Leonard William Barden is an English chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

 master

Chess master

A chess master is a chess player of such skill that he/she can usually beat chess experts, who themselves typically prevail against most amateurs. Among chess players, the term is often abbreviated to master, the meaning being clear from context....

, columnist

Columnist

A columnist is a journalist who writes for publication in a series, creating an article that usually offers commentary and opinions. Columns appear in newspapers, magazines and other publications, including blogs....

, author, and promoter. The son of a dustman, he was educated at Whitgift School

Whitgift School

Whitgift School is an independent day school educating approximately 1,400 boys aged 10 to 18 in South Croydon, London in a parkland site.- History and grounds :...

, South Croydon

South Croydon

South Croydon is a locality in Greater London, the area surrounding the valley south of central Croydon about 1 km in radius, centred on the Red Deer public house on the Brighton Road. It is part of the South Croydon post town and in the London Borough of Croydon...

, and Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College, Oxford

Balliol College , founded in 1263, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England but founded by a family with strong Scottish connections....

, where he read Modern History

Modern history

Modern history, or the modern era, describes the historical timeline after the Middle Ages. Modern history can be further broken down into the early modern period and the late modern period after the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution...

. He learned to play chess at age 13 while in a school shelter during a German air raid. Within a few years he became one of the country's leading juniors.

Playing career

In 1946, Barden won the British Junior Correspondence Chess Championship, and tied for first place in the London Boys' Championship. The following year he tied for first with Jonathan Penrose

Jonathan Penrose

Jonathan Penrose, OBE is an English chess player, emeritus Grandmaster, and International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster who won the British Chess Championship ten times between 1958 and 1969. He is the son of Lionel Penrose, a world famous professor of genetics, and brother of Roger Penrose...

 in the British Boys' Championship, but lost the playoff.

Barden finished fourth at Hastings

Hastings International Chess Congress

The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

 in 1951-52. In 1952, he won the Paignton

Paignton

Paignton is a coastal town in Devon in England. Together with Torquay and Brixham it forms the unitary authority of Torbay which was created in 1998. The Torbay area is a holiday destination known as the English Riviera. Paignton's population in the United Kingdom Census of 2001 was 48,251. It has...

 tournament

Chess tournament

A chess tournament is a series of chess games played competitively to determine a winning individual or team. Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players.Today, the most recognized chess...

 ahead of the Canadian grandmaster Daniel Yanofsky

Daniel Yanofsky

Daniel Abraham Yanofsky, OC, QC was Canada's first chess grandmaster, an eight-time Canadian Chess Champion, a chess writer, a chess arbiter, and a lawyer.-Life in chess:...

. He captained the Oxfordshire team which won the counties championship in 1951 and 1952, and in the latter year captained the Oxford University team which won the National Club Championship. In 1953, he won the individual British Lightning Championship (ten seconds a move). The following year, he tied for first with the Belgian grandmaster Albéric O'Kelly de Galway

Albéric O'Kelly de Galway

Albéric O'Kelly de Galway was a Belgian chess Grandmaster , and an International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster , most famous for being the third ICCF World Champion in correspondence chess between 1959 and 1962. He was also a chess writer...

 at Bognor Regis

Bognor Regis

Bognor Regis is a seaside resort town and civil parish in the Arun district of West Sussex, on the south coast of England. It is south-south-west of London, west of Brighton, and south-east of the city of Chichester. Other nearby towns include Littlehampton east-north-east and Selsey to the...

, was joint British champion, with Alan Phillips

Alan Phillips (chess player)

Alan Phillips was a chess master who won the British Chess Championship in 1954, along with Leonard Barden. He was one of the stars in the Stockport Grammar School chess club started by Richard K. Guy in 1939. After WWII, he studied at University of Cambridge, where he tied with Peter...

, and won the Southern Counties Championship. He finished fourth at Hastings 1957-58. In the 1958 British Chess Championship

British Chess Championship

The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...

, Barden again tied for first, but lost the playoff match to Penrose 1½-3½. He represented England in the Chess Olympiads of 1952 (playing fourth board, scoring 2 wins, 5 draws, and 4 losses), 1954 (playing first reserve, scoring 1 win, 2 draws, and 4 losses), 1960 (first reserve; 4 wins, 4 draws, 2 losses) and 1962 (first reserve; 7 wins, 2 draws, 3 losses).

