Jonathan Penrose

Historical knowledge and information regarding our great game.
David Sedgwick
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by David Sedgwick » Wed Jul 01, 2020 7:10 pm

JustinHorton wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:36 am
Was Penrose not available in 1972?
Roger de Coverly wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 12:03 pm
He may have made himself unavailable. He had lost the British title to Wade in 1970 and Keene in 1971. Also he had collapsed during play at the 1970 Olympiad.
From what I recall from reports at the time, he was genuinely unavailable. He played in the England team at the 1973 European Team Championships in Bath.
JustinHorton wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 4:07 pm
Post-1974, did he officially retire in any way?
Not to the best of my knowledge. However, in the excellent article which he kindly posted here, Tim Harding relates that Penrose switched to correspondence chess immediately after the Nice debacle, making his debut in a GB v Finland match that began on 3rd January 1975.

Jonathan Bryant
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Jonathan Bryant » Wed Jul 01, 2020 7:16 pm

Roger de Coverly wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 10:24 am

The Olympiad board orders give a clue as to respective rankings.
Maybe. Wasn’t Hartston board 1 because he was British Champion though? I think that was the tradition back then. I could be wrong.

Miles was awared the GM title at Haifa as was Ray. Ray admittedly only on the last day for his performance at the Olympiad. Miles was a GM elect prior to the event, of course.

I’m not really sure about 'talent' and what that means exactly, or how you measure it. In terms of achievements, though, I don’t think there’s any question that Ray was ahead of Bill Hartston.
One was that RDK lead the way is that he has a good case for saying he was the first to stop playing in the British Championship because it wasn’t worth it for him.

In the 60s I’ve no doubt that Penrose winning all the time was absolutely a reflection of him being the best player. I’m not sure you can say the same from 1972 onwards.


I think it was 1970 that Ray challenged Penrose to a match and the latter declined. Now that, I would say, is a clue to their respective strengths at the time.

Incidentally, on the question of professionalising British chess (in terms of attitude, at least) Hartston once said,
I think we were the intermediate generation. There was the Penrose-Golombek-Alexander era which had no way of competing with the top Eastern Europeans and just got completely overtaken by them in the '50s and '60s. Then Keene and I, and Basman maybe, we introduced a sort of professionalism without being professional: professionalism in terms of attitude to the game. I think that sort of set the road to the next generation of Miles and Short, Stean maybe, just to completely overtake us.
https://streathambrixtonchess.blogspot. ... tston.html

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Matt Mackenzie
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Matt Mackenzie » Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:03 pm

A bit strange that he mentions Stean but not Nunn?
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Roger de Coverly
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Roger de Coverly » Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:09 pm

Jonathan Bryant wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 7:16 pm
Wasn’t Hartston board 1 because he was British Champion though? I think that was the tradition back then. I could be wrong.
Hartston did slightly edge ahead of Keene in the 1973-74 period. There was never any expectation that the British Champion would even be selected for the Olympiad team, let alone play board 1. The regular match against the Dutch might have been another matter.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:34 pm

"Wasn’t Hartston board 1 because he was British Champion though? I think that was the tradition back then. I could be wrong.

Hartston did slightly edge ahead of Keene in the 1973-74 period. There was never any expectation that the British Champion would even be selected for the Olympiad team, let alone play board 1. The regular match against the Dutch might have been another matter."

Roger is correct. The 1972 British Champion expressed annoyance that he was played on Board 8 in the next match after he became champion...

"A bit strange that he mentions Stean but not Nunn?"

I think Stean night have been higher-regarded then? They were both pretty good of course!

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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by NickFaulks » Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:39 pm

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 8:03 pm
A bit strange that he mentions Stean but not Nunn?
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Neil Graham
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Neil Graham » Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:51 pm

In 1977 I was on a work training course for a fortnight in sunny Worthing. It coincided with the British Chess Championships in Brighton and I went along to spectate. One game hit the headlines involving Jonathan Penrose - my recollection is that it was the Saturday game and so I was able to watch. I don't think he played very much competitive otb chess after this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFN5cqXk7n8

Paul Habershon
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Paul Habershon » Thu Jul 02, 2020 9:19 am

Matt Mackenzie wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 1:28 pm
Penrose played in the 1974 Olympiad, but did terribly - it was one of his last major OTB events.
Penrose scored 6/11 for 17th out of 48 in British Championship at Chester in 1979. Didn't play in 1980 at Brighton.

Nick Burrows
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Nick Burrows » Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:09 am

When was his final otb tournament? Chessgame has this from 1984 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1544790

David Sedgwick
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by David Sedgwick » Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:03 pm

Nick Burrows wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:09 am
When was his final otb tournament? Chessgame has this from 1984 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1544790
I think that that game was played in a key London League match for which Penrose came out of retirement, albeit unsuccessfully.

Neil Graham
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Neil Graham » Thu Jul 02, 2020 12:32 pm

Neil Graham wrote:
Wed Jul 01, 2020 11:51 pm
In 1977 I was on a work training course for a fortnight in sunny Worthing. It coincided with the British Chess Championships in Brighton and I went along to spectate. One game hit the headlines involving Jonathan Penrose - my recollection is that it was the Saturday game and so I was able to watch. I don't think he played very much competitive otb chess after this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFN5cqXk7n8
I've now looked at this and found it was the Round 3 game on Wednesday. Suppose they must have let me out early. According to chessbase Penrose's games after the 1979 British Championship are solely correspondence chess with one game in 1980 against a Jamieson Pryor which doesn't show a source.

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JustinHorton
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by JustinHorton » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:10 pm

Nick Burrows wrote:
Thu Jul 02, 2020 10:09 am
When was his final otb tournament? Chessgame has this from 1984 https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1544790
Heh, interesting opponent
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Jonathan Bryant
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Jonathan Bryant » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:34 pm

Image

Chess in the USSR 1958.

Is this Jonathan Penrose? I ask because the given initial д is normally a ‘D’ sound.
The surname looks right though

EDIT: ‘дж’ is a kind of last-bit-of garage sound which I guess is as close as you can get to Jonathan in Russian

EDIT2: I see nick got in before me
Last edited by Jonathan Bryant on Thu Jul 02, 2020 2:23 pm, edited 2 times in total.

NickFaulks
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by NickFaulks » Thu Jul 02, 2020 1:46 pm

That would be right. Russian does not have a "j", so it translates into Cyrillic as Dzh. I was taught this by my Russian master at school, Mr Dzhopson.
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Simon Rogers
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Re: Jonathan Penrose

Post by Simon Rogers » Wed Oct 07, 2020 11:02 am

Happy Birthday Jonathan Penrose. 87 today.
A colossus of British Chess.