewhere. Instead, you get something very much based on Tiviakov’s own repertoire. In general you’d expect positional players to prefer queen’s pawn openings, just as Tivi’s hero Tigran Petrosian did, while tactical players will be more likely to choose king’s pawn openings. Tiviakov, though, has been almost exclusively a 1. e4 player throughout his career. With White he makes little attempt to secure an advantage, just aiming to reach a pawn formation he understands better than his opponent.
In the first chapter we look at positions with a pawn majority on one flank. Something like this formation, which Tiviakov often reaches after 1. e4 c5 2. c3, or 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Nd2 c5 4. exd5 Qxd5.
He comments that he’s unaware of any book dealing specifically with this sort of position, and neither am I. If you’re likely to reach this sort of pawn formation in your games you’ll find this material very helpful and instructive.
In this position, from a game Tiviakov – Romanov (White to play), he discusses the idea of deciding, even this early in the game, which pieces you want to trade off for the ending. His conclusion is that ideally you should retain the dark squared bishops, so that you can attack Black’s queenside pawns, and try to trade everything else off. He managed to realise his plan successfully in this game, where he compared his style to that of Petrosian, Karpov and Carlsen.
I’ve thought for many years that perhaps the topic which, more than anything else, needed a book was that of doubled pawns. Naturally, I was delighted to see that Tiviakov devotes two chapters to this. Some of the examples were an eye-opener for me.
Here, he uses his game against Igor Efimov (Imperia 1993: it’s not in MegaBase) to demonstrate how he plays against the Trompowsky.
At first glance you might think that Black’s bishop on e6 looks like a rather useless Big Pawn, but Tiviakov explains that it’s actually more useful than its white counterpart.
But it’s important to understand that in chess a piece is labelled ‘bad’ or ‘good’ not by how it stands, whether it is blocked by pawns or not, but on its role in the actions that its army will carry out.
He explains that Black plans to swing his knight to e4, followed by b6 and c5, and, if White does nothing, by c4, b5, b4, Qd6 and Rb8.
A very instructive game, he claims, but you’ll have to buy the book to find out why.
It’s grandmasterly insights such as this, sprinkled liberally throughout, which make this book worthwhile.
Here’s another example. Tiviakov used to favour the Scotch against 1… e5, but dropped it after a loss against Mamedyarov in 2006.
Black has gone in for a deterioration of his pawn structure. From the viewpoint of classical chess strategy, he should stand worse, because of the doubled pawns, the isolated pawn on e6 and in general the three ‘islands’ against two for White. But in concrete dynamic play, Black is not worse. This is something you should understand.
We now move on to positions with semi-open files in the centre.
This sort of pawn formation can arise from very many openings, for example the Caro-Kann or Tiviakov’s favourite Scandinavian.
Here’s another instructive example, with White to play in the 2006 game Godena – Tiviakov. A Qd6 Scandi has resulted in an equal position. Now White chose the apparently natural (to me anyway) 22. c4.
It is possible to place the pawns side by side on c4 and d4, if White has definite dynamic prospects or if the opponent cannot organize an attack on them. In this concrete example, I can prevent the pawn advancing to d5 and organize an attack on it.
After White’s 32nd move this position was reached. Objectively it’s completely equal, but in practice it’s Black who’s pressing.
Tiviakov again:
After the exchange of rooks, the queen and knight are stronger than the queen and bishop team, because Black has certain secure squares available to him. For example, the queen can come to d4 and then manoeuvre such that he can switch the attack between the white king, the queenside pawns and the pawn on f2.
White’s position is very unpleasant.
Another insight into how a strong grandmaster will perceive a position which a club player like me would think of as just being equal.
The next chapter is about positions with seven pawns each and an open d or e-file.
In this position from a Tiviakov – Kasimdzhanov game, we can deduce from a piece comparison that White stands slightly better. His dark squared bishop is clearly superior, especially after a future f3 and Bf2. It’s perhaps less immediately obvious that his light squared bishop is also better than its opposite number as it’s looking at Black’s slightly vulnerable queenside, while the bishop on b7, once White’s played f3, will be ineffective. Furthermore, White has a potential square on d5, while Black doesn’t have an equivalent square on d4.
Moving on again, we have, logically enough, Two Open Files in the Centre.
Here’s a position from Tiviakov – Ibrahim (2015), with White to play.
If I had a position like this I’d be thinking about offering a draw and heading to the bar, but in fact White is much better here. Black already has a weakness on d5, and by playing Bg4+ now (as it happens Stockfish thinks the immediate Re1 is preferable) and provoking f5, he creates additional weaknesses on e5 and e6.
The final chapter is rather different, looking at the way Tiviakov defends against flank openings, using a double fianchetto system. Again, interesting, but it doesn’t quite fit in.
Summing up, we have four chapters, 1, 4, 5 and 6, which fit together logically, and three chapters, 2, 3 and 7, which, although equally instructive and interesting, don’t really fit in, as well as a long introductory chapter of only tangential relevance. Although it might not make a coherent whole, the quality of the material is very high.
However, contrary to Tiviakov’s claim in his preface that the book is aimed at players of all strengths, from beginner to Grandmaster, it really isn’t. At lower levels games are usually decided by tactical oversights rather than subtle positional advantages of the type we see in this book. I’d say it was suitable for players of, say, 1750 upwards. Again, if you favour kingside attacks, sharp tactics or heavy opening theory this might not be the book for you. But if you’re a strong player with a preference for positional chess, and especially if you share some of his opening choices, this is a book you really don’t want to miss. A second volume has now been published, which I look forward to reading in due course.
Production values are well up to this publisher’s usual high standards, even though a final read through by a native English speaker might have helped. As usual with books for New in Chess, active learning is encouraged: the reader is asked questions every few moves.
Perhaps this isn’t a book for everyone, but the content is excellent throughout, and, if you’re strong enough to appreciate grandmaster level positional concepts, the book can be highly recommended.
Richard James, Twickenham 12th August 2024
. Richard James
Book Details:
Softcover: 264 pages
Publisher: New In Chess; 1st edition (31 Jan. 2023)
“The astounding success of How To Study Chess on Your Own made clear that there are thousands of chess players who want to improve their game – and do (part of) their training on their own. The bestselling book by GM Kuljasevic offered a structured approach and provided the training plans. Kuljasevic now presents a Workbook with the accompanying exercises and training tools a chess student can use to immediately start his training.
Kuljasevic wanted his exercises to mimic the decision-making process of a real game. His focus is on training methods that encourage analytical thinking. Most workbooks offer puzzles and puzzles only. But with this book, you will be challenged by tasks like:
Solve positional play exercises
Find the best move and find the mini-plan
Play out a typical middlegame structure against a friend or an engine
Simulation – study and replay a strategic model game
Analyze – try to understand a given middlegame position
The Workbook is designed for self-study, but is also useful for chess coaches and teachers and can be applied in one-on-one lessons, as well as in study groups in chess clubs, schools or online classes. This first volume is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1800 and 2100 but is very accessible and useful for any ambitious chess player.”
About the Author:
“Davorin Kuljasevic is an International Grandmaster born in Croatia. He graduated from Texas Tech University and is an experienced coach. His bestselling books Beyond Material: Ignore the Face Value of Your Pieces and How To Study Chess on Your Own were both finalists for the Boleslavsky-Averbakh Award, the best book prize of FIDE, the International Chess Federation.”
GM Davorin Kuljasevic
Before we continue you might like to inspect this preview from the publisher’s website (product page here), which will give you an idea of the layout and show you some of the exercises. If you prefer, you can see sample pages from the Kindle edition here.
A quick word first. I have a large backlog of books to review and little time in which to review them, so, in an attempt to catch up, I will be writing much shorter critiques on the titles in my in-tray than I have done in the past.
I reviewed the author’s previous volume with some enthusiasm here, so was eager to see this workbook, especially given that, in terms of rating, but not interest in improving my game, I’m within the book’s target range.
The main body of the book comprises fifteen sets of eight puzzles. We start with five sets on tactics, gradually increasing in difficulty, each set including six ‘find the hidden tactic’ exercises, followed by two ‘tactical analysis’ exercises.
This seems excellent to me. My impression has always been that, at my level, games are much more often decided by spotting or missing exactly this sort of tactical point than by brilliant combinations and sacrifices. The Hidden Tactic exercises present a position and a three-move sequence, in which you have to find the tactical opportunity that was sometimes missed over the board. The analysis questions invite you to analyse several different lines and decide which is best.
Then we have five sets on Middlegame Training. Here we have six positions where you have to find the correct mini-plan, followed by two simulation exercises where you play through part of a game and are awarded points, in the style of Daniel King’s How Good is Your Chess feature in CHESS, for finding good moves.
Finally, there are five sets on Endgame Training to test you on this most important phase of the game. Here, each set gives you four endgame analysis questions where you have to analyse several lines. Then you have two endgame simulation exercises, followed by two positions for you to play out against a training partner, coach or engine. I’m very much in favour of this and believe that playing out endgame positions should be an important part of every player’s training.
In my day, 50-60 years ago, reading books was, for most of us, just about the only option for chess improvement. Now, of course, there are many more options. As was clear from his previous book, Kuljasevic has put a lot of thought into the most efficient training methods, and into what works best within the framework of a book, and has done an excellent job in selecting material appropriate for his target market.
If you think this book might appeal to you, again I’d refer you to the previews linked to above.
As is usual from this publisher, production values are high. The layout could have been more generous and easier to follow, but this would have necessitated more pages and cost you more money.
If you’re rated between 1800 and 2100, ambitious to improve your rating, are prepared to take time out for serious study and enjoy reading books, I can strongly recommend adding this to your library. Further volumes for lower and higher rated players are promised: I look forward to reading these in due course.
