Published Notation

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Kevin Thurlow
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Published Notation

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sat Aug 04, 2012 11:33 am

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.
"Kevin was the arbiter and was very patient. " Nick Grey

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Published Notation

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Sat Aug 04, 2012 12:09 pm

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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Jonathan Bryant
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Re: Published Notation

Post by Jonathan Bryant » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:07 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote: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.
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?

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Published Notation

Post by Roger de Coverly » Mon Aug 06, 2012 8:35 pm

Jonathan Bryant wrote: Of course, you know how deserves most credit for bringing algebraic to British chess publishing?
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.

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John Clarke
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Re: Published Notation

Post by John Clarke » Wed Aug 08, 2012 12:25 pm

Kevin Thurlow wrote:I'm sure this was discussed somewhere but I can't find it.
Kevin: is this the thread you were trying to find?
http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=648
Jonathan Bryant wrote:Of course, you know how deserves most credit for bringing algebraic to British chess publishing?
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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Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Published Notation

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Thu Aug 09, 2012 7:59 am

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

That's the one! Thanks
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Jonathan Bryant
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Re: Published Notation

Post by Jonathan Bryant » Mon Aug 13, 2012 8:03 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:I'd imagine you could be referring to the author of "Flank Openings" ....
Indeed I was, but it wasn't just with regard to Flank Openings. RDK was way ahead of his time on this one.