 What's the title of my talk? Becoming a candidate, that's it. So in 1985 I became the first ever British candidate for the World Jazz Championship and I thought I'd talk about that. Stuart was pressing me for a topic and I thought I would find something that could create and it's formed, yeah, obviously a very long time ago. It may be a little bit chessy this talk. I actually spent most of the day looking at these games, many of which I haven't seen for over 30 years. It's been quite interesting. So the route to the World Championship in those days was through a series of zonal tournaments and then interzonal tournaments. If you qualify for the interzonal you're obviously a candidate. So go to some of the first event which was the rise in zonal tournaments. Just an interesting thought. Have any of you been watching the games from Tata Steel? Yes, quite a few of you. I've heard a lot of comments actually about the games in Beyhanze and a number of people have remarked on the low quality of the chess in Beyhanze and, well, I made a comment on Facebook a few days ago saying that it wasn't getting better in the old days and I can confirm this is most definitely the case because I've been looking at these games and they're absolutely dreadful. They really are appalling. There are plums galore and it's really interesting because I've just got a new laptop so my old laptop was steam powered and this is actually quite a nice fancy one and of course you put an engine on these games and basically don't stand up to scrutiny. So I'll just, mainly going to concentrate on the interzonal but let's have a look at a few positions really from the zone. So you've actually could see the results up there. The zonal tournament in Brighton was a nine round event and you may be able to see I scored plus four in that event with five draws but there were really, really serious tactical errors in almost all the games. So let's have a look at a few of them. It's an error because I've chosen the wrong game. Okay, Pants Carlson. I can't tell you too much about him as a player but I just want to show some interesting little tactical points in some position like this. Right, here is a position we had in the game and I played 9-4 leading to a slight advantage if I would be Richard Rapport in a flash at Queen's 8-6 which just wins the game instantly. And these are the sort of tactics which you often don't notice especially the old days of course you had no way of checking these things. It didn't occur to me during the game, it didn't occur to me after the game that I missed this and obviously will take Queen, Pants takes and the ball is going through to Queen so it's just winning an enormous amount of material. That's just game one. Did you just come up with that today? I just come up with that today. Okay, so this is Mr. Millionaire himself, Harold Jennings Plasquez. And this was something, there were various tactics important tactics missed in this game. I can show you some of them. For example, in this position I played Rook Dg8. This one I actually saw during the game. I played Rook Dg8 attacking his Queen which allows Rooks 8-6. So I saw this after I played it. 9-D6 check is absolutely crushing. I can't take the ball because he takes with discovered check. After 9-D6, 7-D6 and unfortunately B-5 is over and that's bent. So these are little things. Actually after Rooks 8-6, Black is doing fine. I just shouldn't play Rooks 8-6. I just didn't see the move and I lose the ball. It's one of those little tactics. Later on there were much worse things happened because I had some position like this where in fact I was just completely winning with Black. A lot of material up. And after King D1 I played the appalling Queen's 8-7-2 which is just a horrendous wrong check here. Now, didn't play Queen's 8-7-2 after which he could resign but prizes for an improvement here. White is no more similar. Queen 5 is actually quite similar. He doesn't win for White. He's actually only a draw. It was time trouble. Yeah, it was time trouble. But these are actually pretty shocking. These are low level blunders. This is a zone tour. Just become a grandmaster. That year I was supposedly young talent and it's like every game there is some horrific blunder. Come on to the next one. This was hilarious actually. This was against Mark Condy who is a very strong Scottish player in his day. I got absolutely outplayed. I actually played one line of the... Well, it's actually a Petrov defense. Played 9-4 which is not a very good move. Nowadays they will play 9-8-7-5. Maybe a little better for White. I've got too much material. Actually I really need a weekend as a minimum. I'm not joking to go through all of this material. But I'll just show you the sort of position that I reached. Something like this. And this position... Actually I'm completely lost. I'm just getting mated. And somehow I managed to survive when some moves like this are still completely lost. For certain rotates, A3 is given as an exclamation mark. But I think that was a chess-based comment. Any prizes for a better move here? Can anyone see the better move here? Queen A3 is a move. If you've got a better move than that, it's not difficult. Bishop C3 wins the house. And it is just so completely lost after Bishop A3. I can only presume I was going to play Bishop A3's rule. But it's like I'm so much material down. Absolutely hopeless. So that's game three. Which I managed to draw by ending up with a perpetual check. We'll come on to the next game. There's probably been some very