Richard James, Twickenham 26th July 2024
. Richard James
Book Details:
Softcover: 224 pages
Publisher: New in Chess; Workbook edition (31 Jan. 2023)
Last time I told you about Charles Dealtry Locock’s pioneering work in promoting chess for girls in the 1930s, and, in particular about his private pupil Elaine Saunders, the first genuine girl chess playing prodigy.
She wasn’t the first girl chess prodigy, though. Back in 1891 9-year-old Lilian Baird was making headlines round the world with her skilfully constructed chess problems. You can read about her in this book, and find out more about her chess problemist mother here.
Even in 1891, Lilian wasn’t the only chess kid in town. An even younger composer, seven-year-old James Kistruck from the Essex seaside town of Clacton on Sea, was being celebrated as far away as New Zealand…
The New Zealand Mail 10 April 1891
… and Louisville, Kentucky (although he’d apparently moved from Clacton to London).
The Louisville Courier-Journal 19 July 1891
Here, below, is the first problem: very crude and obvious but just the sort of thing a bright 7-year-old might come up with.
The second problem (the Hackney Mercury for 1891 isn’t available online so I don’t have the exact date) is rather more sophisticated. The key move creates no threat, but prepares three different mates depending on which piece Black moves. I’m sure you can work out the solution for yourself, though.
After the publication of these problems in 1891 nothing more was heard from young master Kistruck. Where did he come from and what happened to him next? I really wanted to find out.
Kistruck (some branches of the family used the variant Kistrick) is a very unusual surname, ideal for a one-name study.
The earliest mention online is of the birth of one Hosea Kistrick in the village of Kirtling, Cambridgeshire (south east of the horse racing town of Newmarket) in 1611. By the late 18th century, and now usually known as Kistruck, they’d migrated east to the villages to the west of Ipswich, Suffolk: Aldham, Elmsett and Offton. Like most of the population outside the big cities at the time, they worked in agriculture. While some of them were humble labourers, one branch had done well for themselves, rising to become farmers. These are the people we need to look at.
Rather confusingly, this family had a lot of sons, all with names beginning with J, and always starting in some order (usually with the father’s name coming first) with James, John and Joseph. The family’s favourite sport was cricket, which must have been confusing for the scorers with so many J Kistrucks in the village team, but some of them also had an interest in chess.
Let me take you back to Thursday 12 February 1862. It was a quiet day at Tollemache Hall, but the peace of the countryside was shattered by the sound of a shotgun and a cry of pain. Farmer Joseph Clarke Kistruck’s gun had accidentally been discharged, shooting him in the thigh. The loss of blood sadly proved fatal.
Essex Standard 27 February 1863
Although the family must have been reasonably well off, it wasn’t going to be easy for his widow Amelia, left with twelve children to look after, and, using the 19th century equivalent of GoFundMe, a fund was launched to help her, soon raising an impressive amount of money.
Suffolk Chronicle 09 May 1863
The twelve children included five sons and seven daughters, and, as this is, in part, a one-name study, we need to consider the boys. There were Joseph Clarke junior (1843), James (1850), John (1851), Jeremiah (1852) and Josiah Ernest (1861).
Jeremiah Kistruck (1852-1938), who spent time in an orphanage after his father’s death, later moving to London.Susanna Elizabeth Kistruck (1847-1927), who emigrated to Kansas.
It’s the two oldest of the boys, Joseph and James, who, in a small way, made their names in chess.
Joseph Clarke Kistruck junior moved to Ipswich after his father’s death, where he found work as an engine fitter, marrying in 1877 and then moving to Clacton on Sea, where his son, of course also named Joseph Clarke Kistruck, was born in 1883. (I wonder what he would have thought of Clacton’s new MP.) This was, as regular readers will know, during a decade in which many chess clubs started up, and chess was beginning to look like the game we now know.
In January 1889 a new chess opened in Clacton, and Joseph was one of the first members. On Easter Monday they played a match against a team of visitors, whose number included Joseph’s brother James.
East Essex Advertiser and Clacton News 26 April 1889
Joseph also took second place in the inaugural club championship, which concluded the following month.
The last time we hear from him, is in a match against local rivals Colchester in 1890. Perhaps he had to retire from chess for health reasons as he sadly died in September 1892. His son, though, followed in his footsteps, playing in a match for Clacton, again against Colchester, in 1906.
Joseph Clarke Kistruck III (1884-1964) pictured at Pinehurst Barracks, Farnborough in November 1917.
James, meanwhile, had moved to London, working for Jeremiah Rotherham & Co, a large department store on Shoreditch High Street, and, unmarried, living on the premises.
His name started appearing in the press in December 1887 as a regular solver of chess problems. Apart from the friendly match against his brother’s team we have no evidence of him playing club chess.
For several years his name was seen regularly in both local and national papers, which, week after week, would publish lists of those who had submitted correct solutions to their puzzles. He was clearly an accomplished solver.
In 1891 he tried his hand at composition, but the g and h files have been cut off in the online newspaper.
East Anglian Daily Times 25 April 1891
The following week the paper reported that the position, as published, had multiple solutions, and that a black pawn on g7 should be added. The correct solution, if indeed there was one, doesn’t appear to have been published.
If you also add a white pawn on g4 you get a sound, but not at all interesting, mate in 2.
Perhaps any problemists reading this can come up with something better.
By 1893 he was solving far less frequently, and, by the dawn of the 20th century he’d stopped completely, only returning late in life, with mentions in 1928 and 1929, and living on until 1935.
Back in 1909 he unexpectedly married a much younger woman, and their only son, James (of course) Frederick Kistruck, was born the following year. (It looks like they might have had an earlier son with the same name who didn’t survive, and whose birth was registered shortly after his death.) They had now moved out to North London, but he continued working for the same company. Even at the age of 71, in 1921, and by that time living in Wood Green, he was employed as a warehouseman.
There were a couple of other Kistrucks who occasionally solved chess problems. In 1889 there was a J S Kistruck (‘we note the different name’), who might have been a cousin, James Syer Kistruck. In 1893, EE Kistruck from Offton solved a problem in the East Anglian Daily Times. This must have been Joseph and James’s sister Edith Eliza Kistruck (1859-1908): it’s good to know that chess was played by girls as well as boys in the Kistruck family. Edith never married, moving around a lot and spending time with her siblings. In 1885 she gave birth to an illegitimate son, Oliver, in Bethnal Green (near where James was working) who died the following year.
Having looked at the chess careers of the Kistruck family, we need to return to the 7-year-old problemist James Kistruck, living in either London or Clacton, depending on which source you prefer, and having a problem published in Hackney.
James Kistruck was living near Hackney at the time, solving and attempting to compose problems. As of 1891 he had no children. His older brother Joseph was living in Clacton and playing over the board, and had a 7-year-old son, but his name was also Joseph, not James.
It seems to me that this was just a harmless hoax, cashing in on the fame of Lilian Baird to get a couple of problems published. I’d guess James composed them, and used his name, but his nephew’s age and home town to get them published.
If you have any other thoughts, do let me know, and don’t forget to come back soon for another Minor Piece.
Sources & Acknowledgements:
ancestry.co.uk/newspapers.com
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
Yet Another Chess Problem Database (www.yacpdb.org/)
“Are you a parent of a junior chess player who feels that because you don’t know how to play chess, you can’t help your child? Or are you an adult or junior chess player who has taken private chess lessons for years, but feels you haven’t been progressing? In both cases, there can be a lot of reliance on a chess coach who has been given free rein with lesson content and direction. They probably have some sort of plan but it is likely to be a plan used for all their students. This is not ideal.
More important is a well-thought out, individualized plan, that focuses on a specific player’s unique strengths and weaknesses. Formulating such a plan is crucial for making improvements. Victoria Doknjas and her son John Doknjas are an ideal writing partnership to tackle this topic. John is a FIDE Master who has already established himself as an excellent and highly-respected author who understands the improvement process very well. Victoria has over a decade of experience navigating the competitive chess arena with her three master-level sons, including also running her own chess academy. Together they offer a unique and informative insight to those wanting to get more out of their chess studies, as well as presenting practical advice in areas including:
* Identifying important goals and how to work towards them.
* Understanding how to objectively analyse your games.
*Maximising the efficiency of software and engines for learning.
Reading this book can broaden your horizons in the essential areas of chess study, and ideally let you better evaluate what your chess coach is teaching you. And if you don’t have a chess coach, this book will provide you with an excellent foundation for serious chess study.”
and about the authors:
John Doknjas is a FIDE Master who has won several strong tournaments in British Columbia, Canada, including the Grand Pacific Open. John is a chess teacher with over eight years of experience and is a highly respected author. Victoria Doknjas has over a decade of experience navigating the competitive chess arena, including also running her own chess academy.
As with every recent Everyman Chess publication high quality paper is used and the printing is clear. Each diagram is clear as is the instructional text. Figurine algebraic notation is used throughout and the diagrams are placed adjacent to the relevant text.
A rather provocative title, I think. Here are two chess coaches telling you what chess coaches (presumably apart from them) don’t tell you. You can read their introduction in the sample linked to above.
As I have a rather large pile of books still to review and much else to do I hope you’ll excuse me being rather less detailed than in the past.
Of course there’s a big difference between coaching players with, say, ratings of 0, 500, 1000, 1500, 2000 and 2500. Or between coaching players aged, say, 5, 10, 15, 20 or 25, not to mention 50 or 95. Or between coaching players who have, say, 5 hours a day, 1 hour a day or 1 hour a week to devote to chess.
I can summarise the chapters fairly quickly.
Chapter 1 (3 pages): Working Hard with a Set Purpose. Or, if you like, Deliberate Practice.
Chapter 2 (5 pages): Defining Goals and Developing a Plan to Achieve Them. All great in principle, but the problem is that, for most of us, life (work, studies, family or whatever) usually tends to get in the way.
Now we move on to the meat of the book.
