English Chess Forum

On 13 January Tryfon Gavriel wrote in this thread: Justin there was a further reply from Raymond Keene on Chessgames.com for the record: "Jan-12-14 Premium Chessgames Member ray keene: let me make it absolutely clear-whenever i have quoted or summarised anything ever written by garry i have sought a...

Thanks for the interesting post, Simon. Obviously, the "I completely disagree" bit from my text referred to Mr Barden's speculative comment about Mr Winter's alleged soft spots...Mr Winter has done nothing more than to simply reproduce an account he obtained from Olga Capablanca. While reading that ...

I have now found somebody who welcomed the English Chess Association, although without naming it. On page 371 of the September 1988 British Chess Magazine Stewart Reuben wrote: "There is no doubt we now have too many players seeking too few opportunities to make a living or play in strong events. Pl...

In the Vera Menchik video I lost count of the number of pictures lifted from Edward Winter's "Chess Notes" site without a word of acknowledgement. At http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/copying.html Mr Winter wrote: "Nor does Chess Notes exist to offer a free scanning service for photographs (s...

One of the Eureka Electronics leaflets sent to ECA members had the English Chess Association logo and said: "The Novag range of chess computers is recommended by the ECA and all carry an invitation to one year's free membership." Another leaflet from the company, issued at Christmas 1989, had this a...

Now may be a convenient time to summarize what we have learned so far from the many posts on the topic of the English Chess Association. The Association was created by Raymond Keene in October 1987, in the immediate aftermath of his resignation from the British Chess Federation. That resignation con...

The references to a "split" and "breakaway" were in a Times report published on 14 October 1987, and it was precisely that report which Professor Kennaway described as inaccurate in his fax to the newspaper dated 16 October 1987 (sent, he said, after Raymond Keene had been consulted). Shortly afterw...

We are told by Professor Kennaway, Chairman of the ECA , that he envisages the new body as rather like the Friends of Chess in the best tradition of the Slater sponsorship." That standpoint of the ECA's first Chairman was contradicted yesterday by Andrew Zigmond when he wrote categorically: "the En...

There has been no selective quotation of Andrew Zigmond's words; I simply listed three different statements of his, made on 5, 15 and 16 January, about the ECA's current status. I have been discussing the ECA only, whereas Andrew Zigmond has used the thread to add more general comments on Raymond Ke...

This thread has been very helpful so far in providing a factual overview of the English Chess Association and in highlighting the confusion that has occurred - sometimes by accident and sometimes by design - between the English Chess Association and the English Chess Federation/British Chess Federat...

Some further information about the ECA, although there's still no recent news. Page 343 of the August 1989 British Chess Magazine reported briefly on the "ECA/Granada Tournament; Preston", which "suffered from withdrawals. The Polgar sisters wanted to renegotiate terms when they heard that Akhmylovs...

The confusion surrounding the start-up of the English Chess Association was described on page 545 of the December 1987 British Chess Magazine , which also said: "We rather agree with the viewpoint we heard from Stewart Reuben, that any new body would be better named something like 'Chess Force' or '...

Geoff Chandler writes: "I've never seen anybody make an excuse for his [Raymond Keene's] copying and pasting and lifting actions." Please refer to http://www.kingpinchess.net/2012/04/plagiarism-watch Concerning the 1948 world championship match-tournament, Tryfon Gavriel gives a link to a piece by a...

I'd like to make some points about various issues in this discussion: 1. The Lasker vs Thomas game is in K. Whyld's 1998 book on Lasker, with a slightly different date: 17, not 18, April 1896. 2. On 5 January Tryfon Gavriel referred to Capablanca's "3rd wife". He was married twice. 3. It's good to s...

There is no evidence that Stalin personally cared about or played chess. As for his friendship with Krylenko, that didn't prevent K being purged and shot in 1938. The Stalin hiding behind a curtain to watch the games story remains a fiction of Olga Capablanca, for whom Winter seems to have a soft s...