Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

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John Upham
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Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by John Upham » Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:57 pm

Can anyone supply details of the Anglo-Dutch Match of 1975 please ?

I cannot locate a report in BCM and I do not have CHESS for 1975.

I believe it was played on 25th and 26th of October 1975 I am assuming at the Lansing Bagnall sponsored venue of Elvetham Hall, Hartley Wintney, Hampshire.

Megabase reports this :
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Anglo-Dutch Match, 1975
untitled.jpg (17.12 KiB) Viewed 1151 times
and (I think) John Pigott played Paul van der Sterren scoring 0.5/2

Megabase appears not to have any of the game scores for this match.

From what I can gather the pairings were :

Keene-Donner
Mestel-Langeweg
Whiteley-Hartoch
Basman-Ligterink
Webb-Vogel
Bellin-Schouten
Speelman-Deiks
Knox-Marcus
Caldwell-Schol
Pigott-Van der Sterren

Megabase says R. Webb but, more likely, it would have been Simon Webb

Thanks !
Last edited by John Upham on Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Ian Thompson
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:39 pm

John Upham wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:57 pm
Megabase says R. Webb but it must be S. Webb
Why? There was a Roger Webb, of about the same age as Simon Webb, who would have been strong enough to play in a match like that.

Roger de Coverly
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:51 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:39 pm
Why? There was a Roger Webb, of about the same age as Simon Webb, who would have been strong enough to play in a match like that.
My Cambridge contemporary Roger Webb was Simon's younger brother. At his best a 200 to 210 standard. Good enough to play in the British Championship but nowhere near high enough in the perceived order of English strength of that era to make the England team.

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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Ian Thompson » Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:56 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:51 pm
Ian Thompson wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:39 pm
Why? There was a Roger Webb, of about the same age as Simon Webb, who would have been strong enough to play in a match like that.
My Cambridge contemporary Roger Webb was Simon's younger brother. At his best a 200 to 210 standard. Good enough to play in the British Championship but nowhere near high enough in the perceived order of English strength of that era to make the England team.
There's a Roger Webb with a long inactive FIDE rating of 2370. Is that him, or someone else?

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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:25 pm

Ian Thompson wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:56 pm
There's a Roger Webb with a long inactive FIDE rating of 2370. Is that him, or someone else?
That would be him.

Richard James
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Richard James » Sat Aug 08, 2020 7:44 pm

https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1555121 is the Round 1 game between Keene & Donner.

viewtopic.php?f=27&t=4389&start=30 is their Round 2 game, which also appears in Münninghoff's biography of Donner.

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Sun Aug 09, 2020 12:11 am

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:51 pm
Ian Thompson wrote:
Sat Aug 08, 2020 5:39 pm
Why? There was a Roger Webb, of about the same age as Simon Webb, who would have been strong enough to play in a match like that.
My Cambridge contemporary Roger Webb was Simon's younger brother. At his best a 200 to 210 standard. Good enough to play in the British Championship but nowhere near high enough in the perceived order of English strength of that era to make the England team.
Not impossible a player of that strength could have made an England side in 1975, before the full extent of our "chess explosion" was apparent.
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Leonard Barden
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Leonard Barden » Sun Aug 09, 2020 12:58 am

Post deleted as factually incorrect.
Last edited by Leonard Barden on Sun Aug 09, 2020 1:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

David Sedgwick
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by David Sedgwick » Sun Aug 09, 2020 12:58 am

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 12:11 am
Not impossible a player of that strength could have made an England side in 1975, before the full extent of our "chess explosion" was apparent.
Some of us were around in 1975. If Roger Webb had been selected to play for England, above Robert Bellin, we might remember.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:37 am

Why wasn't the match covered? In those days, apart from Olympiad years, the only matches England had were the two friendlies against Netherlands and Germany.

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John Saunders
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by John Saunders » Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:41 am

This match was reported in The Times of 27 October 1975, page 2. And it was Simon (and not Roger) Webb who played.
1975-10-27-Times-ENG-NED-match-1.jpg
1975-10-27-Times-ENG-NED-match-1.jpg (144.17 KiB) Viewed 904 times
1975-10-27-Times-ENG-NED-match-2.jpg
1975-10-27-Times-ENG-NED-match-2.jpg (165.46 KiB) Viewed 904 times
Amusingly, The Times seems to have anticipated their famous misspelling of 'Speelman' as 'Specimen' in this report. Or very nearly. The more famous (and clearer) example of this was published in The Times on 15 December 1981.
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John Upham
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by John Upham » Sun Aug 09, 2020 10:37 am

John Saunders wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:41 am
This match was reported in The Times of 27 October 1975, page 2. And it was Simon (and not Roger) Webb who played.



Amusingly, The Times seems to have anticipated their famous misspelling of 'Speelman' as 'Specimen' in this report. Or very nearly. The more famous (and clearer) example of this was published in The Times on 15 December 1981.

John, many thanks for this.

Do you have the game scores for other than the Keene games?
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Roger de Coverly » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:06 am

John Saunders wrote:
Sun Aug 09, 2020 9:41 am
This match was reported in The Times of 27 October 1975, page 2. And it was Simon (and not Roger) Webb who played.
I was trying to work out who presumably wasn't available.

The names Miles, Hartston, Stean, Nunn and perhaps Botterill spring to mind. Among the older generation, Penrose, Wade and John Littlewood perhaps. Mrs Hartston for the women's board and there were presumably numerous alternative players to John Pigott among the juniors.

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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by Richard James » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:15 am

Curiously, there was another Anglo-Dutch match just two months later: a European Team Championship qualifier. England fielded Keene, Hartston, Miles, Stean, Mestel, Whiteley, Webb and Bellin.

The results are on OlimpBase.

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John Saunders
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Re: Anglo-Dutch Match 1975

Post by John Saunders » Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:17 am

I checked StarBase 4.56 (often a source of obscure games) and [EDIT] found two Basman losses - see following post [END EDIT]. As you say, BCM didn't mention it. As Richard James points out, there was a second England vs Netherlands match that year that BCM did cover - played as part of the European Team Championship qualification event, in Vlissingen, 20-21 December 1975, and reported in the Feb 1976 BCM on page 67. There was a match between England and France in Luton, 11-12 October 1975, which BCM covered in the December 1975 issue, page 521. There was also a 1st EEC Team Championship, Ostend, 17-27 September 1975 which included a GB team, reported in the same issue. So actually there was quite a lot of team chess going on, and perhaps that explains why the traditional Anglo-Dutch match got such poor media coverage and a non-optimal line-up of players. It wasn't mentioned in Leonard's Guardian column at all as far as I can see, nor in CHESS Magazine. Perhaps it would have helped if the scoreline had been 11½-8½ in England's favour rather than the other way around...
Last edited by John Saunders on Sun Aug 09, 2020 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
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