Chapter 3 (57 pages): Analyzing Your Games.
The authors recommend that when you’ve played a game you enter it into your database (without having an engine on), annotate it with specific reference to the critical moments, write down what you learnt from the game, and only then look at it using an engine and/or show it to your coach.
You’re provided with three exercises: one game by each of the authors and a grandmaster game, each of which is presented five times: without annotations, with the possible critical moments highlighted, with some variations at the critical moments, with further explanations at the critical moments, and finally with engine-based analysis.
With jumbo sized diagrams used liberally, this takes up a lot of space for a lot of repetition.
Here’s the GM game: you might want to see how you get on. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
Analysing a Karpov game would, I’m sure, be a good exercise for a 2000+ player, but it would be pretty hard for a 1500 player and futile for a 1000 player. We’re perhaps looking at this point at a book for very strong and ambitious players, along with their parents and coaches.
This level seems to be continued in Chapter 4: Creating an Opening Database (30 pages). Using as an example the closed Italian Game (with c3 and d3) for White, the authors show you how you might go about this using ChessBase.
When we’re trying to find moves for our opponent to use in our opening repertoire, we should try to find the most popular moves (since these are what we’re most likely to face in a game). However, when we’re trying to find a move to play ourselves, often it’s useful to choose a rare move over a popular move (as long as the engine is fine with it).
Again, this sounds like excellent advice for, say a 2000 player.
Moving on, then.
Chapter 5 clocks in at a chunky 85 pages on Will to Win: Essential Endgames. All reputable chess coaches will agree that Essential Endgames are, well, essential.
But here we’re taught how to play baby positions like this…
.. which is one of the first lessons I give beginners, followed by pages on RP v R (Philidor, Lucena) and Q v P on the 7th rank, again material more suited to 1000 players than 2000 players.
This all left me rather confused as to the purpose and target market of the book.
We’re still in endgame territory in Chapter 6, Tactics and Studies (32 pages). As well as solving tactics puzzles online the authors recommend, like most chess coaches these days, solving endgame studies. They present five rather difficult studies here, much more suited to 2000 rather than 1000 strength players.
This one, unlike some of their other choices, has a short solution.
White to play and draw (Jan Timman 1981)
The main line runs 1. Nd2 Bf7 2. Kg5 Ng2 3. Nf3 Kf8 4. Ne5 Kg7 5. Nxg6 Bxg6 with stalemate.
Chapter 7 is Slowing Down (another 32 pages). Good advice for novices, yes, but do you need to tell experienced players to slow down? We seem to be back with advice for 1000 players now, telling you to play more slowly and consider basic principles (control the centre squares, develop your pieces etc). We then have a few exercises where you have to use basic principles to find the best plan in some GM games.
The final long chapter, Chapter 8 (88 pages), is on Training Games. I was very pleased to see this chapter as I consider training games to be an invaluable method of improving your chess which is often ignored. We’re first advised to play training games against stronger players if we can. We’re then given 41 positions which can be played out against a training partner or a computer. These range from typical opening positions, through a variety of middlegame positions through to endings. Each of the positions is then repeated along with the game continuation and some analysis, explaining the length of the chapter.
Chapter 9 (22 pages) covers the important topic of To Exchange or not to Exchange in rather perfunctory fashion: a brief introduction followed by four examples including games from Kasparov and Karpov.
Finally, Chapter 10 (12 pages) gives you some FAQs for Parents or Those New to Competitive Chess – useful, I suppose, but parents and adult newcomers will have rather different questions, and some of the answers are USA/Canada-centric, which may not be helpful for UK readers.
What to make of this book, then?
The question I always ask is whether the publishers commissioned the book, or whether the authors wrote it and submitted it on spec. Perhaps the former, although I may be wrong. It’s clear that the authors are great chess coaches and the book is full of excellent ideas and advice, some of which is not readily available elsewhere. But it doesn’t seem coherent to me, though, switching between advice tailored for budding masters and instruction more suitable for novices. There was, for my taste, rather too much analysis of fairly random examples, and the layout, with the very large diagrams favoured by this publisher, could have been more economical.
While I get that the chess book market, unless your name is Levy Rozman, is relatively small, and publishers want their books to appeal to as wide a range of readers as possible, trying to please everyone at the same time results in a book which will only be useful in parts for most purchasers. A more proactive approach from the publishers to produce a book with a more specific target market could easily have resulting in something half the size and twice as useful (which would perhaps have sold half as many copies).
Although I can only recommend the book with reservations, you might find it fills a gap in the market and at least some of the material will give you some fresh ideas about how to improve your, or your students’ rating.
And, if you’re interested in publishing a book about what chess coaches don’t tell parents of kids rated under 1000, I know just the person to write it.
Last time I considered Charles Dealtry Locock’s tournament and match play in the 1880s and 1890s, at which point he gave up competitive chess.
But it was far from the end of his chess career. Alongside his chess playing he had a parallel career as a chess problemist.
In The Chess Bouquet (1897) he was given the opportunity to say something about how he started to take an interest in the problem art.
Here’s that first problem.
Problem 1 (#3 Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 18-02-1882). The solutions to all problems are at the end of this article.
Here’s another early problem.
Problem 2 (#2 Southern Weekly News 29-12-1883).
But these represented just an early dalliance in the problem world. Concentrating on his studies and over the board play, he took a break from composition, only returning in 1890.
This miniature had probably first been published in Tinsley’s Magazine a few months earlier.
Problem 3. (#2 Morning Post 06-01-1890)
He published a few more problems in 1891, gradually increasing his production over the next few years as he stopped playing tournament chess.
Most of the problems were mates in 2 or 3 moves (quite a few of them, sadly, cooked, which suggests, as does his play, a certain carelessness), but also a few selfmates. By now he had a column in Knowledge, which ran from 1891 to 1904, which provided an outlet for some of his compositions.
While some of them were complex, he also published a lot of simpler problems suitable for casual readers, often employing perennially popular themes such as queen moves to corners, star flights and switchbacks.
Problem 4. (#2 The Field 1891)
In 1892 Locock made a brief excursion into the world of endgame studies, with this early example of Co-ordinate Squares.
You’ll see Locock was living in Kingston at the time, but by the September he’d moved down the road to Putney Heath.
I haven’t been able to find anything further, either in the 1892 or 1893 BCM, perhaps unsurprisingly, since the position is drawn, regardless of whose move it is. If it’s Black’s move, though, the only drawing move is 1… Kg7.
If, however, you start with the white king on a1 instead, then you have an excellent study. It was published with this correction in the Deutsche Schachzeitung in October 1914.
White wants to meet Kf6 with Kd4, and therefore also wants to meet Kg5 with Ke3. There’s only one route to get there.
Study. (W to play and win British Chess Magazine July 1892 (corrected))
In the 1893 Christmas Special issue of the British Chess Magazine, Locock offered a puzzle involving retroanalysis.
Here’s the published solution. I’ll leave to experts in this field to comment.
His problems didn’t win a lot of prizes, but this Mate in 3 from 1896 was a first prize winner.
Problem 5. (#3 Manchester Weekly Times 1896)
In The Chess Bouquet Locock discussed his ‘decidedly heterodox’ views on chess problems.
He concluded like this.
This is one of the problems he composed for The Chess Bouquet.
Problem 6. (#2 The Chess Bouquet 1897)
Although he retired from competitive chess in 1899, Locock certainly didn’t retire from composition, although he was increasingly drawn to 3-movers rather than 2-movers. Some of them are pretty complex, but this one is rather sweet and certainly accessible to the casual solver.
Problem 7. (#3 British Chess Magazine February 1909)
This more complex mate in 3 was a 1st prize winner in 1933.
Problem 8. (#3 1st Prize British Chess Magazine 1933)
Now let me take you back to 1909. On April 1 (note the date), Locock wrote to the editor of the BCM:
A sui-mate is what we’d now call a selfmate. Black compels a reluctant White to deliver checkmate.
For those of you who aren’t bilingual, here’s the game.
Locock would maintain an interest in these tasks, known as Synthetic Games, throughout the rest of his long life. In 1944 he published a whole host of them in the BCM. Note that, unlike in Proof Games, there are often multiple solutions.
You might like to try a couple here.
Synthetic Game 1: White opens 1. Nc3 and delivers a pure mate (there’s only one reason why the king cannot move to any adjacent square) with the queen’s rook on the 5th move. (British Chess Magazine May 1944)
Synthetic Game 2: Black mates on move 5 by promotion to a knight (this is also a pure mate). (Manchester Weekly Times 28 Dec 1912)
If you’re interested in synthetic games you’ll want to read this comprehensive and authoritative paper written by George Jelliss.
There, then, you have the problem career of Charles Dealtry Locock, who, as well as being a very strong player during the 1880s and 1890s, held an important and, you might say, unique place in the chess problem world for more than 60 years. If you’d like to see more of his problems, check out the links to YACPDB and MESON at the foot of this article.
But there was much more to Locock’s chess life than playing and composing, as you’ll find out next time. Be sure not to miss it.
Solutions to Problems and Study (click on any move for a pop-up board).
Problem 1.
Problem 2.
Problem 3.
Study.
Problem 5.
Problem 6.
Problem 7.
Problem 8.
Synthetic Game 1.
Synthetic Game 2.
Sources and Acknowledgements
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia The Chess Bouquet (FR Gittins: here) British Chess Magazine (various issues)
Internet Archive (here)
Chess Archaeology (here) The Problemist
Yet Another Chess Problem Database (here)
MESON Chess Problem Database (here) Synthetic Games (George Jelliss: here)
Grandmaster Thomas Luther, born in 1969, is the first player with a disability to have entered the FIDE Top 100 rating list. In 2001 he was ranked 80th in the world. He has won the German Championship three times and is well known as an experienced and successful coach. In 2014 his achievements were recognised by being granted the title of FIDE Senior Trainer. In his career to-date he has published several books and DVDs. This is his fourth book for Thinkers’ Publishing, after a co-production with Jugend Schach Verlag entitled ‘Chess Coaching for Kids – the U10 Project‘ and the current series
GM Thomas Luther
This is the third volume in Thinkers’ Chess Academy (TCA), an ever-growing series written by Grandmaster and FIDE Senior Trainer Thomas Luther intended for beginners through to club standard players.
