Aitken Opponent and Event (help)

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Guys,

Up to book 41 of 45 but John (Saunders) and myself are stuck on this name and the event.

We do not think it is a National County Championship final because it was played in November
but we fully open to any suggestions.

John has been marvelous at finding other names that Mr Aitken has hastily scribbled down and
this has often led to him finding out all kinds of other details about the player in question.
(I expect the same as someone here hopefully fills in the blanks.)

But here we are stumped. Who is the player and what is the event.
Three different sources, the book 41 index, the actual score sheet and from Aitken's owns index.



The game where we see Aitken employing his favorite defence to the Lopez.
Sadly in this game white did not play 10.Rxe4+ when the fun begins.

J H McTonedy(?) - J Aitken, NCC(?), 05.11.1977 (Bonfire Night!)

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 b5 6.Bb3 d6 7.Ng5 d5 8.exd5 Nd4 9.Re1 Bc5 10.h3 0-0 11.c3 Nxb3 12.Qxb3 h6 13.d4 exd4 14.cxd4 Bd6 15.Nf3 Nxd5 16.Ne5 Be6 17.Qf3 Qf6 18.Qxf6 Nxf6 19.Nc3 Rfe8 20.Bd2 Nd5 21.Ne4 Bxe5 22.dxe5 Nb6 23.Nc5 Rad8 24.Bf4 Nd5 25.Bd2 Nb6 26.Ba5 Bc8 27.Bc3 Rd5 28.b4 Nd7 29.Nxd7 Bxd7 30.Rad1 Be6 31.Rxd5 Bxd5 32.a3 Kf8 33.Rd1 c6 34.f4 g6 35.Kf2 Ke7 36.g4 Ke6 Adjudicated as a draw. ½-½

Thank You in advance.

Edit: The '1984' you see is the number of the game given by Aitken.

[PeterFarr]

5/11/1977 was a Saturday, which I guess makes a local North Glos. league match at that time less likely. I wonder if "NC" means National Clubs, which would fit a Saturday match.

[Matt Mackenzie]

White was presumably a fairly good player, so a perusal of grading lists from that time might help (if anybody has them)?

[Geoff Chandler]

HI,

We cannot find him at all. (yet) and yes he can handle himself OTB.
If we could identify the event I'm sure we will get him.

I'm pretty Aitken used the book to the score the game live, it was not copied from a score sheet,
After the game it was written in the score book index, he then added it to his total games book.
a book just with the names of who he played so he can find the relevant score book,

He could have misheard the name first time around then copied it down wrongly...three times!
(you have just read a clutch at a passing straw.)

We have met numerous 'who is this and what was it' and have managed to solve them.
This one is annoying.

[E Michael White]

5/11/1977 was a Saturday, which I guess makes a local North Glos. league match at that time less likely. I wonder if "NC" means National Clubs, which would fit a Saturday match.

Peter Farr is almost certainly right that the NC could be National Club. I played in a NC match around then for Cheltenham which was played on a Saturday and by Telephone. On his score sheet I cannot read the word after NC but the next word looks a bit like Telephone in Aitken Script. I notice Dr Aitken was board 2. In the matches I played in Nic Patterson played board 1 so again this ties up. As regards the opponents name I can't see any connections yet.

Addn:-

Subsequently I checked my own games record and find I played in a telephone match on 5/11/77 for Cheltenham against Newport and Gwent. This would be the National Club match referred to by Peter.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Michael,

Thank you. Now you say 'telephone' I can just about see telephone in the game score.

Narrows the search to Newport and Gwent I'll get on it after studying the form for todays horses.
(find horses with a chess linked name - Dancing King, 3:00 at Goodwood) and place my 10p and 20p roll up bets.
I won £90 a few weeks back but often break even.

Thanks again to all who helped to hopefully nail this one.

[E Michael White]

Hi Geoff
This doesn't help you further but might amuse some. I have deciphered the rest of the "event" box at the top of the score sheet. The troublesome word is not one but two words. I am fairly confident the event box says - N.C.C Match by Telephone.

[Geoff Chandler]

Hi Michael,

I am now entering the games up to the time of the game in question.
I enter the bland details first, names and events to get any queries out of the way, then do the moves.

On the 18th December 1977 Aitken played P. Abbot (Newport and Gwent again!) in a N.C.C. match (draw)
Aitken makes no mention of a telephone. (though I might not recognise it if he had.)

I am in touch with Zane Alford from Newport and Gwent and he has kindly raised the matter on the N & G facebook page.

Although I was joking a contact suggests J H McTonedy could have been misheard over the phone.
as J A McDonnell was club champion of Newport in 1971. Very possible as Mc Tonedy at the moment is untraceable.

(My 2nd theory is that one person could have been playing all the games by phone and made up the names.)

The good news is that Dancing King romped home at 9/2.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Is Aitken consistent in his use on acronyms? Does he use NCC and NC in other scores? Is it possible that he opened a bracket to write "(match by telephone)" and forgot to close the bracket? Or would he write NC one day and NCC another day, meaning the same thing both times?

