Thomas vs. Aitken. Just The Kind Of Thing I Do!
Afternoon everyone.
My few regular followers will know that I have been doing some heavy reading of late. so I took time out to do what I love - looking at a mass of forgotten games.
The wonderful britbase has recently posted a pgn of the games in the notebooks of James Aitken. Lots of links on the page as well. We all can act very clever with a database in front of us, and forget that all those games are there because someone spent hours entering them! Geoff Chandler has done an amazing job with the Aitken notebooks and I am humbly grateful. Cheers mate!
https://www.britbase.co.uk/britbase/pgn/aitkenj-viewer.html
Well, I have had a passing interest in Aitken for a long time, so this was all a joy. He was, as you will see there, an important figure at the incredible Bletchley Park, and is in my blog on the chess club there.
Another player I have always been fascinated by is the remarkable Sir George Thomas. See my blog here :- Sir George Thomas. Two days, Two World Champions, Two Wins. Then Disaster! - Chess.com
At one time I had a folder with over 200 pictures of him from various sources, but unfortunately I lost it when my computer died.
Well, I have found a few of them - including some from badminton sites, so will throw in a few here.
So, let's do my thing - some games and pictures. Simple stuff. No pretensions. No notes to most - A feature game at the end as normal - will explain my special interest in it later. Welcome to my chess world!!
Before the games between the two, here's one which caught my eye as I have done 3 posts on the Worcester College for the Blind.
On to the Thomas- Aitken games as they come out of the folder.
So, onto the feature game, with my notes. Some reasons for choosing this one.
Over 2 decades ago I annotated the games from a correspondence chess event. A number of games saw the closed Sicilian, with some featuring the ...e5 with ...g6 and ...Bg7 idea. As a Sicilian player myself, I did a deep study - with the resources available back then - of the whole system. The last over the board tournament I played was a 'lightning tournament', which I was honoured to be invited to play in. I thought it would be fun!
I hadn't played over the board for quite a while, and was rusty, to say the least. In the first round I simply dropped a piece for no reason!! Well, I got on a roll and in the last round I was 1/2 a point behind the leader and had the Black pieces against him. Luckily for me he played the Closed line against my Sicilian, and I used this ...g6 and ...e5 line. Eventually I managed to zugzwang him in an ending similar to a game Marco - Maroczy game which I posted here once a long time ago. Lessons learned - I study games for pleasure - I never did the 'self improvement study plan' stuff. Opening ideas, middle game concepts and endgame strategy. All the lessons learned won me a tournament. So games in this opening line always get my attention, and this one is a forgotten gem! Enjoy the game! Some happy memories for me.
A few pictures left, so will add them here. have a great day everyone, and thank you for joining me for some self indulgence! BTW, I don't know if I have mentioned it, but a friend of mine is working on a book about the incredible Baronet Sir George Thomas - looking forward to that one!
via britishchessnews, I think - I forgot to note the source.