John Upham has previously reviewed the first volume, First Steps in Tactics, although I note a negative review on Amazon which considered the examples were too hard for the target market. Volume 2, From Tactics to Strategy – Winning Knowledge, which, I believe, hasn’t been submitted for review by BCN, covers more advanced tactics along with an introduction to strategy.
Volume 3 is designed as a workbook for readers of the two previous volumes, while also providing more challenging exercises for ambitious students.
From the author’s introduction (it’s also on the publisher’s website):
Not every reader is ambitious enough or has enough time to work very hard on his chess. That’s quite understandable and nothing to be ashamed of. You can enjoy chess very well without being a strong tournament player. You could just entertain yourself by playing through interesting combinations. In this case don’t try too hard to solve the Advanced Lessons or Master Class exercises. Have a look to make yourself familiar with the position, than look at the solution and enjoy the surprising combinations. You won’t learn as much as you would by racking your brain to crack the hard nuts. But some knowledge and experience will certainly rub off and increase your understanding of chess. I hope this book will help you to work towards your goals and let have you fun with chess.
The book has an unusual structure. We have 20 chapters alternately easier and harder, with the answers at the end of each chapter. Less experienced players are advised to work through the odd numbered chapters first before tackling the odd numbered chapters, while stronger players could work through the book in order, using the odd numbered chapters as ward-up exercises.
An interesting concept, but does it work? Let’s take a look inside. All the odd numbered chapters are billed simply as ‘Quick Test’, although their specific themes are discussed in the chapter introductions. The first Quick Test, which corresponds to Chapter 7 of TCA1, features mates in up to 2 moves. Other tests involve winning material in various ways. There is a gradual increase in length and complexity, until, by Chapter 19 you’ll be able to find wins (material or mate) in up to 5 moves.
I enjoyed Chapter 9 (Quick Test 5): From The Good Old Times!
Can you find this mate in 3 (Napier – Amateur 1904)?
Ng5+ is only a mate in 4: it’s quicker and more spectacular to play 1. Qg6+ Bxg6 2. Ng5+ hxg5 3. hxg6#
This, for example is Q12 in Chapter 19.
If you can solve this within a few seconds you’re a pretty good tactician: quite a jump forward from the simple positions in Chapter 1.
In case you haven’t spotted it yet: 1. Bxf6 Bxf6 2. Qxe6+ Kg7 3. Qxf6+ Kxf6 4. Nxd5+ followed by 5. Nxb6.
The even numbered chapters, apart from Chapter 2, have more specific titles, Chapters 4-12 being Advanced Lessons and Chapters 14-20 being Master Classes. We have (from 4 in steps of 2): Easy Tactics in the Endgame, Chess History, Checkmate in Up to 5 Moves, Advantage or Mate in Up to 5 Moves, All Kinds of Draws, Advantage in 5 or More Moves, The Classics, Studies and finally The Long Way to Checkmate. Yes, of course some two move combinations can be much harder to spot than some five move combinations, but the author has been very careful in his choice of material.
This is from Chapter 10: Mohammad Fahad – Vatsal Mumbai 2018.
White won by continuing 17. fxe6 fxe6 18. Nxe5 dxe5 19. Nxe6 Bxe6 20. Bb5+ Kf7 21. Qf2+ Bf6 22. Rxd8. A nice example of a clearance; very difficult to see, according to Luther.
Like many leading chess teachers these days, Thomas Luther is very keen on endgame studies. “Don’t be frightened or repulsed by the studies”, he says in the introduction to Chapter 4. “They are not like problem chess but very practical and instructive. You can learn a lot by trying to solve them.”
Here, from Chapter 18, is an 1851 study by Horwitz and Kling.
Instructive, I think, because you need to know basic KP v K theory as well as being able to spot knight forks.
The book is beautifully produced and the author has clearly put a lot of thought into both the selection of the puzzles and the structure of the chapters.
If you’re following the Thinkers’ Chess Academy series you’ll definitely want this book. If you’re looking for a book, with puzzles you probably haven’t seen before, this book would also be an excellent choice. I would place this volume high up in my list of recommended puzzle books for club standard players.
Of course many players these days prefer to solve puzzles online, but there’s also much to be said for the old-fashioned method of using a book. Although I’d guess the main target market would be roughly 1250-1750 rated players, anyone between, say, 1000 and 2000 strength would find this book both instructive and enjoyable. Lower rated players should work through the odd numbered chapters first, while higher rated players will prefer to start at the beginning and work through sequentially.
If you want to make sure the book’s for you, you can read the first three chapters here.
Thinkers Chess Academy Volume 3 – Test your chess knowledge – Crucial exercises to sharpen your understanding, Thomas Luther, Thinker’s Publishing, Thinkers Publishing; 1st edition (20 Dec. 2022)
You’ve already read about Charles Dealtry Locock’s career as a chess player and problemist. In the final part of this trilogy you’ll learn more about his life, and about what might be seen as his most lasting and significant contribution to chess.
You’ll recall that he married his first cousin, Ida Gertrude Locock, and that they had two daughters. Both were named after characters in Wagner operas who met unfortunate ends: was Wagner his favourite composer?
Elsa, born in 1891, received her name from a character in Lohengrin, who, to cut a long story short, died of grief after her brother was turned into a swan. She worked for a time as a shorthand typist, did voluntary social work for the Red Cross during the Second World War, and died unmarried in 1985.
Her sister, born in 1894, was named Brynhild, a version of Brünnhilde from the Ring Cycle, a Valkyrie who, to cut a very long story short, rode her horse into a funeral pyre after the death of her lover Siegfried. (If you’d like to find out more, Anna Russell is considerably shorter and much more amusing than Wagner.) In fact her name was registered twice, the second time as Hilda Vivien, which she seemed to prefer. She worked as a children’s nurse, and died, again unmarried, in 1950.
Although Locock gave up competitive over the board chess in 1899, he played on Board 2 for the South of England in a correspondence match against the North the following year. He was matched against the mathematician George Adolphus Schott, winning a brilliant game. As always, click on any move for a pop-up window.
In the 1901 census the family were living in Camberley, on the Surrey-Hampshire border, along with four servants: governess, parlourmaid, cook and housemaid.
Charles’s occupation was described as ‘living on own means & literature”. His particular literary interests were the poems of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Swedish poetry and drama. It appears that he was also still writing a regular chess column in the science magazine Knowledge at this point (some of them are available online).
The same year he had his first book published: neither literary nor chess related, but about the game of billiards. Entitled Side and Screw, you can read it here.
Chess and billiards weren’t Locock’s only games. He was also very much involved in the game of croquet, editing the Croquet Association Gazette between 1904 and 1915, and being employed as the Croquet Association handicapper from 1907 to 1929.
More books followed: Modern Croquet Tactics in 1907, Olympian Echoes, a book of poems and essays, in 1908 (here), and, in 1911, an edition of Shelley’s poetry (Volume 2 here).
In October 1910 he made a rare appearance at the chessboard, taking part in one of a series of consultation games between the veterans Blackburne and Gunsberg. His team was unsuccessful, but the game was exciting.
By the 1911 census the family were in the Hertfordshire market town of Berkhamsted, now employing only two servants, a Swiss cook and a parlourmaid. Charles’s occupation was given as Editor and Handicapper.
In 1912 he celebrated his 50th birthday by writing his first chess book, which, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to be available online.
Hampshire Post and Southsea Observer 13 September 1912
By 1915, Charles Dealtry Locock, returned to playing chess, having joined the Imperial Chess Club, here giving a simultaneous display.
West Sussex County Times 01 May 1915
Here’s his loss against solicitor George Bodman, formerly of Bexhill, whom he may well have known from his time in Sussex chess.
It’s possible his marriage had broken up by this time, and he was living in London. Either way, the social atmosphere of the Imperial (about which there’s much to be researched and written) would have been ideal for Locock, who loved chess while not enjoying the pressures of competition.
Linlithgowshire Gazette 16 July 1915
Locock continued at the Imperial for the rest of the decade, and, in 1920, returned to correspondence chess, playing on top board for Kent against an Italian magazine, and scoring the full point when his opponent went wrong in a bishop ending.
In the 1921 census, Charles Dealtry Locock, claiming to be still married, was visiting a widow named Rose Edith Heath in 4 Ferry Road, Barnes. (I got off the bus about 100 metres from there the other day: perhaps I should have walked in the other direction to say hello.) I don’t know whether he was just visiting a friend, or whether there was anything else to their relationship. Ida and Elsa, working for the Red Cross as a shorthand typist, were living in Redcliffe Square, just south of Earl’s Court. Brynhild was in Scarborough, a trained nurse but working as a servant for a young doctor, perhaps helping to care for his infant son. I’d like to think she bought her groceries from Edward Wallis, whose shop was only a short walk away.
By this time, Locock was very much engaged in translating Swedish poetry and plays, particularly those of Strindberg, into English (for which he was awarded a silver medal in 1928), and resigned from his post at the Imperial Chess Club in 1923. He was still actively involved in the world of chess composition, though, publishing another collection of problems and puzzles in 1926.
You might think that, approaching his seventies, it was time to wind down his chess career, but in fact he had a few more moves to make.
In 1930 he published a booklet entitled 100 Chess Maxims (for Beginners and Moderate Players). Perhaps I’ll review this further another time. For the moment I’ll just say that, while it contains much excellent advice, some of the maxims are decidedly odd.
