Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

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John Saunders
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Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Sun Apr 03, 2016 2:12 am

54 games, report and full results from the April 1952 Bolton Easter Congress:

http://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/pgn/195 ... iewer.html

Sorry they have been a trifle delayed but I've only just received the bulletin...

EDIT: I should of course give credits where due. Many thanks to Mike Conroy for sending this bulletin in my general direction (via C&B).
Last edited by John Saunders on Sun Apr 03, 2016 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Apr 03, 2016 1:38 pm

John Saunders wrote:54 games, report and full results from the April 1952 Bolton Easter Congress:
An interesting comment from the author of the bulletin:-
Most of my annotations are concerned with the opening—for three reasons. First, Opening Theory is the only branch of the game on which I feel any degree of confidence; second, so many players taking part in the Congress are better middle-game players than I am; third, so many Lancashire players are good middle-game players but poor openers.
Perhaps play was "irregular" by the standards of 1952 opening theory, but I've yet to spot anything that was an obvious howler. Perhaps the player who met an Advance French with 3. .. c6.

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Sun Apr 03, 2016 2:16 pm

I'd never seen Wilkinson's annotations before this bulletin arrived (which only happened yesterday) but I was quite impressed by his forthright and authoritative style (reminding me of my own close encounters with schoolmasters of his era - for those who haven't clicked the link above, BL (Bernard Landon) Wilkinson (1904-72) was a strong Lancashire player of the 1950s and 1960s). As is normal, I've not included annotations with the game scores on BritBase, but in this case I was sorely tempted to make the extra effort of including them. Technically it would be breach of copyright but I'm not sure to what degree anyone would be bothered. (I have published PDFs of such material before and nobody seems to mind - if challenged, I would make the point that it is done altruistically and not for profit. I can't imagine sales of the 1952 Bolton bulletin are ongoing.) However, it is easy enough to scan the text so I'll create a PDF of the bulletin, to see what people think.
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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Sun Apr 03, 2016 3:18 pm

OK, I have now scanned in the 1952 bulletin and made it available on BritBase here:

http://www.saund.co.uk/britbase/britbasedocuments.html

Wilkinson's annotations have a certain waspish charm. For example, Otto Hardy suffers a schoolmasterly put-down, having submitted his game against Slade Milan (which, incidentally, produced poor Otto's solitary half point of the tournament) with a naive comment about the opening. After the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Bg5 Bb4 5.Nd5, Wilkinson remarks:
B.L. Wilkinson, in the 1952 Bolton tournament bulletin, wrote:Hardy writes: "This move is my own idea. White’s plan is to play the Rubinstein defence with colours reversed.” I trust I shall not damp Mr. Hardy’s pioneering spirit if I tell him that his plan is not new at all. In actual fact the idea was used by Alapin before the turn of the present century.
Wilkinson's next note starts "Hardy thinks this move is good enough. I am afraid I cannot agree..." Perhaps not surprisingly, not all of the players were agreeable to sending in their games for publication, the late George Ellison being one of the shrinking violets. Players who failed to hand in their homework were name-checked in the bulletin.
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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Apr 03, 2016 4:48 pm

On the very last page, there's a game where White threatens a Milner-Barry Gambit in the French by 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Qb6 6. Bd3 . Black played 6. .. Bd7 instead of 6. cxd4 and then White withdrew the offer by playing 7. dxc5. The annotations suggest that Wilkinson was not aware of the gambit possibility.

So when did the Bd3 line become public knowledge in British chess circles? Not so many years later as Bob Wade played it against Bernard Cafferty in the 1957 British. For that matter how did Sir Stuart's name come to be associated with it?