interesting... So those are consecutive games in fact. These are all the first three games who renders plunders. Actually there were a whole lot of plunders in that game. But I've just shown you the worst one. This game I actually won the point convincingly. Let me just go out to this and see. Murray Childerland was okay. I had a couple. Just a quick point here. I had two games which I have very, very short draws. And I'm very glad that the rules have changed now. We've got these Sophia rules. Most events you have to play 30 moves. And these were chicken draws. There's no question about it. The draw with Spillman was a chicken draw. We were both in a strong position in the tournament. And we were advancing. Now I'll come on to maybe last one against Jonathan Nessle. And yeah, this was horrible. I actually had a decent position in this game. And in fact I'm even winning at this point. I mean, it's not so straightforward. It wasn't that obvious to me. It's actually the move before. I'm sorry, I've got this wrong. Winning, winning continuation. And for anyone who's seen this, this is not so straightforward. It actually took me a few seconds to understand that even after I looked at it. Actually the way to play is just simply Queen h7 and a very crude, it should say c5, queen takes, g6. And yeah, the attack is just extremely strong. For example, if he takes here, d4 is needed to make it very quickly. This one. I'm confused myself. Can we all just take Queen h7? Yeah, Queen h7. Oh, Queen h7, correct, correct. Queen h7 was possible at this point. Yeah, that's right. Queen h7 is the easiest. That's right. But this is just, actually, the moment you put an engine on, you realize that in fact, although it's anti-positional, what you've done, it's just when White's attack is crushing against e6 and so on. So this was one horrendous game. So I played Knight, he went, I went knight e2 instead. He went knight e5. And now I plundered with this move. After this I've just lost knight takes p3. And knight takes d3 is happening here. So I just simply made a simple miscalculation. I tried to confuse him with this move. And knight d4 is a very strong move here. That was a bit difficult to see. He took, and now it started to, and again I suspect there was time trouble, I started to get some threats. Bishop e5. And here. And at this point, I played bishop e5, which was a terrible plunder. Can you give me a strong move for White? Rook h6. Rook h6 is not that strong. Rook f5. Rook f1. Rooks on the open file. And actually under Rook f1 it's just getting over. It's as simple as that. You know, we're not talking about high level hidden tactics here. It's a knock on an open file. And you know, threatening a discovered check. And it's just completely gone after this. Instead I had this, what do they call it? Retained image oversight. Because I played bishop e5. And the image that I retained was with the pawn still on d6 in my mind. And of course he's able to escape to d6. And then it's a draw by repetition. After this your game seven leads to a draw. But these are truly woeful games. That's how I reached the end zone. Really comfortably actually. So maybe I timed with someone in the... Plus four. No, just to ask you a question. You were 2,500 at this time. Yeah, I was kidding. I'll put you in Britain a little while. Your 2,500 was actually a serious rating. I think you can probably add... Well, not that much. Maybe 130 points in today's money to that. So that would be, you know, 26, 30 or something like that. Pretty bad errors. So we'll come on to the interzone wall, which was in the middle in Switzerland. And we had these epic tournaments. 17 rounds. And we're four qualifiers for this event. So I needed a high place finish. So first round I was playing the legendary... You see, I've gone up 75 points in less than a year. That's half a year. Can I ask you guys, did you have a second for this event? I did have a second for this event. I had Grandmaster Murray Chandler. He came along with me. And Murray was a very good analyst. And we took each point seriously. Those days we didn't have laptops, obviously. So we took some books with us. And as I recall, we took 55 books between us. And I mean, it would just break my back these days. I mean, absolutely no way could I manage to do that. So we had these suitcases. 55 books. And as Murray said, he said, we probably only need a look at five of these. The problem is we don't know which one we're going to need. And he was absolutely right on this. So if he was a game... I'll just flip the... Sorry, flip. I'll get it right. Again, I had against Ulf. We reached some position and it was a Queen's Indian. Something like this out of the opening. And actually, the back position is perfectly satisfactory. But I completely misplayed this. The correct way to play involves a simple bit of logic, but no tactics, no tactics. Simple logic. Which is Black's worst-placed piece here. Bishop sees it. Bishop sees it. He's a bad piece. Knight's on H5. The knight's on H5. Knight's on the ring. And actually, I should simply play 9G7 and put the knight on H5. And in fact, not to worry about... I mean, Nigel, over here, just said that Bishop on C6 is bad. I guess my thinking was, I'd like to stick that Bishop on B5 while it can get on that long day. Yeah. You can play Queen G7 here because 9G6 is not a threat. It's absolutely not a threat. That's getting rid of your bang piece. And at some point, you're going to put the knight on F5 and open up the position with activity. It's absolutely