English Chess Forum

I'm sure this was discussed somewhere but I can't find it.

In May 1947, BH Wood experimented with figurine algebraic as well as descriptive in "Chess". It got a fair amount of abuse so he gave up after a month or two. Admittedly, he was doing a mixture, so it looked like 1.d4/P-Q4 1.d5/P-Q4, which rapidly got quite irritating.

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Kevin J Thurlow

"One of the nicest people in English chess." - S Giddins 2011
"Not a gracious gentleman" - D Howes 2011

CHESS tried that again in early 1979, when they had some teething problems with their newly launched algebraic edition......

Again, it was not terribly well recieved and lasted only a couple of months IIRC.

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"Set up your attacks so that when the fire is out, it isn't out!" (H N Pillsbury)

It was awful - the 1979 version. Truly abysmal. I got my copies many years after they were published so I might be missing something, but it's hard to imagine what they could possibly have been thinking of.


Of course, you know how deserves most credit for bringing algebraic to British chess publishing?

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http://www.streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com

"Of all the stupid questions so far, This one is particularly annoying, and irrelevant and when I meet you, I propose to write it down on cardboard and nail it to your face."
- Jerry Sadowitz

I'd imagine you could be referring to the author of "Flank Openings" which as you suggest did much to promote the secrets of Nf3, g3 and c4 among what was then a younger generation of players. There appear to have been previous attempts, but it was around that time that use of algebraic became commonplace amongst higher rated players. It was another ten years before the mainstream publishers such as Batsford followed suit. A widely read book of that era, namely "My 60 Memorable Games" continued to use descriptive, as indeed did its author.

Kevin: is this the thread you were trying to find?
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=648


I've already mentioned in the thread cited above how the master i/c chess at D-lw-ch College criticised one publication in the early 60s for using descriptive.

One early success for algebraic was when New Statesman columnist Assiac made the switch - I don't know exactly when, but certainly by 1966 and quite possibly some years before that. The ostensible reason was to economise on space (which it certainly did), but there may have been a bit of personal preference at work too - Assiac (aka Heinrich Fraenkel) was born and grew up in Germany, so would have had algebraic as his "first" notation.

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"The chess-board is the world ..... the player on the other side is hidden from us ..... he never overlooks a mistake, or makes the smallest allowance for ignorance."
(He doesn't let you resign and start again, either.)

Kevin: is this the thread you were trying to find?
viewtopic.php?f=27&t=648

That's the one! Thanks

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Kevin J Thurlow

"One of the nicest people in English chess." - S Giddins 2011
"Not a gracious gentleman" - D Howes 2011

Indeed I was, but it wasn't just with regard to Flank Openings. RDK was way ahead of his time on this one.

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http://www.streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.com

"Of all the stupid questions so far, This one is particularly annoying, and irrelevant and when I meet you, I propose to write it down on cardboard and nail it to your face."
- Jerry Sadowitz