Welcome
Club Information:
CHESS Minister!:
CCCC Championship:
The Club publishes a magazine entitled ‘CHESS minister!’ 3 times a year to keep members in touch.
If you are interested in joining us, please contact the Secretary:
The Club publishes a magazine entitled ‘CHESS minister!’ 3 times a year to keep members in touch.
If you are interested in joining us, please contact the Secretary:
I don’t know how old I was when Dad (Harry) first taught me Chess. My sisters weren’t at all interested; my brothers dabbled in it; I was quite a chess fan even then, maybe I was 7 or 8 years old - possibly younger. Dad of course was an addict. He played every Tuesday for Barclays Bank (second board, I think, but sometimes top board) somewhere near or at 54 Lombard Street . Mum always knew when he had lost (so she told me sixty years later).
He taught us the basics: how to move, how to mate on the back row, how to start the Ruy Lopez, etc. But he would never allow us to beat him. Oh no! He was after all a very good player. I remember him once telling me about the Evans Gambit and how he had won with it against a very good player from one of the other Big Five Banks. He used to take the Tablet each week. He did the Senior Problem - nearly always a two mover; I did the Junior Problem. I think I got a prize once. Then the editor of the Chess column was murdered - so that was the end of that. For the record, when I was about 18 during the war, I once played Baruch H. Wood in a Simul at Trentham, near Stoke, and beat him. How I wish someone had preserved the game. My moment of Glory!
When I entered this Trappist Monastery in 1947, all that had to go. No more Chess, no more games, none at all. Yet just occasionally I would see a chess cutting somewhere, say in an old newspaper, and I would be hooked again. So I made myself a secret chess-board out of cardboard about 7” square, ink for the black squares, but they were blue. I was working on the orchard at the time, so I took some cuttings from an apple tree, stripped the bark off them, cut them into small pieces about 3/ 8 “ high, painted 16 of them dark blue with ink. Then I sneaked some old back issues of the Tablet, cut the chess column out, and pasted the little ‘icons’ onto my chess pieces. All very hush-hush and secret. Now I’ve let it out. That was my secret chess set for years. I kept the pieces in two match boxes, and I still have boxes but not the pieces. Later, much later, a friend bought me a proper chess set - 4”x 4”. I have used it ever since.
By that time I had got some friends to send me chess cuttings from the Times and the Daily Telegraph. Of course, during the Fisher- Spassky drama, I couldn’t get enough of the great lead up to the 1972 World Championship when Bobby wiped the board first with Taimanov, then Larsen of all people, then the great Petrosian himself, and finally those superb games with Spassky. I became hopelessly enthralled by Bobby’s games. To tell the truth, I probably still am. Alas, that was the end of it for Bobby. But even before that I had already got entangled in the world chess when Spassky beat Petrosian in 1969. Only after Bobby went did Karpov really arrive, and soon we were into the Kasparov period. Yes, I remember now, by 1969 I think Nigel Short was beginning to show himself as a possible world hopeful, and so it turned out. So I kept my obsession alive with all those cuttings which my friends kept sending. It is so much fun playing through the games of the great chess players, working out the puzzling super-endings to a great game, hoping that you could use something from them in you own game. Anyway it keeps you on your toes. And if you weren’t so old you could almost fall in love with Judith Polgar (as was)!
Later still, much later, I saw an advert in the Tablet for the CCCC from Bruce Carlin. By that time, the strict Trappist regime had relaxed a lot. So after a decent but exciting time of hesitation, I wrote off to Bruce and joined the happy throng. There’s nothing like playing against real players to show you just how much you don’t know! to show you how many mistakes you can make in a few moves. I had to learn quickly. I had no idea whatsoever that there were so many Openings. Gradually I acquired a few books, e.g. ‘Batsford’s Chess Openings’, (but to tell you the truth I couldn’t really grasp it). I had a few old books that belonged to Dad before he died, but they were all in the abandoned 1 P-K4 notation. What a delight it has been for me to meet so many of you by email and telephone or even by snail mail. What times I have spent pouring over a tricky move. What fun to share one of the games with a friend in the guesthouse who is also keen on chess. What a joy to find like-minded people who spend time in their busy lives to answer the latest move. What embarrassment, what dejection to find I have made that wrong move! What excitement when your opponent misses the trick you have set for him. And I must now thank all of you for allowing me to take part in the sparkling fun of the CCCC world.