Lesser known game of Raaphy Persitz

A figure not well known to younger players, but Raaphy Persitz was a strong master who played and lived in England before moving back to his native Israel in the 1960s. He was a long time contributor to the British Chess Magazine, his notes to games were deep and penetrating. He was Israeli Junior champion in 1951 and represented Israel in the Leipzig Olympiad in 1960. When he passed away in 2009 there were many moving tributes to him as a good and loyal friend of many leading lights in British Chess in the 50s and 60s. Here is a nice game he won against Robert Huebner in 1969

Jonathan Penrose Brilliant at Southsea 1950

Aged only 16 Penrose had a marvellous result at the 2nd Stevenson Memorial at Southsea, beating Tartakower and Bogoljubov. Here is his game against A.R.B. Thomas from the event.

Early Penrose game

Continuing the thread of Jonathan Penrose here is a game he played at the age of 15 in the British Championships in 1950, an event he would dominate throughout the 1960s as the strongest British Player. Here he is playing the legendary Gerald Abrahams, Well known Barrister, Chess player and author of some very good Chess books. The Chess Mind and Technique in Chess are very interesting and I learnt Chess reading his Teach yourself Chess, the second Chess book I ever owned.

Penrose- Cafferty British Championship 1966

I have been looking at the games of Jonathan Penrose recently and found this remarkable game. I'll give the whole game below, but firstly, can you find what lovely move Penrose played on the 17th move?

Chess since lockdown.

Firstly I finished reading "Lasker's Greatest Chess Games" by Reinfeld and Fine. I really enjoyed this early book by Reinfeld in collaboration of Reuben Fine. The games are of course superb. The only thing I would say, the comments are rather harsh on Lasker's opponents at times and not always as objective as they could be. I believe they tend to be based on the outcome of a game a bit too often,and not always on the value of the variations being analysed.                                          

Since the lockdown began in March in the UK, I basically decided to try to improve my chess for the day when we can play over the board again. I added to my library and decided to read some of my classics that have been sitting on my shelves in their entirety. Like many Chess players, I normally tend to dip in and out of books, but I have really enjoyed the experience of reading from cover to cover.

The next book I decided to finish is the classic collection of Tal's games by the great man himself, "The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal".

                                                     

I actually own two copies of this book. The algebraic Cadogan one pictured above with some of Tal's analysis corrected by computer and John Nunn, and the earlier one by RHM Press in descriptive notation.

I found myself reading the autobiographical parts in the descriptive book and playing through the games in the algebraic. The photos that you get in the descriptive edition went missing from the algebraic, and I found the binding on my Cadogan edition gave up the ghost long ago, with many pages becoming loose. Despite this, it's a fantastic book, quite rightly praised as possibly being the best ever Chess book in many circles. the games sparkle with Tal's genius and his honest appraisal in his notes. If he plays well he says so and if his opponent  plays well he equally praises their moves. If he thinks he played poorly he also says so and is quite self critical at times. The book abounds with stories and characters and he is surprisingly candid in a book written in Soviet times about his dis-satisfaction of how he was treated on occasion by the Soviet Chess authorities. The book is full of humour as well as mentioning his ongoing health problems with his troublesome kidneys that was eventually to end his life far too soon. It's a great book, not only as Chess literature but in literature in general.

Books I added to my collection include J.H. Donner "The King".

I have only just begun to read it but already I am aware that I am holding another fantastic book in my hands. It is a collection of Chess columns and articles Donner wrote in Dutch newspapers and publications from the 1950's til his death in 1988. Wonderful insight and he doesn't hold back in his sometimes controversial opinions. A wonderful read. I bought several other books that I will talk about later. suffice to say, I have plenty to keep me busy. As a professional musician, I cannot work until the theatres and Orchestras open up again for performances, so I have plenty of time to get stuck into the great Chess literature at my disposal.

Other books bought since Lockdown:

Fairly easy study by H Rinck 1952

Warwickshire Open Last Round Win to be analysed.

Warwickshire Open Round 4 game

Played on 23/2/2020

Warwickshire Open 2020 Second round loss.

A good way to improve your Chess is to analyse your own games and publish them in some way. That's really the point of this blog. Whether anyone actually looks at the games is immaterial to me. However, as you can learn most from your defeats, here is a cringingly painful loss I suffered at the weekend in the Warwickshire Open Championships. I should have won, then lost then finally drawn the game, but I have learnt a lot from doing this. Hopefully it will help me improve. I finished the tournament in 9th place out of 20 players with 2.5/5. I will gain rating points from the result and had a couple of nice wins on the way. Here is the game, warts and all played on 22nd February 2020 in Coventry.

Final Game in February Slow Chess League.

My final game in the February 90/30 Slow Chess League ended with a win. I scored 3/3 so depending on the result of another game being played on Saturday I am either clear first or joint first. The game against my Norwegian opponent is given here. A Gruenfeld Petrosian Variation. I will fully annotate this game tonight as that is the point of my blog, to incentivise me to analyse my own games.