<When Mr. Yates first informed me of his intention to compile a collection of his own best games I little thought that it would fall to my lot to complete the work as a " Yates Memorial Book." There has been a certain melancholy satisfaction in ensuring that these fine examples of our great player's style shall not be lost to the chess world, and I am confident that players of all grades will find both pleasure and instruction in playing them over.

Yates' full strength did not develop until after the war and consequently the examples of his earlier play have been limited to eighteen as compared with ninety of his later games. As regards the selection itself, at the time of his death Yates had completed the annotations of thirty games and had also collected a further large number which were found among his effects, but had not yet been provided with notes. Consequently the games chosen are those which Yates himself considered as the best examples of his style. The thirty games annotated by Yates are indicated in the text, the annotations to the remainder being by myself.

The games have been arranged according to the class of event in which they were played, commencing with Inter­national tourneys in chronological order, Team tournaments, British Championships, other British tournaments, personal matches, cable matches, and miscellaneous games. This last section is of necessity very limited owing to Yates' unfortunate habit of destroying the scores of his games immediately after they were played. Consequently many fine examples played in inter-club and county matches, etc., have never seen the light of day...>

quotes Alekhine:

<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.>

What exactly is Alekhine saying when contrasting the "thorough study" versus "the expediency" of "each tactical unit of a scheme"?

User: Karpova

But it shows just how far I got with my Russian lessons, I was thinking <Karpova> could be a diminutive of <Karpov>.

But I guess that's not likely.

My default option is to use the masculine pronoun as default, given English's lack of gender neutrality.

Apologies to <Karpova>, if merited.

Yorkshire Relish:-

<Boknakaran (Bokna lads, derived from boknafisk or half dried fish) is a group in my home town.>

Aha!

<Sorry for the offtopic post!>

I don't this the good Mr. Yates minds too much. He's rather proud of his Yorkshire heritage after all.

Here is his EDO page:

http://www.edochess.ca/players/p449...

I believe it's partly due to Mason's heritage (back then Ireland/England wouldn't be much different to a Russian), and the fact that he returned to England in 1878 (Oxford).

I would guess that since his style was mostly developed by that point, with regards to your question.

That's a bit harsh. There's been a welfare state in Britain since before we colonised America: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Act_f...

I heard on the radio recently the claim that whilst Britain is 1% of the world's population and 4% of its economy, it spends 7% of the global welfare budget.

1884, Civil Registration Birth Index: "Fred Yates"

1861 census, Birstall Yorkshire: his mother's family name is "Dewhirst"

1871 census, Gomersal Yorkshire: his mother's family name is "Dewhirst"

1891 census, Gomersal: "Fred Yates"

1901 census, Birstall: "Fred Yates"

1921 to 1926, Birstall electorial registers (orig.): "Fred Dewhirst Yates" (and "Fred Yates" before 1921)

1924: UK outward passenger list, Liverpool 1 March 1924 to New York: "Fred Dewhirst Yates" (and same name in NY incoming list 11 March)

1924: UK incoming passenger list, New York to Liverpool 24 March: "Fred Yates"

1932: Burials in the Parish of Birstall (orig. document): "Frederick Dewhirst Yates"

Fred Dewhurst Yates (kibitz #30)

now that the Yorkshire site has gone dead:

But this excerpt from the article in the <Nottingham Guardian> of November 15th, p.5, has some interesting additional information:

<Virginia Arelo [other papers have <Av(a/e)llone>], proprietress of the boarding house, said Mr. Yates had a top room there for some years and owed about five weeks' rent. She was not concerned about the money.

Yates was a very quiet little man. She did not see much of him, and so far as she knew he had never threatened his life.

Miss Olive Holmes, a chambermaid, who discovered the tragedy, said some food was left outside Yates's room on Thursday, and was not touched. On Friday afternoon she smelt gas, and on going into the room, the door of which had to be forced, found Yates lying on the bed apparently in deep sleep. There were marks, apparently blood-stains, on the pillow.

P.c. Lewing, who was called, said the gas fire was turned off, and there were no indications that Yates had committed suicide. Dr. Price [elsewhere <Dr. White>] said there were no signs of violent death. What appeared to be blood stains were the result of vomiting after drinking coffee. Death was due to coal gas-poisoning.

Replying to the coroner, Dr. Price said that Yates may have been gassed in his sleep from a leak.>

I think the common assumption has been that Yates died 'peacefully' in his sleep, but this titbit about the vomit on the pillow raises its suggestive head - could it have been connected with Yates's death throes? If so, does it indicate that Yates may have conscious to some degree, at some point, during the process of asphyxiation? Alas, there's no detail about the amount of vomit, or whether there was any sign of it around the mouth and throat. One would also like to know about the presence of any coffee, alcohol or food within the stomach.