Leontxo García and the strange case of Neurocase

You may recall that last week this blog ran a piece, a touch on the sceptical side, about the claim that thirteen million people watched a Spanish TV programme covering the last game of the 1987 world championship match. Leontxo García was not at all pleased:

Never let the facts get in the way of a good story, goes the saying¹.

I was highly entertained by this and if I knew what I was doing I think I'd post the Tweet (or at least the quote) on the masthead of this blog, but just to remain within the limits of my competence for the while, I was reminded that for some time I'd meant to write a piece about Leontxo García and the strange case of Neurocase.

Tell me how it really happened II

One other thing relating to that interview with Leontxo García and Miguel Illescas that we were looking at, a little sceptically, yesterday.

In the eighties, there were fifty million keen chess players in the Soviet Union.

Were there? That sounds like a lot to me.

The piece states:

En los años 80 la extinguida URSS contaba con más de cinco millones de ajedrecistas federados y unos 50 millones de personas practicaban el ajedrez con asiduidad, promovido como deporte nacional

which means

In the Eighties, the former USSR could boast more than five million registered chess players while around fifty million people were keen players, chess being promoted as the national sport.

Tell me how it really happened

Just yesterday we were discussing the surprise appearance of chess, in the shape of the 1984 Karpov-Kasparov match, in the longrunning Spanish soap/period drama Cuéntame Cómo Pasó, and the accompanying RTVE piece on chess which interviewed Leontxo Garcías and Miguel Illescas.

I have a few bones of contention with the piece, notably the claim that thirteen million TV viewers in Spain followed the final game of the 1987 match in Sevilla. The piece tells it thus:

TVE retransmitió en directo la final: "Se trataba de un programa deportivo que iba cambiando entre el match de Sevilla, la última partida Kaspárov-Kárpov, y un encuentro de Copa Davis de India con Suecia, y los espectadores llamaban indignados para que dejaran de conectar con el encuentro de Copa Davis, porque '¿a quién le interesa el tenis? Por favor, ¡qué nos pongan el ajedrez!", narra Miguel Illescas.

Hasta 13 millones de espectadores en España llegaron a estar pendientes de la partida, "desde entonces, los únicos acontecimientos que han reunido a 13 millones de espectadores ante un aparato de televisión fue cuando España fue campeona del mundo de fútbol o cuando el Barça ganó la Copa de Europa", explica Leontxo.

In English:

TVE showed the final game live. "This involved a sports programme which switched between the match in Sevilla, the final game between Kasparov and Karpov, and a David Cup clash between India and Sweden. Angry viewers called to demand that they stopped showing the Davis Cup match, because 'who cares about tennis? Please, put the chess back on!'" as Miguel Illescas tells it.

As many as 13 million viewers in Spain ended up following the game - "since when the only events that have attracted 13 million viewers have been Spain winning the World Cup or Barcelona winning the Champions' League"¹, states Leontxo.

I'm not saying that this isn't true. I am saying that I want convincing that it's true.

Tell me how it happened

If you don't know Spain you probably won't have heard of Cuéntame Cómo Pasó, the long-running show on TVE1 (basically the equivalent of BBC1) which tracks the lives of a fictional Madrid family over time, depicting events, at any given moment, roughly thirty years n the past.

I've not often seen it but it's been quite an important show in its time, not just because it's long-running and has a sizeable audience, but because the very idea on which it's based, the depiction of the recent past, runs contrary to the practice of forgetting, or to put it another way, denying, what happened in Spain prior to the death of Franco (and the "Transition" to democracy which followed). I say "practice", but it's more than that: it's enshrined in Spanish law that human rights violations prior to the Transition may not be the subject of prosecution, and although it is not at all illegal to discuss the past there have been some very strong taboos against doing so, much stronger when the series began than they are now.

That's perhaps a bit heavier an introduction than the programme merits: it's much more a soap opera rather than a political drama, and its reference to events past can be more a way of providing period colour than of making a point. But I mention it just to give some idea of the show's importance in Spanish cultural life, and of explaining the fact that last Thursday's episode, ¡Maldito amor! ("God-damned love!" for want of a better translation) was advertised with the surprising heading:

Kárpov y Kaspárov, en 'Cuéntame': Cuando el ajedrez arrasaba en los 80

or as we might say:

the Eighties, when it was chess that ruled.

Those were the days.

Whatever happened to CJ de Mooi?

Seems ages since we heard anything of the ex-President of the English Chess Federation. Well, not since he claimed to be a murderer in the autumn of last year.

And now here he is popping up again.