No. 4, for instance (translated into algebraic by Carsten Hansen) advises you not to play your c1-bishop to f4. Devotees of the London System won’t be happy.
Then there’s:
37. The object of the game is to mate, and as quickly as possible. Captures are only made to deprive the king of his defenses.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I always thought the object of the game was to mate as certainly as possible. If you look back to some of his games in the first article of my Locock trilogy, you’ll see some examples of him playing in exactly this way 40 years or so earlier.
This book might, in part, have been occasioned by Locock’s new career – as a chess teacher in schools, specifically girls’ schools, and specifically the Oratory Central Girls School in Chelsea. He even wrote an article about Chess for Girls for the first issue of the Social Chess Quarterly.
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 18 April 1931
This seems to have been a rival tournament to the British Girls Championship, with which Locock was also involved, which had taken place a few months previously, with the same winner. See BritBase (here) for further information on this event.
Here’s Honor having just won the earlier tournament.
The Sphere 10 January 1931
The school prizegiving that year even included a chess play.
Chelsea News and General Advertiser 20 November 1931
By 1935 one of his very young private pupils was doing rather well.
Falkirk Herald 22 May 1935
She was Elaine, not Eileen, and her family were living on the prestigious St Margaret’s Estate, on the borders of Twickenham and Isleworth.
That July she was successful again in a rather unusual event organised by her chess teacher.
Linlithgowshire Gazette 02 August 1935
Almost half a century later, Elaine wrote (British Chess Pergamon Press 1983):
My father, assisted by a 2d. (= almost 1p) book of rules from Smiths, taught me the moves at somewhere round the age of five. We were rescued by the problemist CD Locock who noticed me playing in a girls’ tournament two years later. It was he who brought me up on a diet of the Scotch, the Evans and any gambit that was going. We analysed them in some depth – for those days – and my severe task-master made me copy out long columns of dubious lines. He also made me his guinea-pig for his Imagination in Chess and it is small wonder that I still find it hard to resist a sacrifice, and much of my undoing comes from premature sorties such as f4 and Qh5.
In retrospect he must have been a brilliant teacher. Starting in 1936 a succession of girls’ titles came my way including the FIDE under-21, and in 1939 the British Ladies at the age of 13. It is hard to assess how strong or weak one was at the time because there has been such a marked improvement in the standard of play among women over recent years. At all events, those pre-war years were happy ones, especially away from chess which took second place to horses and more physical pastimes.
Yes, we have another book, Imagination in Chess, published in 1937.
From the author’s introduction:
Based on my own chess teaching experience I have partial sympathy with Locock’s views. I noticed at Richmond Junior Club that children learnt the Two Rooks Checkmate early on, and, if they were winning, would head for that mate, spurning quicker mates in the process. On the other hand, most checkmates don’t require sacrifices, apart from a few stock patterns which need to be remembered, just accurate calculation. While we all like to play brilliant combinations, my view is that, at club level, more games are lost by unsound sacrifices than won by sound sacrifices. Over-emphasising sacrifices to young and inexperienced players can be dangerous.
We have 60 positions, in each of which (with one exception) you can play a problem-like sacrifice to force mate. A halfway house, if you will, between problems and game positions.
A couple of examples:
This is a mate in 3: you’ll want to sacrifice your knight, and then your queen.
Here, you have to mate in 4 moves, being careful to play your sacrifices in the right order: knight, then queen, then the other knight.
If you’d like to see more you’ll be delighted to know that this book has very recently been updated, edited and published by Carsten Hansen, with 100 Chess Maxims added as a bonus. You can buy it here.
Locock also played training games with Elaine, one of which survives.
By the time of the 1939 Register, and with war imminent, the Saunders family had taken the precaution of moving out of London, and were staying in the George & Dragon Hotel in Princes Risborough – and Charles Dealtry Locock (Author, retired) was staying with them. It’s not clear how long they stayed there, and whether or not Locock was only visiting.
When he was writing about synthetic games in 1944, one of his correspondents and collaborators was a young RAF pilot named David Brine Pritchard. I’d like to think they met and perhaps played each other, if only because it would give me a Locock number of 2 (I played David, but not Elaine). I’d also like to think he introduced David to Elaine, as they married in 1952. Their daughter, Wanda, was also a strong chess player.
Charles Dealtry Locock died in Putney on 13 May 1946. Here’s his probate record.
I haven’t been able to identify Nina Agnes Wood for certain: the only likely candidate is a journalist named Agnes Nina Wood (1871-1950). I wouldn’t want to speculate.
His wife lived on until the age of 94, dying in 1962 at the same address and leaving £63975 11s: were they reconciled at the end of their lives?
There, in three parts, you have the long and eventful chess career of Charles Dealtry Locock. In the first part we looked at his competitive chess career in the 1880s and 1890s, winning the British Amateur Championship and representing his country. The second part considered his career of more than sixty years as a creative and innovative problemist. But perhaps it’s for his final act, as a pioneer in promoting chess in schools, and, particularly chess for girls, that he should be most remembered. Elaine (Saunders) Pritchard’s memoir confirms that he was a brilliant teacher. More than that, he also pioneered the idea of solving composed positions to teach creativity and imagination. Many chess teachers today encourage their students to solve studies and problems for this reason, but Locock got there first. He should always be an inspiration to all of us involved in junior chess.
Come back soon for the story of another chess prodigy.
Sources and Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to Carsten Hansen for sending me a copy of his new edition of Locock’s Imagination in Chess + 100 Chess Maxims.
Many thanks also to Brian Denman for sending me his file of Locock’s games.
Other sources:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
Internet Archive
ChessBase 17/Stockfish 16.1
Sir Charles Locock (1799-1875) was an interesting chap. Queen Victoria’s obstretician, he also pioneered potassium bromide as a treatment for epilepsy and conducted the autopsy in the notorious Eastbourne Manslaughter Case, establishing that an unfortunate 15-year-old boy had died as a result of corporal punishment.
Locock had five sons, four of whom had distinguished careers. Charles junior became a barrister, Alfred a clergyman, Sidney a diplomat and Herbert an army officer. The middle son, Frederick, though, was the black sheep of the family. He married the illegitimate daughter of a labourer and brought up a son who claimed he was the illegitimate child of Princess Louise. There’s little evidence that this might be true, so we’ll move swiftly on to the Reverend Alfred Henry Locock.
Alfred married Anna Maria Dealtry: their four children were Ella, Charles Dealtry, Henry and Mabel.
Charles Dealtry Locock, born in Brighton on 27 September 1862, was a lifelong chess addict. He started playing chess at his prep school, Cheam, which is now in Hampshire, but really was in Cheam in those days, delivering a back rank mate at the age of 6 or 7, and later winning a tournament there. I would have thought chess tournaments at prep schools were quite unusual in those days. Moving to Winchester at the age of 13, and playing chess on his first evening there, he could find no one to beat him, instead immersing himself in the world of chess problems.
In Autumn 1881 Locock went up to University College Oxford, where he takes up the story.
Wainwright (see here, here and here) was sufficiently impressed to select his adversary for matches against the Oxford city club, Birmingham and the City of London club. At first he was placed on bottom board, but rapidly worked his way up the board order.
In those days the standard of play in the universities wasn’t strong, and their teams would take on the Knight’s Class players of the City of London Club (who would receive knight odds from the top players). Here, he describes a game was one of those matches.
I’m not sure how reliable Locock’s memoir is. We do have a game against Staniforth with a bishop on b2, but otherwise it doesn’t match this description. As with all the games in this article, just click on any move for a pop-up window.
By the 1882 Varsity Match Locock had reached Board 3, where he scored a draw and a win against Edward Lancelot Raymond. He already had quite a reputation as a tactician, the BCM describing him as ‘perhaps the most brilliant and attacking player now at either University’. Unfortunately, the score of his second game, decided ‘by an uncommonly happy series of finishing strokes’, does not appear to have survived.
The 1883 Varsity Match found Locock on top board against Frank Morley. The first game was a solid draw, but the second was more exciting. Zukertort adjudicated the game a draw, but today’s engines give Morley (Black, to play) a winning advantage after h5 (or h6) followed by Ng4.
That summer he played his first tournament, the Second Class section of the Counties Chess Association meeting in Birmingham, scoring 10/14 for second place, a point behind Pollock.
In October that year he took part in a Living Chess exhibition in his home town of Brighton. It all sounded rather splendid.
The Graphic 27 October 1883
Playing against auctioneer and estate agent Walter Mead, early exchanges led to Locock being a pawn down. Exchanges in living chess games are always fun, but didn’t really play to his strengths. (The game had actually been played the previous day: they re-created the moves for the exhibition.)
Round about this point we have a mystery. Several correspondence games between Locock and FA Vincent were published, dated 1884. Locock’s memoirs suggest they were actually played much earlier, when he was still at school. They also state that his opponent was Mrs Vincent, while newspaper columns of the time refer to this player as Mr Vincent. We can identify Francis Arthur Frederick Vincent, a retired Indian Civil Servant who had been born in Singapore, living in Cam, Gloucestershire (not far from Slimbridge Wetland Centre) with his wife, born, rather strangely, Sutherland Rebecca Sutherland. It’s not clear which of them was the chess player, or whether they might have collaborated on their games. If you know more than I do, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
In the 1884 Varsity Match Locock again faced Frank Morley on top board. This time they only had time for one game, and, more than compensating for the previous year’s incorrect adjudication, he was awarded a win in a lost position, even though Bird, the adjudicator, spent 15 minutes determining what the result should be.
In summer 1884 Locock was promoted to Division 2 of the First Class tournament in the Counties Chess Association gathering, held that year in Bath, finishing on 4½/10. First place was divided between Fedden, Loman and Pollock.