Barden has a Morphy Number

Morphy number

The Morphy number is a measure of how closely a chess player is connected to Paul Morphy by way of playing chess games. People who played a chess game with Morphy have a Morphy number of 1. Players who did not play Morphy but played someone with a Morphy number of 1 have a Morphy number of 2...

 of 3, having drawn with Jacques Mieses

Jacques Mieses

----Jacques Mieses was a German-born Jewish chess Grandmaster and writer. He became a naturalized British citizen after World War II.p258-Chess career:...

 in the Premier Reserves at Hastings

Hastings International Chess Congress

The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

 1948-49. Mieses drew with Henry Bird in the last round of Hastings 1895

Hastings 1895 chess tournament

The Hastings 1895 chess tournament was a round-robin tournament of chess conducted in Hastings, England from August 5 to September 2, 1895.Hastings 1895 was arguably the strongest tournament in history at the time it occurred. All of the strongest players of the generation competed...

, and Bird played a number of games with Paul Morphy

Paul Morphy

Paul Charles Morphy was an American chess player. He is considered to have been the greatest chess master of his era and an unofficial World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy...

 in 1858 and 1859.

Journalism, books

In 1964, Barden gave up competitive chess to devote his time to chess journalism and writing books about the game. He has made invaluable contributions to English chess as a populariser, writer, organiser, fundraiser, and broadcaster. He was controller of the British Chess Federation Grand Prix for many years, having found its first sponsor, Cutty Sark

Berry Brothers and Rudd

Berry Bros. & Rudd is a wine and spirits merchant based in the United Kingdom. The company sells wine from around the world, including en primeur wines from Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône and Italy. The company also sells a number of wines and spirits under its own label 'Berrys' Own Selection'...

. He was a regular contributor to the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

's Network Three weekly radio chess programme from 1958 to 1963. His best-known contribution was a consultation game, recorded in 1960 and broadcast in 1961, where he partnered Bobby Fischer against the English masters Jonathan Penrose and Peter Clarke. This was the only recorded consultation game of Fischer's career. The game, unfinished after eight hours of play, was adjudicated a draw by former world champion Max Euwe

Max Euwe

Machgielis Euwe was a Dutch chess Grandmaster, mathematician, and author. He was the fifth player to become World Chess Champion . Euwe also served as President of FIDE, the World Chess Federation, from 1970 to 1978.- Early years :Euwe was born in Watergraafsmeer, near Amsterdam...

.

Barden gave BBC television commentaries on all the games in the 1972 world championship. From 1973 to 1978 he was co-presenter of BBC2's annual Master Game televised programme. As of 2010, his weekly columns have been published in The Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

for 54 years and in The Financial Times for 35 years. A typical Barden column not only contains a readable tournament report, but is geared toward promoting the game. His London Evening Standard

Evening Standard

The Evening Standard, now styled the London Evening Standard, is a free local daily newspaper, published Monday–Friday in tabloid format in London. It is the dominant regional evening paper for London and the surrounding area, with coverage of national and international news and City of London...

column, begun in summer 1956, is now the world's longest running daily chess column, breaking the previous record set by George Koltanowski

George Koltanowski

George Koltanowski was a Belgian-born American chess player, promoter, and writer. He was informally known as "Kolty". Koltanowski set the world's blindfold record on 20 September 1937, in Edinburgh, by playing 34 chess games simultaneously while blindfolded, making headline news around the world...

 in the San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

. Koltanowski's column ran for 51 years 9 months and 18 days including posthumous articles.

Barden has written the books A Guide to Chess Openings (1957), How Good Is Your Chess? (1957), Chess (1959), Introduction to Chess Moves and Tactics Simply Explained (1959), Modern Chess Miniatures (with Wolfgang Heidenfeld

Wolfgang Heidenfeld

Wolfgang Heidenfeld was a chess player.Heidenfeld was born in Berlin. He was forced to move from Germany to South Africa because he was a Jew. There, he won the South African Chess Championship eight times, and he represented South Africa in the Chess Olympiad in 1958...