I like the theory that he misheard the name over the telephone.

It is board two though, so who would have been playing board 1, and what would the team have been? As you say, once you have the teams, you will have the answer. Can you look in databases for other games played on 05/11/1977 (I see E. Michael White has already answered this, finding a game he played on that date by telephone, and suggesting that someone like Patterson - who is Patterson? - might have played on board 1)? Hopefully your Newport and Gwent contacts will help.

Heh, your request for help is now searchable, as I found it here (along with the comment from your 'contact' who is presumably Jon D'Souza-Eva, unless he read it here first):

https://gwentchess.org.uk/mctunday-mctonedy/

[Roger de Coverly]

- who is Patterson?

Nick Patterson, previously of Cambridge University and the Irish Olympiad team, who had signed for the spooks at GCHQ at the time.

Here's his wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Patt ... scientist)

[John Saunders]

Is Aitken consistent in his use on acronyms? Does he use NCC and NC in other scores? Is it possible that he opened a bracket to write "(match by telephone)" and forgot to close the bracket? Or would he write NC one day and NCC another day, meaning the same thing both times?

I like the theory that he misheard the name over the telephone.

It is board two though, so who would have been playing board 1, and what would the team have been? As you say, once you have the teams, you will have the answer. Can you look in databases for other games played on 05/11/1977 (I see E. Michael White has already answered this, finding a game he played on that date by telephone, and suggesting that someone like Patterson - who is Patterson? - might have played on board 1)? Hopefully your Newport and Gwent contacts will help.

From what I've seen Aitken often puts NC when he means the National Club Championship though it's not impossible that it stands for something else on occasion. But I concur with the theory that the 05.11.1977 fixture was a National Club Championship match for Cheltenham, played by telephone. I see from the 1978/79 BCF Yearbook that Cheltenham beat Newport & Gwent on board count after drawing 3-3 in round 1 of the 1977/78 competition. They then seem to have had a bye through round 2 and then defeated St James by 3½-2½ in round 3. (Not sure of the location of St James CC, not that it is relevant). In round 4 Cheltenham lost to Bedford by 2-4. The yearbook doesn't have dates of matches. (An aside: it seems strange to me that some teams - actually, rather a lot of them, there were 50+ first round fixtures but only 13 second round fixtures - should have received byes in round two rather than round one but doubtless someone here will know the workings of the 1970s National Club system.)

I myself played in rounds 1-3 of the National Club that year (for High Wycombe) and notice that the games I played were dated 13.11.1977, 04.12.1977 and 15.01.1978 (all Sundays), which gives some idea of the timings that would probably have applied to other matches played in those rounds. The date of the first one is close enough to 05.11.1977 to suggest that the Mc[Illegible] game was indeed round 1 of the National Club Championship.

Maybe the later match on 18 December wasn't a National Club match - maybe the NC stood for something else on this occasion, or maybe it's his dodgy handwriting again and not NC at all. Can you show us, Geoff? (EDIT - I've subsequently rethought this and concluded it was indeed a national Club match - see this post)

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Would "St James" chess club possibly be the St James Club, a private members club in Mayfair, that might have been able to put together some strong chess players from its members to run Cheltenham close - more likely than some random church named "St James"...

[Christopher Kreuzer]

- who is Patterson?

Nick Patterson, previously of Cambridge University and the Irish Olympiad team, who had signed for the spooks at GCHQ at the time.

Here's his wiki page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Patt ... scientist)

Thank you Roger. Sorry to take the thread even further off topic, but I was intruigued by what the Wikipedia page says:

Nick Patterson was a child chess prodigy. He won the Irish Chess Championship in 1969. In a long game in the Chess Olympiad of Siegen in 1970, where he played top board for Ireland, he met the Danish grandmaster Bent Larsen, who was one of the top 10 players in the world at the time, and managed to make a draw after 93 moves.

More here at the ICU webpage:

https://www.icu.ie/articles/70

Interesting anecdotes there. I think Patterson has been discussed here previously, though only briefly (see here).

[Ian Thompson]

An aside: it seems strange to me that some teams - actually, rather a lot of them, there were 50+ first round fixtures but only 13 second round fixtures - should have received byes in round two rather than round one but doubtless someone here will know the workings of the 1970s National Club system.

Probably because round 1 losers were eligible to play in the Plate competition and round 2 losers weren't.

[David Sedgwick]

An aside: it seems strange to me that some teams - actually, rather a lot of them, there were 50+ first round fixtures but only 13 second round fixtures - should have received byes in round two rather than round one but doubtless someone here will know the workings of the 1970s National Club system.

Probably because round 1 losers were eligible to play in the Plate competition and round 2 losers weren't.

That tallies with my recollection.

If there were an odd number of entries, the unpaired team had the option of staying in the Championship or moving into the plate.