Leonard Barden
Leonard William Barden | |
---|---|
Born | South Croydon, London, England | 20 August 1929
Occupation(s) | chess player, writer, broadcaster, journalist |
Leonard William Barden (born 20 August 1929, in
Early life
Barden was born on 20 August 1929. His father ran a business which collapsed during the
Playing career
Junior results
In 1946, Barden won the British Junior Correspondence Chess Championship, and tied for first place in the London Boys' Championship.[1] The following year he tied for first with Jonathan Penrose in the British Boys' Championship, but lost the playoff.[1][2]
British results
Barden finished fourth at Hastings in 1951–52.[1] In 1952, he won the Paignton tournament ahead of the Canadian future grandmaster Daniel Yanofsky.[2] Barden captained the Oxfordshire team which won the English Counties championship in 1951 and 1952. In the latter year, he captained the University of Oxford team which won the National Club Championship, and he represented the university in the annual team match against the University of Cambridge during his years there.[1] In 1953, Barden won the individual British Lightning Championship (ten seconds a move). The following year, he tied for first with the Belgian grandmaster Albéric O'Kelly de Galway at Bognor Regis, was joint British champion, with Alan Phillips, and won the Southern Counties Championship.[1][2] Barden finished fourth at Hastings 1957–58, ranked by Chessmetrics as his best statistical performance.[1][3] In the 1958 British Chess Championship, Barden again tied for first, but lost the playoff match to Penrose 1½–3½.
Chess Olympiads
Barden represented England in the
Morphy number
Barden has a
Chess organisation, broadcasting, writing
In 1964, Barden gave up most competitive chess to devote his time to chess organisation, broadcasting, and writing about the game.[1][2] He has made invaluable contributions to English chess as a populariser, writer, organiser, fundraiser, and broadcaster.[21]
He was controller of the
Chess columns
As of April 2023, Barden's weekly column has been published in
Books
Barden has written the following books.
- A Guide to Chess Openings (1957),
- How Good Is Your Chess? (1957),
- Chess (1959),
- Introduction to Chess Moves and Tactics Simply Explained (1959),
- Modern Chess Miniatures (with Wolfgang Heidenfeld, 1960),
- Erevan 1962 (1963),
- The Ruy Lopez (1963),
- The Guardian Chess Book (1967),
- An Introduction to Chess (1967),
- The King's Indian Defence (1968),
- Chess: Master the Moves (1977),
- Guide to the Chess Openings (with Tim Harding, 1977),
- Leonard Barden's Chess Puzzle Book (1977) (a collection of his Evening Standard columns),
- The Master Game (with Jeremy James, 1979),
- How to Play the Endgame in Chess (1979),
- Play Better Chess (1980),
- Batsford Chess Puzzles (2002),
- One Move and You're Dead (with Erwin Brecher, 2007).[1][2][31]
Barden's earliest literary credit is for proof-reading "R.P.Michell : A Master of British Chess" by J. du Mont published by Pitman in 1947.
Role in "English Chess Explosion"
Barden's most important achievement was his key role in the rapid advance of English chess in the 1970s and 1980s from also-rans to Olympiad silver medal winners.[32] His involvement began in 1971 when he noticed that Tony Miles and Michael Stean were both likely contenders for the biennial 1973 world junior (under-20) championship, but that the only way for a country to have two representatives was to host the event. Barden knew the financier Jim Slater, who offered to co-sponsor the event, which was staged at Teesside. There, Miles and Stean won silver and bronze medals, respectively, and Miles won the title in 1974 when it was changed to an annual contest. Slater also agreed to Barden's proposal that he should finance special coaching by Bob Wade for the five best teenage prospects. They all became grandmasters.
In 1972, after Slater had saved the Bobby Fischer versus Boris Spassky world championship match from collapse by doubling the prize fund, he offered £5,000 to the first English grandmaster (who wound up being Miles), and £2,000 to the next four players to qualify. Barden worked out the detailed terms, and wrote the speech at Hastings where Slater announced the awards. Encouraged by success, Barden and Slater then agreed on a wider programme to stimulate talent at much younger ages, aiming to produce a generation which could compete with the Soviet Union, the world's leading chess nation.
