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| Jun-10-06 | | BIDMONFA: Frederick D Yates YATES, Frederick D.
http://www.bidmonfa.com/yates_frede...
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| Dec-03-06 | | sfm: A hilarious story (as it goes): Tarrach had objected against Yates' participation in Hamburg 1910, stating that Yates was too weak a player. Well, Yates won only one - guess against who!
Tarrasch vs Yates, 1910 |
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| Jul-15-07 | | Karpova: <Sir Thomas [sic] and Yates are typical representatives of the English school and style of chess, especially Yates. This school, founded by the great combination of players, Blackburne and Mason and the ingenious, although less profound, Bird, always lay greater stress on a thorough study of each tactical unit of a scheme than on judging the expediency of such a scheme. That they had good results despite such a primitive conception of chess was due, especially by Blackburne, first to their extraordinary combinatorial talent and, second, to the fact that Steinitz’s epoch-making explanations of the principles of chess strategy were then only beginning to become popular. This is quite different nowadays when every average champion is well equipped with strategical knowledge, especially those players who lay chief stress on the tactical moment in a match, and who must possess the most exact calculation and never-failing sharpness. For such types of players the signs of the older class are simply pernicious. Therefore it is not surprising that masters like Sir Thomas [sic] and Yates – who also in former times seldom detected the entire plan beyond a single move – are being driven to the background of the chess arena.> Alexander Alekhine
On Carlsbad 1929 for the New York Times
http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/... |
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| Dec-22-07 | | Diagonale du Fou: I've read conflicting versions of <Yates's death>. One is that, always in straitened financial conditions, he committed suicide during the Depression. Another is that he starved to death, like Schlechter. Yet another is that it was an accidental gaspipe death, the one mentioned in the Chessgames bio squib above. Yates is on the receiving end of one of my favorite games of all time: the New York 1924 Indian Defense in which Capablanca's Knights dance the Black King out of countenance, featuring an incredible N wheel. |
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| Dec-22-07 | | CapablancaFan: <Diagonale du Fou> I believe this is the game your referring to. Capablanca vs Yates, 1924 Funny in all their encounters, Yates did not even win 1 game against Capablanca. |
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| Dec-22-07 | | Diagonale du Fou: Yes <CaoablancaFan>, that's the game of course. One of my favorite games. From one of my favorite old-time tournaments, with a great showing for Lasker, and a classic tournament book by Alekhine. Yates was able to win a few from Alekhine and Tarrasch, but the Chess Machine could conjure up too many ways to steer Yates to ultra-precise endgame playing. Yates didn't do too well at all in New York 1924. The tournament director, Herman Helms, and his associates wanted someone else originally - I believe it was Thomas - but the latter received the notification too late to make arrangements for a trip to New York, and they got Yates instead. |
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Feb-12-08
 | | brankat: <CapablancaFan> There was a number of players, some much stronger than Yates, who were not able to win a single game against Capablanca :-) |
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Feb-12-08
| | brankat: For example:
Vidmar
Nimzowitsch
Bogoljubov
Bernstein
Tartakower. |
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| May-06-08 | | Karpova: <Diagonale du Fou: I've read conflicting versions of <Yates's death>. One is that, always in straitened financial conditions, he committed suicide during the Depression. Another is that he starved to death, like Schlechter. Yet another is that it was an accidental gaspipe death, the one mentioned in the Chessgames bio squib above.> Edward Winter deals with this myth:
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail... (the second myth) Yates' death was an accident caused by a leakage in one of the fittings of a gas pipe. A gas company official proved that no tap was turned on. <On page 525 of the December 1932 BCM P.W. Sergeant presented the facts in a way that seemed to preclude any possibility of suicide: ‘The circumstances of his end were tragic. On the night of Tuesday, 8 November he gave a very successful exhibition at Wood Green, only dropping one half-point in 16 games. On the following night he was in the company of a chess friend until fairly late, and then went back to his room in Coram Street, Bloomsbury. He was never seen alive again. It was not until Friday morning that anxiety was felt at Coram Street as to what he might be doing; for he was in the habit of secluding himself for many hours at a stretch when busy with work. On Friday, however, when no answer could be got to knocks on the door of his room, which was locked, and a smell of gas was noticed, the door was at last broken open, and he was found dead in bed. It came out at the inquest before the St Pancras coroner on 15 November that, though the gas-taps in the room were securely turned off, there had been an escape from what a gas company’s official described as an obsolete type of fitting attached to the meter in the room. The meter, it appears, was on the floor, and the fitting must have been accidentally dislodged. A verdict was recorded of Accidental Death; and the coroner directed that the gas-pipes from the room should remain in the custody of the court. The body was conveyed to Leeds for burial on the morning of 16 November.’> |
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Sep-29-08
