Raymond Keene
Raymond Keene OBE | |
---|---|
Full name | Raymond Dennis Keene |
Country | England |
Born | 29 January 1948 |
Title | Grandmaster (1976) |
Peak rating | 2510 (January 1977) |
Raymond Dennis Keene
Keene retired from competitive play in 1986 at the age of thirty-eight and is now better known as a chess organiser, columnist and author. He was involved in organising the
Chess career
Keene won the London and British Under 18 Championships (shared with Brian Denman) in 1964,
Keene was the second British player to meet the necessary requirements to become a Grandmaster. He was pipped to the post by a few months by Tony Miles, the first British Grandmaster in 1976. Both he and Miles won financial prizes for this feat.
Miles and Keene were at the forefront of the English chess explosion of the next 20 years, and they were followed by other British grandmasters such as Michael Stean, John Nunn, Jon Speelman and Jonathan Mestel.
Keene represented England for nearly two decades in international team events, beginning with the 1966 Chess Olympiad in Havana at age 18. He followed with the next seven straight Olympiads: Lugano 1968, Siegen 1970, Skopje 1972, Nice 1974, Haifa 1976, Buenos Aires 1978, and La Valletta 1980. His individual performances at Lugano and Haifa merited bronze medals (although individual medals were not, in fact, awarded at Haifa[6]) and he was undefeated in three Olympiads – these two and Siegen. His later performances, though, were less impressive, with just two draws from four games at Buenos Aires and losses in both his games at La Valletta.[7]
He represented England four times at the Students' Olympiad (Örebro 1966, Harrachov 1967, Ybbs 1968 and Dresden 1969) and four times at the European Team Championships (Bath 1973, Moscow 1977, Skara 1980 and Plovdiv 1983). At Skara he won both a bronze medal with the team and the individual gold medal for the best score on his board.
Keene won the 1971 British championship and shared second place on three occasions, in 1968, 1970 and 1972. His tournament victories include
Playing style
Keene's playing style tended toward the strategically original and positional. Strongly influenced by
Organiser
Keene worked as a chess event organiser. He was the originator and organiser of the annual
Keene brought
Keene has also been involved in organising several World Championship finals matches. He arranged for the first half of the
Columnist
Keene became the chess columnist of
Television personality
Keene has appeared on television. He covered the world championships of 1981, 1985, 1986, 1990, 1993, and 1995 for BBC 2, CHANNEL 4, and Thames TV. In the Duels of the Mind series which aired on the UK ITV network, Keene, along with South African author and civil rights campaigner Donald Woods, discussed and analysed what Keene regarded as the twelve best chess games ever played.
Magazine editor
From 1978 to 1982, Keene was the editor of Modern Chess Theory, a magazine on openings which included contributions from the Soviet world champions Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, and Mikhail Tal.
Author
Keene has written over 200 books on chess and mind games. He was for many years the Chess Advisor to Batsford. His early books such as Howard Staunton (1975, with R. N. Coles) often dealt with players with styles similar to his own.[1] Aron Nimzowitsch: a Reappraisal (1974) is much admired and was revised and translated into Russian in 1986,[1] with an algebraic edition published in English in 1999.[12] In 1989, he and Nathan Divinsky wrote Warriors of the Mind, an attempt to determine the 64 best chess players of all time. The statistical methods used have not met with wide approval, but the player biographies and games were regarded by one book as providing a good overview.[1]
Working for Korchnoi
In 1978, along with
Working for Karpov
In 1981, Keene came to the
Controversies
Allegations of plagiarism
Keene has on several occasions been accused of plagiarism. In 1993 John Donaldson accused Keene of committing plagiarism in The Complete Book of Gambits (Batsford, 1992).[14] Donaldson wrote "Just how blatant was the plagiarism? Virtually every word and variation in the four and a half pages devoted to Lisitsin's Gambit in Keene's book was stolen."
In 2013, Edward Winter reflected on plagiarism in chess:[15] "a particularly sordid corner of the chess world which will never be eradicated without maximum public exposure". He went on: "The latest instance is the discovery[16] by Justin Horton that material from the first volume of Kasparov’s My Great Predecessors series has been misappropriated by Raymond Keene in The Spectator."
