There are more adventures on a chessboard than on all the seas of the world
The year was 1976. I was six when I first started playing chess. I remember my fascination at the tall wooden carved chess pieces dad brought back from Segovia when he went to work in a factory there. I would never have developed the passion I have for chess if it hadn’t been for the big efforts mum and dad made to ferry me around clubs and tournaments so first things first -a big thank you to them for getting the ball rolling. Here’s the 3 of us:
It all started when they started taking me to an upstairs room of the Nag’s Head Pub on Church Street in Ormskirk where the members of the West Lancashire chess club met. It’s the room just above the black window boxes on the right hand side of the street below!
Church Street in Ormskirk
There I started my training with Stephen Berkley and John Littlewood. Everyone was drinking pints and mad about chess. I still remember how big the pint of blackcurrent juice was in my hands. I felt one of the crowd with my drink looking very much like a pint of guiness but without the froth! In 1980, I won the Liverpool under 12 championship at the University of Liverpool at Mount Pleasant with a score of 12/12. I remember the event clearly and the “magic” Nimzovich gambit variation for white against the French Defence which John Littlewood showed me: 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.Nf3 cd4 5.Bd3! It’s still part of my repertoire today.
This was the year of Pachman, Pacman and Adam and the Ants for me. My prize at the Liverpool U12 Open was a copy of Ludek Pachman’s “Modern chess tactics” and I spent hours and hours working out the solutions to all the puzzles until it became totally dog-eared. It was an exciting time. We would play truant from school at lunchtime and sneak into town to the new Dixons electrical shop that just opened on the main street. They were promoting their new handheld pacman. It was totally addictive and they had a demo on show. Not surprisingly the shop was full of local kids all sciving off school to play on it. We were all saving up our pocket money and “sunday rations” to buy one or an LP of Adam and the Ants.
When the recession hit hard in the UK at the end of the 70s dad decided to apply for a job he saw in the papers to help build the first aluminium can plant on the Chinese mainland in Hong Kong. I started school there a few months later in January 1983 at Sha Tin College and immediately joined the Hong Kong Chess Federation who used to meet on Monday nights at the Queen Elisabeth Stadium in Wanchai. We lived in the New Territories and it was a 26 mile journey from home but it was the highlight of my week. The amazing views of the harbour during the ferry crossing and being at sea left fond memories.
While in Hong Kong, I learned also to play chinese chess and found that it was much more wild and open than international chess. It improved my tactical play enormously!
When I was 15, I won the Junior U18 Chess Championship. The same summer GM Miguel Najdorf came to Hong Kong to give a simul on the 28th of July. In a crazy Benko gambit game we played together, he produced 2 brilliant moves both sacrificing on the d7-square finishing me off with style:
White: GM Miguel Najdorf
Black: Michael Taylor
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5 b5 4.cb5 a6 5.e3 Bb7?! 6.Nc3 ab5 7.Bb5 Qa5 8.Bc4 e6 9.Bd2 Qb6 10.e4! Ne4 11.Nf3! Be7 12.0-0 0-0 13.Re1 Nd2 14.Qd2 Na6 15.Ne5 Rad8 16.Rad1 d6?! 17.Nd7!! Rd7 18.de6 Rc7 19.ef7+ Kh8 20.a3 d5!? 21.Bd5 Rd7 22.Qc2 Qc7 23.Bc4 Bd6 24.h3 Re7 25.Re7 Qe7 26.Qd3 Rd8 27.Qf5! Nc7 28.a4 g6 29.Qg4 Qe5 30.g3 Qf6 31.Ne4 Qe7 32.Nd6 Rd6 33.Rd6 Qd6 34.Qd7!! Resigns 1-0
GM Miguel Najdorf making his move against me in a simul in Hong Kong on 28th of July, 1985.
To honour the great Argentinian of Polish descent, this year I am taking up the Sicilian Najdorf variation. Shortly after I went to Manila to play for Hong Kong in the Asian Junior Championship. It was my first ever international competition. The following year in 1985 I played in the Asian Junior in Hong Kong where GM Viswanathan Anand won his international master (IM) title.
Viswanathan Anand on his way to win his IM title at the Hong Kong Asian Junior
The last time I played in the Asian Junior was in 1986 in Dubai where I beat (now GM) Ziaur Rahman in the final round. You can see the game here.
Here is a photo of me playing Lim Fung-Yen from Singapore. You can see the old Hong Kong flag!
My chess high point as a kid was in 1988 when I played for Hong Kong in the World Junior Chess Championship in Adelaide, Australia. It was a strong Category VII tournament with an average rating of 2407 won by GM Joel Lautier who finished ahead of (now GM) Vassily Ivanchuk and (now GM) Grigory Serper, An IM norm required 6 points and I was very happy to have scored 5.5 points with a performance rating of 2305.
My games at the World Junior 1988 have now been added to the new Chessbase 2012. In 2008, I returned to competitive chess playing in the 6th Aigaleo Open in Athens, Greece where I finished in 3rd place and joined Petroupoli Chess Club “Dias” (Greek Chess Federation link).
Petroupoli Chess Club “Dias” wouldn’t be what it is without the hard work of all its members. In particular I want to give a big thank you to Mr Antonis Pavlis (pictured below) for all his efforts and sacrifices that he makes for the future of the club:
In October 2009, I was very happy to bring women’s world chess champion GM Alexandra Kosteniuk to Athens to play her first ever simul on the Greek mainland. Petroupoli chess club organised a great 3-day event – Athens Chess Festival. Hopefully it will help future generations of young and talented Greek chess players get excited about this magical game.
The prize-winning juniors from the 2nd Petroupoli Chess Club DIAS Junior Championship:
My current FIDE rating is 2013 and, thanks to a few amazing coaching sessions with the strong Greek players IM Nikos Kalesis and GM Ioannis Nikolaidis, I am seeing new patterns everywhere on the 64 squares – so dont be surprised if there’s fire on the board after move 10!
