Best Game by an English Player (the vote)

[Geoff Chandler]

I make the closing date the 2nd of April. (if I post anything anywhere on the 1st of April everyone everywhere thinks it's a joke.)

Going through the book 2-3 a day, one wee very minor quibble, I'm not fond of the diagram being upside down if Black wins. no big deal, it just looks strange after staring at thousands of diagrams over the past 60 years with white no matter what the result playing up the board.

[Daniel Gormally]

not sure if it was the best game by an english player but my game against sutovsky from gibraltar 2005 was possibly the best game an english player was ever involved in.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Don't just take Danny's word for it!

The best game that Vishy Anand has ever seen! | Gormally vs Sutovsky

Spectacular.

[Neil_Hickman]

Question for Neil (Hickman): Are there any particularly memorable (but maybe not as well known) games that you came close to including that you had to omit to keep the list manageable?

You said here that you made good some of the omission in articles in CHESS. Can you (or someone else) give references to those CHESS articles? Thank you.

There wasn’t, actually, any great science to where I drew the line; and one of the beauties of Amazon's self-publishing arrangement is that the size of the manuscript (within reason) doesn't greatly matter. I was anxious to get the first draft of the book completed as a gift for a dear clubmate who was terminally ill – I hope he got a bit of enjoyment from it. As I have admitted, it’s a personal and somewhat idiosyncratic selection; Jonathan Rogers’ tart observation that “I have the impression that that the more recent games at least depend on their selection rather much on whether they were published in CHESS” probably has a grain of truth. They certainly do depend on whether I came across them.
The ones I have added via CHESS are:
Alexander-Yanofsky, Hastings 1946-7 in CHESS June 2022 p 42;
Allison-Sams, corres 1981-2, August 2022 p 44;
Nicholson-Basman, Evening Standard 1974, November 2022 p 44;
Szabó-Lloyd, Hastings 1960-61, April 2023 p 42.
Among those I may get round to adding at some stage are:
Vidmar-Yates, San Remo 1930, said to have been described by Alekhine as the greatest game since the end of the Great War, though silicon does quite a lot of damage to it. For a player as weak as I am to try and understand this game properly is a daunting undertaking;
Alexander-Pachman, Hilversum 1947;
Milner-Barry-Alexander, Cambridge 1930, a remarkable affair with Alexander facing a formidable attacker and successfully defending the Pierce Gambit;
Ivanchuk-Adams, Terrassa 1991. See remarks about Vidmar-Yates;
Possibly Alekhine-Sultan Khan. Prague ol 1931 in which Sultan Khan calmly defended a difficult position against an Alekhine then at the height of his powers (it was a few months before he won the Bled tournament by the incredible margin of 5½ points including a 19-move annihilation of Nimzowitsch).
One game which may get examined in CHESS but for other reasons is the alleged massacre of Steinitz by the problem composer Grimshaw, which I know Andy Soltis regards as genuine but which I think it as fishy as hell. It's not as much fun as Atkins-Jacobs, either.
Some games have been mentioned in this thread with which I wasn’t familiar; and if I ever get around to producing a revised version (as David LeMoir keeps telling me I ought to) Ilescas-Sadler, Linares 1995 will certainly be going in.

[Geoff Chandler]

Daniel Gormally vs Emil Sutovsky although a loss could be added, Lasker - Napier is in the book. But Neil must have known when putting it together there would be suggestions as to games being added. He will have to stay with what he has else I'll want the extra games sent to me. (try and persuade Emil to take out English Nationality for a few days..that will work.)

Just looked at Danny's game and added the Vishy remark on https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1330256 it has been attacked by the computer jocks but overall the comments are full of praise.

[Neil_Hickman]

Geoff, after completing a (law/history) book for publication late last year I wrote, echoing Ian Dunt towards the end of his excellent How Westminster Works…and Why it Doesn’t that
“I’ve discovered while writing books that they will absolutely destroy you in every conceivable way: mentally, spiritually, and physically”.
And the idea of doing an enlarged version of Memorable Games frankly terrifies me.
But if Jonathan Rogers has the full score of "NN-Mason" I may yet have to...

[Neil_Hickman]

So which game won the vote?

[Jonathan Rogers]

Geoff, after completing a (law/history) book for publication late last year I wrote, echoing Ian Dunt towards the end of his excellent How Westminster Works…and Why it Doesn’t that
“I’ve discovered while writing books that they will absolutely destroy you in every conceivable way: mentally, spiritually, and physically”.
And the idea of doing an enlarged version of Memorable Games frankly terrifies me.
But if Jonathan Rogers has the full score of "NN-Mason" I may yet have to...

I only just saw this, not that it matters - someone else, not I, must have mentioned that game.

I would guess ("guess" being the operative word) that such an enterprise as another book would only be soul destroying if you were anxious to include absolutely every outstanding game and could not cope with the thought of any omission (and, no doubt, being told about it here, including by the likes of me). If you could free yourself from that sort of stress, and focus rather on all the excellent games you would be putting in one place for others to enjoy - then why not?