, 1960), Erevan 1962 (1963), The Ruy Lopez

Ruy Lopez

The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening or Spanish Game, is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:The opening is named after the 16th century Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura, who made a systematic study of this and other openings in the 150-page book on chess Libro del...

(1963), The Guardian Chess Book (1967), An Introduction to Chess (1967), The King's Indian Defence

King's Indian Defence

The King's Indian Defence is a common chess opening. It arises after the moves:Black intends to follow up with 3...Bg7 and 4...d6.The Grünfeld Defence arises when Black plays 3...d5 instead, and is considered a separate opening...

(1968), Chess: Master the Moves (1977), Guide to the Chess Openings (with Tim Harding

Tim Harding (chess)

Timothy David Harding is a prolific chess player and author with particular expertise regarding correspondence chess. He published a correspondence chess magazine Chess Mail from 1996 to 2006 and has authored "The Kibitzer," a ChessCafe.com column from 1996...

, 1977), Leonard Barden's Chess Puzzle Book (1977) (a collection of his Evening Standard columns), The Master Game (with Jeremy James, 1979), How to Play the Endgame in Chess (1979), Play Better Chess (1980), Batsford Chess Puzzles (2002), and One Move and You're Dead (with Erwin Brecher, 2007).

Role in "English Chess Explosion"

Barden's most important achievement was his key role in the rapid advance of English chess in the 1970s and 1980s from also-rans to Olympiad silver medal winners. His involvement began in 1971 when he noticed that Tony Miles

Tony Miles

Anthony John Miles was an English chess Grandmaster.- Early achievements in chess :Miles was born in Edgbaston, a suburb of Birmingham...

 and Michael Stean

Michael Stean

Michael Francis Stean is an English chess grandmaster and author.-Junior career:He learned to play chess before the age of five, developing a promising talent that led to junior honours, including the London under-14 and British under-16 titles.There was more progress in 1971, when he placed third...

 were both likely contenders for the biennial 1973 world junior (under-20) championship, but that the only way for a country to have two representatives was to host the event. Barden knew the financier Jim Slater, who offered to co-sponsor the event, which was staged at Teesside

Teesside

Teesside is the name given to the conurbation in the north east of England made up of the towns of Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Redcar, Billingham and surrounding settlements near the River Tees. It was also the name of a local government district between 1968 and 1974—the County Borough of...

. There, Miles and Stean won silver and bronze medals, respectively, and Miles won the title in 1974 when it changed to an annual contest. Slater also agreed to Barden's proposal that he should finance special coaching by Bob Wade

Robert Wade (chess player)

Robert Graham Wade OBE , was a British chess player, writer, arbiter, coach, and promoter. He was New Zealand champion three times, British champion twice, and played in seven Chess Olympiads and one Interzonal tournament...

 for the five best teenage prospects. They all became grandmasters.

In 1972 after Slater saved the Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...

 versus Boris Spassky

Boris Spassky

Boris Vasilievich Spassky is a Soviet-French chess grandmaster. He was the tenth World Chess Champion, holding the title from late 1969 to 1972...

 world championship match from collapse by doubling the prize fund, he offered £5,000 to the first English grandmaster and £2,000 to the next four players to qualify. Barden worked out the detailed terms, and wrote the speech at Hastings where Slater announced the awards. Encouraged by success, Barden and Slater then agreed on a wider programme to stimulate talent at much younger ages, aiming to produce a generation which could compete with the Soviet Union, the world's leading chess nation.

Barden organised weekend junior invitation events at which the best prospects played a tournament and had coaching from masters between games. They were also introduced to top master chess at the annual Evening Standard weekend open and via grandmaster simultaneous exhibition

Simultaneous exhibition

A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition in which one player plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players. Such an exhibition is often referred to simply as a "simul".In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used...

s. The model was the USSR's own programme in the 1930s when future masters scored impressively in exhibitions against José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca

José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...

 and Salo Flohr

Salo Flohr

Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...

 during the 1935 and 1936 Moscow tournaments. Very few juniors in the 1970s had international ratings, so Barden compiled his own world ranking lists for every age group from under-18 to under-10, updating the figures at monthly or weekly intervals and posting the results at the invitation events.

