Chessville Interview - 20 Questions with GM Raymond Keene, OBE

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20 Questions with

GM Raymond Keene

Interviewed by Phil Innes

Chessville: In an unpublished memoire of the cold war you say how you smuggled information out of Moscow, foiling the KGB at the airport – tell us about what you know about smuggling and the KGB does not.

GM Ray Keene, OBE: I read the letters with Gulko's permission - memorised them (I have organised around ten world memory championships so I know a little about this topic) and gave transcripts to Olafsson when I got out. Essentially I used my brain; the caviar the KGB border guards had confiscated, I repacked quickly while they were searching my other luggage for the letters, which I knew they could never find!

Chessville: This information was important since it related to the plight of refuseniks, Jewish persons seeking to leave Russia – in this instance of the Russian champion GM Boris Gulko – why did the Western press neglect to publish much of substance at that time, to the extent that the oxford companion to chess chose the euphemistic expression that Gulko was “away from chess”?

RK: You just don’t know how scared and deferential the chess world was to the Russians then - if they withdrew players or visas or whatever they could make life very hard for any professional chess player writer or organisation. I think they somehow respected me because I was very friendly with them but also made no secret that I detested their regime and communism as a whole - even though I fraternised with refuseniks and was Korchnoi's second it never stopped me having trips to Russia and negotiating with them at very high levels-as when I personally terminated the boycott against Korchnoi in 1983.

Chessville: In published and unpublished works Andras Adorjan says that despite strong chess playing computers and electronic databases, the quality of chess seems less to him than 30 years ago. Do you agree with this statement? And if so, do you attribute a lack of originality to modern players as does Adorjan?

RK: I think the tactical quality has risen-chess often used to be a seamless garment as one super gm rolled up an opponent who made an error. The top GM games were Napoleonic in conception. Now they are fragmented and guerilla in nature-if someone is going down strategically he now mixes it - computers have propelled this fragmentation process-to dinosaurs like Adorjan and myself modern top level games often seem to lack a theme or continuity-but that doesn’t mean they are worse - I think it means that hidden resources are sought and exploited and the nature of the battle leads to more errors - so do faster time controls.

Chessville: Your new title [forthcoming] on Tony Miles, who was the first British GM, describes his colourful career and playboy life-style. Did his success have an effect on your own, and your contemporary’s, desire to become grandmasters?

RK: Not on me- I made my first norm before Tony made any - then he made 2 and I made another. It probably encouraged Stean Mestel Speelman Nunn who doubtless all thought themselves stronger than Miles -hence- if he can do it so can I!

GM Raymond Keene, OBE

Raymond Dennis Keene (b. 29 January 1948) is an influential figure in the chess world off the board, bringing many notable chess events to London. He is also the author of a significant number of chess books, including a well respected treatise on Nimzowitsch titled Aron Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal, and a chess book claimed to have been authored over a weekend!

Educated at Dulwich College and Trinity College, Cambridge (where he studied modern languages), Keene rose to prominence in the chess scene in the early seventies. He won the British Chess Championship at Blackpool in 1971. At that time the UK had no GMs, and its best known player was the highly respected Jonathan Penrose (who famously beat Mikhail Tal in 1960). Keene was part of the first group of British players to achieve the necessary norms to become a GM - beaten to the finish line in 1976 by Tony Miles for the title of first British GM.

Keene's playing style tended toward to strategically original and positional. Favouring hypermodern openings such as the Modern Defence, his style of play was strongly influenced by Nimzowitsch, and thus his adoption of Indian-type openings and positions (including the Nimzo-Indian Defence and the King's Indian Defence).

However, it is not as a player Keene is best known. His contributions to the organizational side of chess contrast with the mire of politicking and back-biting that sometimes overshadowed his successes.

Keene is also responsible for a number of significant chess events:

Keene was Viktor Korchnoi's second during his World Championship match against Anatoly Karpov in Manila 1978.
Keene brought Viktor Korchnoi and Garry Kasparov together for the famous 1983 Candidates semi-final match in London. This match was a pivotal moment in Kasparov's march to the World Championship.
Keene arranged for the first half of the 1986 World Championship return match between Kasparov and Karpov to be played in London.
Keene was the instrumental force behind 'Brain Games', which organised the Kasparov vs Vladimir Kramnik match.

Keene remains the chess correspondent of The Times newspaper, and The Spectator magazine, as well as the International Herald Tribune, and will probably remain influential in the chess world for the years to come.

Keene occasionally appears on television, most notably as main presenter of Duels Of The Mind, a series which aired on the UK ITV network.

Chessville: Après-Miles, a veritable flood of British talent succeeded to gm-level, with twice as many native born GMs as in the USA, for example, despite UK having 1/5th the population. How can you explain this?

RK: Very complex - I wrote a book on it - the English Chess Explosion - something self reliant - the essence of chess shot to the surface around that time in the UK in business - politics and chess - I fear it has since receded - new Labour makes herd animals of us all! They tighten the screws every day and the British public moos back in bovine obeisance. It’s sickening.

Chessville: When interviewing Mark Taimanov, I asked him which composer’s style he thought his chess play most resembled, thinking wrongly that he would answer ‘Rachmaninov.’ Instead he chose Chopin for ‘his harmonious development’. For Gary Kasparov gospodin Taimanov subscribed Shostakovitch, for, ‘complexity.’ Since you have known Kasparov well, do you agree? And who is Ray Keene’s play most alike?

