On Saturday the 8th of November 1997, Garry Kasparov took
on a 25-board simultaneous display at the Cobden Club, London
in order to raise money for the charity Fragile X. The event
was opened by the BCF President Steve Davis and the pop star,
Sting. The BCF were invited to enter two teams of four, a girls
team and a boys team. The girls team, comprising Rosalind Kieran
(155), Claire Thrower (148), Jo Hart (130) and myself (166) playing
in consultation, played the following masterpiece?!
Kasparov,Garry (2820) - BCF Girls team [B30]
Fragile X Charity Simul, 08.11.1997
1.e4 c5 We'd been trying to decide which opening to play before the game and we'd decided against the Dragon - he'll know it too well, 1...e5 was out because we didn't know it well enough and we didn't want to play the Philidor's because hardly any GM's play it.
That left us with the Sicilian Sveshnikov. 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 "Eh-oh, I don't know what to do against this system, any ideas anyone?" All four of us out of book on move 3 !?
"Oh well, he's only the
World Champion and we ought to be able to make it up as we go
along anyway." 3...Nd4 4.Nxd4 cxd4 5.0-0 g6 6.c3 dxc3
7.Nxc3 Bg7 Oh dear-we have one piece developed and White has
two & he's castled. Why did we bother getting out of bed
this morning? 8.d4 e6 9.d5 Ne7 10.d6 Nc6 11.Be3 0-0 12.Qd2
f5 13.Rad1 Ne5 14.f4 Ng4 15.Bd4 fxe4 16.Nxe4 Nf6 17.Nxf6+ Bxf6
18.Kh1 a6 19.Be2 Bxd4 20.Qxd4 b5 21.f5 Oh Sh**, still when
we resign we'll be able to shake his hand and get his autograph
and we lasted over 20 moves. 21...gxf5 22.Rd3 Rf6 23.Bh5 Bb7
24.Rg3+ Kf8 25.Qf4 "Right. O.K we've got two options:
Option one-we play h6 and we'll be blown off the board in about
5 more moves (in fact if h6 then Bg6 followed by Qh6 looks rather
strong) or option two-we play Rc8 and answer Qg5 with Rg6 "sacking"
the exchange, we'll have an active rook and besides, losing in
40 moves is better then losing in 25, especially as we were trying
to avoid losing in less time then the BCF's boys team. 25...Rc8
26.Qg5 Rg6 27.Qxd8+ Rxd8 28.Bxg6 hxg6 29.Rxg6 Rc8 30.Kg1 Rc2 31.h4
Kf7 32.h5 Be4 33.Rg3 e5 34.h6 f4 35.Rg7+ Kf6 36.Rf2 Rc1+ 37.Kh2
Bf5 38.g3?
This is not the kind of move you'd expect from a World Champion (even in a simul) he must have overlooked Be4, even so we were trying not to get too excited "We might have overlooked something really simple" 38...Be4! 39.gxf4 Rh1+ 40.Kg3 Rg1+ 41.Kh3 Rh1+ 42.Rh2 Bf5+ 43.Kg2 Be4+ 44.Kg3 exf4+ 45.Kxf4 Rxh2 46.Kxe4 Rxh6 47.Rxd7 Ke6 48.Ra7 Rh2 We're not going to muck this one up now! 49.Rxa6 Rxb2 50.Kd4 Rc2
At this move Kasparov grimaced said, "Huh, draw" with a look of disgust on his face and just walked on without as much so a handshake, a "well played" (not that we deserved one) or a smile, however next time he passed our board we did manage to get him to sign our scoresheets and autograph books.It's a shame he just called the game a draw and didn't ask us if we wanted one because we had our reply all planned: "Hmm, we'll think about it". ½-½
In total Kasparov played 24, won 21 and drew 3 (against Daniel Johnson, The BCF boys team of Richard Palliser, Desmond Tan, Edmund Player and David Hodge as well as the aforementioned BCF Girls team) He also refused to continue one game against someone from Japan sending in moves from the Internet because he suspected the use of a computer. Later when the moves were tested against other software programs, it was found that he had good reason for being suspicious as the replies the computers made were the same ones Kasparov had faced.
Our train journey on the way home was delayed by half an hour at Paddington due to the need to fetch the police to deal with some over jubilant Bristol City fans, but when we finally left the station our joy was short lived as the remaining Bristol City fans restarted their celebrations over having beaten Brentford 4-1 (though I'm sure at one stage when the volume of beer consumed had increased it changed to "we only won 5-1"!)
We finally got home at about 12.45am with the whole collection of out of tune City / Anti-Rovers songs (all unprintable) ringing in our ears. All in all though, a most enjoyable experience and I'd like to thank the BCF for inviting me to play.