[Neil_Hickman]

Geoff, after completing a (law/history) book for publication late last year I wrote, echoing Ian Dunt towards the end of his excellent How Westminster Works…and Why it Doesn’t that
“I’ve discovered while writing books that they will absolutely destroy you in every conceivable way: mentally, spiritually, and physically”.
And the idea of doing an enlarged version of Memorable Games frankly terrifies me.
But if Jonathan Rogers has the full score of "NN-Mason" I may yet have to...

I only just saw this, not that it matters - someone else, not I, must have mentioned that game.

I would guess ("guess" being the operative word) that such an enterprise as another book would only be soul destroying if you were anxious to include absolutely every outstanding game and could not cope with the thought of any omission (and, no doubt, being told about it here, including by the likes of me). If you could free yourself from that sort of stress, and focus rather on all the excellent games you would be putting in one place for others to enjoy - then why not?

Correct, Jonathan, my reference should have been to Andrew Smith.
The soul-destroying bit arose when, last year, I had over 1,000 footnotes in a book to check and reference in the approved style. The terrifying bit (apropos doing an updated and enlarged version of Memorable Games) arises from the fact that chess is such devilish hard stuff to proof read that when I first completed the book and the redoubtable David LeMoir set about preparing a review of it, I received from him a list of corrigenda which, as I recall, ran to four sides of A4. And even then, as Jon D'Souza-Eva has pointed out, there's at least one typo in the index (the wrong year is given for MacDonnell-Boden, as well as the formatting being messed up)
And at the moment, both the garden and the model train layout are looking appealing.
I accept that whatever criteria you use, there are going to be omissions. Thus I noted at the start of Memorable Games that I'd tried to include any game that had been described as "an immortal" or words to that effect; but if Large-D.Ledger, Suffolk Open 1990, described by the BCM as "Peter Large's immortal game", goes in, fine game though it is, I guess an awful lot of other games would need to go in as well.

[Geoff Chandler]

What with the Candidates and other things I forgot all about this.
I finished the last few games in the book a few days ago. Enjoyed it.
There were actually a few I had never played over before. Hartston-Gligoric 1965 was one and the correspondence games were first timers.

I’ll dispense with the vote. Most won’t agree with it anyway. I’ll just stick to my original choice and remind everyone it is ‘memorable’ as in ‘Memorable Games.’
A lot of games give you pleasure to go over but few, for me, have that Kennedy moment when I can recall where I was and what I was doing when first I saw the Nigel Short King Walk. (I was sitting down playing over a game of chess!) But I think you all know what I mean. It hit the spot. I was rushing about for weeks after showing it to everyone.

There have been may other in print moments, but unless I go back to the first time I saw
the Opera Game or Philidor’s Legacy in print then this game tops it.

(spotted a slight mishap Neil, nothing serious, easily fixed. I’ll PM you.)

[Matt Mackenzie]

There were actually a few I had never played over before. Hartston-Gligoric 1965 was one

Assuming you mean Hastings 1965/66, its in the first ever Chess Informant (as is his better known loss to Spassky in that tournament)

[Paul Habershon]

There were actually a few I had never played over before. Hartston-Gligoric 1965 was one

Assuming you mean Hastings 1965/66, its in the first ever Chess Informant (as is his better known loss to Spassky in that tournament)

I was at Hastings that year. It was so unusual for a British player to beat a foreign grandmaster that applause broke out when Gligoric lost to Hartston.

I was in the front row when Spassky beat Peter Lee, then British Champion. On the front cover of 'Spassky's Road to the Summit', a BCM Quarterly by R N Coles, there is a picture of Spassky during the Lee game with me in the background with a newspaper on my lap folded for the crossword. An unintended bid for immortality.
.

[Neil_Hickman]

There were actually a few I had never played over before. Hartston-Gligoric 1965 was one

Assuming you mean Hastings 1965/66, its in the first ever Chess Informant (as is his better known loss to Spassky in that tournament)

Ah yes, the game in which, following a suggestion of Leonard Barden as I recall, Hartston tried the King's Gambit against Spassky, and was rather severely dealt with.
Commented Chess:
"We feel Hartston contributed more to the debacle than Barden...
An unusual reversal of normal King's Gambit trends. White has the pawn. Black has the development".

[Geoff Chandler]

...its in the first ever Chess Informant.

Which I picked up a few years back for peanuts. So the next vote is; 'What is the Best Game in Informators One, Two and Three" That should keep us busy until Christmas 2030.

They did not start judging Best Games till Informator 4 and the first winner was Fischer-Stein, Sousse 1967. Which is rather strange because officially that game does not exist. Fischer's results and games played were removed from the final table because he walk away.

https://www.365chess.com/tournaments/So ... 1967/26503