perfectly playable. I was looking at it earlier. I wonder where I'm not horribly wrong. But a few minutes later, I was getting totally crushed. I just have basically done everything wrong. I've also fought for a start. My knight is still on H5. I've still got the crappy bishop, but at least I managed to lose the right pawn. So I've got some activity now. And where as previously could have been quite the knight in this position? So I can't. Yeah, well, that's saying to indeed, David. So advance, advance. Yeah. And actually, it was a horrible chest. And there was a key moment round about here. And Ulf, he played, if it was a fault of Ulf, he liked to keep things under control a little bit too much. And sometimes he was not as incisive as he should be. Here's a quick question for you. A good move for White. I've given you some clues. Incisive play. 8-4, 8-9-4. Yeah, well, all of them. Queen-4 is possible against that with activity like 9-4, Queen-4. Queen-7, Queen-7. Queen-7 is possible. But the really crushing move is Queen f8. And this is huge, huge problems. And I'll just give you a simple example. And after the move h4, Black can resign. h5 is a threat. And I basically can't do anything about it. If Bishop takes this, he sets up Bishop d3 check as an additional threat. So it's just complete another catastrophe. Instead, he started to play the sort of consolidating move, so to speak. But here I managed to eventually get my pieces on some actor. That was a very bad move with h3, move 38, 39. And actually, by this stage, Black is out of all difficulty because even though I'm a pawn-down, I'm acted enough. And the final position was it's just dead equal because I'm with a pawn-bang. That's rather the one. Second game I'm not going to show you. I will just tell you I got completely crushed by h5, by many others. We just don't have time. It's actually an interesting game, in a way. But we're not going to go through that. I'll run through these games. I'll give you a verbal description otherwise we'll be here for too long. Next one, against Massimil Jansa. It was a French defense. I got a really bad position. Completely lost. So I was completely lost in the first game. I lost the second game. I was completely lost against Jansa. Then I actually won a game from probably a lost position in round four. It seems to be a partner. Yeah, there were some interesting moments. I mean, we had a position. We had a position like this. In fact, he didn't even have to allow something like this. I got an initiative at age six, which was quite dangerous. It was interesting today because I just looked at this with the engine. The engine starts saying, I can play at age six, for example, and Michel takes G7. I'm sure this is something for Michel Tom. Actually, this is very, very dangerous indeed. It's allegedly still equal, but in practice it is very, very difficult to defend. After I made a defensive move, Bishop E3, I was actually in a lot of trouble, and Bishop A5 and Bishop G6, putting pressure on C2, is leading to an overwhelming advantage for Black very, very quickly. My position, he takes a few moves to collapse, but it certainly collapses. I won this game, and we're a bit of a fortune. So I got to 50%. Now, I have to talk about something. I've got to talk about sex, because that's important. I was in love in this tournament with a very, very beautiful girl from Denmark. Stuart here is embarrassed as he knows the same. He also has his stories there, but that's another matter. She was playing in, there was a women's tournament alongside, and she was playing this mighty animal with her name, and she was an international player for Denmark. She was absolutely drop dead gorgeous, and we were spending a lot of time together. It was really beautiful. It was very romantic. We would go rowing on the lake there in Beale, and then we would take a cable car, put up a mountain, and so on. And it was really beautiful. The whole thing was wonderful. And then after 10 rounds of this event, her tournament finished, and she went home. And at this point, I opted my score, and I had 5 out of 10, and I was nowhere near qualifying. So this was the little bit of a shock. I'll just come on very briefly. I mean, Margie at Pettison, not such a bad game. Are you saying those are your results improved after she left? Well, they did, actually. But it's pretty often the other way round. It's very often the other way round, but in this case, somehow, I was able to focus a little better. So in fact, I normally recommend a bit of off. This is interesting. This is what I looked at. This was a very mysterious game to me. I played against Lev Polydianovsky, and we had more of these Koonsiniers. And it was all quite interesting. I'll try and run through this quickly. Here, in fact, even the move before, probably objectively, I should play a move like A5 here with blank, and obtain a bit of counterplay. But I conceived of a different plan to attack on the king side. I wanted to play in G5. I'm at age 6, first. I'm preparing G5. And I sort of ignored my queen side. I elected it. And it's the first time, 32 years later, I've understood what was happening in this game. I thought I was doing well in this game. And I got completely confused by his play. And then somehow I lost. And I checked it today. I realized I was completely winning. I was right, actually. I just didn't find the correct way to play. So I started attacking on this side of the board. I've got horrible weaknesses on this side, but I start maneuvering my pieces around