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Sun Apr 03, 2016 5:48 pm

It's an interesting question. As you say, Bob Wade played it against Bernard Cafferty in the 1957 British Championship and this seems to be the earliest instance of the pure Milner-Barry Gambit on the latest ChessBase database. It is referred to as the Milner-Barry Gambit at the Chesstempo site, but paradoxically the game Milner-Barry versus Cafferty from the same event (1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Qb6 5. Nf3 Bd7 6. Na3) is there referred to as the Wade variation. I can't find any extant games by Milner-Barry playing the MBG (1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Qb6 6. Bd3 cxd4 7. cxd4 Bd7 8. O-O Nxd4 9. Nxd4 Qxd4 10. Nc3) on the ChessBase database. However, I think the naming dates back to the following game (which is not on the database)...

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Townsend » Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:05 pm

Suetin's French Defence notes a game, Ulvestad - Rotman, U.S.A., 1947, in which the gambit was played.

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Apr 03, 2016 6:19 pm

John Saunders wrote:However, I think the naming dates back to the following game (which is not on the database)...

{Source: BCM, Dec 1951, p348} 1-0
Perhaps Wilkinson didn't read the BCM, or didn't notice the annotated game. He might otherwise have commented that the players resisted the temptation to test Milner-Barry's new idea.

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Sun Apr 03, 2016 7:27 pm

John Saunders wrote:However, I think the naming dates back to the following game
On reflection perhaps I should clarify this comment. We still don't know who first named this the Milner-Barry Gambit or when they did it; all I'm really saying is that, whoever did call this line the MBG probably had the 1951 Isles game in mind. I don't remember this name being current in my early days in the game. My first two opening books were Znosko-Borovsky's How to Play The Chess Openings (Pitman, 7th ed., 1964) and the inevitable MCO 10 (Pitman 1965). The former has nothing about 3.e5 against the French, while the latter does have a footnote reference to the line without citing Milner-Barry's name or games. I would guess that some later (1970s or 1980s) author of a book about the French might have dubbed it the Milner-Barry Gambit but these things are hard to follow up without a well-stocked openings library. It's given the name in the Hooper and Whyld Oxford Companion 2nd ed. (1992 - I don't have a copy of the first edition), where it mentions he also tried it in correspondence games (I no longer seem to have a correspondence games database so cannot follow that up). Neither the Sunnucks (1970) nor Golombek (1977) encyclopaedias credit Milner-Barry with this line, only citing the line named after him in the Nimzo-Indian.
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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Apr 03, 2016 7:45 pm

John Saunders wrote:The former has nothing about 3.e5 against the French, while the latter does have a footnote reference to the line without citing Milner-Barry's name or games.
It was Leonard Barden probably, as he was recommending lines for and against the Gambit in his Guardian column in the late 1960s or early 1970s and used that name.

Modern theory seems to be that you stop at one pawn, leaving the queen on d4 defying attempts to attack it. Leonard's opinion was that you could take the second on e5 in a line that ran

The latter move being the important idea. I had a game in 1972 that followed this all the way to my opponent playing 13. .. g6. It only took seven more moves to win. I had got the idea from Leonard's column.

Bob Wade's line (playing Bd7 instead of Nc6 with the idea of Bb5) was also well known as a way of avoiding the hazards of accepting gambit pawns.

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Apr 03, 2016 11:40 pm

John Saunders wrote:I However, I think the naming dates back to the following game (which is not on the database).
Twenty years ago, there was a big effort to capture games from tournament bulletins and add them to game collections. What didn't happen to nearly the same extent was to capture games from magazines. The games from magazines were more significant in the development of practical chess theory than tournament bulletins. The source game, for the UK at least, of the Milner-Barry Gambit is a case in point. Another is the attempt to make the "natural" Nbd7 work in the Flick Knife / Taimanov line against the Benoni.

So from the britbase archive we have a game between "someone good" and a teenage John Pigott.



A few months later I threw caution to the winds in this game. I was aware of the Pigott game because BH Wood had published it, so I knew that if I took on d7, bad things would happen.



For years I had thought that throwing in Qh4 check at move 15 might have given Black a game. The point being that in the final position, if there's a pawn on g3 then if 19. .. Qxf7 20. Rf1 Qxf1 would work with the point that 21. Kxf1 is met by Bh3 check regaining the Queen. The idea is rubbish as Bishops can move backwards, so the Spanish Bishop out on b5 can return home to f1.