However, his game against Blake, where, after getting the worst of the opening, he successfully ventured a positional queen sacrifice for two minor pieces, demonstrated exactly why his creativity, imagination and tactical ability were so highly regarded. He must have seen at move 18 that his queen was being trapped.
Here’s a position from a game against Colonel Duncan of the St George’s Club (whom I suspect was this rather interesting fellow) he sacrificed four pawns for nebulous attacking chances against his opponent’s Benoni formation.
He was rewarded when the Colonel overlooked his threat, playing 31… b3?? (there were plenty of good defences available), allowing 32. Qxh6!! Kg8 33. Rxg6 with a winning attack.
In the 1885 Varsity Match Locock was again on top board, this time facing a former prodigy, John Drew Roberts. This game suggested that, although he excelled at attacking play, he was less comfortable in endings.
Here, Locock (Black, to move), would have been slightly better after a move like d4 or a5, but misguidedly played 32… b5?, allowing 33. b4!, fixing some pawns on the same colour square as his bishop.
A few moves later he erred again: Bd7, for example, should hold, but after 35… Rf8? 36. Rxf8+ Kxf8 37. b4! he was saddled with a bad bishop against a good knight. Roberts converted his advantage efficiently.
From these examples, we can see that Locock was a player with very specific strengths and weaknesses.
The 1885 Counties Chess Association meeting was held in Hereford, and, in the Class 1A tournament he shared first place with another old friend of ours, George Archer Hooke.
The game between the two winners was a very exciting affair which Locock really should have won, but positions with queens flying round an open board are never easy to calculate.
Locock’s fifth and last Varsity Match appearance in 1886 was another defeat, when he misdefended against Herman George Gwinner’s kingside attack. That year he finally graduated with honours in Classics.
In the Counties Chess Association meeting in Nottingham he encountered two members of the Marriott family in the Minor Tournament Division 1. John Owen took first place, ahead of Edwin Marriott, with Locock, Thomas Marriott and George MacDonnell sharing third place. Although he lost to both Marriotts he managed to beat Owen, who blundered in what should have been a drawn ending.
Locock then took a job as an assistant master at Worcester Cathedral School, whose headmaster, William Ernest Bolland, was a chess acquaintance of his.
In August 1887, placed in a stronger section, he disappointed in the Counties Chess Association meeting in Stamford. Blake won with 5/6, and Locock’s solitary point left him in last place.
Later in the year (I’m not sure how he managed to get the time off his teaching job) he took part in the Amateur Championship in the 3rd British Chess Association Congress. He won his qualifying group, shared 1st place in the final group, where he encountered his old University friend Wainwright, and won the play-off against Frederick Anger, making him the British Amateur Chess Champion.
August 1888 gave Locock his first taste of international chess. The British Chess Association held a tournament in Bradford, and Locock was invited to take part. His score was respectable given the strength of the opposition.
It could have been so much better, though. He certainly should have beaten MacKenzie in the first round.
He lost in ridiculous fashion against the tournament winner in a game which he might later have confused with the Staniforth game.
Either Nxg7 or the simple Rxe1 would have given him a very large advantage, but instead he played the absurd Qh6??, simply overlooking that Black could block the discovered check with f6.
His game against Mortimer again demonstrated his prowess in the Ruy Lopez.
On 12 February 1889, at St George’s Hanover Square, Charles Dealtry Locock married his first cousin, Ida Gertrude Locock, a daughter of Charles’s army officer Uncle Herbert. They can’t have had much time for a honeymoon as he was soon in action again over the board.
In a March 1889 match between Oxford Past and Cambridge Past (the first of what would become an annual event) he faced an interesting opponent in economist John Neville Keynes, the father of John Maynard Keynes.
Again he attacked strongly in the opening, but missed the best continuation, allowing his opponent to equalise, and then blundered in what should have been a drawn ending.
They met again in the same fixture two years later, the game resulting in a draw.
At the end of 1889 Locock resigned his position at Worcester Cathedral School, briefly taking a post at Hereford Grammar School before moving to London.
The BCA ran another strong international tournament in 1890, this time in Manchester. This time Locock was less successful, although he did score 50% against the top four.
Unlike two years before, he made no mistake against MacKenzie.
In 1891 Locock’s first daughter was born in Hawkhurst, Kent, although his location was still being given as London at the time. He was also still playing at the British Chess Club, winning this brilliant miniature against a strong opponent in their handicap tournament.
In 1892 the BCA ran another international tournament, this time in London, with the participation of the young Emanuel Lasker. Locock did well to score 6½/11.
Unfortunately, his draw against Lasker doesn’t appear to have been published, but we do have this game.
This would be his last tournament, although he continued playing in matches for several more years.
Soon afterwards Charles Dealtry Locock and his family moved out of London and back to his county of birth, settling in the village of Burwash, not all that far from Hawkhurst. Although it was 15 miles away, he wasn’t deterred from joining the Hastings and St Leonards Chess Club.
Hastings and St Leonards Observer 17 December 1892
It was in Burwash that his second daughter was born in 1894. Meanwhile, he was taking part in county and other matches, and playing consultation games with other leading players, a popular feature of Hastings chess at the time.
Here’s an exciting example in which he had a very strong partner.
One of the opposing team would late meet a tragic end, as described in Edward Winter’s excellent and thorough article here.
The same year a cable match took place between the British and Manhattan Chess Clubs, which was the predecessor of the official Anglo-American Cable Matches starting the following year. Locock was matched against Albert Beauregard Hodges: their game was drawn in 28 moves.
As a gentleman amateur he was just the sort of chap the selectors were looking for, and, although he was no longer an active tournament player he was selected for the Great Britain team for the first four matches. In 1896 he drew a fairly long ending against Edward Hynes, but in 1897 he was well beaten by Jackson Whipps Showalter.
Locock, playing Black, had misplayed the opening, and now Showalter replied to 14… Bxg5 with 15. Rxd7! Kxd7 16. Qg4+ Qe6 17. Qd4+ Kc8 18. Bxg5, having no problem converting his advantage.
This very short consultation game is (or at least was) perhaps his best known game, although it’s not clear whether the game lasted 9 or 18 moves. Unsurprisingly, it involves a queen sacrifice.
This position, from an 1897 match between North London and Hastings & St Leonards, is another demonstration of how Locock’s predilection for sacrifices could end up looking foolish.
He was Black here against Joseph William Hunt.
Locock being Locock, he couldn’t resist the Greek Gift sacrifice here. 11… Bxh2? 12. Kxh2 Ng4+. Here, Hunt played 13. Kg3?, which was unclear, the game eventually resulting in a draw, but 13. Kg1! Qh4 14. Bf4! would have left Black with very little for the piece. These sacrifices usually don’t work if your opponent has a diagonal defence of this nature: there are one or two examples of this in Chess Heroes: Puzzles Book 1. Curiously, the notes in the Pall Mall Gazette (Gunsberg?) claim that 13. Kg1 ‘was obviously impossible owing to Qh4 by Black’. Obviously not, but newspaper annotations, without Stockfish to assist and probably written overnight, were very poor in those days.
In the 1898 Cable Match Locock drew with David Graham Baird, this time missing an early tactical opportunity.
15… Bf3! 16. gxf3 Qh3 was winning, but instead he played 15… g5 and after 16. f3 White was safe, the game eventually resulted in a draw after a long double rook ending.
Locock’s opponent in the 1899 Cable Match was Sidney Paine Johnston.
Here’s the game.
Locock missed a win: 28. Qxe6+ Kh8 29. Rd8!, while Johnston in turn missed 29… Qh6!
There was quite a lot of comment in the press about Locock’s miss. Here’s the Morning Post (Antony Guest):
Morning Post 13 March 1899
Stung by this criticism, he decided it was time to give up competitive over-the-board chess. He kept his word, too. In 1901 it was announced that he’d compete in the Kent Congress, but he changed his mind. This was indeed the end of that part of his chess career.
Many years later he recalled:
What, then, should we make of Charles Dealtry Locock (pictured above) as a chess player? He was clearly a very creative and imaginative tactician, who, at his best, was of master standard for his day (EdoChess rates him as 2346 in 1892), but his constant quest for brilliancy led him to play the occasional silly move, and he sometimes missed tactical opportunities, particularly if they involved more unusual ideas. He also seemed to find endings rather boring. But perhaps, judging from the quote above, he wasn’t temperamentally suited to competitive chess, finding the pressure of the ticking clock too stressful. I can empathise. Fortunately for him, there were other ways to fuel his chess addiction.
You’ll find out more in my next two Minor Pieces.
Sources and Acknowledgements
Many thanks, first of all, to Brian Denman for kindly sending me his extensive file of Locock games.
Locock’s memoirs, quoted in several places above, and written with a combination of arrogance, false modesty and facetiousness, were published in the January 1933 issue of the British Chess Magazine.
Other sources:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
BritBase (John Saunders)
Chess Notes (Edward Winter)
ChessBase 17/MegaBase 2023/Stockfish 16.1
chessgames.com (Locock here)
EdoChess (Rod Edwards: Locock here) Correspondence Chess in Britain and Ireland 1824-1987 and British Chess Literature to 1914, both written by Tim Harding and published by McFarland & Company Inc.
The Surrey County Chess Association runs a bewildering number of competitions of various types, one reason being that they’ve chosen to commemorate some of their long-serving administrators through trophies in their memory.
The main league itself currently has five divisions. The first division is the Surrey Trophy, which dates all the way back to the 1883-84 season, while the second division, the Beaumont Cup, was instigated twelve years later, in the 1895-96 season.
I’m sure you’d like to know, as I did, more about Mr Beaumont. Well, he wasn’t Mr Beaumont at all, but Captain Alexander Spink Beaumont, Alex to his friends. It’s a long story.
He was born in Manchester on 24 June 1843 into a family with military connections. Beaumont was in fact his paternal grandmother’s surname but his father used his mother’s surname. Spink was the surname of his Aunt Charlotte’s husband.
