Britbase Updates

[Kevin Thurlow]

Thanks John - indeed, I was watching the sensational Vaganian - Planinc game live... When I'm reunited with my scorebooks, I'll work out why I'm confused (maybe).

[Nick Ivell]

I seem to recall a Vaganian simul in which we mischievously set up the final position of the Planinc game so the loser could see it on his perambulations.

That must have been very early in 1975.

[Roger de Coverly]

I seem to recall a Vaganian simul in which we mischievously set up the final position of the Planinc game so the loser could see it on his perambulations.

That must have been very early in 1975.

That Hastings also featured his eye catching win over Botterill in a Tromp with Bxf6 a decade or more before Julian Hodgson was using it as a deadly weapon.

Event ""] [Site "Hastings (England)"] [Date "1974.??.??"] [Round "?"] [White "Vaganian Rafael A (ARM)"] [Black "Botterill George S (WLS)"] [Result "1-0"] [ECO "A45"] [WhiteElo "2540"] [BlackElo "2410"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 g6 3.Bxf6 exf6 4.e3 Bg7 5.Ne2 b6 6.Nf4 d5 7.h4 h5 8.c4 dxc4 9.Bxc4 Bb7 10.Nc3 Bh6 11.Bxf7+ Kxf7 12.Qb3+ Ke8 13.Nxg6 Qd7 14.Nxh8 Qg7 15.Qe6+ Kf8 16.Nd5 Nd7 17.Ne7 1-0

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Thank you, Roger. I had not seen that before. Absolutely brutal! (Though Bh6? really?)

Can anyone post the Vaganian-Planinc game?

[Jon D'Souza-Eva]

[Event "Hastings 1974/75"] [Site "Hastings ENG"] [Date "1975.01.02"] [EventDate "1974.12.28"] [Round "5"] [Result "0-1"] [White "Rafael Vaganian"] [Black "Albin Planinc"] [ECO "A32"] [WhiteElo "?"] [BlackElo "?"] [PlyCount "44"] 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.Nf3 cxd4 4.Nxd4 e6 5.Nc3 Bb4 6.Ndb5 O-O 7.a3 Bxc3+ 8.Nxc3 d5 9.Bg5 h6 10.Bxf6 Qxf6 11.cxd5 exd5 12.Qxd5 Rd8 13.Qf3 Qb6 14.Rd1 Rxd1+ 15.Nxd1 Nc6 16.Qe3 Nd4 17.Qe8+ Kh7 18.e3 Nc2+ 19.Kd2 Bf5 20.Qxa8 Qd6+ 21.Kc1 Na1 22.Qxb7 Qc7+ 0-1

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Funny. I see the point of Nick's story now.

[Roger de Coverly]

(Though Bh6? really?)

Presumably the point was that the threat of Nxg6 was preventing Black from castling, so .. Bh6 to either take the Knight or chase it away. I was shown the game by someone who was an eye witness. He said Botterill metaphorically fell off his chair after Bxf7.

[Matt Mackenzie]

Missed a similar Bf7+ in a similar opening once (and yes, it was also one of my most brutal defeats) so easily done if you aren't fully alert.

[John Saunders]

Over the past couple of days, I've uploaded some games from three West of England (WECU) Championships from the 1980s...

1981 West of England Championship (winner Peter Clarke)
1984 West of England Championship (winner Gary Lane - also took part Mickey Adams)
1985 West of England Championship (winner Gary Lane - also took part Mickey Adams)

Many thanks are due to David LeMoir, who sent me a large PGN file of WECU Championship games some time ago; Ian Thompson, who sent me some of his own games plus issues of the WECU bulletin ("Westward Ho") which enabled me to create crosstables and provide full results; Graham Stuart, whose collection of WECU bulletins at the Hampshire Chess History website was also of great help; and whoever it was who set up the game archive of the Bristol & District Chess League (David Collier?) where I found a large collection of the late Alan P Ashby's games.

