| Feb-20-07 | | AlanWilkinson: I played at the Canterbury Chess Club, Christchurch, NZ, as a student. Best results were runner-up NZ Championship 1968 to Bruce Anderson as I recall and also runner-up NZ Correspondence Chess Championship 1968. Funny to see a couple of my games here after all this time! |
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| Feb-20-07 | | Benzol: <Alan> Just curious, how did you find this site? Did you just Google your own name or something? |
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| Feb-20-07 | | AlanWilkinson: Yes, I was just Googling my name and scrolling thru a bunch of other people around the world with the same name and was amazed to see my Sarapu games. I might dig out a few others if I can find my old scorebooks. It would be nice to have some of my wins! Looks a great site. Congrats to the organizers.
Cheers
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| Feb-20-07 | | AlanWilkinson: Hmm. I seem to have lost the scores for some of my better games unfortunately. I had a nice Bledisloe Cup telegraph win against Feneridis and another one against Graham Haase I was quite proud of - I sealed a sacrifice at move 41 which Graham never saw coming in his overnight analysis and so he missed the only drawing line. |
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Feb-20-07
 | | Jonathan Sarfati: <AlanWilkinson> I've read about you in Sarapu's book on his first 25 years in the Champs. Did you know that Fenny died last month just short of 99? |
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| Feb-20-07 | | AlanWilkinson: Yes, Jonathon, I have a signed copy of Ortvin's book too. I've also read about you obviously from your much more recent exploits than my ancient history. I never knew Fenny much because he pretty much retired from Championship play just as I was getting up there. Wow, he did make a great age. Ziggy Frankel I knew a bit better from Wellington, partly because of his publishing. Also Roger Court. |
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Feb-21-07
| | Jonathan Sarfati: Thanx Alan. Yeah, I knew the late Zyggy well for years. He even gave up smoking finally for a number of years. Roger Court was before my time. Are there any of Ort's first book still around? I think he underestimated how popular it would be. |
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| Feb-21-07 | | Benzol: <Jonathan> Ortvin did underestimate the popularity of his first book. Here's a quote from his second, Mr Chess - the Ortvin Sarapu story, "That year (1977) I wrote my book '25 years of New Zealand Chess Championships'. I printed only 200 copies as in my estimation there were not enough customers. In fact I sold more than 100 books overseas and could have sold in all twice as many again over the years. It is now a collectors' item." I was grateful and fortunate that Paul Spiller allowed me to borrow his copy of Ortvin's book for a wee while. The result was the NZ Championship games you now see under Ortvin's file. When I was first here there was something like 19 games in his file and 15 of those were his losses at Sousse in 1967. |
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| Feb-21-07 | | Benzol: I can't remember who the original publisher was but I wonder whether <Ray Keene> would be interested in a republish via Hardinge Simpole? |
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| Feb-21-07 | | AlanWilkinson: I think the book was self-published. It is undated and has no publication or printing info at all on it. I bought my copy directly from Ortvin when I met him once at an Auckland tournament I visited. You would need to get copyright authorisation from his estate to republish I would think - it is probably not extinguished yet. |
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Feb-21-07
| | Jonathan Sarfati: Ortvin signed my copy for which I was very happy. I would have been about 13 at the time. I think his widow Barbara would be very happy if the book were republished. Nowadays they could insert diagrams very easily with computer programs. It's a shame that his second book didn't make use of the programming available at the time. |
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| Feb-07-15 | | Tert: I remember Alan at the NZ Universities Tournament in 1964 - he wouldn't remember me because I was just one of the fill-in players on the VUW team, but he was one of the friendliest guys you could ever meet. |
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Kibitzing