Barden organised weekend junior invitation events at which the best prospects played a tournament and had coaching from masters between games. They were also introduced to top master chess at the annual Evening Standard weekend open and via grandmaster simultaneous exhibitions. The model was the USSR's own programme in the 1930s, when future masters scored impressively in exhibitions against world-class masters José Raúl Capablanca and Salo Flohr during the 1935 and 1936 Moscow tournaments. Very few juniors in the 1970s had international ratings, so Barden compiled his own world ranking lists for every age group from under-18 to under-10, updating the figures at monthly or weekly intervals and posting the results at the invitation events.
Barden read much Soviet chess literature, and in 1974 decided that an 11-year-old named Gary Kasparov was a likely future world champion. His Guardian column of 24 February 1975, headlined "World Champ 1990", made this a specific forecast.[33] It was, by more than a year, the first such prediction by anyone for the future Garry Kasparov, who beat Barden's forecast by five years when he won the title in 1985.
By summer 1975 Barden believed that Nigel Short, then aged 9, also had world title potential. The simultaneous programme was intensified for Short, who in the next few years played three world champions and several other top grandmasters. Barden also used his columns to promote his juniors, whom some called "the Barden babes". When Short defeated Viktor Korchnoi, the world's second strongest active player, in a 1976 Evening Standard simultaneous the result was announced on that evening's ITN news bulletin.
One purpose of the publicity was to attract more sponsorship, and in summer 1976 Barden secured backing from
The first Lloyds Bank event was a pilot, a
By 1978, when England won the world under-26 championship at
In 1980, George Low wrote in Education magazine: In about 1972–73, he recalls, the selectors started casting their nets much wider than the Home Counties grammar schools where the recruiting ground had traditionally been. He and his colleagues looked through the results of a lot more tournaments all over the country. Those who had real talent were encouraged to go in for the National Junior Squad Championships and to enter adult tournaments. They were also given the opportunity to play against adult grandmasters in 'simuls
By the 1980s the "English Chess Explosion" was in full swing, but Barden took a lesser role due to having to care for his mother, who suffered from
In recognition of his efforts, Barden was offered an OBE, but declined it. Brian Walden has written that "Leonard Barden has done more for British chess than anybody since our famous 19th century champion, Howard Staunton."[35]
Chess strength
According to
Notable games
- Barden has said that "my favourite game" is his win against
- 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.d4 Bb4+ 7.c3 Be7 8.Nxf7 Kxf7 9.Qf3+ Ke6 10.Qe4 Bf8 11.0-0 Ne7 12.f4 c6 13.fxe5 Kd7 14.Be2 Ke8 15.c4 Nc7 16.Nc3 Be6 17.Bg5 Qd7 18.Rad1 Rc8 19.Bxe7 Qxe7 20.d5 Qc5+ 21.Kh1 cxd5 22.cxd5 Bd7 23.e6 Bb5 24.Qf4 Kd8 25.Bxb5 Nxb5 26.Nxb5 Qxb5 27.d6 1–0[38]
- Here Barden (White) annihilates Jonathan Penrose (Black), who won a famous game against reigning World Champion Mikhail Tal the following year, and ultimately won the British Chess Championship a record ten times:
- Barden–Penrose, British Championship 1959:[39]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.c3 d6 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 Be6 13.dxe5 dxe5 14.Ng5 Bd7 15.Nf1 Rad8 16.Qe2 g6 17.Ne3 Bc8 18.a4 c4 19.axb5 axb5 20.Rd1 Rxd1+ 21.Qxd1 Rd8 22.Qe2 b4 23.Rxa5! Qxa5 24.Qxc4 Rf8 25.Nxf7! Kg7 26.Nf5+! gxf5 27.Bh6+ Kg6 28.Bxf8 Bxf8 29.Nh8+ Kh6 30.Qxc8 Kg7 31.Qe6 Qa1+ 32.Kh2 Qxb2 33.Bb3 h5 34.Qf7+ Kxh8 35.Qxf8+ 1–0
- Young–Barden, correspondence 1945:
- 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Na5 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6 8.Qf3 cxb5!? 9.Qxa8 Bc5 10.Ne4 Nxe4 11.Qxe4 0-0 12.0-0 Re8 13.Qe2 Bb7 14.Qxb5 Bb6 15.d3 Re6 16.Kh1 Bxg2+ 17.Kxg2 Qa8+ 18.f3 Rg6+ 19.Kh1 Qxf3+ 20.Rxf3 Rg1# 0–1[40]
References
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Anne Sunnucks, The Encyclopaedia of Chess, St. Martin's Press, 1970, p. 20.