He served in the 23rd Foot Regiment of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, reaching the rank of Captain in 1871, when the census found him at Fort Hubberstone in Pembrokeshire. Perhaps it was there that he met Caroline Savage (née Griffies-Williams), a widow more than 20 years older than him, who came from a family of wealthy Welsh landowners, one of whose properties was in Tenby, not all that far from Milford Haven. She was born in 1822 but often claimed to be much younger.
The following year Alex and Caroline married in London, both giving an address in Inverness Terrace, north of Hyde Park, which was by now the Beaumont family residence. He then resigned his commission and, round about 1878, they settled at 2 Crescent Road, South Norwood, in South London. This is now Warminster Road, running by the railway line north of Norwood Junction Station. There are a few grand houses at what is now the high numbered end of the road, and I’d guess one of those was their residence.
As a gentleman of independent means, he had plenty of time to pursue his two passions in life: chess and music. He was a composer as well as a player in both fields, but was also a gifted organiser and promoter. Beaumont wasted little time joining Croydon Chess Club, the first ‘modern’ chess club in Surrey. In 1880 he had a problem published in the local paper. You’ll find the solutions to all the problems at the end of this article.
Problem 1: #3 Croydon Guardian 28 August 1880
The 1881 census found Alex and Caroline living in South Norwood along with his unmarried brother Richard, a Major in the Royal Engineers, four domestic servants, one male and three female, and a nurse.
Later the same year he had some important news.
Croydon Guardian and Surrey County Gazette 19 November 1881
Beaumont was nothing if not ambitious for the new club.
Norwood News 17 December 1881
Zukertort and Blackburne were, according to EdoChess, the second and third strongest players in the world behind the inactive Steinitz at the time. Attracting them to visit a new club in a London suburb was quite a coup. Regular simultaneous displays, both blindfold and sighted, by professional players would become a regular feature of the South Norwood Chess Club.
it wasn’t long before Blackburne visited, and Zukertort was there as well, acting as teller.
Croydon Guardian and Surrey County Gazette 11 February 1882
You’ll also note the name of Leonard Percy Rees, the most influential English chess organiser of his day, involved with the establishment of everything we now know and love, from the Surrey County Chess Association through to FIDE. I really ought to write about him at some point.
During this period he was very active on the composing front. One of his problems even took first prize in a local competition.
Problem 2: #2 1st Prize Croydon Guardian 1882
He was now being published nationally as well as locally.
Problem 3: #3 The Chess Monthly June 1882
This three-mover shouldn’t be too challenging for you.
Problem 4: #3 The Field 19 August 1882
Meanwhile, South Norwood were playing friendly matches against their local rivals from Croydon. There was also talk of an international tournament in London the following year, and Beaumont was the first to make a financial contribution.
By the autumn of 1883 chess in Surrey was moving rapidly towards the thriving county association we see today, thanks to the likes of Joseph Steele, Leonard Rees and Alexander Beaumont, who was elected a vice-president.
Morning Post 17 September 1883
By now the President of the Surrey County Chess Association, the ‘genial and hospitable’ Captain Beaumont’s chess get-togethers were becoming grander by the year, in 1885 attracting about ‘150 gentlemen’.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 12 December 1885
At the same time, along with involvement in the British Chess Club, he was also organising musical events. Here, his two interests were reported in adjacent articles.
Norwood News 09 October 1886
The name of Walter Willson Cobbett, one of his regular musical collaborators, may not be familiar to you, but it certainly is to me.
Although he was not composing so many problems, he was becoming more involved in composing music, and, from 1890 onwards his compositions were being published by Charles Woolhouse in Regent Street.
The Graphic 22 March 1890
Look who else Woolhouse was publishing: our old friend (and my cousin’s father-in-law) W Noel Johnson, whom you might have met here. One online source suggests that Woolhouse was a pseudonym for Beaumont, but that doesn’t appear to be the case: there really was a music publisher of that name.
Percy Victor Sharman, the dedicatee of this work, was a young violinist living in Norwood.
The family doesn’t appear in the 1891 census: it looks like their side of the road might have been missed by mistake.
That year there was good news for South Norwood when they won the Surrey Trophy for the first time. They would go on to win it again in the following three seasons.
Norwood News 12 December 1891
Some of the guests are notable. Captain Lindesay Beaumont was Alex’s younger brother (his older brother Richard had died in 1884). Rudolf Loman was a Dutch chess master and organist. Edward Markwick was a lawyer whom you’ll meet again later in this article.
In December 1893 Beaumont’s portrait appeared in The Chess Monthly.
In January 1894 (or perhaps late December) South Norwood Chess Club ran another of their popular simuls, this time with Richard Teichmann as the guest. He played 18 games, losing one game and drawing two, one of them against Captain Beaumont. This was described in the local press as “a good example of (Beaumont)’s bold and energetic play. (As always, click on any move for a pop-up window.)
His counter-gambit worked well and he missed a simple opportunity to win a piece in the opening.
In 1895 he presented a trophy – yes, the Beaumont Cup – to be competed for by some of the smaller Surrey clubs further out from Central London. My great predecessors at Richmond won it in its second year. Beaumont’s old club, South Norwood, were among the five clubs taking part in the 2023-24 edition.
Captain and Mrs Beaumont were by no means always at home. They spent a lot of time on the continent, partly for health reasons, partly because they enjoyed travelling and partly because they owned property abroad, including an Italian villa.
At various times they visited, as well as Italy, France, Hungary and perhaps Malta. In 1896 the Captain turned up in Nuremberg to watch the international chess tournament there (his friends Blackburne and Teichmann were taking part, but no match for Lasker), and found himself taking part in a concert.
Westminster Gazette 10 August 1896
Adolph Brodsky was one of the leading violinists of his day, giving the first performance of Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. There’s something about his chess career here, but my article about him is no longer available. I don’t think he’d have consented for any pianist who wasn’t extremely proficient to accompany him.
On 30 October 1897 he was back in Surrey, losing to his old friend Leonard Rees in a match between South Norwood and Redhill.
This time he chose a different variation of the Scandinavian Defence, but without success.
In January 1898 Beaumont was abroad again, this time in Florence. He was proud of the conclusion of this game, where his third move forced mate in 4.
He couldn’t have imagined that, a century and a quarter later, we’d have machines in our pockets telling us immediately that 1. Rf7 would have been mate in 5.
In March 1898 the Streatham News started a chess column, and Captain Beaumont provided the first problem.
Problem 5: #2 Streatham News 26 March 1898
A few weeks later he submitted a problem composed by his late brother Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Henry Beaumont Beaumont (yes, there were two Beaumonts). I haven’t been able to find any other problems composed by Richard, or any more information about his chess career. However, I have managed to find his sword, which was auctioned in 2012, here.
Problem 6: #3 Streatham News 7 May 1898
By that autumn there was talk of running another major international tournament in London the following year. Beaumont, of course, was quickly in with a donation and was appointed to the organising committee led by his friend Sir George Newnes. This was the tournament where Francis Lee might have played on the board later acquired by Leonard Grasty.
On 26 November there was a visit from the Ladies’ Chess Club. The ever genial Captain was on hand to host the event.
Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News 03 December 1898
I’d imaging the top two boards were honorary encounters. Lady Thomas was the mother of Sir George. Prussian born coffee merchant Frank Gustavus Naumann, drawing with his wife in interests of marital harmony, would later become the first President of the British Chess Federation, and later still lose his life on the Lusitania.
Here’s the top board encounter: the protagonists had been friends for many years. Black stood little chance after losing material in the opening.
There was more on the music elsewhere.
Streatham News 03 December 1898
Coincidentally, as I write this I’ve just returned from a piano recital at which the Verdi-Liszt Rigoletto paraphrase was also played.
William Yeates Hurlstone is of considerable interest. A composer of exceptional talent, Beaumont supported him financially after the early death of his father, but he sadly died at the age of only 30. Much of his music has been recorded: there’s a YouTube playlist here.
Violinist William J Read would, in 1912, give the first performance of the violin concerto of another tragically short-lived South London composer, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.
On 5th January 1901 Captain Beaumont organised an even bigger chess event at Crystal Palace. This merited a major feature in the following month’s British Chess Magazine (online here).
The 1901 census found him at home with his wife and four servants: a valet, a parlourmaid, a cook and a housemaid. But now his health was starting to fail and his wife was approaching her 80s. He was often unable to attend chess events, either because he was unwell or because he was travelling somewhere with a more agreeable climate. This seems, as we also saw with Francis Joseph Lee, to have been standard medical advice in those days.
A couple of years later a clergyman, Albert William Gibbs, who had been born in 1870, gave up his curacy to move in with them as a companion and carer.
Captain Beaumont had one last gift for British Chess. In 1904 the British Chess Federation was formed, with Frank Naumann as the first President and Leonard Rees as the first Secretary. Naumann presented the trophy for the British Championship itself, while Beaumont donated that for the British Ladies Championship. “A very elegant silver rose bowl on Elizabethan scroll-work, enriched with chess emblems”, made by Messrs Fattorini and Sons of Bradford, the first winner was Miss Kate Belinda Finn, with a commanding score of 10½/11.
Caroline Beaumont died in 1907, and in 1908 the Captain was advised by his doctor to move, as the London clay on which his house was built wasn’t good for his health. He soon found a new residence built on gravel three miles to the east, in Beckenham.
This rather splendid photograph shows his chauffeur Walter Goldsack at the steering wheel with Albert Gibbs in the passenger seat. The identity of the other passenger is unknown. It was posted on a family tree by Mark Beaumont, great great grandson of Alexander’s brother Lindesay. I’m advised by Dr Upham, an expert on the subject, that the car is undoubtedly American, so I guess it would have been quite expensive.
