Versus the English

BY: BOBBY ANG

(As published in Chess Piece, BusinessWorld, 31 January 2011)

It is a common misconception that Anthony John Miles was the first Englishman to be awarded the title of international grandmaster (GM) -- the honor belongs to Jacques Mieses, who was among the original 27 players granted the GM title in 1950 by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). It is true, though, that Mieses was originally a German and became a naturalized British citizen after the second world war.

So is Miles the first natural-born English GM? I am afraid not. Keith Richardson has that distinction -- he got the International Correspondence GM title in 1975.
OK, does that make Miles the first natural-born English over-the-board chess GM? Yes it does.

The early 1970s was the start of the English chess boom and grandmasters started to sprout up from everywhere. After Miles came Raymond Keene, Michael Stean (never heard of him? Here’s a bit of trivia -- when Campomanes became FIDE president in 1982 Stean announced that he cannot stomach this and retired from chess), John Nunn, Jonathan Mester, Jonathan Speelman and a flood of others. The 1974 Nice Olympiad was the last one where the English team did not have any GMs. In fact, in 1976 Haifa olympiad they were already strong enough to take the bronze medals.

We pick up GM Eugene’s story from here:

Round 7 opponents were the Englishmen. I wanted to take a rest, but Campomanes had this thing against the English team -- in those early years the Englishmen had the tendency to sneer at Asian chessplayers and one of their journalists even likened our players to "penguins and polar bears."

Campomanes in another Olympiad had a heated confrontation with Harry Golombek, the Dean of English chessplayers, when he commented about the Philippine team that "these brown monkeys can play chess."

To be fair, when Campomanes became the FIDE president in 1982, one of the first things he did was to propose that Golombek be declared an Honorary International Grandmaster.

Anyway, in the 1968 Lugano Olympiad the Philippines and England were in the same preliminary group and we managed to slip past them into Group "A," causing their relegation to the "B" group. There was this marathon Raymond Keene vs. Edgar de Castro draw of 101 moves that made this qualification possible.

Keene, Raymond (2435) -- De Castro, Edgar (2320) [A07]
Lugano ol (Men) qual-A Lugano (7), 24.10.1968
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We knew they were itching for revenge.

Hartston,William R (2480) -- Torre, Eugenio (2450) [B07]
Nice ol (Men) fin-A (7), 20.06.1974
Pirc Defense
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Glenn had a promising attack against Markland’s Sicilian, but solid defense by the resourceful Englishman caused him to commit a time pressure mistake, losing a pawn. This extra pawn carried over to the knight and pawns end game and cost Glenn the full point. Final score: 2-2. Not bad.

With 10.5/13 I started entertaining thoughts of getting the 2nd and last GM norm. The requirement during those days was to get a certain performance over 25 games, which usually meant 3 tournaments, but the Nice Olympiad was a long-winded affair and despite the unrated games in the preliminaries which were not counted, a quick calculation showed that, including the games I played in the 1974 Costa del Sol tournament in Spain (where I got my first GM norm) there only remained six more games to reach the magic 25, and I only needed 2.5 points more to fulfill the performance requirement.

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