and we'll see that my pieces start going in the right direction. And suddenly, you know, there are serious threats here. And he begins to, in a minute, he starts running. And he went here. And I was actually surprised during the game because I thought this had just got to be good. And it is. And in fact, the move G4 is already crushing. One of the points is I get move G3 in many variations. So if he plays move A6, I simply take it and play G3. And other things, he's got no time for other moves because here I can simply play hooky eight and I threaten move A3 check. And this is just devastating attack. G3 is coming. And, you know, maintenance again. And that was my idea, but my execution was completely wrong. I played bishop G3. I started pushing my pieces. And he started running here. Bishop A2 was already winning and queen G3. But these were tactics which I missed during the game. So I'll just show you bishop A2 and now hooky ace. And queen takes it. G3 is coming. And he just can't defend his position. He's got a weak king. And I got major pieces circling his king. So this was very good. And I still had some... No, I didn't. This was it. I got this all wrong as well. So this G4 was a bad move. And after this, suddenly I had this tactic but he just ran away. And after rook e8, rook a8, I resigned. It's a lost position. I should have played 9g8 if that continued. And he still has to find a few more moves. But that was a big blow to me that particular game. So I'm back to minus 1 after 8 rounds. Well, come on. Sorry, I won't keep a set up for 8 rounds. Two more draws. Now, I said that my beautiful Danish lady, mind she left after 10 rounds. Round 11, I played Miguel Quinteros. And this was another awful game. It is really an appalling game. So I was white. I had some position, something like this, out of the opening. In fact, white is doing incredibly well, more or less winning this position. I can play... I'll just show you some moves like this. Knight f5 and queen b6. And because of the threat to his d4, his position collapses. He can defend like this, but then bishop 8x8x6 leaves me with a pawn out and a huge pass 4 on the 7th rank. So this is a decisive advantage. So I salted frittering away everything. Here, I'm still better. 9c4 was still a good move. And then I played some utterly idiotic moves. And I basically lost my e-pawn for a few more moves. And here, black is just clearly better. So I've gone from being clearly better to clearly worse in a very short space of time. And there was a crucial moment in the game now after this, rook a97. And now he has to play a quiet move, but he played tactically, bishop 8b4. And I had this cheap trick, 9xf6. And after 9xf6, white is suddenly better again. It was very funny, because I just won completely by accident. You'll see how I win the game by accident. The next sequence is he sort of semi-forced. He now took this. Qe5, threatening mate, back-ranked mate. And he fluctuates, I suppose, 98, winning. So after this, he's winning material. So he's got two bishops against a rook. And after rook e6, he can't stop me from winning his bishop on b7. His bishop on b7 is so bad that he now loses it. For example, if he plays c5, I can simply play rook e8, check, and rook e7, check, and take the position. So he's got no defense. He won Qg7. And now I picked up the bishop and he's very easily winning end game. And after this, he resigned. So Q4, Q4, still well off the pace. Six rounds left, only. Next game against Lvojevic was an up and down affair. Yeah, I think I was in trouble in that game. I think the Spanish player, Martin, actually pretty one-sided you. I think that was a bit of opening preparation, actually. Occasionally, I was able to get in some opening preparation. And it was a Sicilian dragon. And he fell for some trap in the Sicilian dragon. I just thought it was a really good advantage. So after this, there are four rounds remaining and I'm on plus two. There are several guys who are playing well ahead of me. Then the next one, I started to go for it with playing against Lee Zunyan. We had a very boring opening. But we reached a position like this. And here, actually, I was just clearly better. I could have played the move e3 here, which was a tactical blow. And after he takes, he's in all sorts of trouble. I could have simply defended my bishop and this is probably a close position for him. Instead, I played f6. And this not only threw away my advantage, but in a few more moves, I actually lost more than my advantage. I was actually completely lost. I'm actually in serious trouble here. Because he's a pawn, he's very strong. In fact, the move a5 is just going easily because I can't generate any threats. So this was almost the end of me. You know, you had to pass forward, which would have just pushed to the fifth round and that would have been the end of the game. Instead, he played this sort of tricky move, d5. And I started to go for counter play with bishop d6. And here, he was winning still because queen b6 takes, takes check, which was actually my main idea. After here, he's got the queen d8 check and d8 c6 check when the queen. So chess is decided by tactics. You figure out about all this positional stuff. I mean, the number of points, we've just been counting the number of points that have been swinging back and forth on supposedly a high level, it's actually really shocking. I mean, huge number of points going with tactical errors, inability to calculate three and four variations. This is a little more difficult, but