In the 1911 census, Alexander and Albert (described as a ‘visitor’) were living there, along with a cook-housekeeper, a parlourmaid and a housemaid. We’re additionally informed that the house had 14 rooms, including the kitchen but excluding the bathroom.
The following winter he travelled south in search of better weather.
Norwood News 02 March 1912
But that was to be his last journey. He died on 4 September 1913, at the age of 70.
The obituaries were effusive.
Beckenham Journal 06 September 1913
“A man of splendid disposition, a generous friend, and a great lover of animals and children.”
Norwood News 06 September 1913
One of the obituaries published this game as a sample of his play, without, unfortunately, giving any indication of when, where or against whom it was played.
Here’s his probate record.
This is round about £8.3 million today. Probate was granted to his nephew (and closest relation), his companion, to whom he bequeathed £400 plus an annuity of the same amount, and his solicitor.
Captain Alexander Spink Beaumont appears to have been, in every respect, an admirable fellow, much loved and respected by everyone who knew him, either through chess or through music.
It seems only right that his name should still be remembered by Surrey chess players today, more than a century after his death.
And yet, there was another side to him as well.
Let me take you back 40 years, to 11 September 1873. Alexander Spink Beaumont, recently retired from the army and recently married, is living in Norton House, one of his wife’s family properties, in the seaside resort of Tenby, Pembrokeshire. He invites a 14 year old local lad named George Lyons, the son of a boatman working in the coastguard service, to his house, and, if you believe George’s account, invites him upstairs. He asks the boy if he can keep a secret, attempts to perform an act so disgusting that it cannot be mentioned in the press, gives him three shillings and sixpence, and then takes him down to the garden. George, quite correctly and courageously, goes home and tells his mother. His parents summon the authorities and, the following evening, his father returns the money to Captain Beaumont in the presence of a witness. On 3 October the allegation goes before the magistrates. Beaumont’s domestic staff are called as witnesses and deny that anything untoward could possibly have happened. Nevertheless, the magistrates decide there is a case to answer (‘making an assault upon George Lyons, with intent to commit an abominable crime’) and send the captain to trial.
The following February Beaumont appeared before the Pembrokeshire Spring Assizes. The judge considered the evidence improbable and contradictory and instructed the jury to dismiss the case, which they duly did.
Well, I wasn’t there so I don’t know for certain, but young George’s account seems fairly convincing to me. I guess the judge felt that a gentleman couldn’t possibly have committed such an act. Then, as now, if you’re rich or famous you can get away with almost anything. Perhaps it served as a warning to him as there’s no evidence that he ever did anything of that nature again.
Let’s now move forward a few years, to 1881, the year in which an ambitious young publisher named George Newnes started a general interest weekly magazine called Tit-Bits. The magazine proved highly successful, Newnes, a chess enthusiast, made a lot of money and went on to sponsor, amongst much else, the Anglo-American Cable Matches.
A few years later, a young journalist named Alfred Harmsworth submitted some articles to Newnes for publication, soon deciding that he could make more money by starting his own magazine. In 1888 he started a weekly called Answers, providing answers to a wide range of questions submitted by readers or just made up. A friend of his father, Edward Markwick (yes, you’ve met him earlier in this article), joined the venture, and he persuaded his friend – yes, Alexander Spink Beaumont, to provide financial support. Adrian Addison’s gossipy history of the Daily Mail, Mail Men, suggests that some thought Beaumont may have had ‘an unrequited homosexual motive in getting behind the pretty young journalist’.
At first, the Beaumonts and Harmsworth were the best of friends, but in 1891 a bitter argument between them ensued and eventually they sold their shares in his company. There’s much in Reginald Pound’s biography Northcliffe, which can be read online (although the OCR is poor) here. Caroline, who seems to have been the dominant partner, is described as ‘charmingly uncommon’. Meanwhile, in 1896 Alfred Harmsworth and his brother Harold launched the Daily Mail, becoming, as a result, rich and famous.
Years later, in 1905, the year of the establishment of Associated Newspapers, the case flared up again.
Cheltenham Chronicle 14 October 1905
It looks as if the Beaumonts, jealous of the success of the Daily Mail, were trying to get half a million pounds (about 76 million today) back from the shares they sold 14 years earlier. Harmsworth put in a counter suit accusing the papers who published this report of libel, and the whole affair was quietly dropped. Very strange.
What, then, should we make of Captain Alexander Spink Beaumont? it seems to me highly likely that he was gay at a time when same-sex relationships were illegal. Should we feel sorry for him, or, looking at the allegations of George Lyons, revile him? Or perhaps we should just remember his services to the game of chess, as a player and problemist, but most of all as an administrator, promotor and populariser of his – and our – favourite game.
One final thing, there’s a thread on a military badges forum here from a collector who has miniature portrait lockets, acquired separately, of Alexander and his older brother Richard. A rather wonderful thing to have.
He’s not the only Alexander to have given his name to a Surrey chess trophy, but that’s something for another time. I have other stories to tell first. Join me again soon for another Minor Piece.
Sources and Acknowedgements:
ancestry.co.uk
findmypast.co.uk/British Newspaper Library
Wikipedia
Yet Another Chess Problem Database
MESON problem database (Brian Stephenson)
Internet Archive (archive.org)
chessgames.com Movers and Takers, and various blog posts by Martin Smith
EdoChess (Rod Edwards)
Surrey County Chess Association website
Other online sources linked to in the text
Problem solutions (click on any move to play them through):
“It is amazing how much play you can create in a seemingly equal chess position – if you persevere. In this book, the greatest chess player of all time, Magnus Carlsen, and his friend, Grandmaster David Howell, explain how to win these kinds of chess games.
Carlsen and Howell show how you can keep a game alive, how you can keep posing problems to your opponent, how you can recognize the first small mistakes, and how you can grind your opponent down until he cracks.
New In Chess has converted this book from a popular Chessable video and MoveTrainer ® course with the help of Carlsen and Howell. The lively conversations of the two friends translate very well into a highly instructive chess manual. It is top-level chess, using grandmaster games as examples, but the insights are accessible to players of all levels.
Magnus Carlsen won the World Chess Championship in 2013 and gave up his title in 2023. He is regarded as the greatest player of all time and holds the #1 spot in the world ranking. He has read dozens of books published by New In Chess, but this is the first book with Carlsen as an author. Carlsen (1990) lives in Oslo, Norway.
David Howell is an elite chess Grandmaster with a 2700+ peak rating and an individual gold medal winner at the Olympiad. He is a well-known and popular commentator on live chess streams. Howell (1990) is two weeks older than Carlsen, was born in Eastbourne, United Kingdom, and lives in Oslo, Norway.”
David Howell, London Chess Classic, 2013, courtesy of John Upham Photography. For more about David Howell see here
This book is essentially a transcript of a Chessable course which you can find here. If you prefer book learning, or you just like the idea of having something written by Magnus Carlsen on your bookshelf you’ll be interested in this title.
David has written a two page preface:
A quick swashbuckling attack full of sacrifices may appeal to some, but a long endgame grind can lead to the same result. Arguably, while one approach is more spectacular and may ensure that games end quicker, the other approach comes with less risk attached.
Magnus provides a shorter preface:
Nothing quite compares to the thrill of pressing a minute advantage and converting it into victory. The excitement of outmanoeuvring and outlasting your opponent. The realisation that – although your first punch may not have landed – there is no need to despair. Try, try and try again. You will very often succeed.
Which are you? A hacker or a grinder? A sprinter or a marathon runner? To become a strong player, of course, you have to master both styles of play, but many will have a preference for either hacking or grinding.
Grinders require qualities such as patience and stamina as well as an outstanding knowledge of both technical and practical endings. If you’d like to become a better grinder, or even if you’d like to be better at defending against grinders, this course is for you.
It’s standard practice these days to have two commentators working together in live broadcasts, sharing ideas, asking each other questions. It’s something that usually works very well, making the broadcast more interactive, more friendly, more accessible, and, for me at least, it’s also effective in book form.
There could be no one better to demonstrate by example how to become a grinder than Magnus Carlsen, not only the highest rated human player of all time, but also a leading exponent of grinding. David Howell, also a strong grandmaster who enjoys grinding, as well as being an excellent commentator, is Magnus’s ideal partner. They are also good friends, and this is something that comes across well, adding to the enjoyment of the book.
Having said that, the contents themselves seem rather slight. Apart from the introductory material to each of the eight chapters you only get twelve games, seven played by Magnus and six played by David. If you’re good at maths you might have noticed that 7+6 is 13: one of the games is between the two authors, played in the final round of the 2002 World Under 12 Championship. It resulted, since you asked, in a draw.
This is one of Magnus’s lesser known games. He admits that it was an ‘awful game’ but still managed to grind down his lower rated opponent. Click on any move for a pop-up window.
The book is beautifully produced, although I guess the, er, colourful cover might not be to everyone’s taste. If this sort of thing bothers you, you might also think that, while a wide sans serif font is best for screens, a narrower serif font might be preferable for books.
The quality of the annotations, if you like the conversational style, is, of course, of the highest quality. At one level the games are more suited to players of, say, 2000+ strength, but some of the more general insights into the nature of grinding will be of interest and value to all players.
If you like the idea of grinding and you’d rather study the material from a book than from an interactive course or videos (or perhaps you’d like the book as well as the interactive course) it can be highly recommended.
Daniel King interviews David Howell about the book here, and if you can’t afford an hour to watch this, Daniel also provides a summary here.
You can read some sample pages from the book, which will enable you to decide whether or not it’s for you, here.
Richard James, Twickenham 14th May 2024
. Richard James
Book Details:
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: New in Chess; 1st edition (31 Aug. 2023)
Grind Like a Grandmaster: How to Keep Pressing until Your Opponent Cracks, David Howell and Magnus Carlsen, New in Chess; 1st edition (31 Aug. 2023), 978-9083328461
We focus on the British Chess Scene Past & Present !
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