Barden read much Soviet chess literature, and in 1974 decided that an 11-year-old named Gary Weinstein was a likely future world champion. His Guardian column of 24 February 1975, headlined "World Champ 1990", made this a specific forecast. It was, by more than a year, the first such prediction by anyone for the future Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov

Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....

.

By summer 1975 Barden believed that Nigel Short

Nigel Short

Nigel David Short MBE is an English chess grandmaster earning the title at the age of 19. Short is often regarded as the strongest English player of the 20th century as he was ranked third in the world, from January 1988 – July 1989 and in 1993, he challenged Garry Kasparov for the World Chess...

, then aged 9, also had world title potential. The simultaneous programme was intensified for Short, who in the next few years played three world champions and several other top grandmasters. Barden also used his columns to promote his juniors, whom some called "the Barden babes". When Short defeated Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi ; pronounced in the original Russian as "karch NOY"; Ви́ктор Льво́вич Корчно́й, born March 23, 1931 is a professional chess player, author and currently the oldest active grandmaster on the tournament circuit...

, the world's second strongest active player, in a 1976 Evening Standard simultaneous the result was announced on that evening's ITN news bulletin.

One purpose of the publicity was to attract more sponsorship, and in summer 1976 Barden secured backing from Lloyds Bank

Lloyds Bank

Lloyds Bank Plc was a British retail bank which operated in England and Wales from 1765 until its merger into Lloyds TSB in 1995; it remains a registered company but is currently dormant. It expanded during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and took over a number of smaller banking companies...

. The bank's chairman, Sir Jeremy Morse

Jeremy Morse

Sir Jeremy Morse was Chancellor of the University of Bristol between 1989 and 2003 before being succeeded by the Baroness Hale of Richmond and was chairman of Lloyds Bank....

, was an eminent chess problemist, and its sponsorship manager, Pat Bowman, liked the concept of the bank financing a serious challenge to Soviet chess supremacy.

The first Lloyds Bank event was a pilot, a London v New York telex match to celebrate the United States bicentennial

United States Bicentennial

The United States Bicentennial was a series of celebrations and observances during the mid-1970s that paid tribute to the historical events leading up to the creation of the United States as an independent republic...

, in which the American captain agreed to Barden's proposal to include extra under-11 boards, on one of which Short (who lived near Manchester) beat the future US champion Joel Benjamin

Joel Benjamin

Joel Benjamin is an American chess Grandmaster. In 1998, he was voted "Grandmaster of the Year" by the U.S. Chess Federation. , his Elo rating was 2576, making him the No. 12 player in the U.S. and the 214th-highest rated player in the world.-Life and career:Benjamin is a native of Brooklyn, New...

. By then many juniors were advancing towards master strength, but lacked official FIDE international ratings and titles. So in 1977 the annual Lloyds Bank Masters was launched, modelled on a successful US event at Lone Pine where the best US juniors competed against grandmasters. Barden also organised an all-play-all tournament, the Lord John Cup, where the grandmaster score was sufficiently low that three young English masters - John Nunn

John Nunn

John Denis Martin Nunn is one of England's strongest chess players and once belonged to the world's top ten. He is also a three times world champion in chess problem solving, a chess writer and publisher, and a mathematician....

, Michael Stean

Michael Stean

Michael Francis Stean is an English chess grandmaster and author.-Junior career:He learned to play chess before the age of five, developing a promising talent that led to junior honours, including the London under-14 and British under-16 titles.There was more progress in 1971, when he placed third...

 and Jonathan Mestel

Jonathan Mestel

Andrew Jonathan Mestel is Professor of applied mathematics at Imperial College London who works on magnetohydrodynamics and biological fluid dynamics...

 - all achieved it.

By 1978, when England won the world under-26 championship at Mexico City ahead of the USSR and a group financed by Lloyds Bank performed strongly at Lone Pine, the golden generation was on the way to the Olympiad silver medals achieved in 1984, 1986 and 1988. Barden continued to seek new primary school talent, and in 1980 recognised the exceptional promise of the then 8-year-old Michael Adams. Adams lived in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, far from the major chess centres, so Barden arranged for a Devon organiser, Ken Butt, to stage an annual Lloyds Bank under-18 international tournament in Plymouth. Adams first played there at age 10, and by 12 missed an international master result by only half a point in his Lloyds Bank Masters debut where, in line with Barden's policy of matching the best talents against top grandmasters, he also performed well in a blitz game against Spassky.

