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| Sep-10-04 | | Benzol: "One of the best ways to improve your chess is to model your game on a top grandmaster whose play and personality you like. The strategy and ideas of past legends such as Capablanca, Alekhine and Fischer are timeless. But there are also arguments in favour of choosing a contemporary GM whose results you can follow and whose style and repertoire are still evolving.
A good way to start a hunt for a role model is via the free website <chessgames.com>, where you can click on a player's name and view a large number of his or her games on a user-friendly applet board. There are also summaries of the GM's preferred openings, and percentage analyses of results. <Chessgames.com> has an active kibitzer's forum so that many games on the site have analysis or debate attached". - Leonard Barden in the Guardian Weekly, September 10-16 2004. |
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Sep-10-04
 | | chessgames.com: We've made the Guardian! That's great, many thanks to Mr. Barden. |
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| Dec-21-04 | | Benzol: Leonard William Barden
Born 20th August 1929 in Croydon
Was joint British champion in 1954 and came 1st= in 1958 but lost the playoff. |
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| Dec-21-04 | | Poisonpawns: I have his chessbook :-) |
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| May-15-05 | | Cpersan: "Play better chess" (1980) was my first chessbook, and I learned a lot of concepts by him. |
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| Jan-10-06 | | Laskerfan82: Yes, he was a very good writer and teacher. |
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Jan-10-06
 | | ray keene: theres a typo in the bio-1929 is given correctly as his date of birth but then 1920 erroneously creeps in below! |
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| Jan-11-06 | | Benzol: Thanks <Ray>. |
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| Sep-13-06 | | BIDMONFA: Leonard William Barden BARDEN, Leonard W.
http://www.bidmonfa.com/barden_leon...
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| Sep-05-08 | | rudysanford: Does anyone have an opinion on his book- The Ruy Lopez: Winning Chess with 1. P-K4? Has it aged well? Is it still useful? Is it more of a book for white than black? |
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| Oct-01-08 | | Karpova: C.N. 5783
Leonard Barden in "The Guardian", 24 February 1975, page 16: <But in my opinion there is a very clear favourite for world champion in 1990. He is 11-year-old Gary Wainstein from Baku, coached by IM Bagirov, youngest player in the USSR junior championship and youngest candidate master since Karpov. In english rating terms, Wainstein is a 190 player (2120 on the Elo scale) and improving fast.> Source: http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/... |
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| Oct-01-08 | | Red October: i liked his columns |
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Mar-02-09
 | | Open Defence: and he is still alive though I imagine he is retired. I miss his columns |
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Apr-07-09
| | Open Defence: In the Mahabaratha there is the story of Ekalavya, the archer who studies by thinking of Dronacharya (the teacher of the famed archer Arjuna), his prowess increases solely on account of devotion to his Guru (teacher) When he finally meets his Guru, Arjuna is jealous of his prowess and Drona to keep a promise to Arjuna that he will be the best Archer in the world asks Ekalavya for a "Gurudakshina" i.e. a gift which the student is to give his Guru in return for knowledge and demands Ekalvya's thumb as his Gurudakshina Ekalavya gladly gives up his thumb
well what does all this have to do with Barden ? well I kind of feel like Ekalavya in that I studied a lot from the columns of Mr Barden, though he was never my Guru in person he certainly is one in deed |
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| Apr-09-09 | | falso contacto: cool post.
im not sure I understood that part "maha-who-knows-what", but i always thought Arjuna was a wolf-hunter.