it's not beyond the realms of human possibility. These are normal moves, actually. So I now need it after this disappointment. Well, I should be grateful I escaped. I now needed to score some points in my remaining three games. I have one advantage at this point that two of the guys who were in front of me, I still had to play. And Eugene Torre, Grandmaster of the Philippines, was wonderful. He was in absolutely great form at that time. He's playing really blind in chess. And no more, surprisingly, you know, any of the younger people here, well, John van der Veel, there's a name from the past, who was the number two Dutch player in the 1980s. He's more or less sunk without trace, actually for a long time. But he was having the talk of his life and he was doing very well. So I still had to play these two guys. They were both in front of me and I had to beat them both to have any chance whatsoever. Even then, it was a slim chance. So I had this game, which I've momentarily forgotten. Actually, I outplayed it. We had some position like this. Eventually, I converted. And it was interesting here. We had a broken 4-net game. So it's a broken 4-net game against Eugene Torre. Remember that. It will become apparent why I'm asking you to remember that. Eventually, I converted this by getting my king into the position and he designed. So this was an absolutely vital win. I pulled him back. Eugene Torre was still ahead of me. The next game, I went all out against Andreas Sokolov. It was a very interesting game, actually. I ended in a draw. It was quite a brilliant draw, in a way. We ended in a tie. For that, I'm sorry to say. And in the last round, I played John van der Veel. And at this point, my chances of qualifying for the Interzonal were slender. Very, very slender. Because for me to qualify, two things had to happen. First of all, I had to beat John van der Veel. Well, that's okay. I had the white pieces. It was in my hands. The second thing was, Eugene Torre had to lose. And in that case, if I won and Torre lost, I would be in a three-way tie for the last qualifying place. So this is how bad my situation was. And what was even worse about this was that Eugene Torre was playing a doula sax, a Hungarian ground monster, who had a lousy tournament, had absolutely nothing to play for, no money, no nothing, you know. No reason why he should be playing at all in the last round. And I never spoke, unfortunately, the guy's dead now. I never got to speak to him later to ask him why he played off. But Torre, he, well, first of all, I'll show you this game. Or at least I'm part of it. We reached a position like this with some charm, Sicilian. At a plate, unnecessarily slowly, King H1, it's a ridiculous move, actually. And Bb just all went round to take my pawn. And here I decided to go forward with F5. And he took on C3. In fact, he turns out that basically he can, yeah, actually even after this, he can get away with this. He probably just didn't want to be in a pit like this. He only needed the draws of all of mine. And he didn't want to be in a pit. And he looks dangerous, he looks dangerous. He's got, you know, the rook is attacking the bishop and so on. But actually I can't do anything. So this is clearly better than the blank. So he just sort of played in a liquidating way. He went, Bc3, the bishop is no longer attacked. And then he took here. And after this, my attack becomes incredibly dangerous. It becomes really seriously strong. Takes, takes, Nxf5. And actually his only move to keep it on the board here is to play d4. It's a thematic move, but it also accelerates my attacking in some way. Only way to survive is to play like this with the knight on f6, because he's exploiting the fact that my, now if Bxf6, Qc6, check is coming. And Qxg7, Qxg7, check is a possibility. But these are sort of difficult defensive ideas. And he said he played Nx6, and after Bxd4, I'm two points down, but I've got this monster knight on f5 and the bishop on d4 is really crushing. And after this, it's a devastating combination. And I just bought the knight back because my bishop is actually much more powerful than his rook. And it finished with me just bringing my pieces forward into the attack. And I was actually very pleased with this next move because this next move is deflecting his bishop from the e8 square. So I played c4 and rook e1, and upon being rook e8 is absolutely killing. So that was the end of John Banville. We were now in a tie. And Qxg8 was still defending. He played the Berlin actually. It wasn't a very fashionable opening in those days, but he decided to play a boring opening to try and hold the game. And he played the Berlin, and in fact he was doing fine for a very long time and then eventually blundered. So I'm now in a three-way tie with f5d. And Qxg8 and Torre. So at this point, my second deserted me. I mean, what did you say? Well, I couldn't really blame Murray because he'd been there for weeks and weeks already. We'd just played 17 rounds with rest days and the German days and God knows what. I mean, it just all went on forever. And he had to go. And so I was desperate to find a replacement. Second. And I called upon Dr. Jong Nam, who came to my rescue, but he couldn't get there immediately. But he could get there after the first round. So he arrived on the evening after the first round, but I'd already been wiped out in the first game. So my route to the candidates was not as smooth as you probably notice. I got utterly crushed, so we won't go there. It was actually very one-sided. I