I'm sure all English Chess Federation members will wish to join me in sending our sympathy to CJ and wishing him the best of luck with his legal travails.

(No comments allowed on this one, obviously - ejh)

Highlights

Something odd struck me just at the end of this rather nice video which has been going about over the past couple of weeks.

It's that at the very end of the sequence, in which we're reminded that the world number #1 is Magnus Carlsen, there's no sign at all of the chap who is about to play him for his title. The top ten players' names appear in colour all throug the video (well, a maximum of ten) and Karjakin isn't among them.

I'm not 100% sure where they're getting the numbers from for that last point in the sequence but if it's the rating list for February 2016 that'd be more or less right, since there's Sergei just outside the top ten.

Tenuous

Why is this man not smiling?

Contrary to the impression perhaps given by the photograph, it is not because he is about to be shot. He being me, the answer might be "because he never actually smiles" although of course I rarely do.

It is because I have tendonitis, and bloody painful it is too.

You might reasonably ask "what's that got to do with chess", but no sooner had I posted the image on Facebook then a friend asked Is it your chess playing arm?

It's not, since I mostly use the other one, not that I've used either of them in a real game since last August. Still, at least I can identify which arm is my chess playing one, which may be more than one can say for Hikaru Nakamura.

The Baby and The Bike

"The child is father of the man" wrote Wordsworth. Chess-wise that seems more true than ever. The World Champion, a GM at 13, is about to take on a challenger who was a GM at 12. But can an astute eye discern the contours of a future chesser even earlier: in the cradle? Could the as-yet-unformed physiognomy of a mere toddler betray a nascent talent for the game?

As a case in point from an earlier epoch: does this blissfully ignorant infant astride their rocking-horse already bear the mark, some might say the curse, of their calling?

Photo courtesy of the family. 

Unlikely as it may seem, observe the unflinching gaze, the steely determination, the tight rein...

Nothing lost

Returning to Hikaru Nakamura's adventures in J'adoube, I wonder if followers of other sports than chess might find it strange that an incident of this magnitude didn't end up in front of some kind of disciplinary panel.

Yes of course, Nakamura was fined a portion of his winnings, but not for inviting Lev Aronian to believe the unbelievable: he was fined for not turning up to the post-game "press conference". Ironic: a competitor is therefore fined, not for the offence as such but for not turning up to answer questions about it, at a press conference that is not actually in any recognisable sense a press conference and at which in all likelikhood, no difficult questions would have been asked.

This is ironic, but it's also, perhaps, a little bit stupid.

If there really were 600 million players in the world....

...a claim Andrew Higgins uncritically repeats in the New York Times...

...don't you think we'd have journalists writing for the New York Times who knew the difference between a "game" and a "match"?

For the past 16 years the Carnegie Library has hosted a chess club...

...run by Edward Ochagavia, a survivor of the Nazi siege of Stalingrad in 1942.

"I'm a very old man. I survived the Stalingrad battle in 1942, but at the moment I can't survive the Lambeth Council closure of the Carnegie Library."

The Carnegie Chess Club: A Passing History

The Carnegie Chess Club was established by Edward Ochagavia in 2000 when the Library was under threat of closure. He was keen to make the library not just a place for books but also to bring people living in the area together socially and stave off the threat. He learned to play when he was growing up in the Soviet Union where chess is almost a way of life and wanted to pass on his enjoyment of the game.

And now the library - and the club - is under threat of closure again.

Friends of Carnegie Library
Defend The Lambeth Ten
Save Lambeth Libraries

Double question mark

If you've ever seen The Avengers - and if you haven't you should make the effort to see one of the greatest, wittiest TV shows of its era - you'll recognise at least two people in the shot above, which comes from an episode called The Master Minds. In the foreground is John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and in the background, Emma Peel (Diana Rigg). You can see the sequence from which the still is taken here.

A Surrey state of affairs

To recap: Howard Curtis, a prominent figure in chess for many years, has been convicted on several counts of sexual assault and child cruelty, carried out while he was leader of what the prosecutor described as a "religious cult". The religious organisation, while distancing themselves from their former leader, are not able to say specifically how they have changed since his departure and have refused to say whether anybody inside the organisation had heard anything about his activities prior to his arrest.

Now to introduce what follows, suppose we imagine you, as a local chessplayer, discussing the affair with a friend. Suppose we imagine the conversation going a little like this...

YOU: Tell you something, there's been a religious cult involved in Surrey chess for many years. Evangelical sort of thing, does missionary work in Russia.

FRIEND: Really? That sounds unusual. Tell me more.

YOU: Lots of tournaments and matches are held on its premises, adults, juniors, you name it.

