Miles' Immortal
Submitted by
davidetal on Thu, 10/23/2008 at 12:31am.
I just love this famous game.
According to Wikipedia:
"In 1976, Tony Miles became the first ever Grandmaster born in the UK, narrowly beating Raymond Keene to the accolade.He was in many ways a controversial figure. Once, in the last round of a tournament, with Miles needing a draw for first place, and his opponent wanting a draw for a high placing, he agreed a draw without playing any moves. The arbiter decided to give both players no points for this non-game; the players claimed this "game" had been played often, when players pre-arranged a draw - they were just being honest about it. This sparked a hefty amount of correspondence in British chess journals.
Miles also had his disagreements with chess authorities and with his fellow English players, particularly Keene and Short. Miles made accusations regarding payments that Keene had received from the British Chess Federation for acting as his second in the 1985 Interzonal tournament. He became rather obsessed with the affair, eventually suffering a mental breakdown over it. He was arrested in September 1987 in Downing Street, apparently under the belief that he had to speak to then Prime Ministe Margaret Thatcher about the matter. He was subsequently hospitalised for two months.
Miles was also noted for his acerbic wit. He often attacked chess personalities in published articles. He attacked former World Champion Anatoly Karpov in an article entitled "Has Karpov Lost his Marbles?". His review of Eric Schiller's book Unorthodox Chess Openings (Cardoza Publishing, 1998) which appeared in Kingpin consisted of just two words: "Utter crap".
This game is considered by many to be Miles' immortal.
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