English Chess Forum

Whilst researching lesser known games of Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik I came across a handful that I am not very confident of being played (or at least by MMB).

I wonder if you can help?

They are:

Botvinnik vs DSC Goodman, London, 1978, 1-0
J J Carleton vs Botvinnik, Britain, 1978, 0-1
Speelman vs Botvinnik, England, 1979, 1/2-1/2
C Barry vs Botvinnik, Dublin, 1979, 0-1.

and even Botvinnik vs Psakhis, Russia, 1-0 which Lev says did not take place.

All of these games come from Chessgames.com via http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessplayer?pid=11207

Are these games fictional or was Botvinnik some other player or players?

Thanks for any help.

The first three, at least, might have been simultaneous games of some sort? And his "opponents" are still very much with us and can be asked, no doubt.

Matt Mackenzie wrote:The first three, at least, might have been simultaneous games of some sort? And his "opponents" are still very much with us and can be asked, no doubt.

Indeed. I am aware of the clock simul on April 8th, 1981 detailed on pages 163 and 224 of the 1981 BCM but am totally unaware of these previous games. Lev Psakhis tells BCM that the alleged game http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1032848 did not occur which somewhat adds to the lack of confidence in the others.

I should add these that games do not appear in Mega Database 2012 but then again, many other important games that did get played do not appear there also.

Maybe LWB can help?

There was an Ilya Botvinnik (relation?) around in USSR chess back then - maybe that is who played Psakhis?

Matt Mackenzie wrote:There was an Ilya Botvinnik (relation?) around in USSR chess back then - maybe that is who played Psakhis?

Yes, we looked at this possibility also...

John Upham wrote:Whilst researching lesser known games of Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik I came across a handful that I am not very confident of being played (or at least by MMB).

Cross checking with other databases suggests that George Botterill was the player. Whilst chessgames.com is nice for being able to generate links, its reliability as a historic source is questionable.

Botvinnik is known to have retired in 1970, so a return to active play in the 1970s in British tournaments is likely to have been headlined by the magazines of the time.

Roger de Coverly wrote: Cross checking with other databases suggests that George Botterill was the player. Whilst chessgames.com is nice for being able to generate links, its reliability as a historic source is questionable.

Spot on Roger! These are indeed games of George Steven Botterill.

Thanks for your help.

I wonder if chessgames.com are open to corrections?

They certainly are, but they have been known to take their time about them

I might be seeing C Barry next weekend so I will ask him about his game!

Andrew Bak wrote:I might be seeing C Barry next weekend so I will ask him about his game!

Thanks Andrew! I searched for the position at 11...Qc7 onwards in Megabase 2012 but could not find a match.

John Upham wrote: Thanks Andrew! I searched for the position at 11...Qc7 onwards in Megabase 2012 but could not find a match.

This one presumably
http://chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/2923835

Roger de Coverly wrote:

John Upham wrote: Thanks Andrew! I searched for the position at 11...Qc7 onwards in Megabase 2012 but could not find a match.

This one presumably
http://chesstempo.com/gamedb/game/2923835

That's the one.

It is curious that the various games databases have a different selection of games, some are missing and some have blatant mistakes.

It would seem someone has gone to a lot of trouble to introduce the errors.

John Upham wrote: It would seem someone has gone to a lot of trouble to introduce the errors.

Supposed data clean ups are the most likely cause. You can do a lot of damage with replace string x with string y. The older ChessBase format (CBF) was particularly vulnerable to this as it squeezed information about the game into just three fields. So you had "players", stored as say Fischer - Spassky, event/place and year. There was also an attempt to standardise player names which amalgamated some separate players.

The Botvinnik/Botterill error could have been an indexing failure, since the names would be very close in any alphabetic list.

The chesstempo database now seems to be taking its material from the FIDE ratings site, so Congresses such as e2e4 who routinely load pgn files for their events are heavily featured.

John Upham wrote:

Andrew Bak wrote:I might be seeing C Barry next weekend so I will ask him about his game!

Thanks Andrew! I searched for the position at 11...Qc7 onwards in Megabase 2012 but could not find a match.

Colm told me that he has never played Botvinnik.

Botvinnik certainly did not visit Dublin 1979, if ever.

I organised a FIDE rated tournament in Dublin at Easter 1979; that is when Colm Barry would have played George Botterill.
Please ask Colm to contact me, and give him my regards, thanks.

I would never dream of using chessgames.com as a source for any kind of historical data.

They may have derived a lot of their material from the old pitt.edu files of the 1990s which were full of errors, and, as others have already pointed out, it was very hard in the old ChessBase CBF days to document things properly.