 | | GrahamClayton: The Yates variation of the Queens-Indian Defence is 1. d4  f6 2. c4 e6 3. f3 b6 4. g3  a6 5. g2 b4+ 6. d2 a5Source: David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld "Oxford Companion to Chess", OUP, 1992 |
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| Jan-16-09 | | WhiteRook48: hmm.... Yates had a win against Alekhine. |
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| May-13-09 | | FHBradley: In fact, two. |
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| Feb-28-10 | | Flatfish: <GrahamClayton: The Yates variation of the Queens-Indian Defence is 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6 4. g3 Ba6 5. Bg2 Bb4+ 6. Bd2 a5 Source: David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld "Oxford Companion to Chess", OUP, 1992> Wow! 6 ... a5! This must be the only chess opening in which a pawn is allowed to leapfrog over a bishop. |
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Jul-26-10
| | GrahamClayton: <Flatfish>Wow! 6 ... a5! This must be the only chess opening in which a pawn is allowed to leapfrog over a bishop. <Flatfish>,
My mistake. The Yates variation of the Queens-Indian Defence is 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 b6 4. g3 Bb7 5. Bg2 Bb4+ 6. Bd2 a5. Here is part of the obituary notice for Yates from the "Times" newspaper of the 12th of November, 1932: "Yates was a very hard player to beat when in his best form, though he suffered from an inability to recognize that some games were positionally drawn, and the effort to win them was not always successful. No doubt his score would have been better at times if he had recognised the inevitable, yet against that he more than once pulled a game out of the fire by nothing else than a grim determination to extract the most from the position. He was a great little fighter." |
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Jun-03-11
| | GrahamClayton: In 1926 Yates played a game against W Gooding at Edinburgh which went for 180 moves. Apparently it was the longest competitive game played up to that time. Does the game score still survive? |
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Jan-16-12
| | brankat: R.I.P. master Yates. |
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Jan-16-12
 | | wordfunph: In the book 101 Of My Best Games by Frederick Yates published by Moravian Chess in 1934, confusingly there were actually 109 games on it. rest in peace Master Yates.. |
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| Jan-16-12 | | Penguincw: < Sadly he died in his sleep, gassed by a faulty pipe connection at his home in London in 1932. > Interesting. That I'm a little scared to sleep. :) |
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Mar-15-12
 | | pawn to QB4: Some years ago Chess magazine ran a competition to find the world's saddest chess player. A friend of mine was too late to enter, but would have stood a fair chance with his hobby of visiting the graves of famous players. His great discovery was a bit startling. He tells me that the tombstone of Yorkshire's finest is in Birstall, and gives his name not as Frederick Dewhurst Yates, but as Fred Dewhirst Yates. My friend is particularly confident about the spelling of the middle name, as it was Yates' mother's surname; he also reckons that Yates's siblings all had very plain English names, so believes the first name was probably plain old "Fred" and not the more grandiose "Frederick", even though that's the version given by Yates's contemporaries. Not that there's much chance of righting the record at this stage...but it's a shame that the title of Saddest Chess player On God's Earth may have gone to someone less deserving. |
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| Mar-15-12 | | AlanPardew: <A friend of mine...> Not that old one. Admit it, it was you! I bet you have a photo album of the headstones, as well. Maybe they curtailed Frederick to save money on the engraving. |
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Mar-15-12
| | pawn to QB4: I wondered if someone would suspect it was me, but no, I can't claim this one. I did ask the chap (since I don't put my name here I can't fairly say who it is) whether it was Fred. indicating short for Frederick but he reckoned not. Seems he does have a photo album of the headstones though. I thought his toughest competitor was a bloke who used stop his car to check chess set displays in shop windows, hoping to find them set up wrongly. He enjoyed complaining to management. |
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| Mar-15-12 | | AlanPardew: Many years ago, I bought a cheapo pocket chess set with magnetic pieces from the Sainsbury's in Nine Elms, only to discover - oh the horror! - that the board was the wrong way around (black h1 square). The lady on Customer Service didn't seem to really get it, but I got a refund all the same. |
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| Apr-25-12 | | Cibator: Well, they couldn't even get the board the right way round on Alekhine's grave when it was repaired after being damaged in the Boxing Day 1999 hurricane. See image at
http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail...
(You have to scroll right to the end.) |
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| Dec-28-12 | | Cibator: Regarding the correct version of Yates' forename: I very recently read a piece about his fellow-Yorkshireman Sir Fred Hoyle, the eminent astronomer. Seems that in that part of the world, Fred is in fact regarded by quite a few people as a full name in its own right, not necessarily a diminutive of Frederick (or, in the case of my uncle, of Alfred). That was apparently true of Hoyle, and could well have been so with Yates as well. |
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Dec-28-12
 | | SteinitzLives: Do not study his games, you will not get better. Rather, play thru them quickly and give each the heading: "do not let this happen to you". Excepting of course when he wins. |
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