FRIEND: Uh-huh. What are they like? Do you get on with them?

YOU: Not always. Matter of fact there's been lots of disputes. They were always threatening other officials with lawsuits and the like.

FRIEND: Well, up to you, but that doesn't sound like the sort of people I'd be happy to work with. Anything happening with them right now?

YOU: Funny you should ask. Their head was arrested for sexual assault. Apparently he'd been spanking female members of his congregation and claiming it would cure their depression. Said they'd consented to it.

FRIEND: Blimey. Did it go to court?

YOU: Verdict just last week. He's been found guilty of sexual assault and child cruelty. Sentencing next month. He's going to go to prison.

FRIEND: I'm not surprised. What are you going to do about it now?

YOU: Nothing.

A correspondence with CCF

If you smack somebody it could free an evil spirit

- Howard Curtis

If you've read Monday's posting, about the convicted abuser Howard Curtis, one time head of both Coulsdon Christian Fellowship and Coulsdon Chess Fellowship, you'll have gathered that I'm not greatly fond of either organisation, in so far as I think they're actually worth distinguishing (which is not very far).

I think it might be important to consider Howard Curtis not just as an individual, but in his role as somebody who headed a religious organisation - one referred to in court, by the `prosecutor, as a "cult". He was able to act as he did because he was head of that religious cult, a cult which played and retains a prominent role in Surrey chess. So it seems appropriate to ask some questions of that organisation.

The disturbing story of Howard Curtis

Last week Howard Curtis was convicted at Croydon Crown Court of a number of offences of sexual assault against women and two offences of child cruelty. The sexual assaults took place at various times over a long period, between 2007 and 2013: one of the child cruelty offences took place much further back, between 1986 and 1989. Mr Curtis will be sentenced next month and will go to prison.

The prosecutor, says the Mail, told the jury that Mr Curtis

ran the Coulsdon Christian Fellowship in south London as a cult.

If you're not familiar with Howard Curtis, you might have been surprised, on clicking on the link above, to see him pictured playing chess. The photo comes from a 2012 local news story

Croydon Advertiser

in which we learn that Howard Curtis didn't just run the Coulsdon Christian Fellowship. He ran the Coulsdon Chess Fellowship as well: a very busy club with "decades" of chess behind it, played by both adults and juniors.

Mr Curtis expresses his enthusiasm for children playing chess:

but perhaps it would not be too churlish to observe that according to the court, Mr Curtis has not always been the best judge of what is "good for children".

A small contribution to Science

My attention was drawn by Angus French to this online endgame quiz, created by Berenike Waubert de Puiseau, Dipl.-Psych and Professor Dr Jochen Musch at the Institute of Experimental Psychology at the Heinrich Heine University of Dusseldorf. So now I'll draw your attention to it in turn.

Some of it is easy, some of it you'll likely have seen before, some of it is a bit harder. (I found it so, anyway, scoring a little less than I was comfortable with.)

At the end you give your Elo rating, if you have one, and a few other details - they explain briefly the purpose of the survey, and you even get the answers to the questions.

So give it a go: it's a long weekend and I'm sure you have half an hour spare to make a small contribution to Science.

And no closing the browser window prematurely when you think you've got too many wrong!

(Thanks also to Dr Chris Brooke, Oliver Rivers and Dr Vanda Wilcox.)

Hackney Seen in New York

Just a short post until we get used to the new arrangements...and I'll lose no time in acknowledging Justin's generosity in allowing me to indulge in the occasional Friday post on Lost On Time.

Back in the other place we spent a good few posts - fruitfully, as I hope you will agree - ruminating on the intriguing chess art of Tom Hackney, inspired as it is by the art and chess of Marcel Duchamp. Often we have had the benefit, and the pleasure, of talking to Tom himself; and we have been tracking his chess-in-art career from the early days in, well, Hackney, via an exhibition in Clerkenwell, and inclusion in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition of 2012. Most recently he has been showing a wider canvas of works in Munich, Limerick and Vienna. Now he has reached New York, with a solo exhibition of 18 Duchamp chess game paintings at the prestigious Francis Naumann Gallery in New York.

The Francis Naumann Gallery is a temple of Duchampian art, with Mr Naumann himself, eminent gallerist and connoisseur, its benevolent high-priest. You can read the exhibition prospectus here - and Tom's own website carries this:

      
Sadly, we in the UK won't get a chance to see the exhibition - but our readers in the US will have a double opportunity as it will move on to the Saint Louis World Chess Hall of Fame from May 19 to September 11 2016. Back here we will have to make do with the thumbnails given in the list of works online at the Francis Naumann Gallery website. But I would urge our American friends to get along to the shows if they can - there is no substitute for seeing Tom's works (indeed any work of art) in the flesh: the crystalline form, the precision of production, the seduction of surface...and that's without exploring what lies beneath in the conceptual under-storey to the Duchamp chess-game series.  

