Leonard Barden still going strong – at 87

The Guardian chess column

By Leonard Barden

Leonard Barden's weekly Guardian chess column began in September 1955 and has continued since with no breaks for sixty-one years. It has broken the previous record for any columnist, held by English local columnist Tom Widdows, who wrote weekly in the Worcester News from October 1945 until April 2006, 60 years and 6 months. Leonard's other (daily!) column, in the Evening Standard, began in June 1956 and has continued every day since. It was in print until 30 July 2010 (54 years 1 month), and has since continued online – click on this link for some additional entertaining chess puzzles. So this daily column has been running for almost sixty years, easily overtaking the one written by George Koltanowski for the San Francisco Daily Chronicle, which lasted 51 years 9 months, until his death. Leonard's Evening Standard column is quite possibly the longest ever running daily column by a single journalist in any field of journalism.

Friday 21 October 2016

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa chases world grandmaster age record at 11

An 11-year-old Indian boy with a very long name is changing chess history. Already the youngest ever international master, the Chennai prodigy is likely to eclipse Sergey Karjakin’s long standing world record as the only pre-teen player to achieve the grandmaster title. His early career is outpacing both Russia’s Karjakin (GM at 12 years and seven months) and Norway’s reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen (GM at 13 years and four months), whose title match starts in New York on 11 November.

Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa learned chess at five, and soon made remarkable progress. He won the world under-eight title in 2013, the under-10 in 2015, and is currently the No1 seed in the world under-12 at Batumi, Georgia. He outclasses his peers but it is his advance in global adult chess which has set new all-time peaks for age achievement.

His first international master result at Cannes, France, in February this year, was quickly followed by his second at Moscow Aeroflot in March, then his third and final norm at Bhubaneswar, India, in May, so qualifying him as an IM at ten years and nine months and breaking Karjakin’s world record by more than a year. [Editorial note: typically Leonard researched Praggu's exact age by contacting his father through friend, and even correcting our report, where we had initially given ten years and ten months]. And the way he did it hints at much more to come. He recovered from a 0.5/3 start in Moscow, while at both Cannes and Bhubaneswar he reached the IM score with a round to spare.

• Read the full Guardian column here

Friday 14 October 2016

Isle of Man international open pushing for a place among the elite events

The Isle of Man has staged its annual international open for some 20 years but the 2016 version at Douglas was by far the strongest of the series. America’s trio of Olympiad gold medallists, all ranked in the world top 10, faced a tough field including the England No1, Michael Adams, China’s world woman champion, Hou Yifan, Hungary’s former world title challenger Peter Leko and Ukraine’s Pavel Eljanov, who took the trophy. The Manxmen can now justifiably claim their event belongs in the major league of elite opens alongside Tradewise Gibraltar, Aeroflot Moscow and Qatar.

Fabiano Caruana tied with Eljanov and expressed disappointment that there was no speed play-off. But the 24-year-old US champion shared the prize money and, most important for him, gained a haul of rating points which made him the clear world No2, only 30 points behind Magnus Carlsen.

• Read the full Guardian chess column here

Friday 7 October 2016

Ian Nepomniachtchi triumphs at a Tal Memorial blighted by too many draws

Mikhail Tal was a tactical genius who aimed for decisive results but two-thirds of the games were drawn in this week’s Tal Memorial in Moscow, leading to criticism that too many of the elite grandmasters had conservative styles. The winner was Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi, another triumph for the golden birth year of 1990 which has already produced the world champion Magnus Carlsen, his challenger, Sergey Karjakin, and France’s recent world No2, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave.

Tickets for next month’s world title match in New York, which starts on 11 November, are now on sale at the ticketing website Ticketfly and the organisers have made a bold attempt to attract an involved onsite audience. Spectators will have live commentary, access to the post-game press conference and blitz tournaments with grandmasters.

• Read Leonard Barden's full Guardian column here

Friday 30 September 2016

Mikhail Tal a creative genius despite short reign as world champion

Mikhail Tal, the “magician from Riga”, was world champion for one year but he has become one of the greatest legends, a true genius.

Tal had creative imagination in abundance, helped by a fantastic memory. As a five-year-old he went to his father’s medical lecture and repeated most of it when he got home. When I first saw him at the Munich Olympiad in 1958 he won several games by brilliant attacks, often with much clock time to spare, and spent most of the session away from his board touring the hall with a notebook looking for material for his nightly radio broadcasts.

He won the 1958 USSR championship, beating Boris Spassky in a final-round epic, then the world championship interzonal, then the candidates, then the world title against Mikhail Botvinnik in 1960. He was at his zenith that year in a USSR v West Germany match and at the Leipzig Olympiad, despite his final-round defeat by England’s Jonathan Penrose.

The chronic kidney ailment which dogged Tal for most of his life struck shortly before his return series with Botvinnik, who demanded a certificate from a Moscow doctor. The provocation worked. The sick Tal decided to play the match and was well beaten. I saw him again a month afterwards at the European team championship in Oberhausen and he still looked yellowish and ill.

He recovered quickly, won at Bled that summer and his long career included unbeaten runs of 95 games in 1973-74 and 86 games in 1972-73. These are records which have never been broken and it is quixotic that they should be held by a legend whose name is synonymous with risk. Every game, said Tal, was as inimitable and as invaluable as a poem.

Tal died early, at 55, weakened by ill-health, vodka and chain smoking. He loved speed chess and left his intensive care ward to play for the Moscow blitz title where he defeated Garry Kasparov, then world champion, and tied for second prize. A month later he was dead.

• Read the full Guardian column here

Do not fail to visit Leonard Barden's Guardian chess column for weekly entertaining chess news and puzzles.

About the author

Leonard William Barden (photo above by Linda Nylind for the Guardian) was born on August 20, 1929, in Croydon, London, the son of a dustman, and was educated at Whitgift School, South Croydon, and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.

Barden learned to play chess at age 13 while in a school shelter during a German air raid. Within a few years he became one of the country's leading juniors. In 1946 he won the British Junior Correspondence Chess Championship, and tied for first place in the London Boys' Championship. The following year he tied for first with Jonathan Penrose in the British Boys' Championship, but lost the playoff. Barden finished fourth at Hastings in 1951–52 and fourth in 1957–58.

In 1953 Barden won the individual British Lightning Championship (ten seconds a move), and in the following year tied for first in the British Championship. He did this again in 1958. He represented England in the Chess Olympiads of 1952 (playing fourth board, scoring 2 wins, 5 draws, and 4 losses), 1954 (playing first reserve, scoring 1 win, 2 draws, and 4 losses), 1960 (first reserve; 4 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses) and 1962 (first reserve; 7 wins, 2 draws, 3 losses).

In 1964 Barden gave up competitive chess to devote his time to chess journalism and writing books about the game. He has made invaluable contributions to English chess as a populariser, writer, organiser, fundraiser, and broadcaster. He was a regular contributor to the BBC's Network Three weekly radio chess programme from 1958 to 1963.