In 1980, George Low wrote in Education magazine:

Mr. Leonard Barden, manager of the junior squad, traces the resurgence of interest to media coverage of the Fischer-Spassky duel eight years ago and its sequel between Korchnoi

Viktor Korchnoi

Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi ; pronounced in the original Russian as "karch NOY"; Ви́ктор Льво́вич Корчно́й, born March 23, 1931 is a professional chess player, author and currently the oldest active grandmaster on the tournament circuit...

 and Karpov

Anatoly Karpov

Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov is a Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion. He was the official world champion from 1975 to 1985 when he was defeated by Garry Kasparov. He played three matches against Kasparov for the title from 1986 to 1990, before becoming FIDE World Champion once...

 five years later.

In about 1972-73, he recalls, the selectors started casting their nets much wider than the Home Counties grammar schools where the recruiting ground had traditionally been. He and his colleagues looked through the results of a lot more tournaments all over the country. Those who had real talent were encouraged to go in for the National Junior Squad Championships and to enter adult tournaments. They were also given the opportunity to play against adult grandmasters in 'simuls

Simultaneous exhibition

A simultaneous exhibition or simultaneous display is a board game exhibition in which one player plays multiple games at a time with a number of other players. Such an exhibition is often referred to simply as a "simul".In a regular simul, no chess clocks are used...

' (simultaneous games involving 20 or 30 boards). Mr Barden now has 500 players on his books in whom he takes an active interest, following their tournament games and writing to suggest alternative strategies in their games.

By the 1980s the "English Chess Explosion" was in full swing, but Barden took a lesser role due to having to care for his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer's Disease

Alzheimer's disease

Alzheimer's disease also known in medical literature as Alzheimer disease is the most common form of dementia. There is no cure for the disease, which worsens as it progresses, and eventually leads to death...

. He still spotted talents early, notably Matthew Sadler

Matthew Sadler (chess player)

Matthew Sadler is an International Grandmaster of chess, and a chess writer.Sadler won the British Championship in 1995 at the age of 21 and again in 1997...

, who debuted in the Lloyds Bank tournament at 11 and became a leading grandmaster in the 1990s. In 1992 when the British Chess Federation was reluctant to send Luke McShane

Luke McShane

Luke James McShane is an English chess player. A former World Youth Champion and prodigious talent in chess, he has become one of England's leading players and a member of the Olympiad team. He has also been a trader in London's financial sector.- Early career :McShane won the World Under-10...

, then 8, to the world under-10 championship in Duisburg, Barden campaigned for a positive outcome which was rewarded when McShane won the gold medal. In 1988-90, he managed the early programme for David Howell

David Howell (chess player)

David Wei Liang Howell is an English chess player. He is the youngest chess Grandmaster in the United Kingdom, a title he earned when he came second during the 35th Rilton Cup in Stockholm on 5 January 2007 when he was 16...

, then 8, who at 16 became England's youngest grandmaster.

In recognition of his efforts, Barden was offered an OBE

Order of the British Empire

The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...

, but declined it. Brian Walden

Brian Walden

Alastair Brian Walden is a British journalist and broadcaster who was a Labour Member of Parliament for a decade. He is the father of actor Ben Walden....

 has written that "Leonard Barden has done more for British chess than anybody since our famous 19th century champion, Howard Staunton

Howard Staunton

Howard Staunton was an English chess master who is generally regarded as having been the world's strongest player from 1843 to 1851, largely as a result of his 1843 victory over Saint-Amant. He promoted a chess set of clearly distinguishable pieces of standardised shape—the Staunton pattern—that...

."

Chess strength

According to Chessmetrics

Chessmetrics

Chessmetrics is a system for rating chess players devised by Jeff Sonas. It is intended as an improvement over the Elo rating system.-Implementation:...

, Barden's best single performance was at Hastings 1957-58, where he finished fourth, behind the world title candidates Paul Keres

Paul Keres

Paul Keres , was an Estonian chess grandmaster, and a renowned chess writer. He was among the world's top players from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s....