Club colleague Andy Smith confirms that the Nbd7 idea was known to London juniors of that era.

I suspect a database search finds nothing earlier than Mestel-Hodgson from the 1983 British.

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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by John Saunders » Mon Apr 04, 2016 12:29 am

Yes, you're right about Leonard Barden using the term 'Milner-Barry Gambit'. I've just found it in his Guardian column of 2 July 1971. Quote...
Guardian chess column, 2 July 1971 wrote:The old piece of chess wisdom that the threat is stronger than its execution is very applicable to the psychological spell of gambits. Some players who reply to the king's pawn with half-open defences like the Sicilian, Caro-Kann, or French, do so less as a mark of faith in these openings than because they fear the complications of open games like the King's Gambit and Vienna. On the other flank, the Dutch Defence would have a higher reputation as a counterattack against 1 P-Q4 but for club players’ exaggerated respect for the Staunton Gambit 1 P-Q4 P-KB4 2 P-K4.

Gambit neurosis is widespread even when the opening concerned is infrequently played and has poor results, like the Vienna and the Staunton. Some gambits can scare grandmasters. Ten years ago at Hastings I wanted to try the unclear Milner-Barry gambit against the French Defence, which occurs after the textbook moves 1 P-K4 P-K3 2 P-Q4 P-Q4 3 P-K5 P-QB4 4 P-QB3 N-QB3 5 N-KB3 Q-N3 6 B-Q3 (the variation can also occur via the Sicilian with 1 P-K4 P-QB4 2 P-QB3). My distinguished opponents Botvinnik and Gligoric dodged the gambit with 4 . . . N-K2 and both admitted later that it was a general fear of the Milner-Barry rather than specific analysis which influenced their decisions.

In recent years the gambit, named after and first analysed by the current president of the British Chess Federation has gained further prestige, yet the impression stays that some of its value lies in the minds of those who defend it badly or avoid it altogether. This week's game suggests that familiarity and exact analysis is starting to tame the fierce Milner-Barry gambit.
The article then goes on to consider the game Bisguier-Westerinen, Netanya 1971, which can be found on databases. It followed the line you mentioned in your post.

And, yes, I too (and I'm sure many other people) have noticed that game databases have mostly been put together via the the systematic inputting of tournament bulletins, rather than via the 'harvesting' of games from magazines and newspapers. Though inputting bulletins is the logical way to get the maximum number of games digitised, sometimes important theoretical games which happen to have been played in events for which there are no such records (e.g. the London League, one of the mass participation events in the old Soviet Union, or even weekenders) slip through the net. That is one reason why I have a soft spot for the StarBase 4.56 database, as it seems to be have been input from a more varied range of publications than ChessBase's Mega/Big Database, including magazines and newspaper columns. Though it is a complete mess as regards naming standards, and is replete with duplicates and errors, StarBase 4.56 often reveals key theoretical one-off games which haven't found their way onto more conventional databases.

Incidentally I've just found an earlier 'Milner-Barry Gambit' reference in the Guardian chess column of 6 March 1970, and a later one on 29 July 1978.

EDIT: I've just found an even earlier use of the name Milner-Barry Gambit in the Guardian, on 7 July 1967, with Leonard writing of KC Messere using it to defeat the world correspondence champion Zagorovsky.
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Re: Bolton Easter Congress, 11-14 April 1952

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Mon Apr 04, 2016 8:41 am

There was the famous occasion in a Civil Service vs RAF match about 30 (ish) years ago. One RAF player was late, seeing one empty chair, he rushed in and started play. After a few moves, he decided he had got some time back on the clock and relaxed sufficiently to go for a walk, get a cup of tea and apologise to his captain for being late. He then added, "The old boy I'm playing seems to know the Milner-Barry Gambit rather well." Back came the inevitable reply, "That's because you're playing Milner-Barry." A stunned RAF player returned to his chair and duly lost.

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