The Best Game of Chess played by an English Player

[Geoff Chandler]

I do no think we need to show the full game. Just the details of the top 10 -15 games chosen by someone who cannot then vote.
First we have to vote on who compiles the list of 10-15 games.

Or wait till my copy of the book arrives, I'm quite willing to list every game and then everyone can dive in. (there are bound to be complaints that a voters particular favourite game has not been included in the book.)

[Roger de Coverly]

Or wait till my copy of the book arrives, I'm quite willing to list every game and then everyone can dive in.

The Amazon sample pages contain the index.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Memorable-Game ... =4&depth=1

The selection is of memorable British games, which will be wider than best games by an English player.

[Geoff Chandler]

Thanks Roger,

Saved me typing it in. Need a new thread. I'll kick it off.

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

Number 68 - Plaskett beating Miles with Black is astonishing! I'm surprised I haven't seen it before.

[Matt Mackenzie]

There is also a lovely win by Miles over Andersson with the White pieces - a positional crush that Ulf himself would have been proud of.

And Miles v Belyavsky 1984, with the shattering 16 f4 TN

Which was and remains the only theoretical novelty to ever get a perfect score (all 10/10s) from the Chess Informant jury.

Though this is one of the games mentioned in this thread not making the 90 in the book that started this conversation off.

(Ivanchuk v Adams is, surprisingly, another)

[NickFaulks]

And Miles v Belyavsky 1984, with the shattering 16 f4 TN

I wondered why I could not find this game. It's actually 1986.

[NickFaulks]

Which was and remains the only theoretical novelty to ever get a perfect score (all 10/10s) from the Chess Informant jury.

One of whom was Miles. There was no reason for him to be modest, so he wasn't!

[Neil_Hickman]

Thank you all for the kind remarks about my book. As I acknowledge at the start of the book, the selection is inevitably arbitrary, and there are several games which I've looked at since the book came out that I'd wish to include if I were compiling the book now. There was a measure of time pressure; the first draft of the book was a present for a dear clubmate at Wymondham who was terminally ill. I've made good some of the omissions in articles in CHESS.
I took a pretty broad view of what counted as "British" which allowed me to include Labourdonnais-Macdonnell, Zukertort-Blackburne and Sultan Khan-Capablanca.
If you are looking at "English" rather than "British" I think you may have to leave out Conel Hugh O'Donel Alexander.
Thank you Nick Faulks for a very neat summary of the Tony Miles we both remember - "There was no reason for him to be modest, so he wasn't!" But he was still a lovely person and his premature death was a sad loss.

[Andrew Smith]

Hi Everyone,
I instigated this subject during a lazy day on holiday in Marrakech. Its evolved quite nicely and many thanks to Mr de Souza for his efforts in making all games from Neil Hickman's book available to everyone. We have probably got all the votes we will get. If we stop here and now, with singular votes, I think Short wins. But my idea was a top 10. I agree that we need to take the context of the games and strength of opponents into acount. I have selected 10 games based on comments and votes received and games i like !
My vote is :

1. Sultan Kann v Capablanca (30)
2. Penrose v Tal (46)
3. Yates v Alekhine (24)
4. Nunn v Beliavsky (67)
5. Short v Timman (72)
6. Miles v Spassky (61)
7. Keene v Kovacevic (52)
8. Steanv Browne (54)
9. Miles v Karpov (64)
10. Pratten v Maczynski

Does anyone else want to put these games in order ?

[Neil_Hickman]

1. Sultan Kann v Capablanca (30)
2. Penrose v Tal (46)
3. Yates v Alekhine (24)
4. Nunn v Beliavsky (67)
5. Short v Timman (72)
6. Miles v Spassky (61)
7. Keene v Kovacevic (52)
8. Steanv Browne (54)
9. Miles v Karpov (64)
10. Pratten v Maczynski

Does anyone else want to put these games in order ?