But here at home we can do something else: we can talk directly to the artist himself - so watch out for a further post, with what I hope will be Tom's reflections on his American adventure.

Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog Chess in Art Index          

Nothing ventured

INTERVIEWER: Lev, what happened out there? Did Nakamura really say "J'adoube"?
ARONIAN: Yes, yes he did. He tried to get away with it. I just couldn't believe it.

INTERVIEWER: Lev, what happened out there? Did Nakamura really say "J'adoube"?
ARONIAN: To be honest I really don't know. I thought he did at the time but we were both tired and I really can't be sure.

INTERVIEWER: Lev, what happened out there? Did Nakamura really say "J'adoube"?
ARONIAN: You know - I just don't want to talk about. It's gone, I won the game. Let's just talk about chess.

One of these things should have happened on Thursday night. As far as I'm aware, none of them did.

Lost in Art

A sort of Index to chess in art posts on Lost on Time.
For chess in art posts in an earlier incarnation see here  

2016
25 March Hackney Seen in New York - Tom Hackney's upcoming shows in the States

24 June Hackey Seen in St. Louis etc - Tom Hackney again, plus conceptual art in London

26 August Chess in Art: Richier Revisited - Germaine Richier's great chess set at Tate Modern

2 September Chess in Art: Miss Tanning's Appendix - She who played chess with Max Ernst

9 September Chess in Art: RA Afterthought - Chess in architecture

25 November Wot a Lot - David Bowie flogs a chess set

23 December Chess in Art: Tinkling the Ivories - Hot chess at the Carvery

2017
6 January Chess in Art; Chess Board Cubism - Cubes and squares

13 January Chess in Art: Again, With A Footnote - John Berger RIP

8 September Hackney Hits a Hundred -  An update on Tom Hackney's Duchamp project

2019
1 March Chess in Art Revisits 1. John Ruskin  - Another look occasioned by a current exhibition

8 March Chess in Art Revisits 2. Tom Hackney - Catching up with Tom catching up with Marcel

15 March Chess in Art Revisits 3. Dorothea Tanning - To see her  fine retrospective at Tate Modern

Lost in History

A sort of Index to Lost on Time history posts:
For chess history in an earlier incarnation see here.

2016
8 April  The Baby and The Bike -  An addition to the story of Edwardian player E.M.Jellie (begun here, and continued here).

6 May et seq.  A seven part series on Louisa Matilda Fagan, maybe the strongest female player in late Victorian England: including her chess, her family, and her politics - 1. Waltzing Matilda; 2: Mrs Fagan's Game;  3: Mrs Fagan's Game Resumed; 4: Mrs Fagan's Family 5: Mrs Fagan's Politics;  6: Another Mrs Fagan...and Her Politics; 7...And the  Final "Mrs Fagan"

16 September  A French Connection - Young French aristos caught playing chess in Richmond.

30 September & 14 October  Played on Squares (Bloomsbury and Chess) 8 - and 9, on E.M. Forster - a continuation of the series begun in 2015 here.

16 December The Bird Has Landed  - an appreciation of Hans Renette's fine biog of Henry Bird.

2017
27 January et seq. A series on Herbert Jacobs, described in his obituary in 1950 as, in his time, one of the strongest players in the country - 1. Beginning in Croydon; 2. Brixton, Benedict and Bar; 3.City Champ; 4. Congress Man; 5. A Load of Old Cablers; 6.Engaging Agnes; 7. Congress Man Replayed; 8. Madame Larkcom; 9. Jacobs Crackers; 10. Votes for Women!; 11. Votes for Jacobs!; 12. Intermission Riff; 13 Barrister;  14. Still at the Bar; 15. Down the Line; 16. Finale

28 April. Brixton Byways 2½: Peyers You Went  - a reprise on the de Peyer brothers of the ancient Endeavour Chess Club of North Brixton, who were first described here.

22 September. Les Chesseurs Britanniques de Paris: Part 7. Addendum bis  - a further episode* documenting the short lived British Chess Club of Paris active in the decade before WW2; beginning here.

6 October et seq. A further perambulatory sequence in the series started back here. This time Streatham Strolls West: Outward; then Backtrack; and Inward

1 December. *And yet another episode: Les Chesseurs....Part 8 Inital Confusion, Final Conclusion?