- ^ ISBN 0-517-53146-1.
- chessmetrics.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ISBN 0-486-23733-8; olimpbase.org, the Leonard Barden results file
- ^ In a team competition such as the Chess Olympiads, the "first reserve" is the player whose rank on his team is one below the number of players who play in a match (e.g., the number five player in a situation where only four players play in any given match). The first reserve thus only plays in matches where one or more of his team's top players does not participate.
- , chesscafe.com, 2010.
- ^ Horace F. Cheshire (editor), The Hastings Chess Tournament 1895, Dover, 1962, pp. 323–24.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ISBN 0-486-43574-1.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ a b Cross-table of 1948 BCF Premier Tournament. BritBase Chess. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Mortimer played Edward Sergeant at the London 1906-07 and London 1908-09 tournaments. Gino de Felice, Chess Results, 1901-1920, McFarland & Co., 2006, pp. 281, 282.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Cross-table of 1949 Southsea Tournament. BritBase Chess. Retrieved on 8 October 2019.
- ^ Mortimer played Sir George Thomas in the Canterbury 1903 and Brighton 1904 tournaments. Gino de Felice, Chess Results, 1901-1920, McFarland & Co., 2006, pp. 26, 37.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- chesscafe.com. Published 1 October 2014. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- Swisscircuit". Id. at 71.
- ISBN 0-385-08627-X.
- ISBN 1-879479-85-0.
- ^ Chandler and Keene, p. 67.
- ^ "Chess - with Leonard Barden". 31 January 2020.
- ^ J.H. van Meurs (ed.), British Chess Federation Year Book 1956/57, 1956, p. 70.
- ^ Chess with Leonard Barden (January 31, 2020)
- ^ Edward Winter, Chess Note 4841. Chesshistory.com. Dated 8 February 2007. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Edward Winter, Chess Note 5267. Chesshistory.com. Dated 8 November 2007. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Longest serving daily newspaper columnist. [www.guinnessworldrecords.com]. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Author: Leonard Barden. WorldCat.org. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Stuart Milner-Barry wrote in the foreword to The English Chess Explosion: From Miles to Short that the "English chess explosion" occurred because "the fruits were being reaped of the unobtrusive but devoted spade-work in junior training pioneered by Barden, Wade and many others." Chandler and Keene, p. 7. Barden "has been involved in junior training and sponsorship for over a decade, and ... was the first to predict the English chess explosion." Id. at back cover.
- ^ Edward Winter, Chess Note 5783 Talent-spotting. Chesshistorycenter.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ George Low, "The School Seedbed of Britain's Chess Success", Education magazine, 7 November 1980, reprinted in Chandler and Keene, pp. 116–17.
- ISBN 978-0-905703-12-1.
- ^ chessmetrics.com, the Leonard Barden results file
- ^ Terence Tiller (editor), Chess Treasury of the Air, Penguin Books, 1966, pp. 234–36.
- ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Barden–Penrose, British Championship 1959. ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
- ^ Young–Barden, correspondence 1945. ChessGames.com. Retrieved on 7 October 2019.
External links
- Leonard Barden player profile and games at Chessgames.com
- Chess site, including Barden's column, at The Guardian
- http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jun/28/4
- "Leonard Barden" by Edward Winter