English Chess Forum

My wee column at RHP, I mentioned I was entering the Aitken games...

https://www.redhotpawn.com/chess-blog/t ... player.469

....adding: as yet none of the games I had entered had appeared in...



And from my alter ego...



Ha-Ha!

Little did I know I was in good company and how close to the truth I was, Steve Giddens reports:

"...here is a nice story of how the FIDE Congress around 1950 proposed to award Atkins the honorary IM title.
The Soviet delegate objected on the grounds that he was too weak, whereupon the English delegate pointed out
that Atkins had finished ahead of Chigorin at Hanover! The Soviet objection was dropped..

The Soviets later claimed – perhaps credibly – that they had misheard the name and thought the nominee was
J M Aitken, the Scottish Champion. who was indeed unworthy of such an honorary title."

https://matthewsadler.me.uk/attack/h-e- ... on-part-i/

Harry Golombek recounted the story about Atkins' IM title in a radio talk around 1962-3 (later reprinted in Chess Treasury Of The Air). This and several other sources all refrain from mentioning the name of the UK delegate concerned, but I suspect it was ol' Harry himself.

My memory of what I was told, possibly/probably by Harry,was that the USSR delegate, who was Kotov, made the objection due to his misunderstanding of Atkins/Aitken. The protocol then was that the Fide secretary or whoever was the designated official read out a list of the disputed player's principal results.

When he came to Hanover 1902 and said something like "Atkins placed third of 18 with 11.5 /17, behind Janowski and Pillsbury and ahead of Mieses, Napier, Wolf, Tchigorin....." at this word the room erupted with laughter and Kotov hastily withdrew his objection. My impression from that memory is that the BCF delegate didn't say anything as it wasn't needed.

Thanks lads,

I said to John Saunders I bet when I am entering in these games (now on book 8 ) I mix up Aitken with Atkins.

I did read ' Chess Treasury Of The Air' years ago (the 70's) so if it is in there (and I do not doubt it is) then it rattled
around inside my loose mind and the Kotov error must have stuck in a dark corner for me to remember a fragment of it.
(Someone has done this before....don't let it be you.)