[GrahamStuart]

Over the past couple of days, I've uploaded some games from three West of England (WECU) Championships from the 1980s...

1981 West of England Championship (winner Peter Clarke)
1984 West of England Championship (winner Gary Lane - also took part Mickey Adams)
1985 West of England Championship (winner Gary Lane - also took part Mickey Adams)

Many thanks are due to David LeMoir, who sent me a large PGN file of WECU Championship games some time ago; Ian Thompson, who sent me some of his own games plus issues of the WECU bulletin ("Westward Ho") which enabled me to create crosstables and provide full results; Graham Stuart, whose collection of WECU bulletins at the Hampshire Chess History website was also of great help; and whoever it was who set up the game archive of the Bristol & District Chess League (David Collier?) where I found a large collection of the late Alan P Ashby's games.

Great to see these, does this mean that Ian has issues of the WECU bulletin which are not in my collection? If so, is this something which can be scanned so I can add? It would be great to add some of the missing ones to the collection. In addition, this may help with missing match details I have for the Hampshire County team in the WECU (1990 to 1998)

[John Saunders]

Great to see these, does this mean that Ian has issues of the WECU bulletin which are not in my collection? If so, is this something which can be scanned so I can add? It would be great to add some of the missing ones to the collection. In addition, this may help with missing match details I have for the Hampshire County team in the WECU (1990 to 1998)

Yes, I'll send you what Ian has sent me so you can add them.

[John Saunders]

Thanks to Ian Thompson, who sent me a copy of the bulletin, I've been able to assemble a large file of games, properly dated and with round numbers, from the 1990/91 Hastings Congress...

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

The games from the Premier and some of those from the Challengers have been generally available in digital form for many years but without dates or round numbers which I find unsatisfactory. The same applies to quite a lot of digitised games from that era, when ChessBase software didn't have a field to allow the input of a full date. Consequently many late 1980s, early 1990s games were input showing the year, but not month and day, and often without round numbers, and in most cases nobody has subsequently bothered to follow up and add the extra data now that such fields are available. I am endeavouring to do so for British games.

Ian has also very kindly provided me with the bulletin of the 1993/94 Hastings tournament, which also has crosstables for Premier and Challengers, so I should be able to do the same for those tournaments in due course. But otherwise I have a large gap in my Hastings bulletin collection for the 1990s (other than the summer 1995 Hastings Centenary Masters, which I played in). If anyone can lend me one or some or all of those bulletins, I would be very grateful. (If, like Ian, you are a dab hand with a scanner, it would be even better to receive PDFs.)

Turning back to the 1990/91 Hastings Challengers, it was very striking that 64-year-old Alexey Suetin, with a rating which had descended to 2360, should have prevailed over all those rising young players, including eight other GMs and seven players rated 2500+. Admittedly, it was Swiss Gambit-like, with a slow start, but that 4/4 finish was impressive for someone of pensionable age. Not something we see too often these days, now that adjournments are history.

[John Saunders]

I think I have the correct solution to the following game score which appeared in the Middlesex County Times on 1 February 1949, but it might amuse people to see how badly a chess score can be garbled when the typesetter gets it wrong. I'll post what I deem to be the correct PGN in due course.

1949-02-01-middx-county-times.jpg (242.81 KiB) Viewed 1411 times

(n.b. I have divided it into five parts in order to present it properly here but I assure you that it is all there)

P.S. Another thing the sub-editor got wrong - it is not a brilliancy.

[Nick Ivell]

I think this shows how strong a player Suetin was; also how adjournments favoured the older player.

Would Botvinnik have drawn with Fischer in that awful ending, without adjournment? I think not.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

There is a bit about Alan Francis Stammwitz elsewhere on the forum. Do we know if he was related to the taxidermy Stammwitzs (Percy and son Stuart, of Natural History Museum-blue whale fame)?