Living the Dream: A Coincidence Diary

On the evening of November 17th 2018 I happened to think about a slightly unusual ending of  rook´s pawn and a bishop (which does not control the corner square on which the pawn promotes) Vs knight´s pawn. Although the position is similar to one which arose in the game Timman Vs Mestel, London 1982, which Timman won and also to that which arose in the fifth game of the Korchnoi Vs Karpov, World Championship Match, Baguio City 1978, which Karpov clung on to draw, my machinations soon led me to realise that it was in fact also drawn. Here, by the way, is a game from two men who would later contend The Times 1993 World Championship Match. In the ending that arose at move 93 the position is actually won for the man with the bishop as the doubled knight´s pawn means that, after the defender is compelled to give it away, the resultant position will not be a stalemate -  https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1070432 The following day I competed in a Rapids event in the t...

On the afternoon of Saturday June 16th 2018 my mind wandered back to an afternoon in late 1991 when I and a schoolmate, Neil Cannon, had played backgammon together in a house owned by parents of a friend of his in Kimbolton Road, Bedford. Within the hour I received an e mail from Cannon himself. It was only the second e mail he had ever sent me, the previous one being in January 2017 in which he had said he was back in Bedford to visit his aging mum. He now said that he had spoken with my mother the previous evening when watching the Spain Vs Portugal World Cup soccer match on TV in the Charter House home where she was resident. His mother, he informed me, was also a resident there and on the same ward.  I had not known that. I e mailed him back re what I had just been thinking about. He responded with their names - ´ Chris & Jonny Potter.  We played chess & backgammon that afternoon. ´ As I myself had left Charter House Care Home on one occasion, I too had ...

On an afternoon in 2012 I found a scene, which I had seen some twenty years previously, popped into my head. It was  where Elton John held a pistol out towards Rowan Atkinson... which did not go off! And so he had found himself forced to go “Bang!”  I presumed it to have been an antiquated  Secret Policeman´s Ball , but when I checked I found it to have been from a Hysteria show of 1991. The following afternoon Byron Jacobs mentioned this very scene to me when we communicated at a social media site. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl0HqlbX7dc

In Playing to Win , I wrote of Kasparov´s televised victory over Karpov in the final game from their 1985 Moscow match which made Gary World Champion. “ Games like this show that what the board game may offer is a unique blend of science, sport and art. And if we have the pleasure of watching the moves come in live, rather than playing through them afterwards, we will also sense an unmistakable element of theatre.” On the morning of February 6th 2018 I was listening to episodes of the Radio/TV show Just A Minute . I then took a shower and found myself musing on some remarks made to me the previous year on my lack of committed professionalism. But I responded that I was not really a chess pro. I even said out loud whilst showering,  "I´m a writer, not a chessplayer!"  This I cribbed from a song of Gilbert O´Sullivan´s from the 1970s, although It had never been released as a single and I had not heard the track in many years: " I'm A Writer, Not A Fighter " I...