played it very poorly. I made French defense. Show it to you very quickly. Okay. I just played this... You know, we had this position and it was kind of a standard French. I think I was influenced by these guys, like John Watson, who of course has played in... I don't know if you can see it this time, but he played in the previous years, American YM. He'd written some very good book on the French defense and he had sort of recommended some lines like this. And I basically... I never ever understood how to play this type of position with black. If it's possible to play it at all. I mean, I know quite a number of people do that, but I had never had this focus idea of how to play this kind of position with black. And I played some maneuver, which I've seen Victor Courchoy doing something similar in some games, some Night Age 6. And it was just sort of absolute crap. It was like a ridiculous move. And he just played it in a very simple way. I mean, it's like chess from the simultaneous exhibition. I mean, it's that easy. And then I made weaknesses, and then he thought we should do Night Age 6 and Night Age D7 and Rooktakes. C6 is coming, so basically nothing works. And I was trying to get some tricks. The tricks didn't work. And after a few more moves, I was completely destroyed. Now with Rook Age 7 coming, that's the end of the game. First game had gone horribly. Second game also went horribly. We had some sort of fierce defence, playing Eugene Torrey. We got some fierce defence. I got strategically outplayed. He's actually a pretty good position player. He's tactically sometimes a bit weak. That's always been the case. Actually, he couldn't play Queen 7. He just needs to get his Queen off this line here. His problem is that I put my Rook opposite his Queen. So he needs to put his Queen somewhere else in order to get Rook D3 in as an idea. But if you play Queen D7, it's more or less the end of the game because Queen before check is very, very strong. I've got no coordination here, no nothing. He went Queen D8, and I just sort of managed to grovel in a sort of miserable style. Now I put my King into safety. I'm still probably a bit worse here. But after a few moves, I slowly began tricking him. I started creating some, I wouldn't say exactly called threats. I just sort of moved my Queen around to annoy him. And eventually he just blundered the pawn. And after this, he was the pawn now and I just managed to converse it. So what did I say about Eugene Torre and Rubin Paul end games? It's number two, not the last one. It's a, I should say, it's a, you play three games against each player in the playoff. So it's six games in total. So three against Vanderbiel, three against Torre. So the next one against Vanderbiel, I was actually doing very well and I think I missed a win. I just recall, I did miss a win against him. The key moment was around about here. And at this point, Rc7, I got this position and I could just win with Rc7 check and Rd7. And the point is that after g4 check, which is his trick, I'm playing gf6. And if Rg6, I simply had King g5 leading to an easy win. Just needs a little calculation. It's not extremely difficult tactics but I missed that and eventually that was the final position which was very aesthetic, I thought. And then the next game, I beat Eugene Torre. Well, I'm not going to go through all of it but we had some position where actually he was doing quite well. But here, at this moment, he should have played f3 and he was still doing, it may even be slightly better here. But instead he played g1 and this allowed me to... He was sort of playing for tricks, actually. He had some sort of beat fire. He wanted to make the old back room but it didn't really work. Because of Queen takes f8 check, I still have Queenie 8 as a defense. So he had to go around and this is just a completely winning position. Eventually we got this. So we reached the Brooklyn ball game against Eugene Torre, number 3. Which I won, 3 out of 3. And this is not technically very difficult because when Queenie was just coming forward it was actually very straightforward. So having won this, I was then in... Oh, this was... I'm sorry, I want to cry. So did everybody who mentioned magazines at this time? Yeah. There's something you can remember this time. What's the question in my generation remember this game? Oh, God, this was... I just wanted to cry. This actually shows you which result I was playing for. I played the Petrol defense. I played the Petrol very few times in my life. And I'll just tell you, I think I'm incredibly bad at school. I managed one draw with the Petrol defense. And it's not as though the Petrol is a bad opening. It's a perfectly playable opening. But what I realized is it's an opening that doesn't suit me because I played it with the wrong mentality. You know, this game I played it with the intention of killing the game Stone Dead. And there are some people who can play negative chess. Peter Lecker can play negative chess. Glad to be a crowning. I mean, his idea is to refute Y4 by playing boring openings. You know, just basically saying play something else. So that was his... I mean, he told me that. His idea is to essentially refute it and you're never ever going to get any advances by playing such a weak move as an E4, leaving your E4 unprotected. So, you know, go away and try something better. Like D4. Sorry? Like D4. D4 is a good move. Yeah, knight f3 and c4. They're all good moves. The main problem with E4 is it plunders the E4 in so many lines. So, okay. Okay, so