RK: Kasparov Beethoven - me Mahler.

Chessville: A mysterious aspect of grandmaster play is their preparation for chess. How do you allocate time for a serious event proportionally among: (a) study of the opponents, (b) your own repertoire, (c) practice games, (d) other factors? Do you suggest the same routine for the regular club player?

RK: Its all changed - databases have made opponents games far more readily available at GM level but not at club level - so I recommend club players get their own repertoire sorted as a priority - because their opponents games won't be so freely accessible; GMs can trawl for opposition weaknesses as a priority.

Chessville: Who did you ever most fear as an opponent and why?

RK: Timman, he was very self confident. I only beat him once - the self confidence masked his errors.

Chessville: What allowed G. Kasparov to dominate world chess for 10 years? Is there anyone currently on the chess scene likely to match that performance?

RK: Incredible energy and mental flexibility - no replacement I can see - BTW it was closer to 15 years.

Chessville: Women in chess are achieving ever higher levels of performance and in greater numbers of participation; wearing Merlin’s famous Predicting Hat, which three countries will first have a woman as national champion, and how long will it be before a serious challenge to the world champion is upon us?

RK: The three countries will probably be very small such as Tuvalu or Vanuatu or slightly fringe e.g. Australia - Angela Song is already the Australian all-comers junior champion; the top Oz, GM Rogers, has been their best player for a quarter of a century – that’s actually too long and implies stagnation and a revolution open to female players in the offing - I can't see an all-comers female world champion for a very long time.

Chessville: The late Arnold Denker wrote in 1947: “…the Russian masters have been combing the archives to retrieve and improve upon hundreds of apparently ‘hopeless’ attacking variations, infusing new life into forgotten lines of play. The pendulum is ever moving…” Where is Arnold’s pendulum moving in 2006? Whose work is currently supplanting the ‘Russian masters’ if any? And is the process the same now as then?

RK: Yes - computers are doing it - just look at Kasparov's MGP Vols.

Chessville: If any nation could surpass Russia in the first tier of chess will it be the relatively new, yet prodigious, efforts of China, who have already claimed the women’s title?

RK: Yes – China - they will take over the world in everything in the next 50 years!

Chessville: Politics! Famously, you championed Kasparov’s break-away from FIDE as a more player-oriented option. We are now on the cusp of critical point in FIDE’s history, and an election which will determine how much of world chess is transacted in the early C21st. What are the most critical aspects, in your opinion, that a future FIDE needs to achieve in world chess?

RK: Sponsorship, sponsorship and sponsorship - We look like idiots having a WCC match in Elista rather then Paris, Berlin, London, Madrid or New York.

Chessville: Advise three essential elements to include in any chessplayer’s repertoire in order to significantly improve their game. Conversely, what holds back most players and should be discarded?

RK: Physical fitness; a defence with black to e4 and d4 which you trust; knowledge of the most common endgames, vital since there are no longer adjournments; --- fear.

Chessville: In your book on The English Defence, e6, b6, bb7, you feature two games by Miles against Adorjan, Biel 1983 and Gjovik 1983, both of which are roundly refuted. As a technical aspect of writing opening books, what effect does this have on the variation? In the past 25 years have players abandoned Miles’ line, or do we see new resources in it? Or indeed, are openings merely fashionable, and not so dependent on any technical precedent?

RK: As I said what was refuted often gets revived by computers - positions I once regarded as hopeless turn out to be defensible.

Chessville: You once unearthed an interesting cache of chess material at the home of Marcel Duchamp in France. Who was their author; what was their subject; and have they ever been published?

RK: It was Duchamp copying of Nimzowitsch's writings - I described this in my preface to the book Winning with Hypermodern Chess Strategy, co-authored by Dr Eric Schiller - see www.hardingesimpole.co.uk.

Chessville: Classical chess is often said to be played-out and spoken of as if virtually solved. In editing such a monumental work as Batsford’s Chess Openings (BCO) what percentage of its lines would you estimate are unclear or of open-ended fortunes?

RK: Everything is up for grabs now computers can analyse well - apparent big advantages turn out to be meaningless - meanwhile-minute plusses can apparently be converted - we are almost facing a new game. An example from checkers - the Chinook computer came close to defeating the great Tinsley at checkers and was clearly slightly better than all other human opposition. A big tournament was held a few years ago - the Chinook programmers threw away its openings book and let it play from scratch - It won by a humungous margin.

Chessville: Why should parents give serious thought to introducing chess to their children and encouraging participation in the game?

RK: Helps to ram home the message that there is a relationship between study and reward.

Chessville: Who have been Ray Keene’s influences throughout his career and what did each contribute?

RK: Nimzowitsch, Petrosian -- abilty to manoeuvre, prophylaxis blockade; Reti - the power of the fianchetto.

Chessville: Your columns in The Spectator, the Times, the International Herald Tribune, plus some 130 books, frequent interviews and correspondences must have confronted you with every manner of chess question. Is there still a question you wish someone would ask, but hasn’t? Ask yourself and answer it!

RK: Chess has a great history of gladiatorial combat to decide the world title - world chess champion used to mean something - ever since the days of Bobby Fischer bureaucrats have been trying to undermine the title so that the champion becomes subordinate to the officials. By and large the great individuals who have been champions have resisted this but now I fear it will all be thrown away if the world championship match is abolished. It is like the line from Othello--"threw a pearl away richer than all his tribe."

Index of Other 20-Questions Interviews