Indeed Patagonic gauchos used to say "Arjuna con la lobuna". And if you consult La Sevillana Library, which might be sharp-edged, you will know that "lobuna" is a female wolf. |
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| Apr-11-09 | | Benzol: <Open Defence> <and he is still alive though I imagine he is retired.> While I doing a bit of research about Bob Wade and Fedor Bohatirchuk I found a reference to <chessgames.com> by Len Barden at www.ecforum.org.uk dated December 2008. It's possible he visits here clandestinely. |
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Apr-11-09
 | | roberts partner: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/chess |
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| Apr-19-09 | | falso contacto: I wasn't trying to disrespect the Mahabaratha. Just mixed with some argentinian popular culture (Inodoro Pereyra). But it's a tough task. |
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| May-01-10 | | newzild: My mum bought me Barden's book Play Better Chess for my 11th birthday. It was my first chessbook. There was no chess club where I lived (Hawkes Bay, New Zealand), so I used to play through the grandmaster games by myself. Thirty years later, I'm an expert-strength player and still look at the book from time to time. It's buried in the back of the wardrobe somewhere. Thanks for the inspiration, Leonard. |
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Sep-13-10
 | | FSR: I played (and managed to draw) an Internet 15-minute game against Barden earlier this year, which gives me a Morphy Number of 4. (I drew Barden, who drew Mieses at the Hastings Premier Reserves 1949-50, who drew Bird at Hastings 1895(!), who lost many games to Morphy in 1858 and 1859.) Barden is one of five known living players with a Morphy Number of 3. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphy... and add to the list Melvin Chernev, Irving's son, who played an offhand game with Lasker (who played Bird many times) in 1938. http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/... As of a few months ago, Melvin Chernev was alive and living near San Francisco. I spoke to him on the phone. |
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| Sep-13-10 | | dikankan: Congratulations on that result FSB, and on such an informative post.
On the subject of Morphy numbers, I have a copy of the 1971 Volume of the British Chess Magazine, which includes the following obituary (p. 249): "Essex chess players suffered a severe loss with the death of T.H. George on April 19th at the age of 85. He was the doyen of essex chessplayers...He was rather proud of of having played a man who had played Morphy. this happened in his young days when he beat Jas. Mortimer in a club match; Mortimer had played friendly games with Morphy with Paris in the early sixties if the last century." I see no reason to doubt this, which if accepted would give T. H. George a Morphy number of 2, and by a route entirely unrecognised by the wikipedia entry to which you have linked. I don't know anything else about T. H. George, but if he was active into the 1950s there may be more extant players who met him and so have Morphy numbers of 3. |
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Sep-15-10
| | FSR: <dikankan> An interesting find. Very likely Mortimer did play Morphy, although unfortunately there is no contemporaneous record of that. Lawson in his magisterial biography of Morphy notes that Mortimer witnessed Morphy's match against Anderssen at the end of 1858, and that on January 3, 1859 an American (probably Mortimer) conveyed to Harrwitz Morphy's offer to play a match against him at pawn and move odds. A number of games that Morphy played in Paris in 1863 are known, but alas none against Mortimer. I know nothing about Mr. George, but if he continued playing chess until the end of his life it is (as you say) highly likely that some of his opponents are still with us. |
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Sep-15-10
| | FSR: <dikankan> I now agree that Mr. George's Morphy Number of 2 is adequately corroborated. CHESS Monthly in September 1892 had an article about Mortimer. From page 66 thereof: "In 1853, he was appointed attaché of the United States Legation in Paris, where he had an opportunity of renewing his acquaintance with Paul Morphy. The two countrymen thus became intimate friends. Both being passionately fond of chess, many hundreds of games were played by the master and pupil . . . ." |
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Sep-20-10
| | FSR: Barden wrote in an e-mail to me this morning:
"Mortimer played Znosko-Borovsky and (most notably) Tartakover at Ostend 1907 which blows up Morphy 3 as a finite one-hand number, Z-B played at London 1948 (two Penrose brothers), Tartakover met Gligoric, Benko, Bisguier, Fuderer (Bled 1950) , Matanovic, Ivkov, J Penrose and others, Tom George likely played Peter Clarke who was a young member of Ilford CC in the early 1950s when George was still active. I reckon now the traceable living Morphy 3s number around 15-20. Best regards
LB" |
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Sep-21-10
| | FSR: My blog post on Morphy numbers: http://chicagochess.blogspot.com/20... |
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