this... Well, actually, there was some theory here with... Yeah, there was this game of Walter Brown. Actually, the late Walter Brown. I remember this was 27. Bishop H6. That was the brilliant shot. But Qc6 is a very good move. And Waddenville actually just played this line. He had no improvements on the theory. So he was just making moves. And it's not even necessary to play Routier. But when you're in a position like this, look at this. I need not to lose to the guy. And here we have a position where Black just has a clear advantage. And it's simple. It's really simple. There's hardly any material left. I mean, what sort of complications can you make here? And I took a form. It's a good move. Nothing wrong with this. He starts doing some things, makes the old threat. And he starts going around. I just started to get a bit confused. It's all good, actually. What I've done. It's all good enough. It's basically winning. Here my next move was not really necessary. Probably f5 is a good move. But I went here anyway. And Q4. And now at this point, it's... I shouldn't have allowed him to get this far. Because this position is actually starting to get pretty dangerous. And Black, if you just count the material, is just winning. And I'm still winning if I play a move like f5. f5 is just driving his queen away. And after Q here, I can play Qb8. And Qd4 is even stronger, actually. But Qd8 is also completely winning. And Qd5 coming next. I mean, he's just dead lost at this point. And after, you know, it's been a time trouble here. I started to get nervous. I played Qb8. And this is a bad move. Now I'm in trouble. And he went like d7 check, which I had seen. And my only move is to play Qxd7. Actually, the commentators at the time, they didn't spot my defense. I'm still doing okay in this position. I have to take it and run. At least the only move in a6. But strangely enough, I have enough pawns. And my vision is very good. And also I very often have a perpetual check. So Qxc7, I have Qh6 check. And this is actually good enough to hold the game. But here, you know, I make one blonder. And now I make a second blonder. Qc8. And he finished off with this glorious move. Rd6. And if I take Qc6, mate, and Qa8 is the crushing threat. So that was a very, very beautiful finish by VD and an absolute tragedy for me. So then I had to beat Eugene Torre again. So not really the most exciting game. We had something like this. He could have played, actually he could have played 90 points. He was doing absolutely fine. But he found the wrong plan. And eventually I started to get an initiative. And here are a few more moves. I didn't play it in the best way, actually. I got a rook and pawn end game against Eugene Torre for the fourth time in a matter of days. Or weeks. So he had chances to hold this game. In fact, probably f5. Jong-un, these are the comments by Jong-un. He said f5 was equal. The computer doesn't quite agree that it's equal. But it does agree that f5 is the right move. And white's advantage is not very significant. But eventually he got ground down. I got an extra pawn. And I started to move around. And f5, then I went this way. F5 and then I started to go around again. And suddenly my rook is coming into the game. At the moment my rook comes into the game. It's all over. I'm trying some tricks. And that was it. And so, to green camp, I had... I scored 3 out of 3 against Eugene Torre. I scored half out of 3 against Jong-un van der Veel. Eugene Torre beat Jong-un van der Veel 2-1. So I ended up with a tie with Jong-un van der Veel on 3.5 points. Eugene Torre on 2 points. And, ordinarily, you would think I would lose on the tie break because he beaten me 2.5-1.5. But the tie break was the tie break from the previous event. And of course I beaten him in the previous event. And therefore I qualified. So tie breaks are always fair, as we know. And that's how I became a candidate with fight. And a colossal amount of luck. So if you've got any questions... I should ask you one question during your thing. It's such a long event. So many players and also the extra, the tie break. If you played yourself, how was that all final? Did you have to pay yourself? Did the Federation help you? I don't recall, but I think the BCF were helping out at that time. I'm not sure they helped out. But I think it was hard to get any money at all in this event. Essentially it was playing for weeks or for nothing. It was almost nothing. It was actually not financially rewarding at all, the whole thing. So if it had been for the financial support, I wouldn't have got that. Because I got that by the narrowest margin possible, anyway. And I always think that you've got a good second. They're going to contribute half a point, one point during the course of the event. And in a tight event, it makes a big difference. You're looking for small advantages there. So maybe that bit of preparation I got in that Dragon, which I didn't show you. Maybe that's the difference between you qualifying and not qualifying. But it does make a difference having a good second. Nigel, I think you have 23 games. And if you were in the world championship, you'd have in those days 24 games. And you didn't have any computer assistant. Is your conclusion that the young players today, or the great players today, are going to be very easy? Yeah, they do. I'll tell you another thing. Actually one of my mistakes during my chess career, my chess career is not finished, but my good times, really good times are finished. I didn't look back on things I could