These alleged plagiarisms, which Winter calls "eye-popping"[19] are catalogued at "a convenient 'plagiarism index'[20] which is being kept updated".[21]
Tony Miles
In 1985, Keene received £1,178 from the BCF for being Tony Miles' second at the Interzonal in Tunis; however, he had not actually been Miles' second but accepted the money and shared it with Miles. Miles never banked the cheque and told the BCF about the scam in 1987. Two months later, Keene resigned his posts as BCF Publicity Director and FIDE delegate. Keene said that his resignation was for different reasons, and that he was "furious" at his treatment after organising numerous events from 1983 to 1987.[22]
Brain Games Network
In 2000, Keene's former brother-in-law
Levy further criticised Keene for selling three of his own companies to BGN for £220,000 despite their being "virtually worthless". The three companies had between them "a total capital and reserves of only £2,300". At much the same time, according to Levy, BGN purchased a web site and two domain names from Chess and Bridge Limited. However, they made the purchase in two stages. The first of these stages was its sale to Giloberg Finance Limited, owned by Keene's associate Alan Lubin: the second was the immediate sale of the same items, by Giloberg, to BGN. The first sale was for approximately £60,000 (in fact $100,000) and the second was for £290,000, hence making Giloberg "an instant profit of approximately £230,000" and raising the question of why BGN should have paid a sum much greater than the original vendors considered the items were worth.[26]
BGN collapsed in controversial circumstances. Shareholders were unhappy that sums amounting to at least £675,000 had been paid to directors in "fees and payments" despite the company swiftly becoming insolvent.[27] Investors were also unhappy that Keene and Lubin had acquired 88% of the company "for a song" even though the remaining 12% had been sold for around £3 million.[28]
During the course of the 2000 Braingames World Championship Keene was accused of heavy-handed behaviour in having journalist John Henderson removed from the press room with the assistance of bouncers.[29]
Korchnoi
Viktor Korchnoi alleged that when acting as his second in the 1978 World Championship match, Keene broke his contract by writing a book about the match (which appeared three days after the match finished) having specifically signed an agreement "not to write, compile or help to write or compile any book during the course of the match". Korchnoi commented: "Mr Keene betrayed me. He violated the contract. It was clear that while Mr Keene was writing one book and then another, Mr Stean was doing his work for him."[30]
Attempts to defend Keene were rebutted by Michael Stean's mother, who stated that she was in a position to know what was in Keene's contract since she herself had typed it. Keene, she claimed, had signed this despite having already negotiated a contract with Batsford to write a book about the match. She described "a premeditated and deliberate plan to deceive" and noted that Keene's conduct had come under suspicion during the match.[31][32]
References
- ^ ISBN 0-19-280049-3.
- ^ William Hartston, "No rest from mental fight", The Independent, 23 August 1997 [1] retrieved 13 October 2011
- ^ United Kingdom list: "No. 50154". The London Gazette (Supplement). 14 June 1985. p. 10.
- ISBN 0-7134-0830-8.
- ISBN 0-273-07078-9.
- ^ Individual Medals Olimpbase: 22nd Chess Olympiad, Haifa 1976.
- ^ [2], consulted 9 September 2009
- ^ Keene, Becoming a Grandmaster, pp. 73–76.
- ^ Howard Staunton memorial tournament [3]
- ^ New in Chess, 2008, number 8, Nic's Café, p. 6.
- ^ The Spectator's decision to dismiss Keene for plagiarism was reported in Private Eye, 18–31 October 2019, p. 9 (https://keenipedia.com/press)
- ^ John L. Watson (1999). "Book Reviews by IM John L Watson #19". London Chess Center. Archived from the original on 24 June 2009. Retrieved 5 September 2009.
- ^ a b "Матч Корчной – Карпов: как йоги, КГБ и экстрасенсы воевали за шахматную корону". business-gazeta.ru. 12 June 2016. (in Russian)
- ^ Inside Chess, 3 May 1993, pp. 24–5.
- ^ Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (99) Chessbase, 21 June 2013
- ^ Predecessors Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog, 19 June 2013.
- ^ Chequered Mate.
- ^ Special Ks, The Spectator, 5 January 2013
- ^ Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (100) Chessbase, 2 September 2013.
- ^ Ray Keene Plagiarism Index Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog.
- ^ "Edward Winter's Chess Explorations (100)". Chess News. 2 September 2013.
- ^ Generous to a Fault, Kingpin 15, Summer 1989, pp. 10–11, letter from Tony Miles. Also see Raymundo contra Mundum Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ How could you do this Raymond? Open letter from David Levy to Raymond Keene.
- ^ Chess Café 14 August 2001, The Skittles Room, Brain Games: The Full Truth by David Levy. Also see Raymundo contra Mundum Archived 20 November 2008 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Log in or Subscribe – ChessCafe.com". chesscafe.com.
- ^ Is Fraud a Brain Game? Archived 17 July 2011 at the Wayback Machine by David Levy, 6 January 2002.
- ^ Private Eye, 1084, 11 July 2003.
- ^ Private Eye, 1093, 14 November 2003.
- ^ "Pandora", The Independent, 23 October 2000, comment p. 4; Lubomir Kavalek, "Chess", The Washington Post, 23 October 2000, p. C11.
- ^ "Keene's Gambit" by Nick Pitt, The Sunday Times magazine, 13 January 1991, p. 20.
- ^ "When Keene was taxed by Petra Leeuwerik and Viktor Korchnoi as to whether he was writing a book during the match, as he was spending so much of his time in the Press Office sending telex messages, Keene emphatically denied it." Chess, February 1980, pp. 84–85, letter from Mrs Jean Stean.
- ^ What Jean Stean had seen Streatham and Brixton Chess Blog, 19 April 2013.
External links
- Raymond Keene rating card at FIDE
- Raymond Keene player profile and games at Chessgames.com
- Chess columns in The Spectator.