, Svetozar Gligorić

Svetozar Gligoric

Svetozar Gligorić is a Serbian chess grandmaster. He won the championship of Yugoslavia a record twelve times, and is considered the best player ever from Serbia...

 and Miroslav Filip

Miroslav Filip

Miroslav Filip was a Grandmaster of chess from the Czech Republic. Filip was awarded the title of International Master in 1953, and the Grandmaster title in 1955...

, scoring 5/9 (56%) against opposition with an average rating of 2566, for a performance rating of 2586. On the January 1958 rating list, Barden reached his peak rating of 2497.

Notable games

Barden has said that "my favourite game" is his win against Weaver Adams (Black) at Hastings

Hastings International Chess Congress

The Hastings International Chess Congress is an annual chess congress which takes place in Hastings, England, around the turn of the year. The main event is the Hastings Premier tournament, which was traditionally a 10 to 16 player round-robin tournament. In 2004/05 the tournament was played in the...

 1950-51: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Nxd5 6.d4 Bb4+ 7.c3 Be7 8.Nxf7 Kxf7 9.Qf3+ Ke6 10.Qe4 Bf8 11.O-O Ne7 12.f4 c6 13.fxe5 Kd7 14.Be2 Ke8 15.c4 Nc7 16.Nc3 Be6 17.Bg5 Qd7 18.Rad1 Rc8 19.Bxe7 Qxe7 20.d5 Qc5+ 21.Kh1 cxd5 22.cxd5 Bd7 23.e6 Bb5 24.Qf4 Kd8 25.Bxb5 Nxb5 26.Nxb5 Qxb5 27.d6 1-0

Here Barden (White) annihilates Jonathan Penrose

Jonathan Penrose

Jonathan Penrose, OBE is an English chess player, emeritus Grandmaster, and International Correspondence Chess Grandmaster who won the British Chess Championship ten times between 1958 and 1969. He is the son of Lionel Penrose, a world famous professor of genetics, and brother of Roger Penrose...

 (Black), who won a famous game against reigning World Champion

World Chess Championship

The World Chess Championship is played to determine the World Champion in the board game chess. Men and women of any age are eligible to contest this title....

 Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Tal was a Soviet–Latvian chess player, a Grandmaster, and the eighth World Chess Champion.Widely regarded as a creative genius, and the best attacking player of all time, he played a daring, combinatorial style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability....

 the following year, and ultimately won the British Chess Championship

British Chess Championship

The British Chess Championship is organised by the English Chess Federation. There are separate championships for men and women. Since 1923 there have been sections for juniors, and since 1982 there has been an over-sixty championship. The championship venue usually changes every year and has been...

 a record ten times: Barden-Penrose, British Championship 1959 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.O-O Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 O-O 8.c3 d6 9.h3 Na5 10.Bc2 c5 11.d4 Qc7 12.Nbd2 Be6 13.dxe5 dxe5 14.Ng5 Bd7 15.Nf1 Rad8 16.Qe2 g6 17.Ne3 Bc8 18.a4 c4 19.axb5 axb5 20.Rd1 Rxd1+ 21.Qxd1 Rd8 22.Qe2 b4 23.Rxa5! Qxa5 24.Qxc4 Rf8 25.Nxf7! Kg7 26.Nf5+! gxf5 27.Bh6+ Kg6 28.Bxf8 Bxf8 29.Nh8+ Kh6 30.Qxc8 Kg7 31.Qe6 Qa1+ 32.Kh2 Qxb2 33.Bb3 h5 34.Qf7+ Kxh8 35.Qxf8+ 1-0

Young-Barden, correspondence

Correspondence chess

Correspondence chess is chess played by various forms of long-distance correspondence, usually through a correspondence chess server, through email or by the postal system; less common methods which have been employed include fax and homing pigeon...

1945 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Na5 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6 8.Qf3 cxb5!? 9.Qxa8 Bc5 10.Ne4 Nxe4 11.Qxe4 O-O 12.O-O Re8 13.Qe2 Bb7 14.Qxb5 Bb6 15.d3 Re6 16.Kh1 Bxg2+ 17.Kxg2 Qa8+ 18.f3 Rg6+ 19.Kh1 Qxf3+ 20.Rxf3 Rg1# 0-1

External links

• Chess site, including Barden's column, at The Guardian
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/jun/28/4