have done better in my chess career. And one of the things that I didn't really do enough of was analyzing my own games. This is the old sort of botaning stuff. But honestly, you play an event like this and you want energy for playing chess as well. Where do you find the hours, and it takes you hours, literally hours to analyze each of these games? Where do you find the time to do that? Your only chance is actually after the event, but when you've been playing for a month, you're naked. So most of these games, as I said, I've seen for the first time today. It's been 32 years. I actually thought of the Quinteros game only because I met Miguel in London, not very long ago, when I was just trying to remember that particular game. But most of the other games, they just haven't seen them at all. So in a way, I'm not joking about this. They do have it much easier, the younger generation, because you go to your room, you bung it on the laptop. Even in half an hour, you get an extraordinary amount of information, and you can absorb that very, very quickly to try and analyze these games properly. I mean, it should be a day to do each and every game. So it's a different world. Thanks. I'm going to hear you talking about the fact that there's been great inflation over the years. I also hear Gems around 24 and 25 are talking about there being deflation. How do you account for the two different views? Well, they're wrong. I wish that's actually better. There are some deflationary aspects of the raising system. If you have somebody with a raise of whatever, 2200, and they drop dead, that's points that have gone out of the system, and they've taken points from someone else. What I understand from people who have studied the rating system in much, much greater detail than I have, and I've spoken to John Nunn, who's actually spent a long time on these things, and he said there was a big surge of inflation. Really, back in the 1980s, continued for a while. It's been recently. So it's stabilized for quite a number of years now. Do you have any reasons to complicate? Well, there are far more people on the rating list these days. My day, you had to be over 2200 against all the rating lists. And now, what's the bottom? I don't know, 1200? 1000. 1000? Thank you, sir. But I think one of the things is, in the 1990s, they had this rule. If you got 50% in Olympiad, you got 2200. And they were all very much underrated to that. This is a political nonsense. Talking about political ideas in the Olympiad, I shouldn't say this with rain, because you've got all of these norms in the Olympiad, but nowadays, until recently, we were giving double norms in Olympiad. So that makes absolutely no sense at all. So if you've earned your norm in Olympiad, you've got a double norm. They've only just abolished that. That's been in for a number of years. Before my time, that's for sure. Not before your time. For a number of years, that existed. So if you got a earned GM norm, you basically got a two norm. So if you played well in the Olympiad, you were well on the way to the grandmaster time. Maybe a lot of money in there. Because I've got the grandmaster time in the street, not from what the first prize was in Slater. You're on a time. You might want to rob to 4000 pounds there, don't you? Maybe I'll do it somewhere else as well. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I can't remember when they introduced it. I mean, they made the grandmaster time so easy. There were a huge number of... Yeah, your fault, is it? Oh, some of it. That doesn't surprise me. It's been prostituted. It's been prostituted. No. On this one? I said, right, and of course it was. Yeah. There were certain things which, if you start looking at this stuff, certain things come back to you, like, you know... George Bolshaw. The philosopher, George Bolshaw, and British champion. And I still do remember recently, when was the last time I saw him or spoke to him? And I remember speaking to him in a pub somewhere. And he was telling... I don't even remember two things from the conversation. One was he was talking about chess and computers, and he said that competing against a computer is like being in a heavyweight... I'm sorry, weightlifting competition against the four-wheeled truck. That was his argument, a very good analogy from a philosopher. And the other thing I remember was he was a huge fan of George Orwell, which I know you're as well. I am. And I am too, a huge fan of George Orwell. So that's a shared interest. I wonder if there's really a prize of knowledge for me, but I might be at that level far. Okay, very good. Any other questions for Nigel, before we wrap up? Nigel, do you want to leave us in the video? Any special words before we... That's it, so I look forward to seeing you there. So I hope you enjoy it. It was a bit of a rush, but I hope you've got some idea of the track. The track to the candidates, anyway. Nigel, I'm sure we all look forward, and hopefully the not too distant future, of you coming back and giving another talk entitled Becoming the World Senior Champion. Well, it's actually... If I get some proper sponsorship, I will definitely play in that. But the problem is it doesn't make any financial sense. So that's basically the issue. You know, last year I could have played in the European team championship, which I did, and get paid, or pay myself to play in the World Senior Championship. So I decided I would represent my country by playing in the European team championship, so it's my job. All right, thanks, then.