1964 Mikhail Tal simul at John Lewis's, London

[John Saunders]

I've created a page at BritBase covering simuls given by Mikhail Tal in London and Birmingham, 9-11 January 1964...

https://www.saund.org.uk/britbase/pgn/1 ... iewer.html

The first of these simuls was held at John Lewis's, London on 9 January 1964. 22 complete scores of the 24 games played in this simul have long been available, thanks to the good offices of Leonard Barden who supplied them to Edward Winter (who featured them on this page). One of the scores has since been amended, thanks to the Brameld/Paige collection of WH Pratten games. The David Rumens game only runs to 10 moves before becoming illegible, while the score of Jim Howson's win seems to be missing.

What is new is the collection of photos which I have posted on the page. Via the usual chess detective's procedure of comparing photos with game scores, I've been able to identify most of the players in the simul. You can see these IDs by moving the mouse pointer over the player's head.

I've also included some games from the Tal simul played in Westminster on 10 January 1964, the consultation game he played for the BBC radio programme on 11 January and some games from the simul he played in Birmingham that same evening.

[Neil Blackburn]

Thanks John. Nice to see my old friend Brian Dudley get a prominent mention in the Birmingham simul.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Amazing article and pictures. I loved the way he demolished my old team mate, Wilf Pratten, with the King's Gambit. Wilf was a very attacking player himself and I'd have liked to have seen his face when Tal started sacrificing material!

[Geoff Chandler]

Yes. A wonderful piece of work. I like the note in Tal's game v Norman Stephenson after move 9.

'Somewhere about this critical stage of the game Tal, who was in very good humour throughout the whole session, captured my almost full packet of rather expensive Chesterfield cigarettes (en passant) and on his next turn around replaced them by some evil-smelling cheap and nasty East European brand-smiling broadly all the while. He was so charming that day, it was easy to forgive him.'

[John Saunders]

Glad people are enjoying this. I've just added five more games from the Westminster (10 January 1964) simul, sent to me by a German chess historian, Gerard Hartmann. He tells me his source for the games was something he found some time ago which he recorded as the Westminster Bulletin but he neither owns it nor remembers anything about it. It doesn't ring any bells with me. (There was a publication called Westminster Papers which featured a lot of chess material, but that was back in Victorian times and we're talking mid-1960s here.) Any ideas?