1. Alekhine v Yates, where Black had one of his "best -player-on-the-planet-for-the-next-six-hours" days;
2. Beliavsky v Nunn, about which the winner understandably wrote that "if you play a game such as this, thinking of it will give you a warm glow for at least the next 25 years;
3. Penrose v Tal. The only game the Soviets lost in that Olympiad, and getting a standing ovation from the assembled experts;
4. Miles v Spassky, a very accurate sustained attack against one of the strongest players in the world, which won a brilliancy prize and showed once again how wrong B. H. Wood was when he wrote that "it's when you have champions up against rabbits that you get the brilliancies";
5. Karpov v Miles. Any game that irritated Karpov so much deserves a high ranking;
6. Keene v Kovacevic. A lovely reminder that before he took to writing pot-boilers, Ray Keene was actually a very fine player indeed;
7. Stean v Browne. Out-combining Walter Browne took some doing, even if there may have been a hole in it;
8. Short v Timman. It's spectacular but I can understand why Short is fed up with only being remembered for it;
9. Maczynski v Pratten. Incomparably beautiful finish, but, as others have said, less than top-rank opposition and with a whacking hole in it;
Disqualified: Sultan Khan v Capablanca. I had the excuse for including him that he was a citizen of British India and that he played for the British team at the Olympiad; but English he ain't. Damn fine game, though.

[Neil_Hickman]

I also love the finish by Ted Mason (extract is game 42 in book and the full game is in my book ' Off The Board Chess') who was my clubmate at Lewisham Chess Club when I started playing chess. I can recall him demonstrating the game to me personally in his own inimitable way whilst smoking his pipe and sipping his whisky !

I asked for Off the Board Chess as a birthday present on the strength of this post, and was ever so slightly disappointed that the Ted Mason game quoted at page 73 isn't the one I quoted. I assume that the full score of that game is one of those which have been mislaid.
That, however, was the limit of my disappointment. A beautifully produced book with some hilarious anecdotes (some of which probably verge on the libellous, but hey) and some pretty interesting and instructive chess, too.

[Matt Mackenzie]

A remarkable footnote to that rightly lauded Miles v Spassky game is that later that year at the Olympiad, Miles had White against him again - and played his then trademarked 4 Bf4 line against the QID again. And beat him again! Not as brilliantly as the first time, but still impressively.

[James Plaskett]

This game - the finale of which features in the 1975 film Night Moves when Gene Hackman demonstrates the MISSED finale to a fading actress - actually predates the 1948 F Maczynski Vs Wilfred Henry Pratten
Portsmouth ENG
0-1 effort in Hickman´s book!!
https://www.chess.com/blog/J_adoubious/ ... ight-moves

And, btw, as Hartston reported in the BCM, Spassky actually remarked to Miles when they met on Board One of the USSR Vs England match of the 1978 Olympiad, after Miles´4 Bf4, "If I play twice as well as last time I may last to adjournment."
As Hartston noted, "That proved an unfortunate prophecy."

Also, Miles´play in the cited 1998 game with Short seemed to me to be perfect https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1747461

I´ve actually looked at that ending with my wife!
Not because she´s a chess player (well, with this one exception, perhaps https://james-plasketts-coincidence-dia ... itual.html) but as comparison with some rook endings with an extra outside passed pawn which have arisen in my own games which featured the superior side´s king, after the defender has had to give up a rook for the passed pawn, hurtling back apace to deal with the remaining pawns of the defender.
I had also, initially, thought Miles´play in this game, which features a similar rook ending, to be quite perfect.
But Stockfish16 judges his 26 Re1 as sub-standard - https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1097795

[Mike Gunn]

I was in the tournament hall for the '98 Miles vs Short clash and it's the only time I can remember when a victory in a chess game was greeted by a spontaneous round of applause from the assembled spectators.

[Graham Borrowdale]

Well there was the game Karpov-Kortchnoi in London 1984, when I clearly remember applause at the end from the spectators in County Hall, and possibly when they shook hands for the first time in several years at the start.